Speaker 1: So thankful that you guys rock with this podcast, that
Speaker 1: you have subscribed to this podcast, or that you tell
Speaker 1: somebody else about this podcast. Whatever you do and showing
Speaker 1: your support for this podcast means so much to me.
Speaker 1: And the biggest compliment is when you share with somebody else.
Speaker 1: So thank you for you know, rocking with your boy
Speaker 1: and Black Tech, Green Money. What we're trying to do
Speaker 1: here is give you insights knowledge on wealth creation and
Speaker 1: this is particularly for people who are either building or
Speaker 1: leveraging technology for their wealth and legacy. And so this podcast,
Speaker 1: this particular episode is going to be a little bit
Speaker 1: more about what's been going on with me in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four and what I plan for twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1: What we tend to do is expect unintentionally. Often I think,
Speaker 1: I don't think it's you know, something that we do
Speaker 1: just maliciously. But what we think, what we tend to
Speaker 1: do is assume that because the year has changed, that
Speaker 1: things are just different. And I had this post that
Speaker 1: I put up on I think at my threads a
Speaker 1: couple of days ago. So just because it's a new year,
Speaker 1: if you don't change the operations the way your habits
Speaker 1: work at et cetera. Then your twenty twenty five will
Speaker 1: be actually worse than you're twenty twenty four, and that's
Speaker 1: because the landscape around you is changing. So one of
Speaker 1: the biggest lessons I learned in business was, like, there
Speaker 1: is no stasis, Like there is no flat. What we
Speaker 1: assume is flat is just because the numbers may be
Speaker 1: the same as they were last year. You know, maybe
Speaker 1: we didn't grow, we didn't grow as much as we
Speaker 1: could ever should have, or maybe we're down just slightly.
Speaker 1: All of those things mean you're down because the market
Speaker 1: is continuing to progress, and you being flat means that
Speaker 1: everything else is changing around you and going in a
Speaker 1: positive direction while you're stuck where you were. So if
Speaker 1: you have not taken the initiative and responsibility of changing
Speaker 1: your habits and putting systems in place, changing your operations,
Speaker 1: then things will be what they were last year, and
Speaker 1: that means that you will be increasingly behind. And so
Speaker 1: I've already started to feel and then it's a wee
Speaker 1: a weekend. I've already started to feel the pressure of
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five and the things that are in front
Speaker 1: of me, the things that are on my plate, what
Speaker 1: happened to me in twenty twenty four was by the
Speaker 1: end of the year September October was on fumes, like
Speaker 1: legit running on fumes, and it's my own fault. I
Speaker 1: will talk more about that. Like I have a few businesses,
Speaker 1: toll Houses. One toll Houses a private social club that
Speaker 1: is designed for the city d well and creative and
Speaker 1: entrepreneurial class. And so it's in my hometown of toled Ohio.
Speaker 1: We're sitting right on the water. Water's right outside you
Speaker 1: know where I am right now because my Creatio office.
Speaker 1: Creatio is my market company. That office is right here
Speaker 1: inside Toehouse in the front of the building. So toe
Speaker 1: House is twenty five thousand square feet that we own. Here.
Speaker 1: There's five bars, there's five lounges. There's a coffee house here.
Speaker 1: There's a jazz club. Jazz and blues is what we're
Speaker 1: doing there. There's a cigar lounge in there, there's a
Speaker 1: pub in the back. There's a coworking space with two boardrooms,
Speaker 1: two conference rooms, a work lounge, there's a private dining area.
Speaker 1: All of these different amenities that we offer to our
Speaker 1: members and somebody. These areas are open to the public,
Speaker 1: like the coffee house and the jazz club, but everything
Speaker 1: else is for members and their guests. So that's Toll House.
