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Speaker 3: All right, guys, welcome back. E y L.
Speaker 4: South Beach Edition. And you can't tell by the backdrop
Speaker 4: because he's going to do the other side. But we
Speaker 4: in Miami right now, the rain is outment. It's still
Speaker 4: better weather than New York.
Speaker 2: We'll any day. We'll take that for sure.
Speaker 4: So, you know, we try to do interviews when we're
Speaker 4: on the road, and we know sometimes we have it planned,
Speaker 4: sometimes just impromptu. So this is an impromptu. We met
Speaker 4: a superstar in the tech world and somebody that we
Speaker 4: really thought we would add value to the podcast. So
Speaker 4: kwame Uncle just a brilliant star in the tech world.
Speaker 4: He was actually just found out. He was a start
Speaker 4: the co founder of Black Angel Tech Fund, which was
Speaker 4: the first tech fund in America that was focused on
Speaker 4: African American entrepreneurs, right, and now he's the CEO of
Speaker 4: Black Star Fund, which is a tech fund that looks
Speaker 4: for predominantly is where black people aretists are.
Speaker 5: The start is top twenty five black venture venture capitalists
Speaker 5: to watch from pitch book.
Speaker 2: That's right, man.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and Stanford, Stanford alumni. So we're gonna talk about
Speaker 4: that because that's an interesting within itself.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 4: But so yeah, yeah, and you're currently your firm is
Speaker 4: currently invested in nine companies.
Speaker 2: Right, nine companies that's right all over the country. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, I mean humbly met you.
Speaker 5: We were at an event and we walked over like, hey, guys,
Speaker 5: I'm a huge fan. I'm like, Okay, this is great,
Speaker 5: and then as we spoke more, I'm like, wait, this
Speaker 5: guy is a superstar.
Speaker 2: I appreciate it.
Speaker 6: Before we jump into I want to say, you know,
Speaker 6: you got fans all over the world.
Speaker 2: I was just in Ghana, and.
Speaker 6: I just want to say, as a fan myself, I'm
Speaker 6: so proud of you all of the work you're doing
Speaker 6: and the impact that you're having on the consciousness, the
Speaker 6: business consciousness, the mindset of our people, not only in
Speaker 6: the United States but all over the world.
Speaker 4: No, I appreciate that. Thank you, and shout out to
Speaker 4: Ghana too. We're gonna talk about Africa a little later too,
Speaker 4: because I know your roots are from Ghana, right, your
Speaker 4: African American, first generation African America, your family, your parents
Speaker 4: have roots in their families from Ghana.
Speaker 2: That's right, that's right. Yeah, return, we just passed. Yeah,
Speaker 2: we just stopped there for that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, talking about Yeah, yeah, so I definitely want to
Speaker 4: talk about Ghana. But yeah, so, first and foremost, thank
Speaker 4: you for joining us.
Speaker 3: Appreciate it.
Speaker 2: It's my pleasure, of my honor.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So we're gonna jump right into the tech world because
Speaker 4: we haven't really covered tech that much and a lot
Speaker 4: of people have been asking us. So the first I
Speaker 4: want to start at Stanford because this is something not
Speaker 4: to graze over.
Speaker 3: People don't understand how powerful that school is.
Speaker 4: I think like thirty something billionaires in the tech world
Speaker 4: to have graduated from Stanford. Guys a lot of even
Speaker 4: so I think one particular professor still is a professor
Speaker 4: at Stanford, and a lot of guys take his class
Speaker 4: because he's a VC guy too, and he gives money
Speaker 4: to different the Airbnb through that today somebody, somebody did that.
Speaker 4: They Yeah, but I say that to say a lot
Speaker 4: of times people don't fully understand how networking is and
Speaker 4: network So coming out of such a prestigious claw off.
Speaker 4: As far as going to Stanford as an African American,
Speaker 4: I'm assuming you was in a minority. How has how
Speaker 4: was that experience and how has that experience helped you
Speaker 4: now that you're in the VC world yourself.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's a great, great question. So lots of pieces,
Speaker 6: lots of parts there. You got to keep in mind
Speaker 6: that the times are very different. You know, I'm not
Speaker 6: sixty or seventy years I'm forty seven, so early nineties. Yeah,
Speaker 6: but the times were different. I meaning the first time
Speaker 6: I saw the Internet, I was a senior in college. Right,
Speaker 6: So when we talk about networking today and the ability
Speaker 6: to get connected to people through these incredible social networks
Speaker 6: that we have and it's easy, that was not our reality.
Speaker 6: That was not our world at the time. So it's
Speaker 6: much harder to get connected to people. And I'm fully
Speaker 6: transparent with you, I did not understand the power and
Speaker 6: prestige each of the Stanford name when I graduated as
Speaker 6: a minority student there there was a lot of the turmoil,
Speaker 6: and so when we graduated, we weren't thinking about, well,
Speaker 6: how can we start donating back to Stanford?
Speaker 5: It was expensive. I mean a lot of people get
Speaker 5: closer than that. Like a lot of times the schools
Speaker 5: have boosters right there, alumni and all their boosters. Like
Speaker 5: where we come from, it's like once we graduate schools, like, how.
Speaker 2: Can we pay it back?
Speaker 5: That's the loans, that's not to the school, that's right.
Speaker 6: And you don't understand that, like and part of the problem,
Speaker 6: I think again, it's a mindset.
Speaker 2: Right, I'm twenty two.
Speaker 6: I don't understand at that point in my life that
Speaker 6: I'm part of the elite country club, because in my mind,
Speaker 6: even though I was there, even though I have the diploma,
Speaker 6: I was not a part of the country club. I
Speaker 6: just didn't realize.
Speaker 3: It didn't feel like that.
Speaker 6: It didn't feel like it. So I didn't realize it,
Speaker 6: and it didn't feel like it. Now later in my
Speaker 6: professional life, I'm maturing. I'm understanding the power of networks.
Speaker 6: I'm understanding what I call success by association. I'm starting
Speaker 6: to understand those.
Speaker 4: Principles success by association. Can you explain, I interres I've
Speaker 4: never heard that before, but I understand what it means.
Speaker 4: But you explain that.
Speaker 2: I think we've got plenty of arguments about this.
Speaker 6: Okay, Yeah, So it doesn't mean that you will be
Speaker 6: successful simply because I'm Rashad's friend. But what it means
Speaker 6: is that I'm accelerating my ability to get to that
Speaker 6: place of success, and I'm establishing this intense credibility that
Speaker 6: I might not have on my own, but because I'm
Speaker 6: with you. So when I was a kid, my mom
Speaker 6: my mom even though she's half going to aint half British,
Speaker 6: so she had a British accidents, so she'd always go, well,
Speaker 6: you know, kwame buds of a feather flown.
Speaker 3: Together everybody in London?
Speaker 2: I mean, like what does that mean?
Speaker 6: But then you know, you get older, you figure out
Speaker 6: I was good.
Speaker 2: The cats that you roll with speak to who you.
Speaker 4: Are because I like what you said, because it's like
Speaker 4: a lot of times, how you look and how your
Speaker 4: word things is extremely important. So peer pressure is something
Speaker 4: that we hear a lot growing up, and we always
Speaker 4: look at it from a negative connotation, like, but it's
Speaker 4: positive peer pressure. We spoke about that the podcast before
Speaker 4: and which you said as far as six by association.
Speaker 4: All the time growing up we had guilty by association.
Speaker 4: That happens all the time. You're guilty by association. You mean,
Speaker 4: like the people that you hang out with, you're going
Speaker 4: to be guilty just by hanging out with them. I
Speaker 4: never heard anybody say success by association. So it's like
Speaker 4: you got to change the way that we actually use
Speaker 4: words where we look at things, and it's like if
Speaker 4: we could be guilty by association, we could be successful.
Speaker 2: Bad language is important, it's triven.
Speaker 6: The thing is a lot of times it's math, right,
Speaker 6: what I guarantee you, you and your audience I already
Speaker 6: understand principles around the people you hang that. There's a
Speaker 6: phrase that we hear all the time and money, Right,
Speaker 6: your net worth is the average of the five people
Speaker 6: you spend the most time with. Right now, most people
Speaker 6: have heard that and know that what I'm saying, I'm
Speaker 6: just adding those two concepts together. Well, wait a second,
Speaker 6: Like you said, if we always talk about guilt by association,
Speaker 6: but we also know that your your net worth is
Speaker 6: the average of the five people you spend the most time with,
Speaker 6: then that means if you're around successful people, you're going
Speaker 6: to be successful by association. How they think about money,
Speaker 6: how they think about life, how they live life, the
Speaker 6: decisions that they make. It becomes a part of your
Speaker 6: process because you're around them.
Speaker 2: Right I'll give you an example.
Speaker 6: I'm reading a book right now called The One Thing
Speaker 6: by Gary Keller, and it's this whole we've already heard
Speaker 6: about time management and prioritizing.
Speaker 2: He makes it really simple.
Speaker 6: He say, look, you know, every day when you wake up,
Speaker 6: there's one thing that you need to do that will
Speaker 6: help you.
Speaker 2: To be to get the success faster. Focus on that.
Speaker 3: That's it.
Speaker 6: Focus on that thing, one thing at a time. Yeah,
Speaker 6: right right, So he said we got to do lists.
Speaker 6: He said, you need to start writing down success lists.
Speaker 6: What are the successful steps? And sometimes, like in my world,
Speaker 6: it's as easy as making one phone call. If you
Speaker 6: call this one person who you know loves you, supports you,
Speaker 6: is extremely successful and extremely well connected. But you're doing
Speaker 6: five other things under the pretense, well, I got these
Speaker 6: other things I gotta do, but do this one first,
Speaker 6: so that at the end of the day, even if
Speaker 6: you haven't finished your to do list, the fact that
Speaker 6: you made that one call and got an appointment to
Speaker 6: go see that person is going to start.
Speaker 2: To open up opportunities.
Speaker 7: Right.
Speaker 5: So that's that's that's that's what you said that you
Speaker 5: were part of the country club but you didn't feel
Speaker 5: like it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what what was that like? Because this is.
Speaker 5: Cali in the early nineties. How did you fight to
Speaker 5: fight that that barrier?
Speaker 2: How did how did I start to feel like I
Speaker 2: was part of the country club?
