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Speaker 5: One of the things that I learned from the first
Speaker 5: business that I took into the second one was the
Speaker 5: power of building audience and community and then serving them right.
Speaker 5: A lot of entrepreneurs get an idea for a productor
Speaker 5: or something, and they rushed to build that. They rush
Speaker 5: to do that, and then they go try to find
Speaker 5: an audience to sell it to. My advice would.
Speaker 6: Revert be to reverse engineer that right.
Speaker 5: So before I dropped, before we actually launched, I had
Speaker 5: ten thousand names on my email list.
Speaker 6: I had five thousand names on my SMS list.
Speaker 5: As we were building out the Instagram and the social presence,
Speaker 5: it was more so about what this brand was, about
Speaker 5: what it was going to stand for and showing the
Speaker 5: audience the and I was showing mock ups and people
Speaker 5: were just resonating with it because it spoke to them.
Speaker 7: My graduates from my school being false backdrop drop, Mike drop,
Speaker 7: backdrop drop.
Speaker 1: All right, guys, welcome back. E y L.
Speaker 8: This is gonna be a dope conversation. Actively black. This
Speaker 8: is somebody that we got introduced to the brand.
Speaker 1: I think Kwame Uncle, Yeah, like two years ago.
Speaker 8: Yeah, he introduced us to the brand. And then we
Speaker 8: got the merchant.
Speaker 2: The biggest package of merchandise that I've ever seen from
Speaker 2: a brand. I said, wait, what is this?
Speaker 8: But what's happened is that they've been actually progressively like
Speaker 8: climbing up the rankings of this whole situation. You've probably
Speaker 8: seen them being wore. I see the list of celebrities
Speaker 8: that have championed the brand, from Steph Curry to Pinky Cole, Meganica,
Speaker 8: Steve Harvey, Deon Sanders, Cam Newton, Damon John a bunch
Speaker 8: of people, and then a lot of the IL deals,
Speaker 8: especially with the Sanders family, Shiloh Sanders, Shador Sanders, Travis Hunter,
Speaker 8: our guy Stagah, Kelly.
Speaker 1: Somebody's been down in Jackson. Well somebody's in Colorado now. Yeah.
Speaker 6: Yeah, we're gonna we're gonna be in that cold for
Speaker 6: a little bit.
Speaker 8: So it's a it's a I guess the best way
Speaker 8: to describe it is an athletic where brand.
Speaker 6: At leisure at leisure sports apparel.
Speaker 1: Yeah, at leisure sports apparel.
Speaker 8: So it's a dope conversation from starting growing the brand VC,
Speaker 8: because you guys took some VC money as well, right,
Speaker 8: So that leads into that conversation with the seed rounds
Speaker 8: different things in nature, collaborations with Foolble, collaborations with the
Speaker 8: Muhammad ali A State, a bunch of different things that's happening.
Speaker 1: So congrats on.
Speaker 6: That, man, appreciate it.
Speaker 1: He just like breaking news today. Yeah, I just saw you.
Speaker 1: I just saw the post.
Speaker 6: Multi year deal with the Muhammad ali Ah State.
Speaker 1: We gotta get into that. Yeah. So yeah, we got
Speaker 1: the CEO, Landy Smith.
Speaker 8: Thank you for joining us.
Speaker 6: Appreciate you for having me, man.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it's been it's been a long time coming.
Speaker 5: Yeah, man, it's funny you say two years ago when
Speaker 5: Kwame introduced you. That's literally when he introduced the brand,
Speaker 5: before we even got started. We just made two years
Speaker 5: on Black Friday this past Black Friday. So we're we're
Speaker 5: brand that's twenty five months years old, man, twenty five
Speaker 5: months old.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I feel like we've been in text conversation
Speaker 2: probably for about a year of that about that year
Speaker 2: and I'm like, yeah, we coming to LA. When we
Speaker 2: come and we're coming, it's like, yoh, man, I just
Speaker 2: did this deal that you think Now, I'm like, yo, bro,
Speaker 2: it's coming.
Speaker 1: Here we are, So yeah, let's talk about it. Man.
Speaker 8: A lot of people start holding brands, but you, like
Speaker 8: I said, you've actually been able to reach success and
Speaker 8: you're reaching more success.
Speaker 1: You've been able to raise money and everything. But take
Speaker 1: us back to the beginning.
Speaker 8: What's the idea to start the brand and what's the
Speaker 8: beginning things that you did to get the brand off
Speaker 8: the ground.
Speaker 6: Yeah, well this is actually my second one.
Speaker 5: The first brand I launch is called Active Faith, launched
Speaker 5: that back in twenty eleven. My two business partners in
Speaker 5: that with Steph Curry and Anthony Tolliver.
Speaker 6: How'd you get those guys. Man, So I'm a former
Speaker 6: basketball player. Man, excuse me?
Speaker 1: Where'd you play? Man?
Speaker 5: I played at the University of Houston and finished up
Speaker 5: with the Sacramento Kings. I tore my knee up thirty
Speaker 5: three days after signing my first NBA contract, So, you know,
Speaker 5: something that was a dream for me since I was
Speaker 5: five years old, chased that dream. Like I said, played
Speaker 5: my college basketball at University of Houston and had the
Speaker 5: opportunity to play in the NBA. And that was a
Speaker 5: devastating moment for me, but it ended up being pivotal
Speaker 5: and would led me to doing what I'm doing today. So,
Speaker 5: I mean, jay Z has this this lyric where he says,
Speaker 5: if if you would have told him that whole was
Speaker 5: so clothing not in his lifetime. Wasn't in my right
Speaker 5: mind that that lyric. I mean, if there's anything that describes,
Speaker 5: you know, my experience and my testimony, that would be it.
Speaker 5: Because there's no way that I thought I'd be sitting
Speaker 5: here talking to you guys about a clothing brand. I
Speaker 5: was one of those guys where it was NBA or BUS.
Speaker 5: You know, I didn't have a plan B. I thought
Speaker 5: I was gonna plan in the league for ten twelve years,
Speaker 5: take care of my family, hopefully take care of a
Speaker 5: few people in my neighborhood, and that would be my legacy,
Speaker 5: you know what I mean. But God had a different
Speaker 5: plan for me. So the first brand man I from
Speaker 5: that injury. Man, I was in practice, a guy fell
Speaker 5: into my knee. To the articular cartage in my left knee.
Speaker 5: I had two micropractice surgeries in my career was over with,
Speaker 5: just like that. So I'm back home in Houston when
Speaker 5: I'm from shout out East.
Speaker 1: Town by the way, number one in the country, number two, Yeah.
Speaker 5: We number three right now. We lost, you know, last
Speaker 5: game number three. But and you know, I'm back home
Speaker 5: in Houston. I'm a grown man. I'm broke, living at
Speaker 5: home my.
Speaker 1: Mother, and.
Speaker 5: It was it was embarrassing for me to leave the
Speaker 5: house because every time I'm somewhere, somebody like, yo, that's
Speaker 5: Landy Smith, the basketball player, and she's supposed to be
Speaker 5: in the league. Thought she was in the NBA. And
Speaker 5: I'm at home, broke, you know, not knowing what I'm
Speaker 5: gonna do next next with my life. So I was praying, man,
Speaker 5: I asked God to give me some guidance, and I
Speaker 5: literally said this prayer. I said, if you're gonna take
Speaker 5: this game away from me, I'm begging you to show
Speaker 5: me what you want me to do with my life.
Speaker 5: And it was probably a week after that that I
Speaker 5: had this idea to create a sports appel brand that
Speaker 5: was faith based. That's how the first brand came to
Speaker 5: be Active Faith. Growing up as an athlete, I was
Speaker 5: privy to all the best of the best when it
Speaker 5: comes to sports apparel. And you know, when I thought
Speaker 5: about my passions in life, my faith was always important
Speaker 5: to me.
Speaker 6: Sports was always important to me.
Speaker 5: So I was like, maybe this would be a cool
Speaker 5: way to put those passions together to create this sports
Speaker 5: appel brand that was faith.
Speaker 6: Based, had these faith based messages.
Speaker 5: So that's how the first one started, man, And just
Speaker 5: through those relationships. The basketball world is very small, man.
Speaker 6: So you know Steph.
Speaker 5: I've been friends with Steph for what was it twelve
Speaker 5: thirteen years now. Obviously he's a man of faith. So
Speaker 5: when I was talking to him about this brand that
Speaker 5: I was getting ready to start that was going to
Speaker 5: be faith based, he wanted to be a part of it.
Speaker 5: So yeah, that's how that first one got started.
