# Booker Blasts College Sports Act. Roger Fortson Killing Heads To Trial. Black Beauty Funding Crashes

An episode of [#RolandMartinUnfiltered](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1434424449), 25 Sep 2026, 2 h 21 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/ec5a50b3-3ea1-4b6e-b91b-ae2e00387281/94eed3fd-b64a-49ff-bcae-b4d00134a6b4/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=9fce13f2-0092-4f32-888b-ae2e0038728f

9.17.2026 #RolandMartinUnfiltered: Booker Blasts College Sports Act. Roger Fortson Killing Heads To Trial. Black Beauty Funding Crashes. Senator Cory Booker pushes back on the Protect College Sports Act that was advanced by the Senate. Booker says y'all are wrong this actually doesn't help college athletes. We'll also talk about Senator Mitch McConnell's suspicious absence and reappearance, after a video surfaced of him being instructed on how to vote at a Senate committee meeting. U.S. Virgin Islands Congresswoman Stacey Plaskett led a panel during Congressional Black Caucus Week. She spoke regarding e-commerce and how this can benefit the black entrepreneurial and creative community. She will join us to talk about her discussion. A Florida judge rejected a motion to dismiss a manslaughter case against a former sheriff's deputy who shot and killed a Black Senior Airman, forcing that deputy to go to trial. The Black Beauty Industry is a progressive multi-billion dollar global movement across the world but recent stats show that financial support of black founders is decreasing. Tonight we will have a very special panel of Black female entrepreneurs who founded their own companies to talk about the future of the beauty industry. Black Star Network Partner: Chapter Chapter and its affiliates are not connected with or endorsed by any government entity or the federal Medicare program. Chapter Advisory, LLC represents Medicare Advantage HMO, PPO, and PFFS organizations and stand alone prescription drug plans that have a Medicare contract. Enrollment depends on the plan’s contract renewal. While we have a database of every Medicare plan nationwide and can help you to search among all plans, we have contracts with many but not all plans. As a result, we do not offer every plan available in your area. Currently we represent 50 organizations which offer 18,160 products nationwide. We search and recommend all plans, even those we don’t directly offer. You can contact a licensed Chapter agent to find out the number of products available in your specific area. Please contact Medicare.gov, 1-800-Medicare, or your local State Health Insurance Program (SHIP) to get information on all of your options. ____ Download the Black Star Network app at http://www.blackstarnetwork.com! We're on iOS, AppleTV, Android, AndroidTV, Roku, FireTV, and SamsungTV. The #BlackStarNetwork is a news reporting platform covered under Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:02] Speaker 1: Today is Thursday, September 17th, 2026, coming up on Roland
[0:05] Speaker 1: Martin Unfiltered, streaming live on the Black Star Network.
[0:08] Speaker 2: New Jersey Senator Cory Booker pushes.
[0:10] Speaker 1: Back on the Protect College Sports Act, which the Senate
[0:14] Speaker 1: has advanced out of committee. Booker explains why the bill
[0:17] Speaker 1: will not help college athletes. I'll also dig in further
[0:21] Speaker 1: as to why is the Thurgood Marshall Fund and the
[0:24] Speaker 1: UNCF supporting the bill, but not talking about why. Senator
[0:29] Speaker 1: Mitch McConnell is back after a three-month absence. Um, he
[0:34] Speaker 1: looks like he is totally out of it.
[0:37] Speaker 3: U.S.
[0:37] Speaker 1: Virgin Islands Congresswoman Stacey Plaskett will be joining us to
[0:40] Speaker 1: talk about e-commerce and how it can benefit black entrepreneurs. Also,
[0:44] Speaker 1: a Florida judge rejected a motion to dismiss a manslaughter
[0:46] Speaker 1: case against a former sheriff's deputy who shot and killed
[0:49] Speaker 1: a black senior airman, forcing that deputy to go to trial.
[0:53] Speaker 1: The black beauty industry is a progressive, multi-billion dollar global movement,
[0:57] Speaker 1: but recent stats showed that financial support for black founders
[1:00] Speaker 1: is decreasing. Tonight, we'll have a very special panel of
[1:03] Speaker 1: black female entrepreneurs who founded their own companies to talk
[1:06] Speaker 1: about the future of the beauty industry. It's time to
[1:09] Speaker 1: bring the funk. I'm Roland Mark Unfiltered on the Black
[1:11] Speaker 1: Star Network.
[1:12] Speaker 2: Let's go.
[1:15] Speaker 4: He's on it whatever it is he's got the scoop
[1:19] Speaker 4: the fact the fine and when it breaks he's right
[1:22] Speaker 4: on time and it's rolling best belief he's knowing putting
[1:27] Speaker 4: it down from sports to news to politics with entertainment
[1:31] Speaker 4: just for kicks he's rolling.
[1:40] Speaker 5: It's Roland Martin, yeah.
[1:45] Speaker 4: Rolling with Roland now.
[1:49] Speaker 6: He's funky, he's fresh, he's real the best. You know
[1:52] Speaker 6: he's Roland Martin now.
[2:08] Speaker 1: All right, folks, we've been talking about the so-called Protect
[2:10] Speaker 1: College Sports Act, which is the latest attempt by Congress
[2:15] Speaker 1: to deal with what's happening in college athletics, namely NIL, Portal,
[2:21] Speaker 1: all those sort of different issues. Now, you might remember
[2:25] Speaker 1: the House tried to move the SCORE Act. Now, initially,
[2:29] Speaker 1: you had two CBC members who were involved in that.
[2:34] Speaker 1: One of them was Alabama congressman Shamari figures. The other
[2:39] Speaker 1: was out of Oregon, Janelle Bynum. Then, of course, they
[2:44] Speaker 1: dropped their support of the SCORE Act, and the CBC
[2:47] Speaker 1: was unanimous in their opposition. They killed the SCORE Act
[2:51] Speaker 1: because they also tied it to the issue of voting
[2:55] Speaker 1: rights that were taken away because of Louisiana v. Kalei decisions.
[2:58] Speaker 1: So once the House bill failed, all of a sudden
[3:01] Speaker 1: it went to the Senate. That's where Senator Ted Cruz
[3:04] Speaker 1: and Maria Cantwell decided to sponsor a so-called bipartisan bill. Now,
[3:08] Speaker 1: in advance in a motion, 74 to 24, and then
[3:12] Speaker 1: we'll go to the floor to vote. Now, the bill
[3:15] Speaker 1: would set national rules for athlete pay, transfers, also agents.
[3:20] Speaker 1: It deals with other issues as well. Now, more than
[3:22] Speaker 1: 20 collegiate athletic conferences representing 228 colleges and universities across
[3:27] Speaker 1: 46 states, including HBCUs, have publicly supported and praised the bill.
[3:33] Speaker 1: But New Jersey Senator Cory Booker said it is designed
[3:37] Speaker 1: to take power away from players and give it back
[3:43] Speaker 1: to universities, administrators, and coaches.
[3:48] Speaker 7: I want to speak forcefully against the Protect College Sports Act.
[3:52] Speaker 7: I know there's a handful of us, like my colleague,
[3:54] Speaker 7: who played college sports. I was a high school All-American,
[3:58] Speaker 7: Player of the Year for my state, on the same
[4:01] Speaker 7: USA Today All-American team as people like Emmett Smith, and
[4:03] Speaker 7: got a full scholarship in so many ways. Like my colleague,
[4:07] Speaker 7: I am here, afforded opportunities I probably would never have
[4:11] Speaker 7: had if it wasn't for college athletics. But while a
[4:14] Speaker 7: college student and a player, I saw how unjust the
[4:18] Speaker 7: NCAA is. It is a serial monopolist controlling an industry
[4:24] Speaker 7: over $ 15 billion strong and rapidly growing. And the NCAA
[4:31] Speaker 7: has a long record of ignoring the cries for justice
[4:35] Speaker 7: from exploited college athletes. The NCAA protects its members. It
[4:42] Speaker 7: protects the colleges. And it has repeatedly put college athletes
[4:46] Speaker 7: in horrible positions. For generations, billions of dollars were being made.
[4:53] Speaker 7: They were giving to coaches, ADs. Everybody was making money,
[5:00] Speaker 7: but college athletes weren't. It wasn't until College athletes were
[5:04] Speaker 7: able to begin to win cases in court and states,
[5:08] Speaker 7: seeing the injustices, began to change the law that started
[5:11] Speaker 7: to shift the power table. And now the NCAA is
[5:14] Speaker 7: coming here to the United States Senate asking for sweeping
[5:20] Speaker 7: powers that exempt our antitrust laws. Well, my concerns I've
[5:28] Speaker 7: grown to have over the years are not addressed in
[5:30] Speaker 7: this bill. This bill does not enough to protect college athletes'
[5:36] Speaker 7: health and safety and well-being. And as a result of that,
[5:41] Speaker 7: the numbers of groups opposed to it is almost too
[5:45] Speaker 7: long to read. I'm going to submit for the record
[5:49] Speaker 7: a full list, but let me just read some of them.
[5:52] Speaker 7: Every college sports team. Athletes Players Association, the College Football
[5:58] Speaker 7: Players Association, the United College Athletes Associations, all the associations
[6:04] Speaker 7: of college sports, all our major unions, the AFL-CIO, the
[6:09] Speaker 7: United Steelworkers, all of our major civil rights organizations, the NCAACP,
[6:16] Speaker 7: the Urban League. all of our major legal think tanks
[6:20] Speaker 7: that protect the health, well-being, and justice, like the Center
[6:25] Speaker 7: for Law and Policy. I could go on and on
[6:28] Speaker 7: about those people who object to this bill because it
[6:33] Speaker 7: is not protecting athletes. And think about this. It is
[6:39] Speaker 7: doing all kind of things to stop players from earning money,
[6:45] Speaker 7: putting money, bureaucracy between them and the possibilities, but it
[6:50] Speaker 7: does nothing to affect coaches. So in other words, it's
[6:54] Speaker 7: treating college athletes as a different class. Meanwhile, coaches' salaries,
[6:59] Speaker 7: often in most states, the highest-paid people in their state
[7:02] Speaker 7: governments are the basketball or the football coach. Their salaries
[7:06] Speaker 7: continue to skyrocket. With close to 15 coaches right now
[7:12] Speaker 7: have almost a quarter of a billion dollar buyouts, for
[7:16] Speaker 7: their contracts. This is an unjust bill, and I want
[7:21] Speaker 7: to deal very quickly with some of the top lines.