Speaker 1: Then Creatio is a marketing, technology and production agency, so
Speaker 1: we do everything from video production, website development, communication, strategy design,
Speaker 1: and more out of Creatio. And that business is a
Speaker 1: business I've been running since two thousand and seven, and
Speaker 1: so Creatio and my team is actually next door in
Speaker 1: the office next to me, and so that team is
Speaker 1: a growing team, and we are really working to, particularly
Speaker 1: for the region that we're in, is help companies and
Speaker 1: organizations reach and engage multicultural and diverse audiences. So we
Speaker 1: specifically work with not intentionally, but specifically. Our customers just
Speaker 1: tend to be governments, nonprofits, school systems, et cetera. Because
Speaker 1: they are trying to reach and engage multicultural and diverse audiences.
Speaker 1: We do other things. Those just tend to be the
Speaker 1: people who have us on retainer. Then beyond that, there's
Speaker 1: four other four total real estate properties that we own
Speaker 1: right on the same strip. So I have this building
Speaker 1: that I'm in right now, which is the Toll House
Speaker 1: and Creati operation. The next door is a building that
Speaker 1: we bought earlier in twenty twenty four, So that's another
Speaker 1: ten thousand square feet. Then about two blocks down on
Speaker 1: this same street water there's two more buildings that I bought,
Speaker 1: I want to say, in twenty twenty three, and in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two we bought two other buildings. In total,
Speaker 1: there's sixty thousand square feet that we have right in
Speaker 1: this same stretch, which is the historic Vistula District in Toledo.
Speaker 1: And so I'm committed to this area number one because
Speaker 1: I saw the most opportunity here and the most white
Speaker 1: space for getting my ideas out into the world. Like
Speaker 1: I'm not in a real estate holder from the perspective
Speaker 1: of I'm trying to lease out space. I have enough
Speaker 1: ideas of my own and I'm an operator, and so
Speaker 1: I am interested in starting my own operations out of
Speaker 1: these properties. Now that that doesn't mean like forever, I
Speaker 1: won't lease out or rent out space, but I'm working
Speaker 1: on getting my operations going for the business ideas that
Speaker 1: are very very quickly coming into fruition. So toll House
Speaker 1: being the first physical footprinted business that mattered, I guess
Speaker 1: for square footage like Creatio, we didn't don't necessarily need
Speaker 1: a place where customers could come but we do intend
Speaker 1: to have more space for creatives to be able to produce.
Speaker 1: And so obviously I do a podcast. I've been podcasting
Speaker 1: for almost a decade, if not a decade, and there
Speaker 1: are many people in our community who want to get
Speaker 1: into podcasting, video and or audio, and what we're doing
Speaker 1: is creating space for them to be able to have studios.
Speaker 1: And so you'll see more of that kind of thing
Speaker 1: come up if you're following along in my business journey.
Speaker 1: But the point in telling you all these things, and
Speaker 1: there's also other things, like there's boards I sit on.
Speaker 1: I just actually recently turned off of the University of
Speaker 1: Toledo Board of Trustees. I was the chair to board
Speaker 1: up until a couple of months ago. And I'm currently
Speaker 1: vice chair of the Casino Control Commission for the State
Speaker 1: of Ohio, and I will turn off of that board
Speaker 1: in very short order, just a couple of months. And
Speaker 1: so what's important to me is that I'm doing things
Speaker 1: that feed the mission. And so my life's mission is
Speaker 1: to create content and opportunities that helps black people realize
Speaker 1: entrepreneurial success beyond their wildness dreams. So everything I do
Speaker 1: is intended to do that. What happens is because I'm
Speaker 1: involved in so many things and I have a family.
Speaker 1: Because I have so many things going on, I can
Speaker 1: get bogged down with just a to do list. The
Speaker 1: to do list drives my day. My calendar and my
Speaker 1: to do list drive my day. And it's not a
Speaker 1: great way to live. It is a way to live,
Speaker 1: but the businesses end up unintentionally driving me, or at
Speaker 1: least my intention is not for them to drive me,
Speaker 1: but they end up driving me because I'm just doing
Speaker 1: so many things. And mind you, I've been doing this
Speaker 1: with like a virtual assistant, a remote assistant somebody who
Speaker 1: used to live in Toledo no longer lives in Toledo,
Speaker 1: but helps me now remotely. She mostly manages my calendar
Speaker 1: and my schedule and projects for the Creatio team. But
Speaker 1: I have not had an on site assistant in a
Speaker 1: long time, or assistant that I'm seeing regularly on site
Speaker 1: in a long time. And part of that's my fault
Speaker 1: because I don't I have not found what I work
Speaker 1: well with. And Sada, who's my assistant now, is fantastic,
Speaker 1: and even though she's remote, there's so much comfort there.