Speaker 8: And then What were the issues with the first one?
Speaker 6: Why that didn't work out? Oh?
Speaker 5: It worked, It still works still. Yeah, we've still got
Speaker 5: that one. Active Faith has done over twenty million in revenue.
Speaker 5: We've got customers in seventy five different countries, all e
Speaker 5: comm It's the first of its kind of.
Speaker 6: Faith pushed that brand.
Speaker 1: You push that because I've seen this pushed a lot.
Speaker 6: Is that being pushed in a different channel.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: It's got its own Instagram, it's got its own website.
Speaker 6: It's completely separate.
Speaker 5: You know, I don't I don't have kids yet, but
Speaker 5: I would imagine it's like, you know, you're having a newborn.
Speaker 5: It's got to take all of your attention, you know
Speaker 5: what I mean. Active Faith has been going since twenty eleven.
Speaker 5: I've got a partner that's still making sure, you know,
Speaker 5: running all the day to day with that. But when
Speaker 5: I had the vision for Actively Black and once this
Speaker 5: thing got started, man it was it was a snowball.
Speaker 5: So I've had to give it, you know, my full
Speaker 5: attention to make sure that we grow this thing the
Speaker 5: right way.
Speaker 2: So I want I want to go back to a
Speaker 2: little bit right because embarrassed to come out understandable from
Speaker 2: a standpoint, like you're the man in the town and
Speaker 2: now you've got this injury that's devastated. You didn't have
Speaker 2: any income, but you had an idea. How did you
Speaker 2: go from my idea to actually creating the brand itself?
Speaker 2: Like what was the manufacturing process that?
Speaker 1: Who gave you? You know what I mean? Like? What was
Speaker 1: that process? Like?
Speaker 5: Yeah, man, it's funny all your different experiences in life,
Speaker 5: how you can look back and you see where you
Speaker 5: know God was orchestrating things or where these different relationships
Speaker 5: will come back into play. So in two thousand and eight,
Speaker 5: I was invited to go on the NBA Asia Tour
Speaker 5: and so they took you know, a bunch of us.
Speaker 5: We went and played games in the Philippines and China
Speaker 5: and in Korea. And when we were in China, we
Speaker 5: actually went on this tour. They took us on this
Speaker 5: tour of some factories, and you know, most of the
Speaker 5: guys wasn't paying any attention to the tour guide. I'm
Speaker 5: asking questions and the dude ended up befriending me on
Speaker 5: Facebook at the time. And so when I had the
Speaker 5: injury and I had this idea, the first thing I
Speaker 5: did was I went to Facebook and I hit my
Speaker 5: guy up and I was like, Yo, I need the
Speaker 5: best of the best. I need like real sports apparel.
Speaker 5: I'm not talking about buying blanks and T shirts and
Speaker 5: printing on them. I need moisture, wicking, high quality performance apparel.
Speaker 5: Can you point me in the right direction. And that
Speaker 5: relationship that we have formed when I was over there
Speaker 5: in China helped to come back and help me to
Speaker 5: find my first factory at the time to get the
Speaker 5: samples and everything that I needed. I knew I wanted
Speaker 5: this to be premium performance fabrics, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 5: So I knew I had to go get it, you know,
Speaker 5: from the source. You know, Frank Lucas style, so it
Speaker 5: sounds like Frank. And then I tell people all the time, Man,
Speaker 5: I went to YouTube university.
Speaker 6: You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: I didn't.
Speaker 5: I was a kinesiology major at the University of Houston,
Speaker 5: so I had no background in design clothes. The only
Speaker 5: job I ever had was playing basketball, you know what
Speaker 5: I'm saying. So I went to YouTube and I was
Speaker 5: just religiously looking up everything I could.
Speaker 6: Man, I remember googling how to come up with a
Speaker 6: company name you know what I mean.
Speaker 5: And I remember the article was saying to make columns
Speaker 5: of words that described what your brand was going to
Speaker 5: be about.
Speaker 6: And literally, you know.
Speaker 5: Active in Faith were next to each other in this
Speaker 5: column of words that I was trying to figure out
Speaker 5: the name for the first company was going to be.
Speaker 5: And when I thought about active faith and the double
Speaker 5: entendre of it being the active where brand wanting to
Speaker 5: be active but also knowing that would activate your faith
Speaker 5: is is you actually have to put forth action, you
Speaker 5: know what I mean. People talk about manifestation, they talk
Speaker 5: about speaking things into existence, but it's the action that
Speaker 5: actually unlocks, you know, a lot of these blessings. So, man,
Speaker 5: I was on there looking up videos how to build
Speaker 5: your own website because at the time I'm looking up
Speaker 5: you know who am I.
Speaker 6: Hire a build website?
Speaker 5: And I'm looking they charging ten, fifteen, twenty thousand dollars
Speaker 5: to build a website. I don't have no money, So
Speaker 5: I'm like, I gotta I gotta figure out how to
Speaker 5: do this myself. So I taught myself to cold my
Speaker 5: own website, taught myself how to use photoshop and illustrator.
Speaker 5: Like I said, I don't come from a design background,
Speaker 5: so I'm just figuring out how to create mock ups
Speaker 5: just to get the ideas out of my head and
Speaker 5: get them visually onto a platform.
Speaker 6: And really that was the start of it, man.
Speaker 2: So when you get the first product right, the next
Speaker 2: thing is how do you market it? Are you thinking
Speaker 2: that yourself? Do I need a break a mortar or
Speaker 2: is it like I'm a solely ecommerce this thing and
Speaker 2: get it in the right hand.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 5: So, in the beginning with Active Faith, there was two
Speaker 5: big Christian sports appail I mean Christian retailers at the time,
Speaker 5: Family Christian LifeWay. I'm thinking, once I pitched them this idea,
Speaker 5: they picking me up, We launched and were gone. They
Speaker 5: all told me they'd never heard of Christian sports apparel before,
Speaker 5: so they were like, this isn't gonna work. So I
Speaker 5: actually went to e commerce route by necessity, but it
Speaker 5: ended up being a blessing, you know what I mean.
Speaker 5: I utilized my existing network. The funny thing, the thing
Speaker 5: that actually put Active Faith on the map, that gave
Speaker 5: us our first big exposure was do you.
Speaker 6: Guys remember Lynn Sanity?
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, yeah, all right, So Jeremy's went a closet
Speaker 5: of mind, yeah exactly, and he was wearing wrist bands
Speaker 5: from my company. So I got these wrist bands that
Speaker 5: said active Faith. The tagline was in Jesus, name I
Speaker 5: Play instead of name I prayed. The tagline is just
Speaker 5: name I Play. And so I was sending these wrist
Speaker 5: bands out to all the basketball players that I knew
Speaker 5: that would understand this concept of a faith based sports
Speaker 5: a pearl brand. Jeremy was one of them. He was
Speaker 5: in the D League at the time when I first
Speaker 5: got him the wristbands, and the Rockets called him up.
Speaker 5: We met for lunch, gave him some wrist bands, they
Speaker 5: cut him. The Knicks called him up, but he's at
Speaker 5: the end of the bench. Nobody, I mean nobody saw
Speaker 5: that coming. And it was it was two weeks after
Speaker 5: the Knicks has signed. They came back in time to
Speaker 5: play the Rockets. We went to lunch again. I was like, yo,
Speaker 5: let me give you these orange wristbands to match the
Speaker 5: Knick's uniform.
Speaker 6: And it was probably two weeks after that.
Speaker 5: I think Baron Davis got hurd whoever the two point
Speaker 5: guards wherever in front of him got hurt and he
Speaker 5: was forced into this role. And you know what, happened
Speaker 5: when with insanity and so he's on the cover of
Speaker 5: Sports Illustrated. Time magazine is everything you could think of
Speaker 5: laying the ball up and you see Active Faith and
Speaker 5: you see these wristbands on his wrist. I mean, you
Speaker 5: go look at it right now. Look up any picture,
Speaker 5: you're gonna see him wearing these wristbands. And Man, USA
Speaker 5: Today reached out to do a story on it. Next thing,
Speaker 5: I know, my website crashing because everybody in America was
Speaker 5: trying to get these wrist bands that he was wearing.
Speaker 6: And then we were.
Speaker 5: Getting all this traffic from China and Taiwan. So first
Speaker 5: year out the gate with Active Faith, we did three
Speaker 5: hundred thousand in revenue off wristbands. Yeah yeah, so man,
Speaker 5: that's how it got started.
Speaker 3: Man.