Speaker 5: Well both so, so like not feeling like it and
Speaker 5: being it and then actually becoming aware of it, and
Speaker 5: like how did that?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 6: Well, I mean the thing is is funny, man. It
Speaker 6: feels like ancient history. But like when we saw all
Speaker 6: the the barrage of those pain, painful videos of police brutality.
Speaker 6: Right a couple of years ago now Ferguson and the
Speaker 6: brother in Louisiana, and it was just like this, day
Speaker 6: after day after day when I was in school, is
Speaker 6: the first time we had a global viral video of
Speaker 6: police brutality.
Speaker 5: R king, I'll never forget it. Actually happened on my
Speaker 5: birthday and like ninety one, that's right. I was like
Speaker 5: that crazy, I'll never forget it, And that's what I'm
Speaker 5: thinking at that time. This is the timate of California.
Speaker 6: That's exactly right, right, So for us, it was this
Speaker 6: feeling of like, wait a second, this is the stuff
Speaker 6: that was supposed to be happening in the sixties and
Speaker 6: the seventies. I personally had experienced these issues with the police,
Speaker 6: being profiled, being in a very I had guns put
Speaker 6: in my head when I was in LA when I
Speaker 6: was in high school, I had gotten attacked by the police.
Speaker 6: They thought I'd stolen stuff. So it really hit home
Speaker 6: and we and basically the feeling was if we're here
Speaker 6: at this most elite school where we have all this power,
Speaker 6: but we could be anywhere and be treated like a
Speaker 6: Rodney King. Something's gotta change, right, But we weren't connected
Speaker 6: to other campuses because again we didn't have the technology.
Speaker 6: So that was a lot of the thing of feeling
Speaker 6: like is this really for us? Do they let a
Speaker 6: couple of us in? Are we really a part of
Speaker 6: the thing?
Speaker 4: So at what point do you get into tech then?
Speaker 4: Because I know so obviously tech wasn't your main focus
Speaker 4: going into college since it was just starting out things
Speaker 4: on nature. So at what point do you decide I
Speaker 4: want to be have a benure capital fund and invest
Speaker 4: money into tech entrepreneurs.
Speaker 2: It's funny.
Speaker 6: A friend of mine always says that the dots don't
Speaker 6: connect when you look in front of you. So when
Speaker 6: I look back, I actually got into tech when I
Speaker 6: was ten years old. I literally started to learn how
Speaker 6: to code when I was ten. I went to a
Speaker 6: computer coding camp when I was in fifth grade. This
Speaker 6: is like green screen, yeah you know what I mean.
Speaker 6: And I was fascinated Star Wars. I was fascinated by technology,
Speaker 6: and I was fascinated by production and just you know,
Speaker 6: green screen and the whole creating of production through technology.
Speaker 6: So it was actually in me when I was when
Speaker 6: I was a younger person, and I believe it or not,
Speaker 6: the editing software popular editing software used today, Adobe Premiere.
Speaker 6: Right when I was in school, I was part of
Speaker 6: the beta testing team of Adobe Premiere at one point,
Speaker 6: oh of college. Yeah, so the idea that you know,
Speaker 6: we can we can edit video using computers when I
Speaker 6: went into college, that didn't exist by the end I
Speaker 6: was testing that stuff. So technology had always been interesting
Speaker 6: to me. I was working with Prince is how I
Speaker 6: actually got into the tech world in a serious business way.
Speaker 6: And he was obviously an extraordinary artist, but as a businessman,
Speaker 6: he used to say, if you don't own your masters,
Speaker 6: your masters own you. And when we see so many
Speaker 6: artists today like Jay Z and all these incredible artists
Speaker 6: who own their own stuff, they'll all say it was
Speaker 6: because they talk to Prince. And he was an evangelist
Speaker 6: for that for these younger artists. So he was in
Speaker 6: the tech, he was in the ownership. My father grew
Speaker 6: up in a village in Africa, in Ghana, no running water,
Speaker 6: no electricity, and came to the States, got scholarships, became
Speaker 6: a physician, and started buying land back home in Ghana
Speaker 6: in the nineties. I know you guys do a lot
Speaker 6: of stuff on real estate in the nineties. What's going
Speaker 6: on now in twenty twenty. So my point is, as
Speaker 6: a child, when I was see my dad at work,
Speaker 6: it had his name, Vincent Aku md Inc on the door.
Speaker 6: I never heard my dad talk about a boss. He
Speaker 6: was the boss. My mother was the office manager and
Speaker 6: the business operations first.
Speaker 2: So at dinner they were talking business at old times.
Speaker 6: When I was ten, I learned how to balance the
Speaker 6: corporate checkbook on the computer and got paid. So I
Speaker 6: was on my parents' business payroll doing there at ten
Speaker 6: at ten years old. At this point, are they familiar
Speaker 6: with computers the way you know it? A lot of
Speaker 6: times kids know more about technology than parents. I'm so
Speaker 6: grateful they didn't know anything about computers except how important
Speaker 6: it was. Yeah, and they bought me my first computer when.
Speaker 2: I was nine.
Speaker 4: How Prince. People talk about Prince a lot, like you said,
Speaker 4: as far as being one of the greatest musicians of
Speaker 4: all time. But I'm a huge Nas fan. And I
Speaker 4: remember Nas was on another podcast s Frank Champs, and
Speaker 4: he was talking about when he first met Prince and
Speaker 4: years ago, like in ninety nine, and he asked Prince
Speaker 4: to do a record with him, and Prince told them.
Speaker 4: He was like, do you own your masters? And now
Speaker 4: I said, I own my masters, and he was like,
Speaker 4: when you own your masters? We could have a conversation
Speaker 4: and he was like that really inspired. So it's like
Speaker 4: being around Prince. How was he as far as the
Speaker 4: business acumen the business side of things?
Speaker 2: Extraordinary? Man.
Speaker 6: I remember I had a conversation with him one time
Speaker 6: in his office, just the two of us. He said, look,
Speaker 6: let me tell you something. He said, I usually end
Speaker 6: the show playing purple rang, he said, within an hour.
Speaker 6: I don't care if I'm playing in front of two
Speaker 6: hundred people or if I got sold out at the stadium.
Speaker 6: I know how many T shirts were sold. I know
Speaker 6: how much merchandise were sold. I know how many Coca
Speaker 6: colas were bought.
Speaker 2: We spoke about that when we were talking.
Speaker 5: I think it's like a very first episode right when
Speaker 5: we talked about how innovative he was when he was
Speaker 5: packaging tickets, merchandise, all these things at the vendings, all
Speaker 5: packaged all together as one thing, and how now that's
Speaker 5: the standard. Twenty years later, people are just realizing, like
Speaker 5: what he set forth.
Speaker 6: Exactly I mean you think about subscriptions now Netflix and
Speaker 6: everything else. He created the New Power Generation music club
Speaker 6: in the late nineties where you'd pay nine dollars a
Speaker 6: month or whatever it was, and then you get music
Speaker 6: and you get merch and everything else.
Speaker 2: He created that.
Speaker 4: It's crazy, so before streaming, before it was Apple for
Speaker 4: any of that.
Speaker 6: So my point in terms of the tech stuff is
Speaker 6: that as a child, when you're raised with a parent
Speaker 6: who not only had a business, but more importantly came
Speaker 6: from nothing and created that, and then I got to
Speaker 6: work in it on the business side, and then as
Speaker 6: an adult, I'm working with Prince who's so adamant about ownership.
Speaker 6: So we were working with an organization that he and
Speaker 6: Van Jones found it called Yes Week Code, teaching African
Speaker 6: American kids in the hood how to code and become
Speaker 6: technology people. I'm not working with Facebook, I'm working with Google.
Speaker 6: I'm working with the Obama White House Office of Science
Speaker 6: and Technology. And then we start to put two and
Speaker 6: two together.
Speaker 2: We said, wait a second.
Speaker 6: We went to school with the people who created Google, Yahoo, PayPal, LinkedIn, pallunteer, YouTube.
Speaker 6: We went to school with all these guys. They understood
Speaker 6: right like that let's not breeze over there. That's crazy. Literally,
Speaker 6: there's a cat that's in my class nineteen ninety four
Speaker 6: who's a co founder of WhatsApp.
Speaker 5: Now owned by Facebook, which was.
Speaker 6: Sold for nineteen billion dollars. Yeah right, Jerry Yred Yahoo
Speaker 6: was two years ahead of me in college in Stanford.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thirty year reunions.
Speaker 5: Yeah, oh, I'll see if we can get an invite
Speaker 5: to that.
Speaker 4: Honorary brother Stanford alumni is crazy.
Speaker 3: So all right.
Speaker 4: So, so you build your relationships working with Prince and
Speaker 4: Van Jones, and you're on the tech side. So at
Speaker 4: what point do you to say, Okay, I want to
Speaker 4: start my own venture capital firm with other people. I
Speaker 4: think this is a good idea to do that.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 6: So basically, we were having a Black alumni reunion and
Speaker 6: it was a summit. It was in twenty fifteen, and
Speaker 6: we were in Atlanta, and I was on a panel.
Speaker 6: The numbers had come out around how in Silicon Valley
Speaker 6: less than one percent of the tech employees at these massive,
Speaker 6: big tech companies is African American. The less than one
Speaker 6: percent of venture capital going to African Americans. So I
Speaker 6: was on a panel and there was a conversation about that,
Speaker 6: and you know, you got some of the most successful
Speaker 6: black people in the country all sitting in that room,
Speaker 6: so there's a lot of anger. But then that turned to, well,
Speaker 6: what do we do. We need to put pressure on Google,
Speaker 6: we need to get them to hoid on black people.
Speaker 2: I was like, hey, wait a second.
Speaker 6: If we went to school with the people who created
Speaker 6: all this stuff, they had two very simple things. They
Speaker 6: had an idea and they had a little bit of
Speaker 6: Angel investment money two hundred three hundred five hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 2: And then they were up and running.
Speaker 6: We need to be focusing on doing that for our
Speaker 6: black tech entrepreneurs.
Speaker 2: So I didn't even say, hey, we need a fund.
Speaker 6: I just kind of put that out there, and literally
Speaker 6: a group of us got together and by the next
Speaker 6: day it was like the light bulbs are going off.
Speaker 2: And we said, hey, why.