[7:25] Speaker 7: First and foremost, we have a bill that doesn't solve
[7:28] Speaker 7: the problems it claims to solve. It says it's going
[7:31] Speaker 7: to fix a system that's broken. Well, the NCAA conferences
[7:36] Speaker 7: in schools continue to lose major court cases. This bill
[7:41] Speaker 7: is going to take away the power of athletes to
[7:45] Speaker 7: be able to sue for their rights. It says in
[7:48] Speaker 7: this bill that, oh, we're preserving an individual right of
[7:51] Speaker 7: action for individual athletes. Well, let me tell you right now,
[7:56] Speaker 7: any lawyer worth their salt will tell you that somebody
[7:59] Speaker 7: competing for the starting pitcher spot on a softball team
[8:02] Speaker 7: is not going to sue their college in hopes they're
[8:04] Speaker 7: going to get justice if they're facing sexual assault or
[8:08] Speaker 7: if they've been forced to play through an injury. Or
[8:10] Speaker 7: if there's a breaking of any of the rules around
[8:12] Speaker 7: the NCAA that purport to support our students. It's creating
[8:17] Speaker 7: a cartel for them, a monopoly for them, and no
[8:20] Speaker 7: inadequate protections, excuse me, inadequate protections for college athletes. And
[8:26] Speaker 7: undermining their ability, should they even choose to sue, undermining
[8:31] Speaker 7: their ability to have a fair day in court. It's
[8:34] Speaker 7: not protecting the spending problem. Schools increasingly claim that athlete
[8:38] Speaker 7: compensation has created unprecedented financial pressure at the same time
[8:43] Speaker 7: that football coaches and basketball coaches continue to see higher
[8:46] Speaker 7: and higher salaries. This bill responds by placing federally imposed
[8:52] Speaker 7: ceilings on athlete compensation while leaving every other major expense
[8:57] Speaker 7: free to continue to increase. How much longer? Schools are
[9:01] Speaker 7: spending on their facilities, paying their ADs, paying their coaches
[9:06] Speaker 7: and assisting coaches. All of those prices continue to go up,
[9:09] Speaker 7: but it's the college athletes that are going to be
[9:11] Speaker 7: facing the caps. We see protections for women's and Olympic sports,
[9:18] Speaker 7: which I agree on. They're in this bill. But those
[9:21] Speaker 7: protections expire, while the antitrust protections do not. You go
[9:27] Speaker 7: to Section 125 of the bill, it has protections for
[9:30] Speaker 7: those roster sports and granted aid opportunities in those sports,
[9:34] Speaker 7: but those protections expire after four or nine years. It
[9:38] Speaker 7: is a lie to say that this bill is protecting
[9:42] Speaker 7: Olympic sports because it's not. It only does so for
[9:45] Speaker 7: a handful of years. Permanent antitrust exemption, temporary protection for
[9:51] Speaker 7: college athletes competing in Olympic sports. Why would we do that?
[9:56] Speaker 7: Why would we do that? We should give. not permanent
[10:01] Speaker 7: exemption if we're not doing it in other parts of
[10:04] Speaker 7: the bill, and even that is questionable. The NCAA's record
[10:10] Speaker 7: over decades does not justify giving it more control. We're
[10:15] Speaker 7: giving them more authority over a group of Americans. And
[10:19] Speaker 7: yet we're not asking for the right things in return.
[10:24] Speaker 7: Protections for athletes, their health, their well-being, their safety, their
[10:30] Speaker 7: equality for others involved in the sport. The bill claims
[10:35] Speaker 7: to codify into law athletes' abilities to benefit from NIL.
[10:40] Speaker 7: Athletes already enjoy this right. They fought decades for it.
[10:44] Speaker 7: The bill just puts new red tape there. The bill
[10:47] Speaker 7: includes protections for athletes' health and safety and education. Yeah,
[10:50] Speaker 7: but you know what? Without a meaningful enforcement mechanism, these
[10:55] Speaker 7: protections are basically suggestions. This bill relies exclusively on that
[11:00] Speaker 7: private right of action in Section 119, placing the burden
[11:03] Speaker 7: on young athletes and young athletes alone to enforce anything
[11:08] Speaker 7: within this bill. They claim that schools and conferences and
[11:13] Speaker 7: NCAA coaches support the Protect College Sports Act. Of course
[11:17] Speaker 7: they support it. They're getting all the financial gain and
[11:21] Speaker 7: putting all of the burden and compromises and givebacks to
[11:26] Speaker 7: college athletes, including their ability to win in court. Oh,
[11:31] Speaker 7: and there's a cynical part of this. They say that
[11:33] Speaker 7: they're going to help historically black colleges and universities. I
[11:38] Speaker 7: want everyone like me that has been fighting for HBCUs
[11:42] Speaker 7: who supports HBCUs to understand the cynicism in this bill.
[11:46] Speaker 7: This bill authorizes money. It authorizes money. It does not
[11:53] Speaker 7: appropriate one single dollar. What you get is a promise
[11:58] Speaker 7: for future funds. But we know time and time again
[12:02] Speaker 7: Congress authorizes funding, and that funding is never delivered. This
[12:10] Speaker 7: bill includes provisions of the SAFE Act that I supported. Well,
[12:15] Speaker 7: this leaves out a critical distinction between the SAFE Act
[12:19] Speaker 7: and athlete's protections with meaningful enforcement. The SAFE Act included
[12:23] Speaker 7: the state attorney general's being able to enforce it. This
[12:28] Speaker 7: bill does not. The SAFE Act didn't give the NCAA
[12:32] Speaker 7: and conferences sweeping new entrust shield. This bill does. So yes,
[12:37] Speaker 7: there are some provisions from my earlier work in this bill,
[12:41] Speaker 7: but they're toothless because of the lack of enforcement power.
[12:46] Speaker 7: This is a growing grassroots effort I hear to support
[12:49] Speaker 7: this bill. Well, I'm seeing millions of dollars worth of
[12:52] Speaker 7: commercials being funded by all the financial interests behind this bill.
[12:58] Speaker 7: But who is protecting college athletes? I gave an example,
[13:03] Speaker 7: and I'll end with this because I know time is short.
[13:06] Speaker 7: I want to make sure, though, that I can enter
[13:08] Speaker 7: for the record. I'm going to ask the president. I'd
[13:09] Speaker 7: like to enter to a record some letters. This letter
[13:14] Speaker 7: is from college athletes organizations. This letter is from civil
[13:26] Speaker 7: rights organizations. and former attorney generals. And this letter is
[13:34] Speaker 7: from college athlete safety organizations, college athlete sexual abuse survivor organizations,
[13:41] Speaker 7: and families of college athletes who died following athletics activities,
[13:46] Speaker 7: all speaking to the urgency to stop this bill. Thank you.
[13:52] Speaker 7: I want to end with this. I gave an example
[13:57] Speaker 7: of the lies that the NCAA tells, that they're about
[14:00] Speaker 7: the protection of student athletes first. And the example I
[14:04] Speaker 7: gave was a change that the NFL did, that we
[14:08] Speaker 7: all know about who are football fans, when they said,
[14:11] Speaker 7: you know what, we're going to change the kickoff rules.
[14:13] Speaker 7: Why did they change the kickoff rules? Well, I know
[14:16] Speaker 7: from my personal experience of screaming down a field trying
[14:18] Speaker 7: to break UCLA's wedge. I've learned this from rushing down
[14:23] Speaker 7: the field to try to tackle people playing against USC.
[14:27] Speaker 7: I learned this in playing Notre Dame. That one of
[14:30] Speaker 7: the most dangerous things you could do is get a
[14:32] Speaker 7: full head of steam and run down on a kickoff. Well,
[14:35] Speaker 7: they changed the kickoff rules to protect NFL athletes and
[14:37] Speaker 7: it's worked. There are less injuries in this area. It's working.
[14:42] Speaker 7: Is there a peep from the NCAA? Don't you think
[14:45] Speaker 7: that college sports should have more protective policies than the pros? Well, no.
[14:50] Speaker 7: The pros, it's a business. We all know that. They
[14:53] Speaker 7: invest millions of dollars in these employees of theirs, and
[14:57] Speaker 7: they're taking actions to protect their players that the NCAA isn't.
[15:02] Speaker 7: The NCAA is an economic group of actors who seek
[15:08] Speaker 7: to maximize profit. Look at their decades-long history. It is
[15:14] Speaker 7: not about player protection. How do I know that? There's
[15:19] Speaker 7: no enforceable standards for sexual assault. There's no enforceable standards
[15:23] Speaker 7: for heat stroke. We have cases right now about brain injuries.
[15:27] Speaker 7: I have friends of mine still paying for the medical
[15:30] Speaker 7: costs for injuries they incurred, putting thousands of people into seats.
[15:38] Speaker 7: When it comes to academic graduation rates, When it comes
[15:42] Speaker 7: to all the things they tell people they're concerned with,
[15:45] Speaker 7: the evidence speaks that that's not their number one concern.