Speaker 5: And then you know, having that initial audience that saw
Speaker 5: the wristbands, when I introduced the apparel, it just kind of,
Speaker 5: you know, did his thing. We went from three hundred
Speaker 5: thousand to jumped from three hundred thousand to one point
Speaker 5: five million, to six million to eight and a half million,
Speaker 5: Like it was something that was just moving at a
Speaker 5: speed that you know, to this day, it's hard to
Speaker 5: really put it into words.
Speaker 6: What was happening.
Speaker 5: I mean, I had I had friends at my mom's
Speaker 5: house feeling orders. You know, my mom's house. I turned
Speaker 5: her my mom's house into an order for filming facility,
Speaker 5: you know what I'm saying, And was feeding my friends
Speaker 5: pizza to helped have them come over and help.
Speaker 6: Me feel orders. So yeah, that's that's how the first
Speaker 6: thing got off the ground.
Speaker 8: So all right, so you get that going, Yep, you're
Speaker 8: taking that money and then starting with actively black.
Speaker 1: Is that how that started?
Speaker 6: Man?
Speaker 5: So so, like I said, so, Steph was my business
Speaker 5: partner also, and at the time, you remember he wasn't
Speaker 5: the guy that everybody sees now, you know what I mean,
Speaker 5: A lot of people don't realize those ankle injuries and
Speaker 5: the surgeries that he had that.
Speaker 6: Second year in the league.
Speaker 5: You could be looking at a Grant Hill trajectory with
Speaker 5: Steph versus what he's on. So, man, people wasn't checking
Speaker 5: for him like that. But he was rocking with me.
Speaker 5: He was rocking with the brand. Same thing with him.
Speaker 5: He gets healthy, he wins multiple MVPs. To this day,
Speaker 5: he doesn't play a game without wearing his Active Faith
Speaker 5: Risbane and he still wears them every single game. But
Speaker 5: I was having some personal experiences that were challenging what
Speaker 5: I was doing with Active Faith, so I hid myself
Speaker 5: from people knowing who the founder of Active Faith was.
Speaker 5: In fact, my Instagram was private up until I launched
Speaker 5: Actively Black. My personal instagram. Over sixty percent of my
Speaker 5: customer base for Active Faith the Evangelical Christians, which in
Speaker 5: this country could be synonymous with racist. I didn't want
Speaker 5: them to know that it was this black man who
Speaker 5: was behind the brand. And so you couldn't found my
Speaker 5: name on the website. I wasn't on the social media,
Speaker 5: none of that, and that started to bother me internally,
Speaker 5: you know what I mean. My mother and my father
Speaker 5: raised me to be proud of my blackness. That's something
Speaker 5: that was taught to me at a very early age.
Speaker 6: And here it is I. You know, I bounced back from.
Speaker 5: An injury that ended my NBA career, built a multimillion
Speaker 5: dollar business out of my mom's house, and I'm afraid
Speaker 5: to even show that this is me, you know what
Speaker 5: I'm saying. And I had instances where customers will call
Speaker 5: you know, entrepreneur in the beginning, you wearing all the
Speaker 5: hats I'm doing customer service. A customer is like, you
Speaker 5: sound like you black, and I was like I am.
Speaker 5: They immediately asked for a refund. I had experiences where
Speaker 5: there were people wanting to invest in Active Faith and
Speaker 5: would write in go back and forth over email, we
Speaker 5: would set up in person meeting and I'll never forge
Speaker 5: get like walking into that room and seeing the looks
Speaker 5: on their faces like, oh damn, he's black. You know
Speaker 5: what I'm saying. Like I saw it in their faces,
Speaker 5: and all of a sudden, those conversations about investing in
Speaker 5: the brand completely went quiet, you know what I mean.
Speaker 5: And so I was already having this internal struggle with
Speaker 5: who I am as a black man and how I
Speaker 5: was hiding myself from this brand. So I started having
Speaker 5: this idea, if I could build this brand for this
Speaker 5: faith based community, can I do the same thing for
Speaker 5: my people, for black people? And you know, to this day,
Speaker 5: I get emails from Active Faith customers who were going
Speaker 5: through chemotherapy and they were saying, I felt like giving up,
Speaker 5: but I wore my Active Faith risk band. I wore
Speaker 5: my Active Faith hoodie to chemo today, and they gave
Speaker 5: me the strength to keep fighting. That let me know
Speaker 5: that what I was building was bigger than just another
Speaker 5: apparel brand, Like this meant something to somebody intrinsically, this
Speaker 5: was having an effect on somebody's life, and so I
Speaker 5: wanted to do that same thing for black people. And
Speaker 5: really the catalyst to me finally deciding to do it
Speaker 5: twenty eighteen, the movie Black Panther comes out, and I
Speaker 5: remember walking out of the theater for the first time,
Speaker 5: and I just remember that feeling that I felt. Man,
Speaker 5: it was unbelievable to see like the diaspora come together.
Speaker 6: You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 5: You saw African Black, Jamaica, whatever you were, if you
Speaker 5: were black, you felt something the first time you saw
Speaker 5: that film. And I was like, you know what, I'm
Speaker 5: gonna create that brand, and I want people to have
Speaker 5: the feeling that I had walking out of the theater
Speaker 5: watching Black Panther for the first time. I want them
Speaker 5: to have that feeling they when they interact with this brand.
Speaker 6: Act of faith kept me plenty busy.
Speaker 5: I moved out to LA six months before the pandemic
Speaker 5: shut the whole city down, and so I told myself,
Speaker 5: I'm not gonna let this time pass without burthening something new.
Speaker 5: And you know, we all witnessed murder George Floyd and
Speaker 5: the aftermath and everything that happened after that, and so
Speaker 5: I started to see all these brands. I saw Nike,
Speaker 5: you know, Adeeda, everybody make these declarations about what they
Speaker 5: were going to do for the black community after the
Speaker 5: murder of George Floyd, and to me, it.
Speaker 6: Felt very performative.
Speaker 5: It felt like this was just part of their new
Speaker 5: marketing strategy because outside of the pandemic, the stuff that's
Speaker 5: been happening in black people has been happening for centuries,
Speaker 5: for decades, and none of these brands had ever said anything,
Speaker 5: So why are y'all saying something now? And finally that's
Speaker 5: when I decided I wasn't gonna put this idea on
Speaker 5: the shelf anymore. Ink Magazine called me to do a
Speaker 5: story on Active Faith for Juneteenth. They were looking for
Speaker 5: a black founder to do a Juneteen story on, and
Speaker 5: I said, I'll do the story, but I want to
Speaker 5: talk about this new thing that I'm going to launch,
Speaker 5: And so I announced it in that article, that Ink
Speaker 5: Magazine article on Juneteenth, and on Black Friday twenty twenty,
Speaker 5: I launched Actively Black.
Speaker 8: So now that people know that you're black and you're
Speaker 8: running Actively Faith. Has that affected the company?
Speaker 6: I've had some I've had some detractors, you know what
Speaker 6: I mean.
Speaker 5: But I've also had people who who have decided to
Speaker 5: support because.
Speaker 6: Of those detractors.
Speaker 5: They're like, you know, we want to support this, this
Speaker 5: black entrepreneur. And and and then also the brand awareness,
Speaker 5: the brand equity that already had already been built over
Speaker 5: so many years. A lot of people attributed to being
Speaker 5: Steph Curry's brand or you know, the brand that Jeremy
Speaker 5: Lynn was wearing.
Speaker 6: So I'm not.
Speaker 5: As as as visible for Active Faith as I am
Speaker 5: for Actively Black.
Speaker 1: Is there a level of fulfillment that you that you
Speaker 1: have now?
Speaker 2: Knowing that, because even when I watch your Instagram now,
Speaker 2: it's like I feel it's like unapologetically Like from what
Speaker 2: you're telling me the story of the private business, it
Speaker 2: was like I had to hide it. This time, I'm overcompensated,
Speaker 2: and I'm going to be unapologetic about it in everything
Speaker 2: I do, because when I see you posts, I'm like,
Speaker 2: I feel, I feel the power in it.
Speaker 5: I wouldn't say over compensating. My my my personal instagram
Speaker 5: was just private. I've been talking this way whole life
Speaker 5: I've been this way the whole time. People just outside
Speaker 5: of who didn't didn't know me personally, who who are
Speaker 5: allowed to follow me on my personal Instagram They didn't,
Speaker 5: they didn't know. But everybody who knows me, they're like, Oh,
Speaker 5: that's that's that's been landing. You scroll back through my Instagram,
Speaker 5: you gonna see the same thing. I've always been this way.
Speaker 5: It's just more visible and more public.