Speaker 1: She knows what I like, she knows what I don't like.
Speaker 1: She knows how I like my schedule to be outlined,
Speaker 1: she knows when I don't want to take meetings whatever.
Speaker 1: So she's already aware of my proclivity. Is the things
Speaker 1: that I like set up in specific ways. But what
Speaker 1: happens is when you don't have somebody nearby or you know,
Speaker 1: within arms reach, that things just end up coming to you.
Speaker 1: And there's like no barrier between me and opportunities. There's
Speaker 1: to vet these opportunities, because not every opportunity is a
Speaker 1: good opportunity, and not every opportunity is for you. But
Speaker 1: I am the the blessing and like the I don't
Speaker 1: want to say curse, but like the good and bad
Speaker 1: thing that I have in equal parts. I am equal
Speaker 1: part business and creative. And so that's my superpower. And
Speaker 1: so I am really good at operating and really good
Speaker 1: at creativity. And so what happens is because I have ideas,
Speaker 1: I can roll and rock out on those ideas very quickly.
Speaker 1: And that's not always a great thing. It is good
Speaker 1: to be able to move fast, but that doesn't mean
Speaker 1: you always should move fast, because if you've heard the
Speaker 1: old adage, you know, if you want to go fast,
Speaker 1: go alone. If you want to go far, go together.
Speaker 1: I am learning that and living that in real time
Speaker 1: because I've put myself in positions that require me to
Speaker 1: continue to go fast, and I'm paying for that in
Speaker 1: many ways because I've not always brought people along, and
Speaker 1: so I've had to learn as an entrepreneur and as
Speaker 1: a CEO that you know, you can't just always you
Speaker 1: can't always turn on a dime. It's great to be flexible,
Speaker 1: and it's great to be agile, but you will burn
Speaker 1: yourself out if you continue to turn on dimes at
Speaker 1: one hundred miles an hour. And so at the end
Speaker 1: of last year again, you know, September October somewhere around there,
Speaker 1: which is gassed like even an afro Tech and even
Speaker 1: I mean actually probably not Afrotech, because I like, I
Speaker 1: was rested up for afro Tech, but globally just exhausted.
Speaker 1: And I've learned how to operate exhausted. But it's not
Speaker 1: good to operate exhausted. Like I'm not bragging. I'm not
Speaker 1: saying that, yo, this is the way to live grind time.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that at all, cause it's not great
Speaker 1: to live that way. But I'm coming out of the
Speaker 1: season of living that way, and that means putting in
Speaker 1: position and putting in place operations and systems that allow
Speaker 1: me to have more space in my life. And so
Speaker 1: if you don't have space, the things that would come
Speaker 1: to you can't even find an opportunity to get to you, Like,
Speaker 1: if you don't have space in your life, you will
Speaker 1: miss out on other things. And so what I found
Speaker 1: is as it's equally as important to build the operation
Speaker 1: as it is to have great ideas. Everybody's got an idea.
Speaker 1: Everybody's got, you know, things that they believe that they
Speaker 1: will start as a business. Everybody's got great ideas, even
Speaker 1: though I'm sure you I'm sure somebody you know has
Speaker 1: ideas that will never come into being, because it's not
Speaker 1: just about having the idea. It's about also putting in
Speaker 1: together the systems and executing on those ideas inappropriate ways.
Speaker 1: And I have not always I've always executed, but I
Speaker 1: have not always executed in appropriate ways, and therefore it's
Speaker 1: caused strain and stress in areas of my life. And
Speaker 1: I'm just like, I can't continue to live like this,
Speaker 1: and so I've been fixing those things, and I dug
Speaker 1: myself so deep into so many of these respects that
Speaker 1: it's like now it's an opportunity to come out and
Speaker 1: coming out of that hole that I've dug so long,
Speaker 1: for so long that you don't just jump out of
Speaker 1: the hole. You have to climb out of the hole.