[15:49] Speaker 7: And this body wants to give them sweeping antitrust power permanently,
[15:53] Speaker 7: in perpetuity, forever, with no accountability. No accountability to Congress,
[16:01] Speaker 7: limited accountability in the courts, no accountability to the girls
[16:07] Speaker 7: and boys, the young student athletes, the college players, who
[16:11] Speaker 7: bring this country together, who give us some of our
[16:16] Speaker 7: greatest life experiences. This is unfair. This is unjust. This
[16:23] Speaker 7: is wrong. Hundreds of organizations that represent student athletes, that
[16:27] Speaker 7: represent ideals of justice, that represent ideals of economic justice. Heck,
[16:32] Speaker 7: you even have somebody like Brett Kavanaugh, excuse me, you
[16:36] Speaker 7: have even somebody like Gorsuch saying things like, It's a
[16:41] Speaker 7: business model, this is the NCAA, that would be flatly
[16:44] Speaker 7: illegal in any other industry in America. And yet we're
[16:50] Speaker 7: moving rocket speed where most of the members of this
[16:53] Speaker 7: haven't even gotten the final bill yet. They're literally haven't
[16:58] Speaker 7: put the bill in most of the offices here. And
[17:01] Speaker 7: we're rushing to move on to it right now. without
[17:05] Speaker 7: reading the bill, without discussing it, without having hearings that
[17:09] Speaker 7: have college athletes that have justifiable experiences, survivors of sexual assault,
[17:14] Speaker 7: parents whose children have died, people that have court cases
[17:17] Speaker 7: against the NCAA right now that the NCAA knows is
[17:20] Speaker 7: going to save them from millions of dollars of liability.
[17:24] Speaker 7: That's why they're spending so much money to pass this bill.
[17:26] Speaker 7: It's not about the safety. It's not about the well-being.
[17:30] Speaker 7: It's not about the education of college athletes. This is
[17:33] Speaker 7: a money play, plain and simple. Read the bill. Talk
[17:41] Speaker 7: to college athletes. We passed this bill. It's a shame.
[17:49] Speaker 1: Now, y'all, what Senator Cory Booker said right there is 100%
[17:52] Speaker 1: on the money. And you just need to understand what
[17:57] Speaker 1: is going on here. You have all these coaches and others,
[18:01] Speaker 1: they're all out here touting the bill, talking about what's important.
[18:05] Speaker 1: And here's a perfect example. Here's Arkansas basketball coach John Calipari,
[18:12] Speaker 1: formerly at Kentucky, formerly at UMass. Listen to him talk
[18:17] Speaker 1: about why the bill is necessary.
[18:20] Speaker 8: I just got back after two days in D.C. And
[18:25] Speaker 8: a little bit of recruiting. And I want to give
[18:27] Speaker 8: you an update. on all the stuff I've been doing
[18:29] Speaker 8: for this bill to support it, to get it across
[18:32] Speaker 8: the finish line, because I think it's going to be
[18:35] Speaker 8: good for all of us, all sports, all athletes, all conferences.
[18:40] Speaker 8: It'll bring together all of us and give us some stability.
[18:45] Speaker 8: Five years of eligibility, no waivers, a transfer portal without
[18:50] Speaker 8: 1,000 waiver requests. The bill is not perfect. But I
[18:56] Speaker 8: believe this solves 75 to 80% of our issues. And
[19:00] Speaker 8: it's really been special to see both parties come together
[19:04] Speaker 8: and work toward a solution. The last five years, college
[19:09] Speaker 8: athletics has been chaotic, unpredictable, and very challenging across the country. Here,
[19:17] Speaker 8: Hunter has been a great partner and given us tools
[19:20] Speaker 8: to go out and get the number one recruiting class
[19:23] Speaker 8: in the country. And our postseason success has been there
[19:27] Speaker 8: because of his support. He has also had to make
[19:31] Speaker 8: some tough decisions like receding, which has generated more revenue
[19:38] Speaker 8: so we can participate in revenue sharing at the highest level.
[19:42] Speaker 8: With these type of decisions, Hunter has been unbelievable in
[19:47] Speaker 8: making sure this university and athletic department is stable going forward.
[19:56] Speaker 1: Okay, y'all, so that's a whole bunch of mumbo jumbo.
[19:58] Speaker 1: All right, so I want y'all to understand something. Just
[20:03] Speaker 1: so you understand, John Calipari, great coach, he won national
[20:11] Speaker 1: title at Kentucky.
[20:15] Speaker 2: Just so you know, John.
[20:16] Speaker 1: Calipari makes $ 7 million a year. John Calipari receives a
[20:29] Speaker 1: $ 500, 000 retention bonus every single year.
[20:37] Speaker 2: That he stays at Arkansas. This is the bill. This
[20:44] Speaker 2: is the Senate bill. The Senate bill caps at $ 20.
[20:51] Speaker 1: Million what the athletic department can pay all athletes. They
[21:00] Speaker 1: don't cap coaches' salaries. The bill is called the... I
[21:10] Speaker 1: don't want y'all to understand how they're promoting this. In
[21:13] Speaker 1: the chaos, Protect College Sports Act. It is not Protect
[21:22] Speaker 1: Student Athletes Act.
[21:26] Speaker 2: And I discussed this last night, and.
[21:29] Speaker 1: I just want y'all to know, there's a provision in
[21:34] Speaker 1: this bill.
[21:36] Speaker 2: that speaks to HBCUs.
[21:39] Speaker 1: And the support that the bill will authorize Congress to do.
[21:46] Speaker 2: Let me be clear.
[21:48] Speaker 1: In this bill, there are zero dollars, zero dollars in
[21:57] Speaker 1: this bill allocated to HBCUs. Zero.
[22:06] Speaker 2: Nowhere in this bill does it.
[22:08] Speaker 1: Say $ 10, $ 20, $ 30, $ 40, $ 50 million for HBCUs, for infrastructure,
[22:16] Speaker 1: and all those things. None of that. The Thurgood Marshall
[22:23] Speaker 1: Fund and the UNCF are supporting this bill.
[22:29] Speaker 2: We reach out to both of them.
[22:33] Speaker 1: The Thurgood Marshall Fund declined, didn't even answer our request.
[22:39] Speaker 1: The UNCF declined to come on the show. Now, listen,
[22:45] Speaker 1: I am, y'all already know, I'm a big supporter of HBCUs.
[22:51] Speaker 1: I wear the gear, I've done commencements, I've done all,
[22:54] Speaker 1: huge supporter. We've had the Thurgood Marshall Fund on this
[22:58] Speaker 1: show before, UNCF on before, But don't you think the
[23:06] Speaker 1: Thurgood Marshall Fund and the UNCF should come on a
[23:11] Speaker 1: black news show and explain why they are supporting.
[23:18] Speaker 2: This bill? And I get it.
[23:22] Speaker 1: Their job is to secure resources for HBCUs.
[23:28] Speaker 2: But let me say it again.
[23:30] Speaker 1: In this bill, and I have the 171 pages sitting
[23:36] Speaker 1: right here, there is no funding in.
[23:41] Speaker 2: This bill for HBCUs.
[23:45] Speaker 3: None.
[23:47] Speaker 1: Now, it lays out, oh, we'll do this and we'll
[23:51] Speaker 1: do that and there'll be grants and here are the
[23:53] Speaker 1: tiers and here are the qualifications, all of that. But
[23:58] Speaker 1: there's no money in here. I got some people I
[24:04] Speaker 1: would love to have on. We're going to be reaching
[24:06] Speaker 1: out to the NFL Players Association. Why are they supporting this?
[24:11] Speaker 1: This ain't got nothing to do with them. Why would
[24:19] Speaker 1: you give the NCAA an antitrust exemption? Why would you
[24:26] Speaker 1: give the NCAA the same... Y'all, come on. This bill
[24:34] Speaker 1: is about the schools, the administrators, and the NCAA making billions.
[24:42] Speaker 2: Off of athletes.
[24:44] Speaker 1: They want the athletes to remain sharecroppers. And we should
[24:50] Speaker 1: be telling every Democrat running should be asked, do you
[24:59] Speaker 1: support this bill or not? And explain why. And why
[25:04] Speaker 1: did they craft a bill and not talk to the
[25:08] Speaker 1: actual athletes who was going to impact? Don't you send
[25:11] Speaker 1: me up a soccer player or a crew or rowing player.
[25:16] Speaker 7: They ain't the ones.
[25:18] Speaker 1: Ain't no billion dollar TV contracts to watch the crew row.
[25:25] Speaker 1: It's about football first, basketball second.
[25:31] Speaker 3: Dr.
[25:31] Speaker 1: Mustafa Santiago Lee, former senior advisor for environmental justice at
[25:34] Speaker 1: the EPA, joins us. We'll be joining in a second
[25:36] Speaker 1: by Greg Carter.
[25:37] Speaker 2: Mustafa. Again, I need people to learn about the bill,
[25:43] Speaker 2: read the bill.
[25:44] Speaker 7: This is all cute.
[25:45] Speaker 1: They make it sound like this is the NCAA, their page. Oh,
[25:52] Speaker 1: nationwide level playing field, five-year eligibility rule, reasonable transfer limitations,
[25:58] Speaker 1: sustainable fair revenue sharing, practical tampering rules, reasonable enforcement. And
[26:04] Speaker 1: it goes, oh, health and safety protections, academic protections, NIL
[26:09] Speaker 1: contract guarantees, reigning and predatory agents, women's and Olympic sports protections,
[26:16] Speaker 1: governance reforms. No, this bill is about how can the
[26:20] Speaker 1: schools claw back millions of dollars from the athletes to
[26:25] Speaker 1: go back into the coffers of the universities.
[26:30] Speaker 5: That's exactly what it's about. It's about power. It's about money.
[26:33] Speaker 9: And it's about being able to frame out what it
[26:36] Speaker 9: looks like, you know, over the next sets of generations.
[26:39] Speaker 9: You know, I'm a former college athlete.
[26:41] Speaker 5: So I understand many of the impacts that we have.
[26:45] Speaker 9: To deal with both, you know, when we're, you know,
[26:48] Speaker 9: either on the field or on the track or wherever.