Speaker 6: Don't we pull money together and create a fund so
Speaker 6: that we can start to do these investments in these
Speaker 6: tech entrepreneurs. So that's literally, as literally how it started
Speaker 6: Atlanta in twenty fifteen.
Speaker 5: Wow. We spoke about Angel Investing with John Henry a
Speaker 5: few months ago and he was talking about how it started.
Speaker 6: Now he's a phenomenal, phenomenal young man.
Speaker 2: How many how many people are with you when you start?
Speaker 6: Yeah, So when we initially started with Black Angel Tech
Speaker 6: on us five of us and we literally, you know,
Speaker 6: we did We raised a couple million dollars. We did
Speaker 6: five deals in my fund now Blackstar Fund. I'm still
Speaker 6: in three of those deals.
Speaker 5: OK.
Speaker 2: So there's a.
Speaker 6: Longevity there in terms of relationships with those founders. But yeah,
Speaker 6: it really and it wasn't people who had investing experience.
Speaker 6: That's one thing I think I love about your show
Speaker 6: is that this is not for people who already know
Speaker 6: all this stuff. It's for people who want to understand
Speaker 6: how it works. If you look at someone like Arlen Hamilton,
Speaker 6: Arln Hamilton does not come out of institutional investing. She
Speaker 6: doesn't have an economics study. Arlen Hamilton the founder of
Speaker 6: Backstage Capital. So she African American woman. She has invested
Speaker 6: in over a hundred companies of diverse founders and women.
Speaker 6: She raised four million dollars four or five years ago.
Speaker 6: She was living out of her car. Well, she was
Speaker 6: in the music industry and promotions, and she got the
Speaker 6: Silicon Valley and again it's math. She's looking around, going
Speaker 6: there's billions of dollars here where the black people. There's
Speaker 6: a disconnect. We should do something about that. And she
Speaker 6: got people to believe in her and her vision. Well,
Speaker 6: what if we were getting this money, same thing with
Speaker 6: we did with Black Angel Tech Fund into the folks.
Speaker 6: I love what she says. We talked about underrepresented minorities.
Speaker 6: She calls us underestimated. It's not underrepresented, right, it's underestimated.
Speaker 6: So my point is that people like Arlen Hamilton, she
Speaker 6: doesn't come out of investing Black Angel Tech Fund, None
Speaker 6: of the founders came out of investing. But we wanted
Speaker 6: to respond to a need and an opportunity. It wasn't
Speaker 6: simply that the numbers were rescued so that black people
Speaker 6: were not getting the cash. But sat wait a second.
Speaker 6: From a business standpoint, that's an incredible opportunity. If Silicon
Speaker 6: Valley is not paying attention to our genius and we
Speaker 6: can get in early, we can support our genius, and
Speaker 6: we can profit from our genius being successful.
Speaker 5: I think you gave a great analogy. You said you're
Speaker 5: like an A and R like in music just in tech. Right,
Speaker 5: you go out, you look for the talent, you say
Speaker 5: that's it.
Speaker 2: Like, that's something that we're good at. Right.
Speaker 5: We know good music when we hear it, and you
Speaker 5: know good ideas when you see them, right, Can you
Speaker 5: talk about that a little bit?
Speaker 2: Yeah? You know.
Speaker 6: It's like so when people say, you know, wikim, what's
Speaker 6: your secret? As an investor said, I'm like an old
Speaker 6: school an R person in the music industry. And for
Speaker 6: the young heads that that means artists and repertoire. That's
Speaker 6: when the cats who would go to the club, they
Speaker 6: go to the church, they go to the yeah, and
Speaker 6: they would hear the sound. Now, could a lot of
Speaker 6: us sing really well? Absolutely? Could a lot of us play? Absolutely?
Speaker 6: But there's something called what the it factor? So when
Speaker 6: you think about back in the day with Motown, you
Speaker 6: got Diana Ross, Smokey Robinson, the Jackson Five, Stevie.
Speaker 5: Wonder, Plantations.
Speaker 6: Okay, they were all phenomenal singers, but they all had
Speaker 6: the it factor. There's something special about certain people that
Speaker 6: you just know that.
Speaker 2: They were born to be leaders.
Speaker 3: No, I say that all the time.
Speaker 4: Is that we live in a world now like I
Speaker 4: have a son and everybody gets award to participate and
Speaker 4: everybody's like it's made just feel everybody's equal.
Speaker 2: Now you're singing my song.
Speaker 3: Now, everybody's not equal.
Speaker 4: There's some people that's that's made to excel others, and
Speaker 4: that's okay because some people like Lebron James might not
Speaker 4: be the best piano player, right, but as far as basketball,
Speaker 4: he's he was built to excel. He still had to
Speaker 4: put the work in. But you could have worked just
Speaker 4: as hard as Lebron. You're not going to be Lebron.
Speaker 4: And it's the same thing with business people. It's like
Speaker 4: even on the podcast, like we've had people on the
Speaker 4: podcast before and be like, he's special or she's special.
Speaker 3: Just has an it factor, right, and it's like you
Speaker 3: don't you can't really put your finger.
Speaker 2: On it, but you know it.
Speaker 3: The people know it. They resonate toward and they just
Speaker 3: they just have it.
Speaker 2: And the person sitting here knows it too.
Speaker 5: Like when they walk in and we talk as soon
Speaker 5: as like we have conversations after what they leave, it's
Speaker 5: like he was he's special, she's special.
Speaker 2: You can feel it. That's the thing.
Speaker 6: So then now let's look at it in the context
Speaker 6: of wait a second, if what we're all saying is true,
Speaker 6: how is it that you have less than one percent
Speaker 6: of the venture capital going to African Americans. Right, That's
Speaker 6: why I was saying that there's the opportunity. Greatest things
Speaker 6: I ever learned from one of my mentors, he said,
Speaker 6: a small mind focus is on the problem. Big mind
Speaker 6: focuses on the solution. A genius mind sees the opportunity
Speaker 6: that lies in the problem. Right, So that's how I functions. Wait, wait,
Speaker 6: less than one percent. We know our genius, We know
Speaker 6: our talent when we see it. So you're telling me,
Speaker 6: I'll give you example. Mary spiel who's actually in town.
Speaker 6: She's got a virtual reality company and she's doing virtual
Speaker 6: reality content for the halftime show at the Super Bowl.
Speaker 6: So she has a company called seek Vr. Okay, so
Speaker 6: let me just give you the background. Here's an African
Speaker 6: woman born New York, raised in Ghana. Dual degree, master's
Speaker 6: degree in from Georgia Tech and Electrical Engineering and Computer science.
Speaker 6: Seven year veteran of the United States Air Force, had
Speaker 6: a satellite communications. Oh and by the way, she invented
Speaker 6: the digital cinema system for Boeing, which bounces the movie
Speaker 6: signal off of satellite.
Speaker 2: To the movie theater big time.
Speaker 6: So you meet this woman who's got a VR company
Speaker 6: and you find out that she got a deal with
Speaker 6: Universe Soul Music and she beat out Oculus to get
Speaker 6: that deal. Does that sound you know what I mean?
Speaker 6: That's that's Dana Ross in the tech world exactly. Exactly
Speaker 6: in the tech world. That's who you invested, not just
Speaker 6: the money, the time, the relationships, the business coaching. So
Speaker 6: we've got that level of talent and my belief, whether
Speaker 6: it's it's John Henry and Harlem Capital, Plexo Capital Precursor,
Speaker 6: Arlend with Backstage Capital, Blackstar Fund, that we are all
Speaker 6: going to be turning the industry on its head and
Speaker 6: in the next three to five years because we knew
Speaker 6: where the talent was that nobody else was paying attention to,
Speaker 6: and we invested early, and when as those companies grow
Speaker 6: and have significant exits, everybody's going to come and look
Speaker 6: at us as geniuses. Look, weren't geniuses. We paid attention
Speaker 6: to the people you were not paying attention to. We
Speaker 6: invested in the people you were overlooking.
Speaker 5: The same dudes. You gave nothing. I made something.
Speaker 2: What I do?
Speaker 3: That's it? So all right.
Speaker 4: In the next in the next segment, we're going to
Speaker 4: go through the process as far as you know, he says,
Speaker 4: the part process and like your day to day and
Speaker 4: then some mindset opportunities that you that you coach people
Speaker 4: on as well. So yeah, we're gonna go into that next.
Speaker 4: All right, So you told us off camera that there's
Speaker 4: really three phases of your VC, and what you do
Speaker 4: with Black Star Fund is, you know, you raise money,
Speaker 4: you find find founders. You raise money, you find founders,
Speaker 4: and you help them be successful. So the interesting thing
Speaker 4: for me is that you raise money before you find
Speaker 4: the founder the founders of the people that you're giving
Speaker 4: money to or you're investing money with. But you're raising
Speaker 4: money before you actually have the people in play, and
Speaker 4: then you're not only just giving them money, but you're
Speaker 4: coaching them. Because I always look at it like it's
Speaker 4: like talent, right, we can't where I like to talk
Speaker 4: in sports and entertainment metaphors a lot because we understand
Speaker 4: that we as a culture, but world culture, we understand that, right.
Speaker 4: So it's like me, I used to play sports. So
Speaker 4: you see it's called the dominant rough Like you see
Speaker 4: somebody like they might be phenomenal player, basketball player, but
Speaker 4: they're not polished. They need work they need to coach,
Speaker 4: they need a trainer, they need somebody. But they already
Speaker 4: have potential, they have raw potential, but they're gonna get
Speaker 4: demolage if they just go to the league. They have to,
Speaker 4: they have to. They gotta practice, right, they gotta they
Speaker 4: gotta refine. Same thing with business. Somebody could be the
Speaker 4: most talented entrepreneur and be the most elegant speaker and
Speaker 4: powerful networker and just have a presence, but that still
Speaker 4: might not make them ready for the big league.
Speaker 5: Credit as you're saying that, the first thing that came
Speaker 5: out of mind were talking team was when Puff found it.
Speaker 2: It was like this gritty dude off the corner becomes
Speaker 2: this guy who.
Speaker 5: Knows where his besogy. He's an icon because of it.
Speaker 5: He found a dirt, he shined it up, and now
Speaker 5: he's an icon forever.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean that happens. But there's a bunch of
Speaker 4: people that just you know, everybody needs some level of coaching.
Speaker 4: Whether it's like nah said, large professor told him not
Speaker 4: to pop his p's and the poof like you don't
Speaker 4: think about that, but it's like little stuff like that.