Speaker 1: And I've been finding myself with opportunities to climb out
Speaker 1: of the hole. And so it's been a process and
Speaker 1: it is a process that I will continue to do
Speaker 1: for the rest of my life, because as you get
Speaker 1: one thing going, other things again coming to play. And
Speaker 1: there are other businesses that will be launching this year
Speaker 1: that will change the landscape once again. But the important
Speaker 1: thing is to not make those same mistakes again. And
Speaker 1: so I'm looking forward to sharing more about this particular journey,
Speaker 1: but I want to talk about today how I'm using
Speaker 1: the things that I've learned over last year, over this
Speaker 1: past year for my twenty twenty five and so particularly
Speaker 1: as it relates to me my professional journey and toe
Speaker 1: housing creatio. So we've been leaning very heavily into AI,
Speaker 1: as you should be. If you're not, what are you
Speaker 1: doing well? Just in some very simple ways and some
Speaker 1: very in depth ways, But the very simple stuff like
Speaker 1: we have again a jazz club here at Toehouse and
Speaker 1: Lucille's Jazz Lounge. So if you look it up onlines,
Speaker 1: just Lucille's Jazz Lounges dot com. That's my jazz club.
Speaker 1: And I was because I do podcasting and I do
Speaker 1: voice stuff, I was doing all the intros for our performers,
Speaker 1: and so what I would find is I would always
Speaker 1: be left with a batch of intros to go record,
Speaker 1: and that's just another thing to do. So like none
Speaker 1: of the things that found their way onto my to
Speaker 1: do list were like super complex things. It was just
Speaker 1: another thing. And like big problems aren't made always of
Speaker 1: big issues, like big problems are made of small issues.
Speaker 1: It's like, you know, when I was growing up, I
Speaker 1: had learned that, you know, you don't just go from
Speaker 1: a well running vehicle to needing new rotors, like you
Speaker 1: go from a well running vehicle to brake pads that
Speaker 1: need to be changed. And if you don't fix the
Speaker 1: brake pads, that becomes a different problem. And if you
Speaker 1: don't fix that problem, that becomes a different problem, and
Speaker 1: the problems compound, Like so what could have been a
Speaker 1: thirty dollars forty dollars fifty dollars fix now is a
Speaker 1: couple hundred dollars fix or thousands of dollars fixed, depending
Speaker 1: on what kind of car you got, because you didn't
Speaker 1: get the small thing resolved. So the point I'm making
Speaker 1: in that is what I have found is on my
Speaker 1: to do list, there's a lot of little things that
Speaker 1: just need to get done. And that doesn't mean they
Speaker 1: need to get done by me, though, And that's always
Speaker 1: been our problem is I've known that other people could
Speaker 1: probably do this thing, but I knew I could do
Speaker 1: it faster, and I knew I need to pay somebody
Speaker 1: else due to so I can just get it done
Speaker 1: and be over and done with. And it's not a
Speaker 1: great way to run a business that you play to grow.
Speaker 1: And so what happens to too many businesses like ours
Speaker 1: ours is that we end up having single, you know,
Speaker 1: one person on the payroll. Some of us don't even
Speaker 1: have real payroll. We just take money out the business.