[26:49] Speaker 5: It might be. And then everything that comes afterwards.
[26:52] Speaker 9: And often when I read this bill, I was like,
[26:55] Speaker 9: I've seen so many athletes get hurt, you know, blow
[26:58] Speaker 9: out a knee or do some other types of things,
[27:01] Speaker 9: get Achilles tendon messed up. And then it's impacting them,
[27:05] Speaker 9: you know, 10, 20, 30 years down the road.
[27:07] Speaker 5: But there's nobody there to help them.
[27:09] Speaker 9: This is also the bill should be focused on helping
[27:12] Speaker 9: to make sure that you're building real wealth for athletes.
[27:14] Speaker 5: They're the ones that are putting butts in seats. Coaches
[27:17] Speaker 5: are great. Don't get me wrong.
[27:18] Speaker 9: It's always great to have, you know, a well-versed coach.
[27:22] Speaker 9: But people are coming to see the athletes perform. So
[27:26] Speaker 9: we should be doing everything we can to help them
[27:28] Speaker 9: to build wealth because it's gonna be necessary.
[27:30] Speaker 5: Many athletes, not all, often come from challenging.
[27:33] Speaker 9: Backgrounds where there wasn't a lot of resources that were there.
[27:37] Speaker 9: This is their opportunity on the college level now to
[27:40] Speaker 9: actually stack their dollars because very few are gonna go
[27:43] Speaker 9: on to the pros.
[27:45] Speaker 5: And when I read the bill, I didn't see a
[27:46] Speaker 5: whole lot that really helped.
[27:49] Speaker 9: To deal with the power dynamic that goes on often
[27:52] Speaker 9: in these situations. For as long as we've been doing
[27:56] Speaker 9: sports in this country on the college level, it has
[27:59] Speaker 9: always been about the institutions and the coaches making the
[28:03] Speaker 9: lion's share of the resources. And now we finally have
[28:06] Speaker 9: an opportunity for athletes to begin to make something.
[28:10] Speaker 5: And that's what we should be focused on.
[28:13] Speaker 1: Yeah, I just want people to understand how they are
[28:16] Speaker 1: dressing this pig up and slapping lipstick on it and saying, oh, no,
[28:20] Speaker 1: this is absolutely wonderful. This is just fantastic.
[28:23] Speaker 2: It's great.
[28:24] Speaker 1: It's just a really great bill. It has nothing to
[28:28] Speaker 1: do with protecting college athletes. This is about taking the
[28:33] Speaker 1: money back. They cannot stand the fact that you have
[28:36] Speaker 1: athletes that are now earning $ 1, $ 2, $ 3, $ 4, $ 5, $ 10,
[28:40] Speaker 1: $ 12 million.
[28:41] Speaker 2: That's what this is all about, okay? And we've got
[28:44] Speaker 2: to just be real.
[28:47] Speaker 1: I was going to have a congresswoman, Stacey Plaskett from
[28:49] Speaker 1: the Virgin Islands, We're going to be talking about e-commerce,
[28:51] Speaker 1: something she's involved in.
[28:53] Speaker 2: But you've got to.
[28:53] Speaker 1: Remember, this initially was in the House. It was called
[28:56] Speaker 1: the SCORE Act. And the CBC opposed it. There were
[28:58] Speaker 1: two CBC members who were co-sponsors, and then they backed
[29:01] Speaker 1: off of this. And the CBC blocked this bill because
[29:05] Speaker 1: they also said, hey, y'all trying to take our seats
[29:09] Speaker 1: and take our voting power with a clay decision, and
[29:11] Speaker 1: you want to advance this here? And so it didn't
[29:13] Speaker 1: pass in the House. Congresswoman Plaskett, first of all, congratulations
[29:18] Speaker 1: on your election. You're going to be the next governor.
[29:19] Speaker 1: of the Virgin Islands, so congratulations on that. But I
[29:24] Speaker 1: do want to just get your thoughts on this because, again,
[29:28] Speaker 1: here's my fundamental problem. This bill that Ted Cruz and
[29:33] Speaker 1: Maria Cantwell are backing and that has all these bipartisan
[29:36] Speaker 1: support is dressed up as, oh, no, this is great.
[29:40] Speaker 2: For the players.
[29:42] Speaker 10: No, no, no.
[29:43] Speaker 1: This is about the universities and the conferences in the NCAA.
[29:47] Speaker 1: They don't like the fact that you finally are seeing
[29:50] Speaker 1: players who are making real money off of their talents.
[29:58] Speaker 11: Yeah. Thank you so much. As you can see, I'm.
[30:03] Speaker 3: Wearing the shirt of my alma mater, Georgetown University. Okay.
[30:09] Speaker 2: Now I see it. Now I see it.
[30:12] Speaker 3: During the glory years of Patrick Ewing and our phenomenal coach,
[30:17] Speaker 3: John Thompson. And, you know, we have had this, we
[30:21] Speaker 3: have been looking at this bill for The Council of
[30:24] Speaker 3: the District of Columbia had a uniform college athlete name,
[30:28] Speaker 3: image or likeness legislation is going to lift a current
[30:33] Speaker 3: really right now. The District of Columbia has allowed Georgetown
[30:37] Speaker 3: University to make direct payments to student athletes and enable
[30:42] Speaker 3: the schools to negotiate directly. with the recruiters to support
[30:46] Speaker 3: the students. I see my fellow Congressional Black Caucus member,
[30:52] Speaker 3: Cory Booker, who himself was a phenomenal athlete at Stanford University,
[30:57] Speaker 3: who's joined others in voting against advancing this Protect College
[31:02] Speaker 3: Sports Act, which is coming up in September. He's criticized
[31:08] Speaker 3: the legislation for placing strict restrictions on bureaucratic limits and
[31:13] Speaker 3: caps on what athletes can earn while doing nothing to
[31:18] Speaker 3: stop the coaches or some of the other individuals who
[31:21] Speaker 3: are making tremendous amounts of money.
[31:24] Speaker 1: Up 10, 11, 12, 13 million.
[31:28] Speaker 2: Like, the cap is gonna be 20 million.
[31:30] Speaker 1: You got one coach at Kirby Smart at Georgia who's
[31:34] Speaker 1: making 13 million himself.
[31:38] Speaker 7: Mm-hmm.
[31:39] Speaker 12: Mm-hmm.
[31:39] Speaker 11: What was Senator Tuberville making?
[31:42] Speaker 5: When he was there.
[31:43] Speaker 1: Well, he was a coach back in the day when
[31:45] Speaker 1: coaches made, you know, one and two, maybe three million.
[31:48] Speaker 2: But the salaries have exploded.
[31:50] Speaker 1: And see, this is the thing that drives me crazy
[31:52] Speaker 1: at College Women's Plaskett. Is that they're like, oh my God,
[31:57] Speaker 1: this stuff is ruining college sports. But they ain't saying
[32:00] Speaker 1: nothing about the explosive salaries. Okay, so all of a sudden,
[32:04] Speaker 1: the Palatian, in fact, I saw some renderings. The University
[32:09] Speaker 1: of Tennessee is planning a $ 280 million entertainment complex with
[32:17] Speaker 1: hotels and all sorts of stuff.
[32:20] Speaker 2: Where's that money coming from?
[32:21] Speaker 10: Athletics?
[32:23] Speaker 2: That's what this is about.
[32:25] Speaker 1: And then this whole, well, only the top 1% are
[32:28] Speaker 1: the ones who are getting the money and not the rest.
[32:30] Speaker 7: Nope.
[32:31] Speaker 1: That black woman down at Texas Tech, the first softball
[32:35] Speaker 1: player to get a million bucks.
[32:36] Speaker 2: She's a sister.
[32:37] Speaker 1: As a woman, Olivia Dunn at LSU.
[32:41] Speaker 2: She's making $ 4.
[32:42] Speaker 1: Million with NIL as a gymnast. Gymnastics ain't bringing in
[32:47] Speaker 1: no money. And so under this bill, the cap, the
[32:51] Speaker 1: total cap for all athletes will be $ 20 million.
[32:55] Speaker 2: That means she ain't getting $ 4.
[32:57] Speaker 1: Million, her sister not getting $ 1 million. That's going to
[33:00] Speaker 1: go to the football players and the basketball players. That's
[33:02] Speaker 1: why I oppose this bill.
[33:05] Speaker 11: Thank you.
[33:06] Speaker 3: Well, I'm glad that you're raising this because so many individuals,
[33:10] Speaker 3: this is how they were able to get their education.
[33:13] Speaker 11: And many of them.
[33:14] Speaker 3: Are athletes who will potentially be injured while they're in college,
[33:19] Speaker 3: but have made a lot of money for the university
[33:22] Speaker 3: and have not been properly compensated as they then move
[33:26] Speaker 3: on into their next career, into their next life. So
[33:30] Speaker 3: I say to pay them while they're making the money
[33:33] Speaker 3: and let them be able to receive the fruit of
[33:36] Speaker 3: their labor, right? And no one is saying that the
[33:39] Speaker 3: universities and the colleges should not be able to capitalize this,
[33:43] Speaker 3: unbuild on this, but let's make it equitable. Let's be
[33:47] Speaker 3: sure that athletes who are there doing the work, making
[33:51] Speaker 3: the sacrifices, are able to be compensated appropriately as the
[33:56] Speaker 3: schools are also being compensated and the coaches and others
[34:00] Speaker 3: as well.
[34:01] Speaker 2: Absolutely.
[34:01] Speaker 1: And so I just want our people to understand what's
[34:05] Speaker 1: going on here. They're dressing this thing up about saying, oh,
[34:08] Speaker 1: this is really about the athletes.
[34:11] Speaker 2: No, it's about the universities.
[34:12] Speaker 1: It's about the people that have been making the $ 14 billion,
[34:16] Speaker 1: and they don't want more of it going to the players.