Speaker 4: It's like you you you actually have talent, but you
Speaker 4: still need to be refined. So can you talk about
Speaker 4: that as far as the process, your process being the
Speaker 4: CEO of a VC fund and actually working with the entrepreneurs,
Speaker 4: not just like one hundred miles away, just do your
Speaker 4: own thing.
Speaker 2: There's the money, go ahead.
Speaker 6: Yeah, So let me say this first of all, there's
Speaker 6: a debate actually within our investment community where people even
Speaker 6: within African American investors around spending a lot of time
Speaker 6: with the entrepreneurs, and some people's philosophy is, but if
Speaker 6: we decided to make a deal with you, we're giving
Speaker 6: you the capital and you figure it out. We'll make
Speaker 6: some phone calls for you, but we're not here to
Speaker 6: hold your hand through the process. The way that VC
Speaker 6: normally works, the philosophy is you invest in ten companies,
Speaker 6: seven of them will fail, two of them will do okay,
Speaker 6: and one of them will be a unicorn and make
Speaker 6: everybody all the money. So what they do is they
Speaker 6: wait to see who pulls ahead, and then the bottom
Speaker 6: seven they kind of abandon most of the time.
Speaker 2: Could we afford to do that with African American tech founders?
Speaker 2: Absolutely not? Okay, absolutely that what are we talking about? Right?
Speaker 2: That just makes no sense. We can't do that ten
Speaker 2: percent to talk about ten companies exactly.
Speaker 6: So when you talk about you know, we're looking for
Speaker 6: the krem de la creme de la creme, the top
Speaker 6: of the top of the top, and so a lot
Speaker 6: of times you know even how we got connected.
Speaker 2: You had one of our companies on EUYL the Win
Speaker 2: Win company. It stands on.
Speaker 6: Phenomenal guy, the true talented tech developer. True he was
Speaker 6: a two time All American at Duke with a full
Speaker 6: ride and made it to the NFL. The work ethic
Speaker 6: of an individual like that, you put that person in
Speaker 6: tech and business, you're dealing with it a force you
Speaker 6: can't even imagine, you see what I mean? So that,
Speaker 6: but everybody has reshards to your point, everybody has areas
Speaker 6: that they need help with. Some of it might be
Speaker 6: to be polished and refined in business. But what I
Speaker 6: find that I think the most value that I bring,
Speaker 6: and this is something I think that could help all
Speaker 6: of your listeners, is that I say, the wider and
Speaker 6: deeper your relationships are, the easier your life is. And
Speaker 6: it translates to business, The wider and deeper your relationships
Speaker 6: are the easier your businesses. So when I invest in
Speaker 6: a company and I can leverage my relationships to help
Speaker 6: them grow. It makes a huge difference we invest in.
Speaker 6: I'll give you an example. We invest in a company.
Speaker 6: One of my investors made one phone call. That company
Speaker 6: was able to get their product into the top grocery
Speaker 6: store in northern California.
Speaker 5: Just from the resources.
Speaker 2: That's you Okay, you see what I mean.
Speaker 6: It wasn't heavy lifting, but because I had that relationship
Speaker 6: and I could leverage that relationship for my founder that
Speaker 6: I invested in, she was able to have a breakthrough in.
Speaker 2: The California market. You see what I mean.
Speaker 6: So it's not just the coaching, like we're helping you
Speaker 6: with mindset and we'll get into some of that hopefully too,
Speaker 6: but it's how can I act as almost your VP
Speaker 6: of business development? How can I get you in rooms
Speaker 6: and how can I connect you with people to help
Speaker 6: you to grow your business? And then sometimes you know,
Speaker 6: we do what I call CEO coaching. It's the behind
Speaker 6: closed door. Its tough conversations where we got to look
Speaker 6: in the mirror, We got to do an assessment. Where
Speaker 6: are your blocks, how are you getting in your own way?
Speaker 6: What story are you telling yourself? That's not serving you
Speaker 6: or your company. You see what I mean?
Speaker 4: So what is some CEO coaching that you do or
Speaker 4: that you know, because, like I said, a lot of
Speaker 4: times people you start a business, there's no roadmap to
Speaker 4: be successful, and coaching is extremely important, right, Like even
Speaker 4: Lebron reportedly spends a million dollars on his body where
Speaker 4: he has like massage therapists and trainers and things of
Speaker 4: that nature. And it's like business, this is important too,
Speaker 4: business podcast is that top level business people spend money
Speaker 4: on coaches. That's right, because they want to improve, whether
Speaker 4: it's a variety of different things that they can improve
Speaker 4: and become more efficient, things of that nature. And so
Speaker 4: as far as like CEO coaching, what is that? What
Speaker 4: does that look like from your standpoint?
Speaker 6: That's a great, great question. So there's not for me,
Speaker 6: there's not a cookie cutter formula. It's like you got
Speaker 6: to assess the person in front of you. Where are
Speaker 6: their strengths, where are their weaknesses? And you hear me
Speaker 6: use this word, where are their blocks? And a block
Speaker 6: is a mental idea that you have in your head
Speaker 6: that's preventing you from moving forward, and oftentimes it's subconscious.
Speaker 6: So how do you find out where those blocks are.
Speaker 6: It's based on output. I'm looking at what the entrepreneur
Speaker 6: is doing, and I'm looking at the output, and in
Speaker 6: certain areas I'm not seeing good results.
Speaker 2: And then I'm asking them, what is it that you want?
Speaker 2: I want this?
Speaker 6: It's okay, Well, I'm looking at six months of activity.
Speaker 6: I'm not seeing a lot of the thing that you
Speaker 6: say that you want. So we have to go into
Speaker 6: why is that now? Some of it is because they
Speaker 6: haven't designed a plan to be able to get there well,
Speaker 6: but a lot of times there's a block, and it's
Speaker 6: almost like be honestly, it's almost like being a psychologist
Speaker 6: where you got to go in and start to figure
Speaker 6: out what is preventing you from doing what you need
Speaker 6: to do, and then you forty seven. So I've seen
Speaker 6: a lot. I've had some great successes. I've had some
Speaker 6: painful failures.
Speaker 5: That's exactly where I was going because I'm thinking, like,
Speaker 5: this sounds very well organized, very well planned. In order
Speaker 5: to coach, sometimes you had to have made some mistakes
Speaker 5: that you know that play doesn't work, that's the thing.
Speaker 2: So what are some of the mistakes that you've made
Speaker 2: along the way. So I'll give an example. I see
Speaker 2: this a lot.
Speaker 6: Actually, when you're building a team as a leader, there's
Speaker 6: a mistake that people make where they build a team
Speaker 6: based on people who look up to them and who
Speaker 6: want to follow them. And part of it is an
Speaker 6: ego thing. Right, So I'm the CEO and founder. You're
Speaker 6: working for me. Maybe you haven't had this level of
Speaker 6: success that I've had, and you just want to be down.
Speaker 6: I'm bringing you on same thing. So what these guys
Speaker 6: do a lot of times they'll build a team of
Speaker 6: people who are kind of not at their level and
Speaker 6: look up to them and kind of idolize them. Huge mistake.
Speaker 6: I made that mistake. When you're in business, you want
Speaker 6: to build a team. And I tell peoples all the time,
Speaker 6: when you look on the table your management team, you
Speaker 6: should be in awe of the people on your team.
Speaker 6: You should literally be in awe of them. Get this,
Speaker 6: howe how is it possible that you're sitting at the
Speaker 6: table actually building this company. See, that's a mindset shift,
Speaker 6: and again sometimes it's ego. Sometimes people don't know better.
Speaker 6: The problem with the first way is that that team
Speaker 6: is always looking for you to make all the decisions
Speaker 6: and they and they're not really solving problems. Okay, so
Speaker 6: you need people who are better than you to do
Speaker 6: the things that you need to do to build your business.
Speaker 6: Steve Jobs was a genius at that and you probably
Speaker 6: have seen that meme. He said, you know, we hire
Speaker 6: people who are smarter than us to tell us what
Speaker 6: to do, right, not the other way around.
Speaker 8: Right.
Speaker 6: So that's that's a problem that I see. If you
Speaker 6: want to get in the nitty gritty in terms of
Speaker 6: cash flow management. One of the folks, one of the
Speaker 6: one of the things I think are our folks have
Speaker 6: a challenge with is that when money comes in, they'll
Speaker 6: operate the business kind of how they operate it on
Speaker 6: their life, okay, without having a budget, without having strict
Speaker 6: controls of that money.
Speaker 2: And so what I do with the entrepreneur is, look,
Speaker 2: we have to have the budget set with the X amount.
Speaker 2: I go over that with them.
Speaker 6: On some of the companies, I'm on the board, so
Speaker 6: it's a little easier because I can do board approvals
Speaker 6: of the budget. But we make sure that the cash
Speaker 6: is accounted for every week. If something comes up and
Speaker 6: we need to make a shift, we need to have
Speaker 6: a board decision to make a shift in the expenditures.
Speaker 6: But we've got spreadsheets to see where everything is. I've
Speaker 6: seen so many companies that are raised five hundred thousand
Speaker 6: dollars a million dollars. Ten months later, money's gone and
Speaker 6: the company is gone. Was it because their burn rate
Speaker 6: was so high? No, because they didn't have good financial
Speaker 6: systems in place, or they were saying, well, we don't
Speaker 6: need a CFO, we can't afford a CFO.
Speaker 2: Well, you don't need to hire a CFO.
Speaker 6: You need to have a fractional CFO, somebody that you
Speaker 6: can hire ten hours a month that will help to
Speaker 6: make sure all the financial.
Speaker 2: Things are in place.
Speaker 5: A fractional CFO.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so this is a new thing to be helpful
Speaker 2: your listener. Yes, I've heard of it.
Speaker 6: We call it fractional c suite. So we're starting off.
Speaker 6: We can't hire necessarily a chief marketing officer CMO, a
Speaker 6: chief financial officer CFO.
Speaker 2: We don't have to.
Speaker 6: There's now people who have positioned themselves to be fractional
Speaker 6: C level managers. I'll give you ten hours a month
Speaker 6: to be your chief marketing officer, right because you're just
Speaker 6: getting started, and so that's a great bit earners.
Speaker 2: What's up.