Speaker 1: But for general purposes, most of our businesses don't have
Speaker 1: more than one employee, and so to house, there's twenty
Speaker 1: two people here on staff. And so what I've had
Speaker 1: to learn how to do is not continue to dig
Speaker 1: myself in these holes that I had previously dug in
Speaker 1: other businesses, where I had painted myself in the corners
Speaker 1: because I was the only person doing things, which means
Speaker 1: I was the only person who knew how and why
Speaker 1: we did things certain ways, because all the institutional knowledge
Speaker 1: was in my head. And so what's been important for
Speaker 1: me is to allow other people, people and systems technologies
Speaker 1: even to take over some of this stuff. So particularly
Speaker 1: again back to Lucille's. I know that was a long
Speaker 1: way back to Lucille's, but with Lucille's even I was
Speaker 1: doing all these voiceovers. So now we're using AI and
Speaker 1: I'm just typing in, Hey, here's the artists we have,
Speaker 1: here's our typical intros. Create these voiceovers. So now I
Speaker 1: use eleven Labs for this. So eleven Labs just creates
Speaker 1: all of our voiceovers for all of these shows, and
Speaker 1: so it doesn't need to be my voice that's introducing
Speaker 1: people to these acts who perform at Lucille. So that's
Speaker 1: one way that we're using these technologies to be able
Speaker 1: to just relieve things from my play, and soon there
Speaker 1: will be somebody else who just does it and I
Speaker 1: don't even got to be involved in it anymore. But
Speaker 1: today it's just me going to the website, inputting the
Speaker 1: artists and spitting it out, and then I send the
Speaker 1: MP three to my guy. Soon again there will be
Speaker 1: somebody else who says, Okay, there's an act coming up,
Speaker 1: make sure we have this voiceover for the intro, and
Speaker 1: I won't even be involved anymore. But again it comes
Speaker 1: as a process of working myself out of the whole
Speaker 1: that I dug myself into. How else are we using
Speaker 1: AI here at Tohouse? So another way we've been using
Speaker 1: AI here at Toll House is just working on our
Speaker 1: events calendar. And so because we have all this member
Speaker 1: data and data for people who even just visit as guests,
Speaker 1: we've built this database of interests in, database of profiles,
Speaker 1: and database of demographics that we can then build programming around.
Speaker 1: So our two words of the year for twenty twenty
Speaker 1: five are partnership and program development here at Toll House.
Speaker 1: So partnership was also our word of the year for
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four. And what that means was it wasn't
Speaker 1: necessarily that we built Toll House to be the sole
Speaker 1: producers of all of our program I mean, we wanted
Speaker 1: our members to take the front seat on the types
Speaker 1: of programs they wanted to see us do. So members
Speaker 1: became the faces the influencers of the programs that we
Speaker 1: developed here. For twenty twenty five, we're keeping that same
Speaker 1: sentiment alive, but we're also adding in professional development because
Speaker 1: so many of our members, if not a third close
Speaker 1: to it, are on corporate memberships. So that means that
Speaker 1: they come here to work. They come here during the day,
Speaker 1: they come here to have meetings, they come here to
Speaker 1: you know as their hybrid or remote office, and so
Speaker 1: they're getting work done here. And so how about we
Speaker 1: lean into that and provide them professional development opportunities to
Speaker 1: where they're hearing a talk, or they're listening to a
Speaker 1: fireside chat, or they're engaging in a seminar to help
Speaker 1: them be better at what it is that they're aiming at. So,
Speaker 1: whether they're working somewhere or whether they're starting a business,
Speaker 1: they're going to find the programming that they need here
Speaker 1: to help them be better. As a matter of fact,
Speaker 1: I'm doing a talk coming up on prompting for AI
Speaker 1: that's specific for small businesses. How to prompt AI to
Speaker 1: help get you the information that you need to grow
Speaker 1: your small business. So that's one of the things. We
Speaker 1: also have other talks on things that are not necessarily
Speaker 1: just business related, but things about the kind of foods
Speaker 1: you eat. So there's people in our membership database who
Speaker 1: are very interested in more holistic foods. But the point
Speaker 1: is we used AI. We just dumped all this information,
Speaker 1: all the characteristic information about our members, and you know,
Speaker 1: we use that to analyze what types of programming might
Speaker 1: be of interest to people in this population. And so
Speaker 1: I've been using a lot of chat sheept's muscle to
Speaker 1: build out our programming calendar and come up with ideas
Speaker 1: that otherwise we wouldn't have thought of if I've even
Speaker 1: done it for Lucille. It's like, one of the interesting
Speaker 1: things Seals is it's a jazz club. Jazz and blues
Speaker 1: is what we're doing there. And it's constantly like booking
Speaker 1: an act for a show. And we have a fickle market,
Speaker 1: and so people don't always want to see the artists
Speaker 1: that you think is fire or that may work in
Speaker 1: other communities and other markets. Just because they working in
Speaker 1: the market doesn't mean they're gonna work here in Toledo.