[34:19] Speaker 1: This week, you hosted a conversation. This is Congressional Black
[34:23] Speaker 1: Caucus Foundation, AOC, happening right now. You talked about the
[34:27] Speaker 1: future of digital commerce for Black entrepreneurs and really going
[34:34] Speaker 1: beyond this country. And one of the things that I
[34:36] Speaker 1: am consistently trying to to say to folks, and I
[34:41] Speaker 1: really hate these people, these FBA people, who are so anti-immigrant,
[34:45] Speaker 1: who have no idea what the hell they're talking about,
[34:47] Speaker 1: that there are significant opportunities for black entrepreneurs that go
[34:52] Speaker 1: beyond the borders of the United States. And so having
[34:55] Speaker 1: relationships with Caribbean countries, you're talking about Bermuda, you're now
[35:00] Speaker 1: talking about African nations, uh, is real and real business
[35:05] Speaker 1: is actually happening and we need to be creating, um, uh,
[35:10] Speaker 1: relationships to be able to build and grow. I, you know,
[35:14] Speaker 1: I have to say this conversation, this division with those
[35:20] Speaker 1: individuals who are talking about, um, you know, uh, American descendants.
[35:25] Speaker 3: Of slaves, I get it, but listen, my family's from
[35:29] Speaker 3: the Caribbean. Um, That slave ship dropped.
[35:33] Speaker 5: Us off there.
[35:35] Speaker 11: And what happened in the.
[35:37] Speaker 3: Caribbean was synonymous with what happened in the United States.
[35:42] Speaker 3: When you look at the slave trade in Cuba, in
[35:45] Speaker 3: my home, which was owned by Denmark, Denmark was able
[35:50] Speaker 3: to raise enormous resources off of the backs of my ancestors.
[35:55] Speaker 3: Our life expectancy was under 30 years of age. And listen,
[36:00] Speaker 3: Chopping cane sugar cane is no easy feat. And there
[36:04] Speaker 3: was a trade that.
[36:05] Speaker 11: Went on between the two continually.
[36:08] Speaker 3: When people talk about being sent down south, sometimes the
[36:12] Speaker 3: south was the Caribbean if you were really outrageous and
[36:17] Speaker 3: what they deemed a rebellious enslaved individual. And where the
[36:22] Speaker 3: boat let us off, it could have been a sister
[36:24] Speaker 3: dropped in Barbados and then another sister dropped in South
[36:29] Speaker 3: Carolina and Charleston. We all come from the same place.
[36:33] Speaker 3: Our experiences may be slightly different, but we should be
[36:36] Speaker 3: benefiting from that triangle that made enormous benefits to England,
[36:43] Speaker 3: to Portugal, to all of Europe, and of course, to
[36:46] Speaker 3: the United States. What I tried to do in this
[36:50] Speaker 3: panel that I had was talk about how do we
[36:55] Speaker 3: recreate and use that commerce for our own good, utilizing
[37:01] Speaker 3: digital commerce.
[37:02] Speaker 11: And so I was able to.
[37:03] Speaker 3: Bring together individuals who are working on this and who've
[37:06] Speaker 3: been thinking about this a long time, whether that's, everybody
[37:11] Speaker 3: calls him GB Agbola, who's the founder and CEO of Flutterwave,
[37:17] Speaker 3: which is the largest online payment system in Africa. Kelly Ifill,
[37:24] Speaker 3: a Caribbean American who's based in Brooklyn, who's doing so
[37:28] Speaker 3: much work in small businesses and crowdfunding and making microloans
[37:34] Speaker 3: to the businesses that keep our neighborhoods going. The barbers,
[37:38] Speaker 3: the lawn workers, you know, people having landscaping businesses, all
[37:43] Speaker 3: of the things that our uncles and our brothers and
[37:46] Speaker 3: our sisters have done.
[37:48] Speaker 11: To be able to keep our communities going.
[37:51] Speaker 3: And of course, having Tunde Kayende, who, Roland, this young man,
[37:57] Speaker 3: originally from Lagos, living here in the United States, went
[38:01] Speaker 3: to school here, has created what they call Jumaya, which
[38:05] Speaker 3: is the Amazon of Africa.
[38:08] Speaker 11: And they are.
[38:09] Speaker 3: Talking about how do we create commerce between the continent,
[38:14] Speaker 3: the United States, and the Caribbean, where we are seeing
[38:18] Speaker 3: tremendous growth work between the three, where there are supply
[38:23] Speaker 3: chains coming and goods coming from the United States, which
[38:27] Speaker 3: can be utilized in Africa. We have a burgeoning youth
[38:30] Speaker 3: population in Africa that is looking for a stable currency
[38:35] Speaker 3: to do their business, which is the United States. And
[38:38] Speaker 3: cryptocurrency and others can be the way to do that.
[38:42] Speaker 3: We had, you know, a gentleman, Stu, who is with Ripple,
[38:48] Speaker 3: He's the chief legal officer at Ripple who talked about
[38:52] Speaker 3: how cryptocurrency is being used in communities, and particularly communities
[38:56] Speaker 3: of color, to advance goods. And then, of course, we
[38:59] Speaker 3: have the indomitable Prime Minister, Mia Motley, speak about how
[39:05] Speaker 3: what she's calling the Bridgeton Project is how they are
[39:09] Speaker 3: also working to try and create a bridge between Africa,
[39:13] Speaker 3: the Caribbean, and the United States, how we can all
[39:16] Speaker 3: benefit and uplift one another.
[39:18] Speaker 1: So how do we connect? How do we bring those
[39:20] Speaker 1: folks together? Because not everybody moves in international circles.
[39:26] Speaker 3: Sure. You know, if you're a creator, an innovator, one
[39:30] Speaker 3: of the groups that you should be a part of
[39:33] Speaker 3: is Black Innovation Alliance.
[39:36] Speaker 11: They're based out of Atlanta. They're run by a sister
[39:40] Speaker 11: named Dr.
[39:40] Speaker 3: Kelly Burton, and they are bringing creators, those in the
[39:45] Speaker 3: tech space who want support, who want to have thought
[39:49] Speaker 3: leadership and are looking for ideas to be able to
[39:52] Speaker 3: connect them with others. You can always go to Ripple
[39:57] Speaker 3: and the National Cryptocurrency Association, which has ways for the
[40:02] Speaker 3: unbanked or those who are looking for loans and support
[40:07] Speaker 3: for their businesses. And then, of course, individuals like Kelly Eiffel,
[40:11] Speaker 3: who has founded Guava, is a group in Brooklyn that
[40:15] Speaker 3: is looking to support small businesses. And then you have
[40:19] Speaker 3: individuals like Melissa Bradley, who's a professor at Georgetown University School,
[40:25] Speaker 3: McDonough School of Business, who is in the private equity
[40:28] Speaker 3: space and doing funding of black and brown businesses as well.
[40:35] Speaker 5: So those are some supports.
[40:37] Speaker 3: You can always go to my congressional website, staceyplaskett.house.gov.
[40:44] Speaker 5: And we have work there.
[40:46] Speaker 3: Under the Congressional Caucus on Black Innovation with my sister,
[40:51] Speaker 3: Marilyn Strickland, a sister who represents Washington State, Tacoma.
[40:58] Speaker 11: And we're looking at how we can be a funding,
[41:01] Speaker 11: you know, a way to source and to support those
[41:05] Speaker 11: innovators and those who are doing the work.
[41:08] Speaker 3: You know, Roland, we see statistically less than 1%, or
[41:13] Speaker 3: sometimes in some years, less than 3% of venture capital
[41:17] Speaker 3: money is going to black creators. And that means that
[41:21] Speaker 3: the United States is actually the one losing out, because
[41:25] Speaker 3: we know that we are innovators, we are creators, we
[41:28] Speaker 3: have phenomenal ideas, we are consumers, and that is keeping
[41:32] Speaker 3: America from increasing its productivity. So we're pushing the envelope
[41:37] Speaker 3: and getting those private equity firms, even the larger ones
[41:41] Speaker 3: like Goldman Sachs, to be on top of the commitment
[41:45] Speaker 3: that they made, right, back in 2020, to support these
[41:49] Speaker 3: businesses and make sure that we.
[41:52] Speaker 5: Are in the game.
[41:54] Speaker 2: Questions from our panel. First off, Mustafa.
[42:00] Speaker 5: Well, Representative Plaskett, it's good to see you again. It's
[42:02] Speaker 5: been a while. You just mentioned some of the banks.
[42:07] Speaker 13: We know there have been a few over probably like
[42:09] Speaker 13: the last decade that there have been a number of
[42:13] Speaker 13: actions taken against them because of some racist activities in
[42:18] Speaker 13: relationship to our communities. Do you see any of those,
[42:22] Speaker 13: besides the one you just mentioned, playing a more significant
[42:25] Speaker 13: role in funding finally, with Black entrepreneurs?
[42:31] Speaker 3: Well, we think that all of them are doing it
[42:33] Speaker 3: around the edges, but we are not seeing a substantial
[42:38] Speaker 3: leap in there.
[42:39] Speaker 11: And that's why we're asking.
[42:41] Speaker 3: Black creators and innovators to look at more creative means
[42:45] Speaker 3: of getting their funding, that being through cryptocurrency. We think
[42:48] Speaker 3: that that's a new wave where individuals do not have
[42:53] Speaker 3: immediately the face that oftentimes traditional banking will cause us
[42:59] Speaker 3: through redlining and other zip codes that they find us in,
[43:03] Speaker 3: not offering us the support and the loans or the
[43:07] Speaker 3: grants for those businesses. Like I said, Howard University does
[43:13] Speaker 3: a lot in blockchain and trying.
[43:15] Speaker 11: To support businesses in that space.
[43:18] Speaker 3: But I think the National Cryptocurrency Group is also a
[43:22] Speaker 3: good place source of information for.