Speaker 1: Now do you, I mean, do you? How does that
Speaker 1: feel now? Right?
Speaker 2: Because you've launched Active Black and it's successful. Yeah, Like
Speaker 2: we said, you mentioned a list of people that are
Speaker 2: actually engaged with the brand, that been supporting it as
Speaker 2: opposed to just having the monetary success from Active Faith.
Speaker 1: Is there a difference in the way that you are
Speaker 1: personally taking this on now?
Speaker 6: One hundred percent?
Speaker 5: I mean, because the funny thing is, I feel like
Speaker 5: we're building this in a way that hasn't been built before,
Speaker 5: especially in this in this particular industry where there's been
Speaker 5: a lack of black ownership and representation, and in this
Speaker 5: industry that has profited heavily from black culture, from black
Speaker 5: ath leads, from the black community, but I felt like
Speaker 5: hadn't adequately reinvested back in the black community. So there
Speaker 5: is a sense of pride of seeing this be successful,
Speaker 5: not only because I believe that it would it would
Speaker 5: be successful, but I'm also proving people wrong.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 5: I had black people telling me actively black wouldn't work.
Speaker 5: I had black people telling me, Man, if you put
Speaker 5: black in the name, it's going to prevent this from
Speaker 5: being successful. So there were a lot of people that
Speaker 5: I initially told about the idea for actively black that
Speaker 5: now are looking at me like, damn, it works, you
Speaker 5: know what I'm saying. And I have a little grace
Speaker 5: for some of those that didn't believe. A lot of
Speaker 5: them come from corporate backgrounds where blackness is suppressed. I
Speaker 5: got friends at Nike, at Adidas, at Jordan Brand. I
Speaker 5: got friends that work in all those different places, and
Speaker 5: they can't authentically be themselves where they are, and so
Speaker 5: their doubt or they're not believing it just it stems
Speaker 5: from their experiences of you know, what they've had to
Speaker 5: do to try to move up on the corporate ladder.
Speaker 5: I've never I've never been corporate, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 5: Like I said, I was a basketball player that that
Speaker 5: went straight into entrepreneurship. So I didn't have those same
Speaker 5: limits to my thinking as far as we're actively black
Speaker 5: was going to be. And I knew. I knew once
Speaker 5: once people saw the quality and understood that. When I say,
Speaker 5: I just tell people were getting ready to build a
Speaker 5: black Nike, and they would laugh. Then I send them
Speaker 5: some gear and they're like, oh shit, this this feels
Speaker 5: like my Nike, or this feels like my Little Limit,
Speaker 5: or this feels like my Jordan. And so now some
Speaker 5: of those some of those doubters are turning into believers.
Speaker 8: So all right, so you made two point three million
Speaker 8: in the first twelve months. Yeah, that was done through
Speaker 8: mostly like online set like what was.
Speaker 6: All e com all e comm.
Speaker 5: I knew that I needed to cultivate this audience that
Speaker 5: I could reach you online through social media. And one
Speaker 5: of the things that I learned from the first business
Speaker 5: that I took into the second one was the power
Speaker 5: of building audience and community and then serving them. Right,
Speaker 5: A lot of entrepreneurs get an idea for a product
Speaker 5: or something and they rushed to build that. They rush
Speaker 5: to do that, and then they go try to find
Speaker 5: an audience to sell it to. My advice would revert
Speaker 5: be to reverse engineer that right. So before I dropped,
Speaker 5: before we actually launched, I had ten thousand names on
Speaker 5: my email list. I had five thousand names on my
Speaker 5: SMS list. As we were building out the Instagram and
Speaker 5: the social presence, it was more so about what this
Speaker 5: brand was, about what it was going to stand for
Speaker 5: and showing the audience the and I was showing mock
Speaker 5: ups and people were just resonating with it because it
Speaker 5: spoke to them. By the time we launched, give it an example,
Speaker 5: we did a three hundred thousand that first year of
Speaker 5: After Faith. We did three hundred thousand probably the first
Speaker 5: first two months of actively Black.
Speaker 6: There were so many people who were waiting for what
Speaker 6: we were providing.
Speaker 5: So by the time it was time for launch date,
Speaker 5: they came at it, and actually I was underprepared for
Speaker 5: the support.
Speaker 1: Talk about that.
Speaker 8: So the first year is two point three Yeah, two
Speaker 8: was five point six million in revenue, but you said
Speaker 8: you missed out on eight million due to demand growing
Speaker 8: way faster than inventory.
Speaker 6: So talk about that, man.
Speaker 5: So I've been playing ketchup since day one. The initial
Speaker 5: inventory that I bought for actively Black, I thought would
Speaker 5: last me the first three months. It sold out in
Speaker 5: the first three weeks. So I've literally been playing ketchup
Speaker 5: from day one. But I didn't know how fast this
Speaker 5: demand was going to grow. So there's a data analytics
Speaker 5: company called Singuli Black founder Black CEO. They specialized in
Speaker 5: analyzing your back end data on your e comm site
Speaker 5: and they provide this for small startups, midsize small businesses.
Speaker 5: You know, because Nike all these other brands, they've got
Speaker 5: entire departments that are that are analyzing this data so
Speaker 5: they can make the decisions for inventory and things like that.
Speaker 6: They did an audit on my site and he came back.
Speaker 5: And he he called me and he said, Man, you know,
Speaker 5: I'm I'm the founder of this company. I normally don't
Speaker 5: I normally I'm not on these calls. I have somebody
Speaker 5: to make these calls for me. But when I saw
Speaker 5: your back end analytics and what's going on, I had
Speaker 5: to reach out and call you because I haven't seen
Speaker 5: these numbers since I was at birch Box. I don't
Speaker 5: know if you'll familiar with birch Box. It was one
Speaker 5: of the most successful what do you call it, the
Speaker 5: subscription subscription businesses subscription boxes.
Speaker 6: They went from zero two.
Speaker 5: Hundred million in two years and and.
Speaker 6: So, and he was there at Birch Box.
Speaker 5: So he hit me, He's like, I haven't seen these
Speaker 5: types of numbers since I was at Birch Box, and
Speaker 5: you need to sit down when I tell you how
Speaker 5: much revenue you missed out on. And so he went
Speaker 5: through everything, went through the deck and the presentation, and
Speaker 5: he was like, you missed out on eight million on
Speaker 5: the low end, because we noticed when you sold out
Speaker 5: of these certain things, you also turned off your advertising forum.
Speaker 5: So if you had kept your advertising going and the
Speaker 5: type of return that you were getting on it, you
Speaker 5: would have done well more. You'd have done way more
Speaker 5: than eight million. We're just telling you base level you
Speaker 5: lost that you missed out on eight million dollars of
Speaker 5: revenue not having enough inventory to support the demand. So
Speaker 5: when when you think of those types of numbers, are
Speaker 5: you got familiar with Jim Shark? Yeah, yeah, yeah, So
Speaker 5: Jim Shark just became a unicorn last year. They're valued
Speaker 5: at one point six billion. Another e comm direct consumer
Speaker 5: at leisure where brand their niche audience is the gym
Speaker 5: heads who were in the you know, in the gym
Speaker 5: seven days out of the week and their founders started
Speaker 5: that company nine years ago.
Speaker 2: I had no idea who they were, and then they
Speaker 2: were walking the streets in London and walked.
Speaker 6: Past and I'm like, they're based in the UK.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like wait, I've never seen or heard this brand,
Speaker 2: but I just kept seeing that the store was flooded,
Speaker 2: but they had like classes inside the store. I'm like, oh, wait,
Speaker 2: this makes perfect sense. I'm about to closing. They work
Speaker 2: out when them right in the same space.
Speaker 5: And that's their first store, is their flagship store there.
Speaker 5: Everything that they've done before then was all e comm
Speaker 5: director consumer And so the reason why I bring them
Speaker 5: up is they were a brand that I looked at
Speaker 5: as my as my north star in getting this thing started.
Speaker 5: Because when I would tell people, man, we get building
Speaker 5: a black Nike, it's hard for them to fathom that.