Speaker 1: And so I've been using chat GPT just to provide
Speaker 1: guidance on how I should think about our programming and
Speaker 1: lou seals our talent roster, and it came up with
Speaker 1: this idea going back and forth with it of alternative
Speaker 1: types of shows, and so what we're doing actually is
Speaker 1: the show coming up. I think it's in February where
Speaker 1: we're doing an album show to where there will be
Speaker 1: an mc R host who will be on stage and
Speaker 1: members of the audience can bring an album with them,
Speaker 1: actual vinyl twelve inch vinyl with them or forty five
Speaker 1: with them of a song that means something to them.
Speaker 1: They get an opportunity to tell the story of that
Speaker 1: album or song, and the audience gets an opportunity to
Speaker 1: enjoy that song alongside them. And so that's an idea
Speaker 1: I would not have come up with otherwise. But we
Speaker 1: were going through this analysis with chat GPT of how
Speaker 1: to think about our location and that stage differently, like
Speaker 1: what can we do other than just booking talent on
Speaker 1: that stage, And through that process came up with this
Speaker 1: really creative idea of having an album party an album show.
Speaker 1: So I'm super excited about that one because I have
Speaker 1: a very big record collection and I never really get
Speaker 1: an opportunity anymore to share those songs with other people.
Speaker 1: And so you might have people over to your house,
Speaker 1: so you might have you know, maybe you're a DJ
Speaker 1: who still spins with wax, but just to have these
Speaker 1: old records that sit up in your grandmother's you know,
Speaker 1: attic or wherever they are, you know, having an opportunity
Speaker 1: to pull those out, dust them off, and bring them
Speaker 1: to a jazz club and blues club and play them
Speaker 1: for people, and then get an opportunity to tell the
Speaker 1: story behind why it means so much to you. I
Speaker 1: think it's super duper special. On the creatio side, how
Speaker 1: we're using AI is you know, for number one, very
Speaker 1: surface level action is to just help us with emails.
Speaker 1: I want to respond to emails in specific ways. Just
Speaker 1: train a particular GPT on this is how I respond
Speaker 1: to emails, will just spit out a response. We use
Speaker 1: AI a lot for writing scripts, and so we get
Speaker 1: from clients this is the goal of this particular effort,
Speaker 1: whether it's a commercial, whether it's a documentary or whatever.
Speaker 1: It's often putting together that shot list, the script and
Speaker 1: all of those things. The creative treatments we're doing a
Speaker 1: lot of that stuff with chat gpt now writing blog
Speaker 1: posts for just putting thought leadership, and so I may
Speaker 1: have ideas on particular things that are happening in the marketplace,
Speaker 1: things that are happening in our community, things that are
Speaker 1: happening globally that would be good to distribute on creatios
Speaker 1: platforms on social media. And I don't always need to
Speaker 1: spend an hour or two hours or half an hour
Speaker 1: writing a blog post when I can put the general
Speaker 1: ideas down and just work through on Claude writing out
Speaker 1: a blog post and tailoring it for our audience. And
Speaker 1: one quick thing is like we use chat chip to
Speaker 1: do a lot of analysis, and I use Claude to
Speaker 1: do more writing. And there's a lot of people I've
Speaker 1: heard that use it the same way. And I really
Speaker 1: believe that it's more the user interface than it is
Speaker 1: like the technical you know, offering. That's just this is
Speaker 1: my own personal hot take. Because chat GPT you can
Speaker 1: get really great content written content out of chat gpt also,
Speaker 1: but the user interface on Claude is so much more
Speaker 1: aesthetically pleasing to write on. So I think that is
Speaker 1: you know, even claud I mean, take the alternative approach
Speaker 1: like Claude you can do really deep analysis, but chatchipt
Speaker 1: it looks like an analysis machine. It's kind of like
Speaker 1: how you know Apple and Microsoft used to be back
Speaker 1: in the day, Like Apple was for creatives and microsofte
Speaker 1: for business people. It's like, that's kind of like that,
Speaker 1: you know, way of a corporate business people, I should
Speaker 1: say corporate business people like Microsoft and creatives like Apple.