[43:26] Speaker 11: Individuals who are looking for funding as well.
[43:29] Speaker 3: But unfortunately, Mustafa, I'm not seeing the banks doing what
[43:35] Speaker 3: they said.
[43:35] Speaker 11: They were going to do back in 2020.
[43:38] Speaker 3: I know that the Congressional Black Caucus members, particularly those
[43:41] Speaker 3: who are on the Financial Services Committee, have sent letters.
[43:44] Speaker 11: Asking them, the banks, about this. And as yet, we've
[43:49] Speaker 11: not had the reminder.
[43:52] Speaker 3: We know we're not in the majority to bring the
[43:54] Speaker 3: banks to task, to ask them about those commitments that
[43:58] Speaker 3: they made back then. Or many of them, of course,
[44:01] Speaker 3: as you all know very well, have been cowered by
[44:05] Speaker 3: this administration's attack on DEI, that they've gone after those
[44:11] Speaker 3: Black private equity firms that had been targeting and supporting
[44:15] Speaker 3: those in our.
[44:16] Speaker 11: Community who needed small business support. And they've been, you know,
[44:21] Speaker 11: sent underground almost.
[44:23] Speaker 3: To provide support to African-American, African-Caribbean founders. And so we're
[44:28] Speaker 3: going to have to, you know, we're all holding strain
[44:32] Speaker 3: for another year and a half before we can bring
[44:36] Speaker 3: this nightmare to end.
[44:41] Speaker 2: Greg Carr.
[44:44] Speaker 14: Thank you, Roland, and thank you, Congresswoman Plaskett, as always,
[44:47] Speaker 14: and especially on this topic. I know that you've been tracking,
[44:52] Speaker 14: like a lot of us, the BRICS summit from last weekend.
[44:55] Speaker 14: They're talking about BRICS pay and a different digital settlement asset.
[44:58] Speaker 14: And on Monday, the richest person in Africa, we saw
[45:02] Speaker 14: Aliko Dangote offer, I think, 3.3 percent of interest in his—
[45:08] Speaker 14: in his oil refinery, 4.1 billion shares and 40 cents each,
[45:12] Speaker 14: and open it up to the world, meaning black folk
[45:14] Speaker 14: could invest here. Any thoughts on the intersection of politics
[45:18] Speaker 14: and economics as we see this kind of nativist strain
[45:21] Speaker 14: in the United States? I'm thinking now about white nativists.
[45:23] Speaker 14: And so, when we talk about going global and we
[45:25] Speaker 14: see people beginning to build these bridges and these alternatives,
[45:28] Speaker 14: Could you imagine any pushback from folk who say, oh,
[45:31] Speaker 14: we need to be buying American, investing American, as a
[45:35] Speaker 14: kind of a cudgel against us when we know that
[45:37] Speaker 14: money knows no boundary, knows no state boundary, and everybody
[45:41] Speaker 14: else involves themselves in international transactions?
[45:46] Speaker 3: Sure. I think the BRICS nations, they're pushing against low
[45:52] Speaker 3: dominance in Western countries on an equal footing with the
[45:58] Speaker 3: United States and other in terms of support that they're receiving.
[46:02] Speaker 11: You know, I'm not sure, Dr.
[46:04] Speaker 3: Carr, if that's going to be incredibly successful at this point.
[46:09] Speaker 3: I think that the payment systems, the swift payment system,
[46:13] Speaker 3: is one that is a difficult one for banks and
[46:19] Speaker 3: other small countries to decouple themselves from to be able
[46:23] Speaker 3: to use a BRICS one.
[46:25] Speaker 11: But as you all know, I'm not only on the
[46:27] Speaker 11: Ways and.
[46:28] Speaker 3: Means Committee, which is a trade and tax committee in Congress,
[46:32] Speaker 3: but I also sit on the Intelligence Committee. And I
[46:35] Speaker 3: think the greatest place that we're seeing this played out
[46:39] Speaker 3: in how great power competition is being done is.
[46:43] Speaker 11: In Africa and the Sahel.
[46:45] Speaker 3: As we're looking to what is now becoming some of
[46:48] Speaker 3: the most precious commodity, which are rare earth minerals. And
[46:52] Speaker 3: I think the quest for that is really driving a
[46:55] Speaker 3: lot more than people are seeing on the surface. And
[46:59] Speaker 3: I think that that's where I'm spending a lot of
[47:01] Speaker 3: my time, looking to see how the United States, China, Russia,
[47:08] Speaker 3: and others are utilizing those countries to play.
[47:16] Speaker 2: This is a listen.
[47:18] Speaker 1: I just want our audience to understand that when we
[47:20] Speaker 1: talk about business, we talk about how do we build
[47:25] Speaker 1: wealth among African-Americans. We have to think far beyond the
[47:28] Speaker 1: borders of this country.
[47:30] Speaker 11: Sure.
[47:31] Speaker 1: And I think that it's important for us to create
[47:34] Speaker 1: those alliances and those relationships. And I certainly hope to
[47:38] Speaker 1: see more of that. Congresswoman Plaskett.
[47:39] Speaker 11: Thank you, Roland.
[47:41] Speaker 3: I mean, they want to do business with us. Africans
[47:43] Speaker 3: want to do business with us. They see us as
[47:46] Speaker 3: creators and we know that they are as well. And
[47:50] Speaker 3: it's time to stop letting Western notions of divisions between
[47:54] Speaker 3: us stop us from doing the work that can uplift
[47:57] Speaker 3: us all.
[47:58] Speaker 2: All right then. Well, we certainly appreciate it.
[48:00] Speaker 15: And thanks a lot. I hope to see you this weekend. Actually, unfortunately,
[48:06] Speaker 15: I will be there tomorrow. I'm not at the dinner
[48:09] Speaker 15: on Saturday. I have to travel out of the city. Uh, but, um,
[48:14] Speaker 15: hopefully I'll catch up with you tomorrow.
[48:16] Speaker 5: And give me my love to your wife.
[48:17] Speaker 10: All right, will do.
[48:19] Speaker 2: I appreciate it. All right, thanks a bunch. Folks, gonna
[48:21] Speaker 2: go to a break.
[48:22] Speaker 1: We come back, we're gonna talk to some other business owners. Uh,
[48:25] Speaker 1: and we'll also talk about, uh, several things I want
[48:28] Speaker 1: to talk about.
[48:28] Speaker 2: I do want to talk about the business of media.
[48:32] Speaker 7: Um.
[48:33] Speaker 1: Ryan Clark, they started a new show. And I've been
[48:36] Speaker 1: seeing some of the comments and they've really been sort
[48:38] Speaker 1: of getting on my nerves. So I'm going to break
[48:39] Speaker 1: it all down to you. Right here, Roland Martin Unfiltered
[48:42] Speaker 1: on the Blackstone Network. Support the work that we do.
[48:43] Speaker 1: Join our Bring the Funk fan club. If you want
[48:45] Speaker 1: to contribute, please do so. Via Cash App, use the
[48:48] Speaker 1: Stripe Cura code.
[48:48] Speaker 2: You'll see it right here. Check, send money, order, make
[48:50] Speaker 2: it payable to Roland Martin Unfiltered.
[48:52] Speaker 1: PO Box 57196, Washington, D.C. 200370196. PayPal is RMartinUnfiltered. Venmo, RMUnfiltered. Zale,
[49:02] Speaker 1: Roland at RolandSMartin.com. Roland at RolandMartinUnfiltered.com.
[49:07] Speaker 2: We'll be right back.
[49:14] Speaker 16: All right, folks, let me get personal for a second.
[49:16] Speaker 16: My mom had questions about her.
[49:18] Speaker 1: Medicare, so she called Chapter. a Medicare advisory company, and
[49:21] Speaker 1: she texted me right after saying it's a great benefit.
[49:25] Speaker 1: It was easy, a real person walked her through the
[49:27] Speaker 1: whole thing, and now she understands better what's going on.
[49:30] Speaker 7: But it's also not just her.
[49:32] Speaker 1: A woman in Yonkers wrote in saying the process was
[49:35] Speaker 1: so simple, the enrollment was easy, and she was so
[49:37] Speaker 1: glad she called. Then there's Marilyn, 90 years old in Florida,
[49:41] Speaker 1: living on Social Security. Her premium climbed every single year
[49:45] Speaker 1: north of $ 400 a month for coverage she could barely
[49:48] Speaker 1: afford anymore. So what does she do?
[49:50] Speaker 7: She called Chapter.
[49:52] Speaker 1: They found her the same top-tier coverage for hundreds of
[49:55] Speaker 1: dollars less. 90 years old, and finally somebody in her corner.
[50:00] Speaker 1: I hear stories like that again and again from our community.
[50:03] Speaker 1: The Medicare system was not built to work for you.
[50:06] Speaker 1: Too much fine print, too many plans. Yet Chapters advisors
[50:09] Speaker 1: are independent and honest, the only Medicare advisors that compare
[50:13] Speaker 1: every plan nationwide. They're focused on one thing, what actually
[50:16] Speaker 1: works for you. If you're already in the right plan,
[50:19] Speaker 1: they'll tell you.
[50:20] Speaker 7: No games.
[50:22] Speaker 1: People who switched with Chapter saved an average of $ 1, 100
[50:25] Speaker 1: a year. All it takes is 20 minutes. You talk
[50:28] Speaker 1: to a real person, and it's completely free help. So
[50:31] Speaker 1: call Chapter at 724-264-8281.
[50:32] Speaker 17: 724-264-8281.
[50:32] Speaker 7: That's Chapter. Let me ask you a question.
[50:42] Speaker 18: Why do so many people seem to think they know
[50:44] Speaker 18: black men so well? What they think we want, what
[50:46] Speaker 18: they think we need. Hell, they even tried to tell
[50:49] Speaker 18: us why and how we voted, but never had a
[50:50] Speaker 18: conversation with us. Never asked us how we felt. What
[50:54] Speaker 18: brings us joy? What makes us angry? What makes us scared?