Speaker 5: They can't they can't envision that. I actually encourage everybody
Speaker 5: to read Shoe Dog if you haven't. Shoe Dog is
Speaker 5: the memoir written by Phil Knight, founder of Nike, and
Speaker 5: he's talking about those early days, those beginning days when
Speaker 5: he's selling shoes out as trunk at track meets. People
Speaker 5: can't fathom Nike that way, right. You see this big
Speaker 5: machine that's been that way for fifty years now. But
Speaker 5: it started with Phil Knight and he had he had
Speaker 5: inventory in his mom's house and he was selling track
Speaker 5: shoes at track meets out as trunk. So when I
Speaker 5: tell people we building the next the black Nike, We're
Speaker 5: just I'm just I'm just at the track selling the
Speaker 5: shoes out the trunk right now. They can't see the
Speaker 5: vision that I have for this, you know what I'm saying. So,
Speaker 5: but Jim Shark, the reason why I made that one
Speaker 5: to one comparison is their founder, Ben Francis, did the
Speaker 5: same thing. He started this out of his apartment, did
Speaker 5: it with e comm, did it with social media, did
Speaker 5: it with the influencers, and.
Speaker 6: Our first twenty four months those.
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Speaker 5: Numbers are blowing their first twenty four months out the
Speaker 5: water while missing out on eight million dollars in revenue.
Speaker 5: So if you think about their trajectory of creating a
Speaker 5: billion dollar at leisurewear brand in nine years, and I'm
Speaker 5: telling you my numbers are better than that and I
Speaker 5: missed out on eight million, That's why I'm telling you.
Speaker 6: That's why know what we'll be getting ready to build.
Speaker 2: When we spoke about inventory, what it was the difference
Speaker 2: in the products, because when you're trying to create Actively Black,
Speaker 2: obviously you want to differentiate from the other brand. I
Speaker 2: know we had risk bands with the other products. How
Speaker 2: did you sit down and come up with the listeners?
Speaker 2: All right, well, this is going to be specifically for
Speaker 2: this brand. These products in this line is specifically for
Speaker 2: that one.
Speaker 6: They're all they're all very similar.
Speaker 5: I'd say the only difference is I elevated the materials
Speaker 5: on Actively Black and and then the messaging the messaging
Speaker 5: in the branding.
Speaker 6: But other than that, they're very similar.
Speaker 1: So it's like the premium.
Speaker 8: So all right, talk about so at what point do
Speaker 8: you decide to good idea to raise money and talk
Speaker 8: about the process of raising money like I said, I
Speaker 8: know you had Kwame uncle on the Black Star Fund
Speaker 8: it's a black venture capital fund. And then Rich Dennis yep,
Speaker 8: who invested in a variety of different companies.
Speaker 2: We spoke to Risk Dennis a few days ago. He said,
Speaker 2: if it's black and it's business, yo, man.
Speaker 6: Shout out to both of them.
Speaker 5: One Kwame, it became, you know, the cool thing to
Speaker 5: invest in black after twenty twenty. Kwame's been doing this
Speaker 5: long before that, you know what I mean. And he
Speaker 5: was the first money in off of a conversation. To
Speaker 5: be honest with you, I told him the vision for
Speaker 5: actively Black. He put in fifty thousand before before I
Speaker 5: had the website up, so you know, shout out to
Speaker 5: Kwame for believing in the vision from from the jump.
Speaker 6: And then Man, to be honest.
Speaker 5: My journey with with raising capital hasn't been traditional and
Speaker 5: it hasn't been with what most people have to go
Speaker 5: through with doing that, I've been very fortunate, very blessed.
Speaker 5: I had a friend of mine who is the founder
Speaker 5: of Solo Funds, Rodney William. Shout out to Rodney man
Speaker 5: doing incredible things as another black founder, and he Rich
Speaker 5: Dennis had already invested in his company and he was
Speaker 5: I went over to Rich's house for Christmas and I
Speaker 5: was like, bro, I got this actively black hoodie and joggers.
Speaker 5: Just take this with you. Man, just gifted to him.
Speaker 5: I'm not making no pitch. I just wanted to see
Speaker 5: what I'm building. And to Rodney's credit, man, he was like, man,
Speaker 5: give it to me. I'm gonna take it to him.
Speaker 5: And a week later he was like, Yo, Rich loves
Speaker 5: your stuff. Man, he wants to meet you. He set
Speaker 5: up a meeting. I came over to Rich's house and man,
Speaker 5: we sat right there at his kitchen table and I
Speaker 5: told him my vision. I told him what I was
Speaker 5: trying to build, and he laughed at me and said, man,
Speaker 5: you remind me of myself thirty years ago. And after that,
Speaker 5: he said, I'm gonna make sure you get an invite
Speaker 5: to my Entrepreneur Assembly.
Speaker 6: Man, what can I actually say about about that that
Speaker 6: I share? I'll just say this much.
Speaker 5: Rich is one of those people who's really about this
Speaker 5: thing when people talk about investing in black and power
Speaker 5: black founders. He has an assembly every year that he
Speaker 5: allows black founders to pitch. It's a combination of Shark
Speaker 5: Tank meets gladiator, because uh, you up there in front
Speaker 5: of in front of a lot of powerful people and
Speaker 5: they throw you in the fire. I went and I
Speaker 5: pitched and riched it up and said, ma, I'm gonna
Speaker 5: take your whole first round. So we closed our Series
Speaker 5: A in April of twenty twenty two seven million dollars.
Speaker 6: And that's seven million dollars.
Speaker 1: Actually, how much of the equity is that?
Speaker 5: So we did it at thirty two post evaluation, so
Speaker 5: give up a little a little less than twenty four percent.
Speaker 8: So the idea of did you have to take the
Speaker 8: money or did you feel like what was your even
Speaker 8: thought process of even going down that path? Was it
Speaker 8: to just do it faster? Or were you really in
Speaker 8: need of capital?
Speaker 5: I understood through a lot of the struggles that I
Speaker 5: went through with active Faith that I did need that
Speaker 5: next level capital. So I told you those numbers for
Speaker 5: active faith, those those numbers for active faith would be
Speaker 5: triple if I had, if I had the capital to
Speaker 5: do what I needed to do with those things. A
Speaker 5: lot of the things that I'm experiencing were actively black
Speaker 5: I already experienced before active faith. My best year of
Speaker 5: active faith, we did eight and a half million. That year,
Speaker 5: and my website was sold out for almost four months
Speaker 5: of that year, So that lets you know what I
Speaker 5: could have.
Speaker 6: Done, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: So the.
Speaker 5: Cycle of the inventory, that's been a challenge, right because
Speaker 5: I'm not going to buying blank T shirts and hoodies
Speaker 5: and printing on them. Everything we got is made from scratch,
Speaker 5: like they're sourcing the material, they're cutting and so on
Speaker 5: it all the embellishments. So that type of production in Asia,
Speaker 5: it's gonna take thirty to forty five days just to
Speaker 5: make it, you know what I mean. And so that
Speaker 5: cycle of selling through something and then trying to get
Speaker 5: it back as fast as possible to meet that demand
Speaker 5: was tough. And when you are just flipping your profits
Speaker 5: and waiting to you know, you sell through something, I'm
Speaker 5: flip this profit. You need that infusion of capital not
Speaker 5: only to plan further ahead and buy more inventory, but
Speaker 5: then also to be able to grow your team and
Speaker 5: reinvest into the marketing and advertising and all those things
Speaker 5: that can grow your brand. So I knew what I
Speaker 5: was trying to build Actively Black, I knew how much
Speaker 5: not having that extra capital stifled some of the growth
Speaker 5: to Active Faith.
Speaker 6: So I was like, man, let's let's go do it, man.
Speaker 6: And it's been been beneficial.
Speaker 5: It's allowing us to start scaling in a way that
Speaker 5: I know most black businesses struggle to do without getting
Speaker 5: that outside capital.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So you're building a brand and obviously you had that
Speaker 2: opportunity to see what it like with the first one,
Speaker 2: not make the mistakes with the second one. But you
Speaker 2: launched this during the pandemic, and so you're setting out
Speaker 2: the merchandise to get made in China. While you're taking orders,
Speaker 2: you said, you've been playing for mine since day one.
Speaker 2: So what was the impact that that had on the business?
Speaker 2: And now coming out of it, what has that been
Speaker 2: like from a supply issue.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 5: So the funny part is I knew about COVID and
Speaker 5: what was getting ready happened months before. Like everybody in
Speaker 5: America realized what was going on because of my relationship
Speaker 5: with my factories and stuff in China. I had people
Speaker 5: telling me like, yo, stuff is shutting down over here.
Speaker 5: And I'm talking to one of them. They were illegally
Speaker 5: in their country because you know, their government's different. They
Speaker 5: were showing me stuff of how many people were dying
Speaker 5: every day. They were showing me, you know all what
Speaker 5: was going on, and in my mind, I'm like, Okay,
Speaker 5: this is happening in China. I didn't I didn't expect
Speaker 5: this thing to become the global pandemic that it did.