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Speaker 6: Just for people to be in because they can work
Speaker 6: for five sixty seven companies and get paid for those
Speaker 6: companies doing fractional work in the week.
Speaker 2: It's great.
Speaker 6: It's great, right, and it's great for the company because
Speaker 6: you're getting high level professional services but you're not paying
Speaker 6: out the nose to be able to get that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's like a consultant or MVP most viable product.
Speaker 4: When we say a lot on the podcast, it's like
Speaker 4: you have to work with the resources that's available to you.
Speaker 4: So you might not have one hundred and fifty thousand
Speaker 4: dollars to pay somebody full time, but you might have
Speaker 4: twenty thousand that you can break. And like you said,
Speaker 4: it's kind of a win win because it's like you're
Speaker 4: still getting some level of help and that person might
Speaker 4: get twenty thousand from ten different people. Now that's two
Speaker 4: hundred thousand as opposed to just the one fifty that
Speaker 4: they were going to get. But they got to focus
Speaker 4: all of their time just on one company.
Speaker 6: That's right, absolutely. And there's one other thing I want
Speaker 6: to say quickly about some of the coaching. It's life style.
Speaker 6: One of our companies you've invested in a great friend
Speaker 6: of mine, Don Dixon, and she has a company called
Speaker 6: Popcom and it's an incredible you know, AI interactive vending
Speaker 6: machine software system that she's created. And you know, she
Speaker 6: always talks about, especially to younger entrepreneurs in the early twenties,
Speaker 6: this idea that you're grinding, you know, ninety one hundred
Speaker 6: hours a week and that somehow we romanticize that that's
Speaker 6: how you're supposed to be successful. That is a way
Speaker 6: to have an imbalanced life, and that is a way
Speaker 6: to burn out. And so I really work with my
Speaker 6: founders in terms of their life balance. Me personally, I
Speaker 6: don't work on Sundays. I will not work on Sundays.
Speaker 6: I only started doing that in twenty nineteen, you see
Speaker 6: what I mean. So I don't want to see my
Speaker 6: founders like as an investor, I don't want to hear
Speaker 6: oh yeah, kwami.
Speaker 2: Man. We grind it out.
Speaker 5: Man.
Speaker 6: We put a one hundred hour week. I had three
Speaker 6: nights with no sleep.
Speaker 2: I don't want to hear that. I want to know.
Speaker 2: Like Mike Brown, I'll just throw his stuff out.
Speaker 6: I'll talk. I'll call Mike, I say hey, can we
Speaker 6: do a meeting. It's like can my son in taekwondo?
Speaker 6: I don't say, well, can you step outside? Because I've
Speaker 6: taken my son when he was five to taekwondo? Right,
Speaker 6: And it's so important that as a founder, as an
Speaker 6: investor with the founder, I'm expecting you to work hard.
Speaker 6: I'm not expecting you to burn yourself out. I'm not
Speaker 6: expecting you to have your life out of balance because
Speaker 6: I care about you as a human being first and foremost.
Speaker 2: But second, it's painfully inefficient. It's not sustainable. It's not sustainable.
Speaker 2: I need you to be here for the long haul,
Speaker 2: and I need you to bring.
Speaker 4: To the best of your abilities, the best of you,
Speaker 4: and then also to play devil's advocate. I think there's
Speaker 4: different systems for different people because, like we talked about sports,
Speaker 4: there's the Belichick way right, Patriots way, but it's really
Speaker 4: Belichick's way and he's a much different coach than Phil Jackson.
Speaker 4: He's a much different coach than Andy Reid. Right with Belichick,
Speaker 4: it's no alternative. He's about t trying to get rid
Speaker 4: of Tom Brady. You don't care.
Speaker 3: This is my way.
Speaker 4: And people say they hate playing for the everybody that's
Speaker 4: played for the Patriots city that's not on the Patriots anymore.
Speaker 4: So they hated it, but they win. They win, right,
Speaker 4: It's like sometimes the win and it's it's hard for
Speaker 4: people to fully understand that too, because it's like it's
Speaker 4: it's it's kind of disy. I think businesses like sports
Speaker 4: where it's like sometimes you go to extra mind and
Speaker 4: every everybody, everybody's not balanced.
Speaker 6: So let me let me expound on that, because, believe
Speaker 6: it or not, I agree with you one hundred percent,
Speaker 6: and I'm glad you said that because I need to
Speaker 6: qualify what I said because it goes to your point
Speaker 6: about it. It's not sustainable. I want to see it
Speaker 6: being seasons. Okay, there's a season to go in the
Speaker 6: overdrive and then there's a season to pull back, and
Speaker 6: the Bible says it's time to place for everything. So
Speaker 6: what I'm not saying as a startup founder, you should
Speaker 6: comfortably just do for hours a week, clock out at
Speaker 6: five o'clock on Friday. I don't think about working all weekend.
Speaker 6: I've got yoga tonight. No, no, right, But this idea
Speaker 6: that like I'm not doing, I'm not a good founder
Speaker 6: of a startup if I'm not working ninety hours a week,
Speaker 6: never take a break, always grind and always reading. That mindset. See,
Speaker 6: that's different than the athlete that is doing waking up
Speaker 6: at four in the morning every day. It's even that
Speaker 6: athlete still takes their family on vacation, you see what
Speaker 6: I mean? Even that athlete reads books instead of playing. Right.
Speaker 6: So there's grind season, there's recovery season, there's we're going
Speaker 6: to pull out all the stops, and then this we're
Speaker 6: gonna reflect. Steve Jobs one of the most innovative entrepreneurs
Speaker 6: on the planet earth, Bill Gates, the minor standing I
Speaker 6: just start documenting on him.
Speaker 2: He still does it.
Speaker 6: They read for over an hour a day. Now, how
Speaker 6: in the world would you be Bill Gates with networth
Speaker 6: of thirty plus billion dollars, with all the global responsibilities
Speaker 6: he has, and he reads an hour day. Steve Jobs
Speaker 6: would walk for an hour a day, not take phone calls.
Speaker 2: Now you have steve jobs, rest and soul. Why do
Speaker 2: you do that? He said?
Speaker 6: Because that's where I can think, and that's where I
Speaker 6: come up with ideas.
Speaker 2: You know what I mean?
Speaker 5: You have to allocate this time. Oh, you definitely will
Speaker 5: burn out. That's like Shoy's coming from the Bisweld educational
Speaker 5: I see it all the time. Like I have teachers
Speaker 5: that are thirty and forty and they're like, I can't
Speaker 5: do this anymore.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm like, well, what are you gonna do? I
Speaker 2: don't know.
Speaker 5: I'm like, well, then you're gonna be doing this right.
Speaker 5: Like it's like most teachers think that they're gonna work
Speaker 5: till the retirement age fifty five fifty sevens for something,
Speaker 5: and they're like, all right, it's great, But I'm like,
Speaker 5: you're thirty now, you're twenty seven years away.
Speaker 2: What are you gonna do if you burnt out now?
Speaker 5: And it's like they haven't allocated the time or the
Speaker 5: resources to look at anything else.
Speaker 2: That's so powerful.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So as far as raising money, right, what's the
Speaker 4: process as far as that is concerned for you personally?
Speaker 4: Like you guys, now, do you tap into your network
Speaker 4: that you've built up over the years. There's alumni association,
Speaker 4: it's just random people that you come in contact with.
Speaker 4: Do you have email marketing?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 4: How do you we calling this stand for the lum
Speaker 4: How do you raise money for you for these businesses
Speaker 4: that you're giving money to.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so there's two sides of it.
Speaker 6: Let's talk about on the fund side and then also
Speaker 6: talk about how I help some of the companies to
Speaker 6: raise money themselves right on the fun side. It goes
Speaker 6: back to what I said, the wider and deeper the
Speaker 6: relationships you have our the easier your life is easier
Speaker 6: your businesses. And remember I said success by association. So
Speaker 6: let's say I've got a good relationship with somebody's business guy.
Speaker 6: It knows me, trusts me, likes me, admires my work.
Speaker 6: Talk to him, he says, calling out, man, I.
Speaker 2: Want to invest.
Speaker 6: I don't just say hey, thank you so much for that.
Speaker 6: I really appreciate it, and then try to find other people.
Speaker 6: Then we sit down, who else in your network do
Speaker 6: you think would be interested in this?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 6: So, now when we go and meet with that person,
Speaker 6: these are people he's done deals with, These are people
Speaker 6: she's done deals with. So they know them, they like them,
Speaker 6: they trust them, and a lot of times they've made
Speaker 6: money together. So now it's not just what, hey, here's
Speaker 6: this guy you don't know.
Speaker 2: Do you want to do this?
Speaker 6: It's hey, man, I just get in this deal. You
Speaker 6: gotta see this, you gotta meet this guy. I'm in
Speaker 6: and I want to bring you in with me. So
Speaker 6: so much of the deal is done before the meeting
Speaker 6: simply because again it's success by association. So that's really
Speaker 6: my strategy on the fundraise. And the cool thing about
Speaker 6: that too, is that you meet extraordinary people doing amazing things.
Speaker 6: Like I'm in town to help my two companies. Those
Speaker 6: events were Thursday and tomorrow. I planned my trip to
Speaker 6: leave on Tuesday. Why because I knew I was going
Speaker 6: to be meeting people, and I got some business partners
Speaker 6: down here that I said, I'm coming for a week.
Speaker 6: Ta Kama will get you some meetings so we can
Speaker 6: help you to raise some money down here.
Speaker 4: You see what I mean, And you never know what
Speaker 4: can happen, like I I was just saying earlier, like
Speaker 4: somebody who was asked me, like you lest, I'm not
Speaker 4: leaving leave Miami until I'm supposed to leave because already
Speaker 4: I know it's in New York.
Speaker 3: I'm in New York all year.
Speaker 4: I might just randomly walk outside and meet a random
Speaker 4: person that could change my life, like you know what
Speaker 4: I mean. And I think people don't fully understand that either.
Speaker 4: It's like it's important to travel and it's important and
Speaker 4: like we just met you two days ago. Who knows
Speaker 4: where this relationship can go. But a lot of times
Speaker 4: we just so can find average person only leaves for
Speaker 4: like two weeks a year, and their day to day
Speaker 4: is exactly the same. And that's why it said, like
Speaker 4: even take a different route to work, because it's like
Speaker 4: you kind of just get programmed to wake up, walk
Speaker 4: your dog, take your kid to school, pick a kid
Speaker 4: up from school. And then like you're you're only interacting
Speaker 4: with ten people every day for your whole entire year.