Speaker 1: But clawod tends to be more leaning because of the
Speaker 1: user interface. It's a beautiful place to write chat ept
Speaker 1: if I'm just doing analysis. Again, it's a great place
Speaker 1: to provide analysis and insights. We also do voiceover work,
Speaker 1: you know, so getting those documentaries who need voices using
Speaker 1: eleven Labs. I use eleven Labs for that. So what
Speaker 1: am I doing, you know with these businesses pecifically the
Speaker 1: real estate? So I talked about we have these four
Speaker 1: properties on the in the right here in the Pastrulia district,
Speaker 1: and I've been very intentional about only acquiring properties that
Speaker 1: are in this same area because I want to own
Speaker 1: this area, and we're doing a pretty good job towards
Speaker 1: that goal. We're sixty thousand square feet now and across
Speaker 1: four buildings and there is a market that we're opening
Speaker 1: this year. We're doing We're gonna move the cigar lounge
Speaker 1: out of Toll House and put it in one of
Speaker 1: the other buildings and make it publicly accessible. There will
Speaker 1: be members only areas, but Vistula District, where my businesses
Speaker 1: are located, is on the outside of downtown, and for
Speaker 1: our purposes, we need more bodies in the area. And
Speaker 1: so what's been important for us is to create concepts
Speaker 1: that just bring more foot traffic, more drive traffic in
Speaker 1: the area. That helps the whole ecosystem grow, the whole
Speaker 1: area grow. And so we're moving the cigar lounge out
Speaker 1: of Toll House into one of the buildings and it'll
Speaker 1: be members only area, and then another part of it
Speaker 1: will be open to the public, will have a bar
Speaker 1: and air food concept. And then the market, which just
Speaker 1: followed along on my personal stories. You'll see more about
Speaker 1: the market to come. But the market. We live in
Speaker 1: a community that has like a Fresh Time fresh market.
Speaker 1: We don't have a whole food I think we're supposed
Speaker 1: to be geting the Trader Joe's, but there's an opportunity
Speaker 1: there for us to create more premium offerings, better options
Speaker 1: for the community. This is not necessarily like a food
Speaker 1: desert effort to help, you know, dissolve that. I believe
Speaker 1: that that is a worthwhile effort. I believe that there's
Speaker 1: people who should be tackling that effort. I am not
Speaker 1: necessarily personally making that effort to solve a food desert issue.
Speaker 1: I am building a business to compete at the highest
Speaker 1: levels with the whole foods, the Trader Joe's, the fresh markets,
Speaker 1: the arawines like that's where we are targeted. So I
Speaker 1: want to build a premium market that is that emphasizes brand,
Speaker 1: and you'll see more of that in my conversations here
Speaker 1: on this podcast, my YouTube channel, and my social media,
Speaker 1: so follow along for that. I'm in. There's some other concepts. Know,
Speaker 1: we've been thinking about other wine concepts, bush and shops,
Speaker 1: small businesses that feed the ecosystem, the local ecosystem where
Speaker 1: there's gaps in the marketplace. But what's important to me
Speaker 1: is that there are that I'm taking advantage of these
Speaker 1: opportunities because these opportunities won't be available forever and there
Speaker 1: are real market opportunities. And you'll hear me talk more
Speaker 1: this year about how we're going to scale these things
Speaker 1: because as you recognize or you might have thought that
Speaker 1: these businesses don't necessarily scale, they could if I position
Speaker 1: in certain ways. But I'm trying to specifically target local opportunities.
Speaker 1: But there will be software plays that I will talk
Speaker 1: more about on this podcast that provides scale globally. So
Speaker 1: we're building the technology because I'm very adamant on not
Speaker 1: subscribing to a whole bunch of other software to plug
Speaker 1: in to help us run our business more efficiently. We're
Speaker 1: building that software because I have an agency that builds technology.