Speaker 5: But I also knew that what was going to happen
Speaker 5: when things shut down At leisure, weear has become this
Speaker 5: thing that it's not just for in the gym and
Speaker 5: working out, people traveling in it, people want to relax
Speaker 5: in it. And most at leisure where brands actually saw
Speaker 5: a spike during the pandemic. Nike, Yeah, even outside of
Speaker 5: the apparel space, you know, your pelotons, anybody who was
Speaker 5: kind of in that space, you actually saw a spike
Speaker 5: during that time. So the initial inventory I had already
Speaker 5: ordered before things had started shutting down, getting those reorders,
Speaker 5: that's where things were delayed, and that's why I was
Speaker 5: missing out on so much revenue because it was taken
Speaker 5: so long to restock the things that were.
Speaker 2: Sold out, and so you really didn't have an accurate
Speaker 2: This is year two, so you haven't really had an
Speaker 2: accurate two to three year span of seeing like what
Speaker 2: the business really could.
Speaker 6: Be at all at all.
Speaker 5: I'm this year moving forward from today, moving forward will
Speaker 5: be the first first opportunity I actually have to really
Speaker 5: see what my real demand is and actually meet it
Speaker 5: because we we've just been behind so much. But the
Speaker 5: thing is we've had all these multiplying factors that are
Speaker 5: pushing that meeting that demand further and further away. So
Speaker 5: when you're talking about you know, in February, last February
Speaker 5: and were talking about Black History Month, we were the
Speaker 5: only black on brand present at the Winter Olympics. We
Speaker 5: outfitted Team Nigeria at the Winter Olympics. That's February, you
Speaker 5: know what I'm saying. So when people see that and
Speaker 5: not just not just being there, not just showing up,
Speaker 5: but People magazine ranked.
Speaker 6: The top.
Speaker 5: The top outfits for the opening ceremony for the Olympics.
Speaker 5: We came in number four. There's eighty five countries and
Speaker 5: you on the same global stage with Nike, Adidas, everybody else.
Speaker 5: You know what I'm saying, Actively Black was number four
Speaker 5: out of eighty five countries. And so that type of
Speaker 5: exposure exposed the demand. Then you have things like you know,
Speaker 5: Barack Obama wearing the Actively Black I.
Speaker 1: Was going there.
Speaker 2: I was because the first time that Kwame sent us
Speaker 2: a text message it was you got to see this brand.
Speaker 1: Oh Barack Obama's wearing to watch too.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I'm like, okay, so how did how did that relationship even, like,
Speaker 2: how did that happen?
Speaker 5: Yeah? Make sure I'm careful my words. What I what
Speaker 5: I can say. So I had this.
Speaker 6: I had this.
Speaker 5: I have this notebook that has all my I write
Speaker 5: everything down, all my visions, all my ideas, all my dreams.
Speaker 6: And I've got this Active Black notebook.
Speaker 5: And I was as we were heading towards launch, I
Speaker 5: was writing down all the people that I thought this
Speaker 5: brand needed to be on or who needed to wear
Speaker 5: this brand, and who would be a great brand ambassador
Speaker 5: for Actively Black.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 6: So I've got this list of people.
Speaker 5: And I wrote down Michelle Obama And in my mind,
Speaker 5: I was like, only thing that would be bigger than
Speaker 5: Beyonce's Ivy Park with Adidas is if Michelle Obama had
Speaker 5: her own active wear line with a black brand.
Speaker 6: When you think.
Speaker 5: About what her brand was at the White House, it
Speaker 5: was getting people moving, getting people fit, getting people healthier,
Speaker 5: especially our community. And you know that's that's one of
Speaker 5: the missions for Actively Black, is to you know, get
Speaker 5: our people in our community healthier. So I was like,
Speaker 5: she would be the perfect brand ambassador for Actively Black.
Speaker 5: I've got a couple of friends, I'll just say this much.
Speaker 5: I've got a couple of friends that worked in the administration.
Speaker 5: And when I told them my idea, they were like,
Speaker 5: you crazy, it ain't gonna never happen, So just leave
Speaker 5: that alone, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 6: And I just I was.
Speaker 5: I was begging them, begging them, begging them, like, Yo,
Speaker 5: just just send the gear to him. That's all I'm
Speaker 5: asking to send the gear to him. And they eventually like,
Speaker 5: that's all we're doing. We're just going to send it
Speaker 5: to them. That's all we're doing. And when they got
Speaker 5: the gear, I got a letter from President Barack Obama
Speaker 5: probably three weeks later, and when I read it, I
Speaker 5: saw that he unders stood what I was building because
Speaker 5: he didn't say thank you for the package the gear
Speaker 5: was nice.
Speaker 6: He was like, the mission of this.
Speaker 5: Brand to uplift and reinvest back into the black community
Speaker 5: is an important one, and we love the gear, you
Speaker 5: know what I'm saying. And so that started that relationship,
Speaker 5: and you know, I've been I'll say this much. We
Speaker 5: are kind of a standing orders you know, whenever a
Speaker 5: new collection or a new product drops, make sure we
Speaker 5: get to him.
Speaker 6: And they requested some gear for Christmas.
Speaker 5: I just we had just got the samples in for
Speaker 5: the actively Black watch, and I just I just threw
Speaker 5: it in, you know as a Christmas gift. Wasn't expecting
Speaker 5: to actually wear it. You know, this is a man
Speaker 5: who wears rolex'es aps. He's got, he's got, you know,
Speaker 5: everything at his disposal. So on January first, New Year's
Speaker 5: when the Queen Michelle Obama posted that picture of them
Speaker 5: celebrating New Year's and he had on the actively Black watch,
Speaker 5: I just I just I couldn't even believe it, to
Speaker 5: be honest with you, it's pretty crazy.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 8: Yeah, So talk about working in athletics yep. As far
Speaker 8: as the nail deals that you've signed and noticed, shit,
Speaker 8: you're tapped in with Dion Sen and his people. So
Speaker 8: how that relationship happened and how have you been able
Speaker 8: to grow that?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 5: To be honest, the nil stuff was something that I
Speaker 5: didn't think we would get involved in this early.
Speaker 6: I knew it would be something that we would eventually do.
Speaker 5: If I'm saying that we want to compete with the
Speaker 5: likes of Nike and Adidas and these other brands. Then
Speaker 5: we've got to be at a place where we're able
Speaker 5: to sign athletes. So I'm thinking that would be year three,
Speaker 5: four something down the line. But I saw Travis Hunter's story.
Speaker 5: I saw him, uh when he you know, I watched
Speaker 5: the press conference when he decommitted from Florida State and
Speaker 5: decided to go to Jackson State, and I was like,
Speaker 5: that's that's somebody who represents what actively black kids. If
Speaker 5: I'm telling our people to support a black on athletes,
Speaker 5: you where a brand instead of these other ones, then
Speaker 5: this is somebody who understands that.
Speaker 6: That's literally what he did with his action.
Speaker 5: He could have went to this PWY and he decided
Speaker 5: I'm gonna take my talents to an HBCU and I
Speaker 5: was like, I gotta sign him. I need that kid,
Speaker 5: and man reached out was able to get some gear
Speaker 5: to him. Same thing, the same reaction man that that
Speaker 5: that you guys had. He was like, Oh, this is legit.
Speaker 5: This s ain't some dude just printing T shirts in
Speaker 5: his garage Like this feels like Nike.
Speaker 6: This feels like, you know, something premium.
Speaker 5: And you know he understood the message and what we
Speaker 5: were trying to build actively black. He was the first
Speaker 5: one that we got that that nil deal done. But
Speaker 5: then Shiloh and Shador they're seeing his gear and they're like, Yo,
Speaker 5: what's this and they're asking about it, and that just
Speaker 5: turned into them wanting to be a part of what
Speaker 5: we were building with this brand as well. So initially, man, honestly,
Speaker 5: I was just trying to get Travis Hunter and it
Speaker 5: led to Shadora Shiloh signing with us, and then definitely
Speaker 5: got a shout out Dejah Kelly. We actually made her
Speaker 5: be the first official athlete because I wanted to be
Speaker 5: a black woman to be the first one that we
Speaker 5: officially signed. So Dajah Kelly, point guard All American at
Speaker 5: North Carolina, was actually our first official athlete that we signed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that sounds similar to the story of how under
Speaker 2: Armor got Steph Curry when they had Baise War and
Speaker 2: he was getting all these sneakers and that he couldn't
Speaker 2: find out to figure what to do with Steph because
Speaker 2: he was having the ankle injuries, and he was like,
Speaker 2: these guys will make you a shoe for every game,
Speaker 2: And that's kind of how it got signed. So you
Speaker 2: have a bunch of people who have supported the brand,
Speaker 2: but I know a lot of times that's not always
Speaker 2: the case. And so talk about the struggles of having
Speaker 2: some people, especially influencers, who really don't understand the vision
Speaker 2: and not are as supportive as you think they would
Speaker 2: be when they see the vision.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I would say. If there's anything that's that's pained
Speaker 5: me the most in this journey actively black, it has
Speaker 5: been seeing a lot of people something that I've looked
Speaker 5: up to, who publicly are delivering a message that, man,
Speaker 5: we're supporting black you know, we want to support black business,
Speaker 5: and then behind the scenes that's not really the case,
Speaker 5: you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: And so.