Speaker 3: How are you going to change your life? Of course,
Speaker 3: your life is going to be the same.
Speaker 5: You're only talking to ten people, That's right, that's the
Speaker 5: allocation part. It was like most people who work in
Speaker 5: corporate worlds, they'll tell you you got two weeks of
Speaker 5: vacation for the year, so choose it wisely. You know
Speaker 5: what I'm saying. So it's like it's tough because it's
Speaker 5: like we're trying to figure out, this is how much
Speaker 5: time we have, and oh, I got to put it
Speaker 5: with my friends and my family because this is the
Speaker 5: only time I have. It's like if you get sick,
Speaker 5: good luck, you know what I mean.
Speaker 6: It's it's true, but I think that this goes back
Speaker 6: to the shifting mindset. Right, if we're working a job
Speaker 6: and we only have two weeks allocated for vacation, that's
Speaker 6: kind of what the rules are. But the reality is
Speaker 6: we also got fifty two weekends, right, And if you'd
Speaker 6: make a decision every other month, I'm going somewhere. Does
Speaker 6: that mean that you got to spend two grand to
Speaker 6: go out of the country or go to Mexico? Not necessarily,
Speaker 6: But if you live in New York, you got a
Speaker 6: friend in DC, you take that train down to DC
Speaker 6: and you stay with them, and it's exactly what you're saying.
Speaker 6: You're in you're at a different party, you're at someone
Speaker 6: else's house for dinner, and it's natural things.
Speaker 2: So what is it that you do right?
Speaker 6: And then having a consent where you go to school,
Speaker 6: and then once you start making those common links, hey,
Speaker 6: do you know so and so?
Speaker 2: No, Man, I got to.
Speaker 6: Introduce you to a friend of mine, right, that's we
Speaker 6: got to be in that mindset totally. How do you
Speaker 6: put yourself in places and spaces where you're meeting new people,
Speaker 6: having new conversations and then having new realities for you.
Speaker 4: You know what's crazy too, is like we're so programmed,
Speaker 4: and it's like the people start looking at you crazy.
Speaker 4: Like when you start traveling a lot, you start doing things,
Speaker 4: they start looking at you crazy, like why are you
Speaker 4: traveling so much?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: You know you need to travel slow down a little bit?
Speaker 2: Why not?
Speaker 3: Like there was literally people.
Speaker 4: Will and then it's like even for you guys, not
Speaker 4: for me, but it's even relationships with people, like you know,
Speaker 4: you never know. It's like why are you traveling again?
Speaker 4: Or you're traveling again? Or and people it's like, yeah,
Speaker 4: why not travel?
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, if I can, I'll get like, hey, you
Speaker 5: gotta slow down. You need to slow down, man, you're
Speaker 5: moving around too much. And I'm like, na, man, we're
Speaker 5: trying to change the world here, like what I'm doing
Speaker 5: in education, like I don't go to work tomorrow. In school,
Speaker 5: somebody eventually will be the new teacher there, but like
Speaker 5: nobody's doing, we're doing, so I gotta advocate. I gotta
Speaker 5: allocate time for this because this is super important.
Speaker 2: You know, it's so it's so true, man.
Speaker 6: But that goes back to what we talked about success
Speaker 6: by association, right, is that there's a painful reality.
Speaker 5: And I learned this.
Speaker 2: I'll be honest with you, man. I remember being in Baltimore.
Speaker 2: It was a tough time in my life and I
Speaker 2: was in I was in.
Speaker 6: A motel and I had audio recording of one of
Speaker 6: Tony Robbins's programs and he said, write down.
Speaker 2: The most.
Speaker 6: Write down how you would describe success in business and
Speaker 6: health in relationships, and basically through one to five of
Speaker 6: where you are, and then you do the average of that.
Speaker 6: I was like at one point two of everything.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 6: And one of the things that he was talking about,
Speaker 6: and this isn't just you know, we say, like we
Speaker 6: said earlier, that your net worth is the average of
Speaker 6: five people that you spend most time with. But the
Speaker 6: deeper level of that concept is your net consciousness is
Speaker 6: the average of the five people you spend the most
Speaker 6: time with.
Speaker 2: Okay, so what that means is.
Speaker 6: One of my favorite rappers of Chuck D Public Enemy
Speaker 6: right from Public Enemy, and Chuck D said, if I
Speaker 6: can't change the people around me, I changed people around me.
Speaker 6: I'm in a situation where I can't change the people
Speaker 6: around me. I change the people around me. And when
Speaker 6: you hear things, no diside of your friends and people
Speaker 6: that love you. But when you hear things like you
Speaker 6: need to slow down, you're traveling too much, and you're
Speaker 6: not hearing the choruses telling you, Man, I'm so proud
Speaker 6: of you.
Speaker 2: Man, do it.
Speaker 5: Man.
Speaker 6: Every time I see a picture of you somewhere else,
Speaker 6: I get excited for you. What's the next thing you're doing.
Speaker 6: You're doing great now, but what's the next level you're
Speaker 6: trying to go to. If you don't have that courus
Speaker 6: around you, it's time to shift the team. It's time
Speaker 6: to shift the team. I learned this early in my career.
Speaker 2: Man. Remember one of my mentors, SA Kwami.
Speaker 6: The team that gets you from A to B, it's
Speaker 6: not the same team that's gonna get you from B
Speaker 6: two C or C D or D two E. And
Speaker 6: you as a leader, you have to be prepared. Doesn't
Speaker 6: mean there's not some people gonna go all the way
Speaker 6: with you. But for the most part, the whole team's
Speaker 6: not coming.
Speaker 3: Everybody might not gonna make it.
Speaker 2: That everybody's not gonna make it. It's not gonna happen.
Speaker 9: It's okay, right, we're only laughing because we say that
Speaker 9: all the time. Everybody's not come make so clearly, man,
Speaker 9: I say, I hit a nerve that is that is
Speaker 9: a that's a mantra that we.
Speaker 2: Are kind of kind of live back. You gotta get
Speaker 2: some of the the teacher. Everybody ain't coming.
Speaker 7: It'll be only it'll be only that's gonna be the shirt.
Speaker 7: It'll be only be only bus stops here, right, you're
Speaker 7: getting off. You get no transfers, no transfers.
Speaker 4: So from your perspective, as far as mindset, is mindset
Speaker 4: more more important than the information that people receive. But
Speaker 4: does it go hand in hand to make the information
Speaker 4: useful for people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's hard to quantify.
Speaker 6: But just to make the point, I mean, in my
Speaker 6: life experience, I always say in life, love and business,
Speaker 6: I would say ninety is mindset and ten percent is
Speaker 6: the info. Because if you don't have the right mindset,
Speaker 6: then you don't know how to digest the info.
Speaker 2: And we were kids.
Speaker 6: Memember of parents used to said, man, it's in one air.
Speaker 6: I tell you the same thing over and over. It's
Speaker 6: in one ear and out the other. Okay, you're getting
Speaker 6: the info, you're not retaining it, you're not digesting it,
Speaker 6: you're not processing it, and most importantly, you're not using
Speaker 6: it for the transformation. So the mindset, you know great.
Speaker 6: Wayne Dyer said, when you change the way you see things,
Speaker 6: the things that you see change. That had a profound
Speaker 6: impact on my life. So when you change whey you
Speaker 6: see things, the things that you see change.
Speaker 2: That is mindset.
Speaker 6: If I can think about this in a different way,
Speaker 6: then I can have a different result. There's another reason
Speaker 6: why you've got to have different people around you, because
Speaker 6: if you fall in the trap of commiserating, oh man,
Speaker 6: things are really tough right now, and you get a
Speaker 6: bunch of people that are supporting that song, you go
Speaker 6: deeper down that hole. You have some people say, man,
Speaker 6: stop complaining. Okay, that is that really helpful? You really
Speaker 6: need There's people who said, let me help you to
Speaker 6: see this thing differently. What you think is the problem
Speaker 6: could be an incredible opportunity. And because your mindset changes,
Speaker 6: then you look at the thing differently, You deal with
Speaker 6: the thing differently, and then you get different results.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I remember to end it on that.
Speaker 4: No, I was years ago. I was working at this
Speaker 4: play this company, and this guy he was like one
Speaker 4: of the top people, big time producer, and he was
Speaker 4: in the bathroom and another person came in the bathroom
Speaker 4: and started complaining about like the manager and was saying like, hey,
Speaker 4: you know what I mean. Like he's like, don't stop.
Speaker 4: I can't process any negative information. Can't process it.
Speaker 3: He stopped him, like aptitudes like Nope, not doing that.
Speaker 4: It's not it's not gonna be beneficial and it's only
Speaker 4: going to be negative and it's gonna lower my frequency
Speaker 4: and I can't.
Speaker 3: I can't do it.
Speaker 4: And when it was so profound because he didn't give
Speaker 4: him apology here and he just and for him to
Speaker 4: be at that level and just let me know, like,
Speaker 4: you know, everything that you put in your brain is important,
Speaker 4: and it's a lot of times we put so much
Speaker 4: negativity in our brain without even fully understanding what we're doing,
Speaker 4: and then we're wondering while we're not getting the positive results.
Speaker 2: That's that's right, that's right. Yeah.
Speaker 6: I think I did a social media post recently, and
Speaker 6: I was saying, you know, in order to kind of
Speaker 6: have a new reality, you have to have a new
Speaker 6: song in your head. Right, what's the story you're telling yourself.
Speaker 6: What's the song that you're singing. I've literally lost friendships
Speaker 6: and relationships saying similar things where people I was hearing
Speaker 6: a lot of gossip. I can't hear that right now. Nope,
Speaker 6: a matter of fact, I can't ever hear it.
Speaker 3: No, that's powerful.