Speaker 1: So not only at Creative do we do video production,
Speaker 1: website development, we build software. And so we'll see more
Speaker 1: of that effort pointed in house to where will be
Speaker 1: completely vertically integrated, where you'll have this private club, this
Speaker 1: grocery store, this butcher shops and guard lounge, all premium
Speaker 1: offerings vertically integrated and underpinned by a marketing company. And
Speaker 1: that's super important to me because we can own the
Speaker 1: whole stack and create more opportunities that way. So that's
Speaker 1: what's happening in my twenty twenty five And what I
Speaker 1: want to leave you with is kind of how we
Speaker 1: started is just because it's a new year, and just
Speaker 1: because we roll the calendar over, your year will not
Speaker 1: necessarily stay the same. Your year will not necessarily change
Speaker 1: or be better if you don't change your operations, your habits,
Speaker 1: and your daily activities. If you do the same things
Speaker 1: you did last year, your year will potentially be worse
Speaker 1: than twenty twenty four because just as you are staying stasis,
Speaker 1: just because you're not changing, and you know, you might
Speaker 1: make the same amount of money you did in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four that you will make in twenty twenty five,
Speaker 1: or you might be the same way in twenty twenty
Speaker 1: five that you did in twenty twenty four. You might,
Speaker 1: you know, have the same output in twenty twenty five
Speaker 1: that you did in twenty twenty four. Well, the market
Speaker 1: around you is actually growing and getting more efficient and
Speaker 1: getting richer. So if you're staying flat, everything else is
Speaker 1: changing around you, which means you are declining. And so
Speaker 1: while it may look on its face as everything is
Speaker 1: the same, nothing is the same because the system around
Speaker 1: you is getting more efficient and richer, there's more wealth
Speaker 1: being created, and all of these things. So I want
Speaker 1: you to spend some time if you have not done
Speaker 1: it yet mapping out your twenty twenty five Give the
Speaker 1: first couple of weeks of the year to yourself and
Speaker 1: really map out what you want this to look like.
Speaker 1: If you're great, you would have started in the end
Speaker 1: of twenty twenty four. But it's not too late to
Speaker 1: really get a handle on what you want this year
Speaker 1: to look like for yourself, because I've already noticed there's
Speaker 1: certain things about the third things that I didn't like
Speaker 1: about my daily life in twenty twenty four are already
Speaker 1: starting to creep back into my days, and it's up
Speaker 1: to me to make sure I extinguish that number one,
Speaker 1: but get a hold and grasp of the things that
Speaker 1: need to be operationalized and standardized so that by the
Speaker 1: end of twenty twenty five, I'm not again completely gassed out.
Speaker 1: And so just because it's a new day, just because
Speaker 1: it's a new year, does not mean that everything is changed.
Speaker 1: Change the things intentionally and be specific about what you
Speaker 1: want this year to look like. So that's my word
Speaker 1: for you. That is the first episode of Black Tech
Speaker 1: gree Money for twenty twenty five. It's a new season
Speaker 1: of the Black Tech gream Money podcast, and so I'm
Speaker 1: glad you spent this first episode with me just to
Speaker 1: set the landscape of what we're gonna do this year.
Speaker 1: So if you enjoy this and you're looking forward to
Speaker 1: this next season of Black Tech, Green Money, I know Masking,
Speaker 1: just go ahead and share this episode with somebody, put
Speaker 1: something into comments. I really appreciate that like this episode
Speaker 1: because that just helps the algorithm give it to more people.
Speaker 1: So if you like this, if you got some value
Speaker 1: out of it, share with somebody, comment on it, just
Speaker 1: hit like subscribe, And I appreciate everything you bring to
Speaker 1: this podcast, every single one of you guys who've been
Speaker 1: rocking with me for a five seasons so far we're
Speaker 1: going into our sixth season. From the bottom of my heart,
Speaker 1: I appreciate it. Let's get to it.