Speaker 5: I've always thought that for for people like us, you know,
Speaker 5: our culture is the most influential culture on earth.
Speaker 6: And there's so much that.
Speaker 5: Has provided value for brands that are not owned by us,
Speaker 5: by our culture, you know what I mean. You know,
Speaker 5: I wanted a Rolex growing up, because that's all That's
Speaker 5: what I heard Biggie n jay Z talk about. When
Speaker 5: you know, when you reach a certain level of success,
Speaker 5: you know you need to roll How how much money
Speaker 5: has Rolex made over the years, just because that has
Speaker 5: been embedded in our minds that that's what we need
Speaker 5: to go get when we become successful. Right, And so
Speaker 5: in my mind, I was like, if we could get
Speaker 5: some of these black celebrities and influence to champion our
Speaker 5: brands the way that they do these other European owned
Speaker 5: brands that don't care nothing about our people. You know,
Speaker 5: if we turn that global influence inward, what kind of
Speaker 5: power would that give us?
Speaker 6: You know what I'm saying. And you know, been talking
Speaker 6: about that a long time.
Speaker 5: And so as I'm having these meetings and having these
Speaker 5: calls or some of these black celebrities and they're like, yeah,
Speaker 5: I got your package a lot of gear, but I'm
Speaker 5: not going to post it unless you pay one hundred
Speaker 5: thousand dollars. It's like you, but you're wearing Nike on
Speaker 5: your gram and they not paying you. You know what
Speaker 5: I'm saying, You wearing you're tagging Louie and Gucci and
Speaker 5: all of your posts, but they're not paying you. But
Speaker 5: you're telling me that in order for you to wear
Speaker 5: my stuff and for you to give a shout out
Speaker 5: to actively black, I got to pay you one hundred
Speaker 5: thousand dollars like that. That doesn't that doesn't make any
Speaker 5: sense to me. So what that tells me is even
Speaker 5: though a lot of these people are publicly portraying a
Speaker 5: certain image that they're supporting us, it's not really that
Speaker 5: support And that it also to me, lets us know
Speaker 5: that there's still an inferiority complex even amongst our biggest
Speaker 5: and our brightest, that we think European designer is more
Speaker 5: than our own because of who that is, Like we
Speaker 5: are the blueprint, you know what I'm saying. If you
Speaker 5: go look at even the style and how it's changed
Speaker 5: with even a lot of those high end designers, they're
Speaker 5: taking inspiration from the street where and the things that
Speaker 5: we already made popular, you know what I'm saying. And
Speaker 5: so that's been disappointing. That's been highly disappointing to see
Speaker 5: a lot of those figures have a pay for play
Speaker 5: mentality when it comes to Black Owned, but they'll endorse,
Speaker 5: not even endorse, they'll promote these other brands in our
Speaker 5: own bios for free.
Speaker 2: But I feel like that just watching actively Black bro
Speaker 2: I feel like that that didn't discourage you. I feel
Speaker 2: like the game plan kind of changed or it was
Speaker 2: altered a little bit and you could correct me if
Speaker 2: I'm wrong, But it seemed like it wasn't let me
Speaker 2: go for the aless celebrity.
Speaker 1: Let me get the entrepreneurs doing that thing and let's
Speaker 1: put the merch on them.
Speaker 2: Was that like the part of the marketing strategy because
Speaker 2: I started seeing with I'm looking at the people in
Speaker 2: our space, I'm like, oh, they were in it too.
Speaker 5: Yeah. I mean, honestly, the strategy. I never thought that
Speaker 5: getting my brand on the celebrity what was gonna was
Speaker 5: going to build a brand. I would actually tell anybody who,
Speaker 5: especially people who are getting into this apparel space or whatever,
Speaker 5: don't let that be don't let that be your goal.
Speaker 5: To me, the power to me was always with the people.
Speaker 5: To be honest with you, those are the people who
Speaker 5: were on that site. They one and have been selling
Speaker 5: out all of this stuff without a celebrity endorsement. So
Speaker 5: I figured, if I got the people, it doesn't matter
Speaker 5: what celebrity is.
Speaker 6: Rocking with it or not.
Speaker 5: I got the people with me, and that's what's going
Speaker 5: to sustain you more than any celebrity giving you a
Speaker 5: co sign. And it has established us in a way
Speaker 5: with the people where they know We're always going to
Speaker 5: be authentic with whatever we do, whatever we say, whatever
Speaker 5: we put out. It is not going to be because
Speaker 5: of what any celebrity thinks. It's not going to be
Speaker 5: for any amount of money. My marketing I don't even
Speaker 5: even call I wouldn't even call it a marketing strategy.
Speaker 5: It's always been about serving the people. And here's the
Speaker 5: powerful thing about it is Nike wants you to be
Speaker 5: a walking billboard for Nike, where the swoosh Adidas, they
Speaker 5: want you to be a walking billboard for Adidas. All
Speaker 5: of those brands want you to be walking billboards for
Speaker 5: the brand. What I flipped it is my customers are
Speaker 5: the tribe as I call them. They don't see themselves
Speaker 5: as walking billboards for Actively Black. They look at actively
Speaker 5: Black and something that represents them. We're not showing you
Speaker 5: the best athletes in the world and the biggest celebrities
Speaker 5: in the world with the psychology of the marketing to
Speaker 5: make you think if you buy this, you're gonna be
Speaker 5: one percent closer to being Lebron James. You're gonna be
Speaker 5: one percent closer to being whatever celebrity is. We're making
Speaker 5: stuff not for you to aspire to be anybody else
Speaker 5: for making stuff for you to be the best version
Speaker 5: of you.
Speaker 6: You know what I mean.
Speaker 5: So these other brands are very aspirational, Actively Black and
Speaker 5: Active Fate.
Speaker 6: They're inspirational.
Speaker 5: We want you to be the most authentic and best
Speaker 5: version of you and the people resonate with that. So
Speaker 5: that's more powerful to me than any co sign from
Speaker 5: any celebrity, to be honest with you.
Speaker 8: So before we wrap, talk about your collab with Muhammad
Speaker 8: Ali's The State and Marvel.
Speaker 5: Yeah, man, Marvel, we got a chance to do a
Speaker 5: collab with Black Panther Wakonda Forever. That was a full
Speaker 5: circle moment. As you know I'm telling the story. Part
Speaker 5: of my inspiration for creating Actively Black was seeing the
Speaker 5: first movie. I got a shout out Damon John because
Speaker 5: this wouldn't have happened without him. Damon reached out to
Speaker 5: do a Footboo collab and he came to La. He's like,
Speaker 5: let's sit down and talk about it. We're talking about
Speaker 5: the food Boo collab and he asked me, well, what
Speaker 5: else are you working on? And I almost didn't show
Speaker 5: him because I had created a deck of what it
Speaker 5: would look like of an Actively Black and Black Panther collab.
Speaker 5: When I first launched Actively Black, I have no contacts
Speaker 5: that Marvel and Disney and nothing. I just knew that
Speaker 5: the synergy and what that movie meant to me and
Speaker 5: what it stood for, and what Actively Black stood for
Speaker 5: and what it meant.
Speaker 6: It was just just so much energy there.
Speaker 5: So I created a deck, had a whole collection designed,
Speaker 5: and so I showed him the deck.
Speaker 6: In the middle of the meeting. He picked up the phone.
Speaker 5: He calls the head of licensing for Marvel and Disney
Speaker 5: and he's like, you guys need to see this right now.
Speaker 5: And two days later he set up a meeting. I
Speaker 5: pitched Marvel and Disney. I showed him the deck and
Speaker 5: they were blown away. They fast tracked the whole licensing
Speaker 5: journey so that we could get stuff in time for
Speaker 5: the movie to release, and so we were able to
Speaker 5: drop the first of our collabse with Marvel and Disney
Speaker 5: for Black Panther o'conorf Forever, which has been absolutely amazing.