[50:57] Speaker 18: How do we live? That's what this show is about.
[51:00] Speaker 18: No translation. Because we don't need anybody speaking for us.
[51:03] Speaker 18: We can speak for ourselves. This will be a show
[51:05] Speaker 18: where we bring brothers on that you don't see on
[51:07] Speaker 18: every other talk show.
[51:08] Speaker 7: Nope.
[51:08] Speaker 18: Brothers that are doing work in local communities with black
[51:11] Speaker 18: men for black communities. We're going to hear each other
[51:14] Speaker 18: and try to understand so perhaps we can move forward together.
[51:18] Speaker 18: No translation. Because we don't need anybody speaking for us.
[51:21] Speaker 7: Nope.
[51:21] Speaker 10: What we need is each other.
[51:23] Speaker 18: No translation. Right here on the Black Star Network.
[51:26] Speaker 1: Check it out.
[51:39] Speaker 17: Rolling good morning brother just reaching out to say happy
[51:41] Speaker 17: anniversary to you uh congratulations on another year and i
[51:47] Speaker 17: say it all the time but it's because i mean
[51:49] Speaker 17: it all the time man you know you're necessary and
[51:52] Speaker 17: you know keep fighting a good fight for all of
[51:55] Speaker 17: us we need you we appreciate you man happy anniversary
[51:59] Speaker 17: brother number one and continued success got your.
[52:02] Speaker 6: Back I'm Martin.
[52:47] Speaker 1: So, folks, I want to talk. We were just talking
[52:51] Speaker 1: about business. And I want to talk about media and
[52:58] Speaker 1: the business of media. A couple days ago, a couple
[53:04] Speaker 1: days ago, Ryan Clark and his comrades with The Pivot,
[53:08] Speaker 1: they launched a new show called The Pivot Sports. And
[53:15] Speaker 1: check out some of them.
[53:16] Speaker 2: Watch this here.
[53:20] Speaker 19: Because it was like one minute I was there and
[53:22] Speaker 19: then the next minute I wasn't. But what's happened since
[53:26] Speaker 19: that day has been my biggest pivot for sure. Because
[53:29] Speaker 19: I guess at some point all of our boxes have disappeared,
[53:33] Speaker 19: but that's not what defines us. What defines us is
[53:36] Speaker 19: the new spaces we create in response. And I mean,
[53:40] Speaker 19: look how great God is. We'd already created our own space,
[53:44] Speaker 19: a space to be open, a space to be vulnerable, authentic.
[53:48] Speaker 19: And it really was a place I could tell my story.
[53:51] Speaker 19: And through this time, I've had a ton of time
[53:52] Speaker 19: to think. And it brought back a conversation I had
[53:55] Speaker 19: with Big Swagoo years ago. And we're walking down the
[53:58] Speaker 19: hallway and he asked me, he's like, why do you
[54:00] Speaker 19: do TV? And for me, the answer was simple. I
[54:03] Speaker 19: didn't want to be a star. I didn't want fame.
[54:05] Speaker 19: I didn't want attention. I just really wanted to talk
[54:08] Speaker 19: ball and watch film, break it down.
[54:11] Speaker 2: Most importantly, do it with people I love to be around.
[54:14] Speaker 1: So there were a lot of people been commenting, saying, oh,
[54:18] Speaker 1: my God, this is awesome. This is wonderful. You left ESPN.
[54:22] Speaker 2: Do your own thing.
[54:23] Speaker 1: But I came across a few of the comments. I
[54:25] Speaker 1: remember one brother posted, hey, y'all might want to pump
[54:28] Speaker 1: y'all brakes, you know, this is not really doing your
[54:32] Speaker 1: own thing because they're doing this in the NFL film
[54:36] Speaker 1: studio and they're also on YouTube. And I saw that
[54:42] Speaker 1: comment and I'm like, what are y'all talking about?
[54:46] Speaker 2: I also think.
[54:48] Speaker 1: Back to all of the people who, after Ryan Clark
[54:52] Speaker 1: was let go.
[54:52] Speaker 2: At ESPN, they were like.
[54:54] Speaker 7: Start your own network.
[54:56] Speaker 2: Not having any idea.
[54:59] Speaker 1: How the hell to even start a network, having no
[55:02] Speaker 1: idea what it takes, what it costs, what's involved with
[55:07] Speaker 1: actually starting a business.
[55:09] Speaker 2: And that, to me.
[55:11] Speaker 1: Is probably the biggest thing that drives me absolutely crazy.
[55:16] Speaker 1: It drives me crazy because I listen to a lot
[55:19] Speaker 1: of people who talk about black business and what you
[55:24] Speaker 1: should do and what you should be doing and how
[55:26] Speaker 1: you should be doing it. And you need to start
[55:30] Speaker 1: your own and you need to go ahead and do this.
[55:33] Speaker 2: And I remember Jemele.
[55:34] Speaker 1: Hill posted something where she said, okay, all of y'all
[55:37] Speaker 1: who are saying, you know, start your own. She said,
[55:41] Speaker 1: do y'all support the existing black media businesses? A lot
[55:47] Speaker 1: of folk got real quiet when she said that. Listen,
[55:53] Speaker 1: We started this show eight years ago. Eight years ago,
[55:58] Speaker 1: September 4th, 2018. And we've had a little over 50,000 donors.
[56:05] Speaker 1: We've got 5 million social media followers. Look at the numbers.
[56:13] Speaker 1: Look at the numbers.
[56:14] Speaker 2: See, when people say that, oh, yeah, we need this
[56:18] Speaker 2: and we need that.
[56:19] Speaker 10: OK.
[56:22] Speaker 2: What are you talking about?
[56:23] Speaker 1: I mean, if you watch, again, if you watch this
[56:27] Speaker 1: video here, again, if you watch this here, go back
[56:31] Speaker 1: to the video.
[56:32] Speaker 2: So all these people start your own.
[56:34] Speaker 1: Okay, well, you know, they really don't own a studio
[56:37] Speaker 1: if they're renting it. Do y'all understand, do you understand
[56:43] Speaker 1: what the cost would be? Do you understand what the
[56:47] Speaker 1: cost would be for them to to build that very
[56:54] Speaker 1: studio themselves?
[56:58] Speaker 2: Do you understand?
[57:00] Speaker 1: I'm looking at the graphics, I'm looking at the monitors,
[57:04] Speaker 1: I'm looking at the floor, I'm looking at all that
[57:06] Speaker 1: sort of stuff. Let me just do this here, okay? So, Elyse,
[57:11] Speaker 1: you need to get the cameras ready, I'm about to move.
[57:13] Speaker 7: Okay, I just want y'all to.
[57:14] Speaker 1: Understand, okay? I just want y'all to understand. Okay, this
[57:20] Speaker 1: is our news set. Over here, this is where we
[57:23] Speaker 1: have our shopblackstarnetwork.com segments. You see this stuff over here.
[57:30] Speaker 1: You got the middle of the floor here. And you've
[57:34] Speaker 1: got where we got our stand-up positions right here. We
[57:37] Speaker 1: got our news set over here. We got all this
[57:40] Speaker 1: sort of stuff. And so we've got That's a set piece.
[57:43] Speaker 1: You got your monitors over here. You got all this stuff.
[57:47] Speaker 1: You've got, you know, 65-inch monitor, an 82-inch monitor, a
[57:53] Speaker 1: 65 to 82 inches, an 82 on the wall. You
[57:56] Speaker 1: got your control room over here in terms of the
[58:01] Speaker 1: whole setup in there. You've got your audio and video,
[58:07] Speaker 1: you name it. Okay, I just need y'all to understand, okay,
[58:11] Speaker 1: The lighting system, the lighting in.
[58:16] Speaker 2: Here, $ 350, 000.
[58:20] Speaker 1: We did an audio upgrade. The audio upgrade.
[58:27] Speaker 2: Alone was almost $ 400, 000.
[58:31] Speaker 1: There are 15 robotic cameras in here. Y'all, we ain't
[58:46] Speaker 1: even got to installing stuff. We haven't even gotten to
[58:50] Speaker 1: how do you pay staff? We haven't even gotten to, oh,
[58:54] Speaker 1: my goodness, this is just in the studio.
[58:57] Speaker 2: What do you do? I mean, these things right here,
[58:59] Speaker 2: these are pop-ups.
[59:00] Speaker 1: I mean, these pop-ups right here in terms of, I think,
[59:05] Speaker 1: you know, I forgot, they probably were 1,000 apiece, whatever.
[59:08] Speaker 1: I mean, sure, great, allows us to sit here, you know,
[59:11] Speaker 1: and push it all the way down, and so, boom,
[59:13] Speaker 1: put it to the case, and so when we get
[59:15] Speaker 1: on the road, then we can use these as our pop-ups,
[59:18] Speaker 1: and so, boom, it pop right back on up.
[59:21] Speaker 2: All of this stuff, y'all, I.
[59:23] Speaker 1: I need y'all to understand something. I got the Comcast bill.
[59:29] Speaker 1: Do you understand that we don't have home Wi-Fi here?
[59:35] Speaker 1: We not paying $ 79. 99 a month for Wi-Fi here. I
[59:41] Speaker 1: need y'all to understand, we have fiber. My Comcast bill
[59:49] Speaker 1: every month, y'all, is almost $ 2, 900.
[59:55] Speaker 2: $ 2, 900.
[1:00:02] Speaker 7: That's just for fiber.
[1:00:03] Speaker 1: $ 2, 900 every month. We haven't gotten the staff. Studio, 5,200
[1:00:06] Speaker 1: square feet, it's $ 25, 000 a month. I love these people
[1:00:29] Speaker 1: who think they know business and they don't. Do you
[1:00:33] Speaker 1: understand that the media business is driven by advertising? Do
[1:00:40] Speaker 1: you know how many people I've had to listen to
[1:00:44] Speaker 1: say to me, oh, yeah, you shouldn't be taking political
[1:00:47] Speaker 1: money or you should be taking advertising from this.