Speaker 4: So all right, in the last segment, we're gonna close
Speaker 4: it out. We're gonna go to Mother Africa home. Yeah,
Speaker 4: the return for sure, awesome. All right, So in the
Speaker 4: last segment, we're gonna close it out and we're gonna
Speaker 4: go into national And this is something that I really
Speaker 4: I really like enjoying having these conversations because I always said,
Speaker 4: like the vision of we can never limit ourselves, we
Speaker 4: can never limit ourselves as far as like geographically or
Speaker 4: culturally or anything like the world is our oyster. I
Speaker 4: think it's important for people to understand that, and that's
Speaker 4: something that we really proud ourselves on. As far as
Speaker 4: your leisure, it's not just in America. We're in you know,
Speaker 4: we're blessed me and some of the top charts all
Speaker 4: over the world act and one continent specifically that we
Speaker 4: have reached the top charts in a lot of countries,
Speaker 4: it's Africa. So shout out to everybody in Africa, all countries,
Speaker 4: all over all countries in Africa. We definitely have to
Speaker 4: come to Africa soon.
Speaker 2: I'd love to be your host.
Speaker 4: Yeah, looking forward to that. A lot of people have
Speaker 4: been hitting us up asking to come to Africa. And
Speaker 4: as I said, you're African American, you have roots in Ghana,
Speaker 4: That's where your family is from, and I know you
Speaker 4: go back there pretty regularly, right.
Speaker 2: I do. Yeah, I'm there usually two or three times
Speaker 2: a year. It was it was a big event this
Speaker 2: this December.
Speaker 5: It was the year return in Africa and Ghana specifically,
Speaker 5: and you were holding a text onment you were speaking there.
Speaker 2: Right, I was, Yeah.
Speaker 6: I'm the US ambassador for the on A Tech Summit.
Speaker 6: The co founders Einstein and Christine and Tim have created
Speaker 6: this incredible vision of tech summits all over the continent.
Speaker 6: And this was the second annual Ghana Tech Summit that
Speaker 6: happened just last month.
Speaker 4: So can we talk about all right, can we talk
Speaker 4: about that as far as what's going on in Africa
Speaker 4: right now. And I think it's important to have these
Speaker 4: conversations because it's like for us being an African American
Speaker 4: and then from the continent people that's of African descent.
Speaker 4: On the continent, it's only a body of water that
Speaker 4: separates us, but a lot of times it seems like
Speaker 4: it's much further, but it's really not. We're not that separated.
Speaker 4: So it's important I want to bridge this gap for
Speaker 4: people in America and for people in Africa. What's going
Speaker 4: on in Ghana specifically as far as the tech boom
Speaker 4: that's happening there and the entrepreneur and what did you
Speaker 4: see when you go out there and you know, being
Speaker 4: out there giving a ted talk and things of that nature.
Speaker 6: Sure, so I'm so excited to have a chance to
Speaker 6: share and really making an open invitation. But piggyback and
Speaker 6: O's what you said is that twenty nineteen was the
Speaker 6: year of Return. And it was the President of Ghana
Speaker 6: who said, look, this is it's the four hundred year
Speaker 6: mark of the first African Africans who were brought to
Speaker 6: the United States or to North America as slaves. And
Speaker 6: so we're going to put our flag in the ground
Speaker 6: and say hey, we're marking this and we want you
Speaker 6: to come home.
Speaker 2: That's what he said.
Speaker 6: Come make cultural connection, Come learn how to invest, come
Speaker 6: to reconnect with the motherland.
Speaker 2: Post that.
Speaker 6: Now that we're going in twenty twenty, it's now called
Speaker 6: the Year of the Birthright, and we're taking it even
Speaker 6: further and saying the Decade of the Birthright. That means
Speaker 6: that you, as descendants of Mother Africa, your birthright is
Speaker 6: there waiting for you, so you got to come back
Speaker 6: and connect with it and build. What's happening in Ghana.
Speaker 6: First of all, it's the fastest growing economy on the
Speaker 6: continent of Africa. Okay, so on any given year it's
Speaker 6: doing six to eight percent growth. Billions of dollars are
Speaker 6: coming from all over the world building infrastructure, building gorgeous
Speaker 6: buildings and hotels, our family businesses, building affordable housing units
Speaker 6: and neighborhoods.
Speaker 2: You know, there's so much in any sector.
Speaker 6: It could be gold, it could be technology, it could
Speaker 6: be textiles, it could be five G anything. It's all
Speaker 6: in the early stages for people to get in and
Speaker 6: to build. And it's a beautiful country. And now granted
Speaker 6: I'm biased because my family is from there, But what
Speaker 6: I found is a year of return because we had
Speaker 6: thousands of African Americans coming that the mines were blown.
Speaker 6: But more importantly, what I knew was going to happen,
Speaker 6: and I watched it happen. There's a feeling when you
Speaker 6: get your feedback on that soil that you didn't know
Speaker 6: that you had the capacity to feel.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, I mean just thinking visually, like every time,
Speaker 5: especially when we were growing up, there was just one
Speaker 5: image of what people thought Africa was.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 5: It was like donated dollar to a child, right, or
Speaker 5: it was like you were in a safari And like
Speaker 5: when we saw the images coming back, especially like on
Speaker 5: social media, and I think that's the beauty of it,
Speaker 5: it was just like, wait, why are we not there?
Speaker 2: You know what I mean?
Speaker 5: And I'm sure that when people got there, like you
Speaker 5: saw that firsthand, right.
Speaker 2: I didn't. But it was literal, man.
Speaker 6: I mean there was people I had so many friends
Speaker 6: that literally canceled their return flights to stay another week
Speaker 6: or indefinitely. I watched people who have full time jobs
Speaker 6: writing emails and proposals to their bosses with ideas of
Speaker 6: how they could be working in Africa for three months.
Speaker 2: Out of the year.
Speaker 6: I watched it happen, So in the feeling, I was
Speaker 6: there with my buddy too, Shaka Sangor, incredible author, New
Speaker 6: York Times bestseller One Man Show All over the World,
Speaker 6: amazing friend of mine, and we did a film with him.
Speaker 6: So he came back to for the first time and
Speaker 6: we shot a docu film of him being over there,
Speaker 6: and he said something really deep he said when he said,
Speaker 6: what the feeling I thought I was going to have
Speaker 6: when I got back is that I'm home.
Speaker 2: He to to be honest with you, I didn't actually
Speaker 2: feel that. He said.
Speaker 6: What I felt was that I belonged here, And I
Speaker 6: think that is the thing for African Americans when they go.
Speaker 6: It's the sense that you belong there. You don't have
Speaker 6: to move, but that feeling. The reality is most Black
Speaker 6: Americans have never felt that their whole life. Very true,
Speaker 6: so that I think that's the massive opportunities in every sector.
Speaker 6: I'm obviously on the tech space, but whatever you're into,
Speaker 6: you will find a place, you will find the feeling
Speaker 6: of belonging, and you're going to want to be doing
Speaker 6: business and building this next civilization in Africa.
Speaker 4: So what is the opportunities as far as for foreigners,
Speaker 4: Because I've heard Akon say, like, anybody that's doing business
Speaker 4: in America, you got to come to Africa and do business,
Speaker 4: and I guarantee like your business like boom like, you'll
Speaker 4: be way more successful doing anything, whether it's doing insurance,
Speaker 4: whether it's real estate, whether it's writing, whatever, doing in Africa.
Speaker 3: He said that before.
Speaker 4: So what are the opportunities and how welcoming is it
Speaker 4: for foreigners, specifically Americans that may be in business to
Speaker 4: come to Africa because obviously you don't know that the
Speaker 4: dynamics of it. You got to like partner up and
Speaker 4: meet people out there.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so two parts of that I always tell people.
Speaker 6: There's there's the what, the why and the how, So
Speaker 6: the what is other opportunities The answer is absolutely yes,
Speaker 6: But then we get into the why. It is easy
Speaker 6: I want to reconnect with Africa and be part of
Speaker 6: creating the change that we want to see. The how
Speaker 6: is about who do you know? Who do you know
Speaker 6: over there that can help you to be able to
Speaker 6: navigate through It's difficult to do business in Ghana and
Speaker 6: quite frankly on the continent when you don't know people
Speaker 6: because you don't have access and you don't know how
Speaker 6: to navigate through there.
Speaker 2: But it's it's the same here. I mean, if I
Speaker 2: you know, I've never been in New York and I'm trying.
Speaker 6: To do business and or stop, I know a whole
Speaker 6: lot of people well connected business, finance, city Hall. I'm
Speaker 6: gonna get some subst out quickly.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So it's really important to connect with people.
Speaker 6: And Joe, when you mentioned about seeing the social media,
Speaker 6: if you have friends that you saw over there with
Speaker 6: social media, I guarantee you they were making relationships and
Speaker 6: friendships over there, you need to get in touch with
Speaker 6: them and say, hey, I'm interested in doing business.
Speaker 2: Who do you know over there? Now?
Speaker 6: You know, I'll do a little bit of promotion because
Speaker 6: I want people to be connected to me as well.
Speaker 6: But then we can help to get you connected to
Speaker 6: folks that can help you based on the things that
Speaker 6: you're interested in.
Speaker 3: Oh, your company does that?
Speaker 2: So I work with folks. I've got partners over there. Ok.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so we you know, we've got a consulting company too,
Speaker 6: so we help people that are interested in doing business
Speaker 6: in Africa, specifically in Ghana.
Speaker 3: You bridged that gain absolutely what's the name of the company.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so my partner with there is black Band. Black
Speaker 6: Band Terry Opong, He's the CEO and founder of black Band.
Speaker 4: What are some industries that they definitely need like right away?
Speaker 4: That's the opportunities for entrepreneurs.
Speaker 6: Oh, well, you'll be happy. I think the real estate
Speaker 6: and obviously our family is in the real estate business.
Speaker 6: But the real estate opportunities in Ghana are extraordinary. It's
Speaker 6: just extraordinary. You got to need right now for a
Speaker 6: million people for affordable housing.
Speaker 5: That's a Cilian Presidentirey.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, development, real estate development.
Speaker 6: Real estate development is huge. But I mean, honest with you,
Speaker 6: the thing is so wide that it's what are you
Speaker 6: what are you passionate about? People interested in fashion, the
Speaker 6: textile industry, fashion explosive. The other area we need to
Speaker 6: really start thinking about is the cocoa industry. Coco Ghana
Speaker 6: producers three percent of the global supply excuse me, seventy
Speaker 6: percent of the global supply of coco, but we're only
Speaker 6: participating in three percent of the supply chain benefit of
Speaker 6: that seventy seventy percent, and between Ghana and Ivory Coast,
Speaker 6: it's ninety percent of the entire planet's coco comes from
Speaker 6: those two places, but we're participating in a minuscule part
Speaker 6: of the profit because we're not processing.