Speaker 6: It's opened up so many other doors.
Speaker 5: Now Marvel and Disney want us to take on some
Speaker 5: other properties that they own, So the next up is
Speaker 5: going to be Miles Morales, the Black Spider Man.
Speaker 6: So yeah, so so we'll be working on that next.
Speaker 5: And then Man Muhammad Ali collab another uh just incredible opportunity,
Speaker 5: uh that we were blessed with. They actually reached out
Speaker 5: Lani Ali, his his wife, uh widow. She was unhappy
Speaker 5: with how some other brands that have had that licensing
Speaker 5: with them haven't fully portrayed who he was, which to
Speaker 5: me is a microcosmo what what happens in American society
Speaker 5: any with some of these mainstream brands. He's watered down
Speaker 5: to just be float like a butterflies, thing like a bee,
Speaker 5: you know what I mean. He's watered down to just
Speaker 5: be the champion that that they are molding him uh
Speaker 5: to be. But we all know when he was alive
Speaker 5: and when he could speak, he was one of the
Speaker 5: most hated men in white America, you know what I mean,
Speaker 5: because of what he stood for, because of his unflinching,
Speaker 5: uncompromising stance on his blackness and what he stood for.
Speaker 5: And when she saw actively black, she was like, this
Speaker 5: is the brand that can actually represent who my husband
Speaker 5: was in his full essence. And so when they reached out, uh, man,
Speaker 5: of course we say yes, and I'm just I'm honored
Speaker 5: and humble to be able to represent his legacy in
Speaker 5: a way that is reflective of who he actually was.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think I mentioned this to you when
Speaker 2: you have posted the Instagram posts about the potential collapse
Speaker 2: that you're coming in and it's going to be life
Speaker 2: changing and it's going to be legacy.
Speaker 1: Yep. In my mind, I was going to text you,
Speaker 1: I'm Mike. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think he signed Kyrie Irving because it felt like
Speaker 2: somebody who had been outcast. Yeah, it felt in that time,
Speaker 2: and I was like, that would be a dope class.
Speaker 2: So for the future of that, are you looking for,
Speaker 2: you know, major athletes to partner with on Brandon?
Speaker 6: So I'll say this much.
Speaker 5: I've got a couple of NBA players who's Nike and
Speaker 5: Adidas deals have did that have expressed interest in Wane
Speaker 5: to sign with actively Black. But one thing that I'm
Speaker 5: going to always maintain is the authenticity about who we are,
Speaker 5: what we stand for. And I'll put it like this,
Speaker 5: I had a meeting with Kyrie's team six months before
Speaker 5: all of everything that ended up happening that led to
Speaker 5: the Nike releasing him, and nobody was talking about what
Speaker 5: they're talking about. Now, that's the thing that's interesting to me.
Speaker 5: I've been yelling from the rooftops, Hey, the same support
Speaker 5: that you're given the Nike and everybody else, do it.
Speaker 5: Do it for a black on brand, and black people
Speaker 5: will ignoring me. And then once Nike dropped Kyrie, then
Speaker 5: it was like, ah, man, forget Nike, we need Black
Speaker 5: And I'm like, yo, I've been saying this forever. You
Speaker 5: know what I'm saying, and y'all weren't listening to me
Speaker 5: in that meeting with his team. I'm gonna just be
Speaker 5: honest with you. It didn't align with what I thought
Speaker 5: it was going to align with.
Speaker 1: It.
Speaker 6: It wasn't about the.
Speaker 5: People in the community and and everything that actively Black
Speaker 5: stands for. The meeting didn't go the way that I
Speaker 5: thought that it would go based on what I thought
Speaker 5: that would represent. I'll say that much and that's no,
Speaker 5: that's no, that's no dis or no slight to to Kyrie.
Speaker 5: I also understand a lot of times people's teams don't
Speaker 5: accurately reflect their personal growth or what they're thinking or
Speaker 5: what they want to do at the time.
Speaker 6: So I have grace for that, but.
Speaker 5: It didn't align with with who we were, and I'm
Speaker 5: not going to sacrifice that for anybody. We had a
Speaker 5: we had a Peloton deal that I pulled the plug
Speaker 5: on because they wanted us to minimize the black talk.
Speaker 5: They wanted us to minimize how bold we were. Matter
Speaker 5: of fact, it was supposed to. It's supposed to it's
Speaker 5: supposed to drop today. It was supposed to be a
Speaker 5: Black History Month. Collabed with Peloton, and they wanted to
Speaker 5: water down who we were, and I was like, man,
Speaker 5: I'm not. It's no amount of money that's gonna make
Speaker 5: me that's gonna make me suppress who we are. You know,
Speaker 5: we're proud to be black. That's what this is about.
Speaker 5: The name is Actively Black, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 5: And because they wanted us to change some things that
Speaker 5: I thought would sacrifice the integrity of who I am
Speaker 5: and what this brand.
Speaker 6: Stands for, I'll pull the plug on that deal.
Speaker 5: So with anybody that we're gonna partner with, or that
Speaker 5: we're gonna work with, or that we're gonna sign, they
Speaker 5: got to understand that, you know, we're standing firm on
Speaker 5: what we on, what we are about. You know, the
Speaker 5: tagline for Active Black is there's greatness in our DNA
Speaker 5: and and we're unflinching in our boldness about about our blackness.
Speaker 5: So if there's anything that's gonna that's gonna uh that's
Speaker 5: going to uh sacrifice that integrity, we're not about it.
Speaker 6: There you have it.
Speaker 8: So how can people buy actively black on the website,
Speaker 8: social media and all that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, actively black dot com, the socials, actively black on
Speaker 5: all the different socials, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok. You know a
Speaker 5: lot of people think I'm They still think I'm crazy.
Speaker 5: I'm gonna stop saying we're building a black Nike because
Speaker 5: what we're building is much more, has much more depth
Speaker 5: to it. It's not just another apparel brand. The way
Speaker 5: we give back to the community. You mentioned a five
Speaker 5: point six million that we did in revenue last year,
Speaker 5: we also donated over five hundred thousand dollars. That's almost
Speaker 5: ten percent of our revenue that was donating. There's no
Speaker 5: brand that's donating ten percent of their over our revenue.
Speaker 5: You look at what Nike promised the black community, and
Speaker 5: you actually think you actually look at the numbers of
Speaker 5: what their revenue and what their profit was and what
Speaker 5: they're actually giving back. It's less than one percent. And
Speaker 5: we can go across the board of all these different
Speaker 5: brands that have promised what they're gonna do for the
Speaker 5: Black community, and it's really just this minimal thing that
Speaker 5: they feel like is charity.
Speaker 6: We really about this, you know what I'm saying. So
Speaker 6: not only do we give back to the.
Speaker 5: Community, but what we're building is bigger than just another
Speaker 5: a pair of brand. Hopefully I get a chance to
Speaker 5: come back and talk with you guys, because there's some
Speaker 5: there's some plans with this that involve the next level,
Speaker 5: that involve Web three, that involves some of the things
Speaker 5: that we're going to be doing to make sure our community,
Speaker 5: our people are not left behind in this new era
Speaker 5: of what's getting ready to happen in tech and how
Speaker 5: that applies to actively black.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we appreciate you coming, man, and we show you
Speaker 1: that Fashion Week.
Speaker 6: Yes, sir. Shout out to that, Yes, sir, New York
Speaker 6: Fashion Week.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The first and only black athletes are where company to
Speaker 2: have a show on fashion.
Speaker 5: Week exactly, So it's black history, man, were making Black history.
Speaker 1: Every day, yes sir. No, not just for a month, man,
Speaker 1: Yes sir, all right, Troy House, Yeah, shout to everybody.
Speaker 2: On Patreon dot com. Shout to everybody on eyl University.
Speaker 2: Shout to actively black. I am wearing my actively black.
Speaker 2: My brother's here with us, he works out and is
Speaker 2: actively black man. That's a shout out to you. Keep
Speaker 2: supporting and keeps bought in to merch or in Elisia. Obviously,
Speaker 2: we got ask the c ovill abilities to shout out
Speaker 2: to the Mers team.
Speaker 1: Love is love. Y'all all right, God, thank you guys
Speaker 1: for rocking us.
Speaker 6: We see you next week. Peace.
Speaker 7: Peace, My graduates from my school being force back drop
Speaker 7: bag Drop Mike droft backdrop.
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Speaker 3: Do what's right. Leave now. Under President Trump America's laws,
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