Speaker 3: It there correctly.
Speaker 2: We're just we're just growing the coco, sending it to
Speaker 2: out there's no infrastructure to properly.
Speaker 4: It's like the diamonds in South Africa, and then they
Speaker 4: send it to Israel to actually get cut and all
Speaker 4: of that.
Speaker 5: That's that's exactly like when we spoke about spoke about
Speaker 5: Elco Dangote when he was when he changed his country's
Speaker 5: export to import policy, right, like they were putting out
Speaker 5: so much oil. He built the infrastructures so now they're
Speaker 5: able to export it to countries and make money. It
Speaker 5: completely changes the income for the entire country.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Nigeria is one of the they have one of
Speaker 4: the largest oil reserves in the world, but they don't
Speaker 4: produce a lot of oil. Now they're starting to change that,
Speaker 4: but because the refineries just wasn't enough to cove and
Speaker 4: they couldn't actually produce it well, efficiently, well and efficiently.
Speaker 2: That's exactly right. So yeah, so look, whether it's oil, whether.
Speaker 6: It's solar, agriculture, real estate tech, which is my world,
Speaker 6: our developers over there are coders over there. There's so
Speaker 6: many incredible opportunities. So when you think about the United States,
Speaker 6: the people really made money back in the day build
Speaker 6: the railroads and everything else. Those families and the oil families.
Speaker 6: We can be those families in Ghana right now in
Speaker 6: twenty twenty.
Speaker 4: And media opportunities are there, Media opportunities and god, oh.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, media infrastructures.
Speaker 6: And I think that's one of the things that trips
Speaker 6: people out, man, when they get the gun and they
Speaker 6: flip on the television and everything. It's like everything here,
Speaker 6: your sports center, your news, But it's us. It's hosting,
Speaker 6: that's producing, that's running those stations and those networks.
Speaker 2: I think it's exciting for content creators.
Speaker 4: No, I think creators and I see you firsthand as
Speaker 4: far as we're earn your leisures because like I see,
Speaker 4: it's a need for what we do in different parts
Speaker 4: of the world, Like people can't wait for us to
Speaker 4: come to Toronto, Canada. Same thing with London, England, Africa.
Speaker 4: And it's like we're highlighting entrepreneurs and we're explaining different
Speaker 4: business ventures in a way that people can understand it.
Speaker 4: And it's just like music, right, like you might be
Speaker 4: a huge jay Z fan, but you're from London and
Speaker 4: he's from Brooklyn. It's just a little different as far
Speaker 4: as the dialect, the things that he's rapping about is
Speaker 4: not the same. But you genuinely you got to love
Speaker 4: for the music and I feel like that the podcast
Speaker 4: is the same thing like people. It might not be
Speaker 4: specific as far as the stuff that we're talking about.
Speaker 4: A lot of this stuff is just is geared towards America.
Speaker 4: We're working on getting more international content, but they just
Speaker 4: sty're encouraged by us by our delivery. And so our
Speaker 4: goal with Earn Lisia is is to take this all
Speaker 4: over the world and to have Summits platforms, podcast shows
Speaker 4: in different countries and highlight entrepreneurs. Don't We're not going
Speaker 4: to do the chrystical Columbus thing and just come with
Speaker 4: people from America and shove all way of thinking on
Speaker 4: other countries. We want to actually invite people that's doing
Speaker 4: their thing in their countries and break it down because
Speaker 4: a lot of times people business owners, they don't have
Speaker 4: a platform and the people don't have a way to
Speaker 4: get the information from those people. So it's a disconnecting Yeah.
Speaker 5: There's people doing amazing things. Like you said, the woman
Speaker 5: you spoke about earlier, who is the Oprah Winfrey in
Speaker 5: the text space that was unfamiliar to us. You know
Speaker 5: what I'm saying, there's no platform for her to be.
Speaker 5: It's not exploited, but displayed her greatness.
Speaker 2: You know what I mean.
Speaker 5: I think it's so important at what we're doing here,
Speaker 5: and to do it internationally will be even more incredible.
Speaker 6: Well, I tell you, I was really moved by what
Speaker 6: you both just said, and I'm going to make a
Speaker 6: commitment to you. One of the reasons why a lot
Speaker 6: of people want to be on your show is because
Speaker 6: you give them a platform and you give them exposure.
Speaker 6: I want to be able to make a commitment to
Speaker 6: you all and to help on the international scene. I've
Speaker 6: got great friends and great relationships with entrepreneurs in Toronto,
Speaker 6: in London, and in Ghana. Okay, so I'm going to
Speaker 6: help you breaking news alert, breaking news. I'm going to
Speaker 6: help you to put those events together in Toronto, in London,
Speaker 6: but in Ghana.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna host you guys.
Speaker 6: Oh we'll tell you haven't oh man, I'm hosting you
Speaker 6: and our family are gonna host you and bring you
Speaker 6: all out so you can experience the country the way
Speaker 6: it was supposed to be experienced.
Speaker 2: And will get you connected. And then but your job
Speaker 2: is to just do what you do.
Speaker 3: That's it. We're going to do it big en after.
Speaker 7: A big.
Speaker 2: World. Why for real?
Speaker 3: Oh Man Kwalme.
Speaker 4: I appreciate you, and like I said, this is all
Speaker 4: it's all about relationships, and it's like we just met.
Speaker 3: You were actually, you know.
Speaker 4: An advocate for the podcast before we met you, which
Speaker 4: is really dope because you're on the whole different coast
Speaker 4: and it's all you know, a couple of degrees of separation.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: We interviewed Mike Brown, which you're invested in his company,
Speaker 4: and we met you at his event and you spoke
Speaker 4: and kicked it off and then shout out to Mike
Speaker 4: Brown also because even when you spoke, we still have
Speaker 4: tie the dots on that and he's like, yo, yeah,
Speaker 4: should have called me on the podcast. I'm like, all right,
Speaker 4: let's do it, and so yeah, shout out to Mike
Speaker 4: for actually quarterback.
Speaker 5: And on top of that, one of your students tell
Speaker 5: us really quickly, I have a.
Speaker 2: Couple of mentees.
Speaker 6: I'm on the board of a university called North Central
Speaker 6: University in Minneapolis, and a couple of students, young couple.
Speaker 6: They're my mentees. So I was in town having dinner
Speaker 6: with them, and they had invested in Mike's company. So
Speaker 6: I'm having dinner with.
Speaker 2: Them and I said, oh, man, I'm so excited. You
Speaker 2: guys invested in.
Speaker 6: Win Win and which which one of my social media
Speaker 6: posts influenced you to make a decision? And they call
Speaker 6: me uncle Kwame, Uncle Kame, what do you mean? I
Speaker 6: was like, didn't you invest because of me working with them?
Speaker 2: You work with him?
Speaker 6: I was like, how did you find out about when Win?
Speaker 6: And he Michael. It's a couple of Michael and Grace.
Speaker 6: They just got engaged. Michael brings out his phone and
Speaker 6: shows me the screenshot that a friend of his had
Speaker 6: sent him of the EYL episode, and all she said
Speaker 6: was you need to invest in this right now.
Speaker 2: That's crazy.
Speaker 6: We watched the episode. We love those guys, and we invested.
Speaker 6: So I'm very grateful to.
Speaker 2: You for what you told us the story. I was
Speaker 2: just like, WHOA, yeah, No, your reach is incredible.
Speaker 6: That's probably I was saying with Toronto man literally had
Speaker 6: a friend of mine was talking to and to recommend podcasts.
Speaker 2: And she's like, the number one was Eyl.
Speaker 3: She from Toronto. Shout out in Toronto, the first one.
Speaker 3: So now a shout to Toronto.
Speaker 2: Man, thank you.
Speaker 4: But yeah, so how can people contact your information on
Speaker 4: you on your your business, different business ventures and uh yeah,
Speaker 4: any information that you want to give the public?
Speaker 6: Sure, man, very very easy. First thing on the business side,
Speaker 6: get connected with me on LinkedIn. So it's just quime
Speaker 6: k w A m E. Last name a n k
Speaker 6: u ku. You definitely connect with me on LinkedIn. That's
Speaker 6: the best platform for business networking in my opinion. Instagram,
Speaker 6: you know, we'll post this, my link will be there.
Speaker 6: And then the website is Blackstar that fund? Black Star
Speaker 6: that fund.
Speaker 3: And what about the what's the company that you connect
Speaker 3: people with in Africa?
Speaker 2: Yeah, black band dot co. Black black Band dot Co.
Speaker 6: Terry Apong phenomenal, phenomenal business leader and entrepreneur over there
Speaker 6: on the ground making stuff happen.
Speaker 5: I appreciate that, Troy shout out to everybody on Patreon
Speaker 5: dot com.
Speaker 2: Y'all know that it is our proud to pay program.
Speaker 5: It has grown over the months.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 5: We are so happy that everybody's come along the ride
Speaker 5: with us. As you know, we have switched it up
Speaker 5: a little bit giving you more content, so be on
Speaker 5: the lookout for that. And I want to just give
Speaker 5: a quick shout out to Havana. Uh we got Jessica
Speaker 5: and Justin are new members. Man, y'all are Tier four
Speaker 5: Tier five members, so you obviously know you have access
Speaker 5: to Early Legion University. That is our online school where
Speaker 5: we have webinars three times a week, real estate on Monday.
Speaker 5: We have a guest webinar every Wednesday, and shouty myself.
Speaker 5: We always do a business related one on Thursdays. And
Speaker 5: ey Spno is out there, so be on the lookout
Speaker 5: and thank you for supporting. Everybody's supporting the merchan only
Speaker 5: leisure dot com new merch is on the way all
Speaker 5: our earning. Be sure to cop the new merge. It's
Speaker 5: specifically made for you by us, so thank you.
Speaker 2: Please report.
Speaker 4: Yeah, everybody asks you about the track suit, so episode
Speaker 4: comes out. Hopefully the tracksuit will be on the website
Speaker 4: EYL University. Yes, make sure you stay in tune with that.
Speaker 4: And the book tip of this week recommended by our guests.
Speaker 4: The one thing, the one thing correct that's it. Yes,
Speaker 4: so yes, Thank you guys for rocking with us. We'll
Speaker 4: see you next week.
Speaker 2: Peace, Peace, Peace.
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