[1:00:49] Speaker 2: Company, that company. But Comcast does, Disney does. ABC, NBC, CBS,
[1:00:59] Speaker 2: all the networks, every network.
[1:01:04] Speaker 1: Do y'all realize that Netflix used to be subscription only?
[1:01:08] Speaker 1: But Netflix is a publicly traded company. That means that
[1:01:12] Speaker 1: you got to keep getting bigger and bigger. So you
[1:01:15] Speaker 1: know what, it used to be, oh, this is awesome
[1:01:17] Speaker 1: because Netflix, they don't have to worry about the advertisers
[1:01:22] Speaker 1: because they got great subscriber growth. Okay.
[1:01:27] Speaker 2: What does Netflix now have?
[1:01:30] Speaker 7: Ads.
[1:01:32] Speaker 2: What does Hulu have?
[1:01:33] Speaker 7: Ads.
[1:01:35] Speaker 2: Prime Video? Free tier? Ad tier? I had somebody, I
[1:01:44] Speaker 2: had somebody.
[1:01:45] Speaker 1: I had somebody hit me up. And they said, man,
[1:01:50] Speaker 1: did you see Don Lemon? He's starting his own channel.
[1:01:53] Speaker 1: I said, yep, I saw it. They said, man, you
[1:01:55] Speaker 1: should do that. I said, I did, four years ago.
[1:02:01] Speaker 2: They're like, what?
[1:02:01] Speaker 1: I said, yeah, four years ago. Then I shut them down.
[1:02:08] Speaker 1: They were like, are you serious? I'm like, yeah, I'm
[1:02:11] Speaker 1: very serious. We had a black star, and again, let
[1:02:15] Speaker 1: me be real clear. This ain't petty, they ain't throwing shade.
[1:02:19] Speaker 1: I'm just walking you out through the fundamentals of business.
[1:02:24] Speaker 1: We had a channel on Amazon Prime Video. The Black
[1:02:27] Speaker 1: Star Network with a live channel on Amazon Prime Video.
[1:02:31] Speaker 1: We had a fast channel on freebie. And there were
[1:02:34] Speaker 1: two of us forgot that the two platforms.
[1:02:36] Speaker 2: We were on. So we were on four.
[1:02:38] Speaker 1: The person who had distribution for me, she could have
[1:02:41] Speaker 1: got me on 10 others.
[1:02:45] Speaker 2: But here's the problem.
[1:02:47] Speaker 1: When you turn to, give me the Amazon TV remote
[1:02:50] Speaker 1: that's down there.
[1:02:52] Speaker 2: Here's what y'all don't understand.
[1:02:54] Speaker 1: When you grab your television, It's down there by the
[1:02:57] Speaker 1: white boxes. When you grab your remote and you flip
[1:03:01] Speaker 1: to Samsung TV +, and you see all of those channels,
[1:03:07] Speaker 1: those are all fast channels. Those are all fast channels. Now,
[1:03:12] Speaker 1: here's what y'all don't realize. When you do a deal
[1:03:17] Speaker 1: with those companies, it's a 50-50 revenue split. It's a
[1:03:20] Speaker 1: 50-50 revenue split, OK? And so whatever ads that, they
[1:03:30] Speaker 1: sell the ads. I had a company that wanted to
[1:03:34] Speaker 1: buy my inventory on that fast channel directly.
[1:03:38] Speaker 2: They said, no, we can't do it that way.
[1:03:41] Speaker 1: So let me tell you what happened. I had to
[1:03:44] Speaker 1: pay a company, it was Mux IP, to send my
[1:03:48] Speaker 1: signal to the fast channels. I think I was paying $ 2, 500,
[1:03:53] Speaker 1: $ 3, 000 a month. Well, after a few months, Amazon said, hey,
[1:03:56] Speaker 1: you got to switch companies because the signal keeps dropping.
[1:03:59] Speaker 1: These people are awful. So you got to use this company.
[1:04:01] Speaker 1: It's a company called Emoji. Emoji is top of the line.
[1:04:06] Speaker 1: Emoji is $ 9, 000 per month. Well, when I saw the numbers,
[1:04:12] Speaker 1: when I saw the ad revenue, y'all, it wasn't even $ 1, 000.
[1:04:19] Speaker 1: So I was actually losing money already sending my signal
[1:04:25] Speaker 1: with MUX IP.
[1:04:26] Speaker 2: And if I had.
[1:04:27] Speaker 1: Gone to the next, gone to the other company, I'm
[1:04:30] Speaker 1: losing more money. So I finally said, hell, I'm not
[1:04:33] Speaker 1: doing that. Why am I going to volunteer to lose
[1:04:36] Speaker 1: more money? Why am I saying all of that? Why
[1:04:42] Speaker 1: am I saying all of that?
[1:04:43] Speaker 2: Why am I saying all of that?
[1:04:45] Speaker 1: Because a lot of y'all keep talking about stuff that
[1:04:51] Speaker 1: you don't know nothing about. And so it's real easy
[1:04:57] Speaker 1: to sit here and say, oh man, so-and-so, you should
[1:05:01] Speaker 1: be doing this, and y'all should start this, and we
[1:05:04] Speaker 1: should have this. I mean, we need to have, well,
[1:05:07] Speaker 1: how about if, Roland, how about if you and Joy
[1:05:11] Speaker 1: and Don and Jamel and Gary, man, and Carrie, whatever,
[1:05:16] Speaker 1: all y'all get together, and man, y'all start, y'all start
[1:05:20] Speaker 1: y'all own network. Do you even remotely understand how digital works?
[1:05:29] Speaker 1: I'm going to help you out right here. If you
[1:05:34] Speaker 1: don't even understand the algorithm, you don't even understand how
[1:05:37] Speaker 1: the business works. When we introduce content on Roland Martin
[1:05:45] Speaker 1: Unfiltered YouTube channel.
[1:05:47] Speaker 2: Hold on, let me deal with that before I get
[1:05:48] Speaker 2: into that.
[1:05:49] Speaker 1: A brother was complaining, but he was saying, well, yeah,
[1:05:52] Speaker 1: y'all need to pump y'all brakes because, you know, the
[1:05:55] Speaker 1: guys at the Pivot, they don't really own.
[1:05:59] Speaker 1: Their network because they're on YouTube. That's somebody who has
[1:06:06] Speaker 1: no idea about the business. Because if you want an
[1:06:13] Speaker 1: over-the-air station, OTA, you have to either get a license
[1:06:20] Speaker 1: from the Federal Communications Commission, or what you have to
[1:06:23] Speaker 1: do is... You have to go negotiate with one of
[1:06:27] Speaker 1: the owners of a license to get one of their
[1:06:31] Speaker 1: digital channels. So if I turned on that TV right now,
[1:06:36] Speaker 1: I probably would see channel.
[1:06:38] Speaker 2: 4 and 4.1, 4.2, 4.3. Those are digital channels on TV.
[1:06:48] Speaker 1: So that station, whoever owns the license to Channel 4
[1:06:52] Speaker 1: here in Washington, D.C., they have the digital spectrum.
[1:06:56] Speaker 2: So they may have 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, 4.4.
[1:07:00] Speaker 1: So that's why when you do a scan of your
[1:07:03] Speaker 1: over-the-air stations and you see all of these other stations,
[1:07:07] Speaker 1: they're on the digital spectrum.
[1:07:11] Speaker 2: But you're on their platform. So you don't actually....
[1:07:17] Speaker 1: Own it. So let's say cable. Let's just, so guess what?
[1:07:22] Speaker 1: You can launch your own cable network, but then you
[1:07:27] Speaker 1: have to then go to each, it's called a master
[1:07:31] Speaker 1: operating agreement. Master MSO, master, they call master, master system operators.
[1:07:38] Speaker 1: So Comcast, Charter, Verizon Master. Now Verizon's files is digital.
[1:07:47] Speaker 1: I'm talking about the cable companies. So you've got to
[1:07:51] Speaker 1: go negotiate a deal with the national, the MSO, which
[1:07:55] Speaker 1: then gives you the right to then negotiate with each
[1:07:59] Speaker 1: market they're in and convince that local market to put
[1:08:02] Speaker 1: you on. How do I know this? Because I had
[1:08:04] Speaker 1: to do that with TV One. TV One sent me
[1:08:07] Speaker 1: around the country to host events to generate enthusiasm in
[1:08:13] Speaker 1: a local market so the black folks in that market
[1:08:16] Speaker 1: would call the cable company to put them on the
[1:08:18] Speaker 1: cable channel.
[1:08:21] Speaker 2: That's how that deal was done, y'all.
[1:08:23] Speaker 1: TV One sent me to Georgia and San Antonio and
[1:08:26] Speaker 1: Fort Worth, Dallas.
[1:08:27] Speaker 2: Sent me all over.
[1:08:29] Speaker 1: We would put on events to generate interest among black
[1:08:33] Speaker 1: folks to say, yeah, we want TV One on our
[1:08:35] Speaker 1: cable system. I'm walking y'all through the business of the business.
[1:08:41] Speaker 2: So for a lot of us, we keep yelling, hollering,
[1:08:44] Speaker 2: and screaming, we need our own, we need our own.
[1:08:47] Speaker 2: And man, what y'all doing? But how many of us
[1:08:51] Speaker 2: are actually supporting our own?
[1:08:55] Speaker 1: You got to ask yourself, how many things do you
[1:09:00] Speaker 1: subscribe to per month? Meaning that you are paying right now.
[1:09:04] Speaker 1: If you're watching right now, or I want you to
[1:09:07] Speaker 1: talk to your friends, I want you to post on
[1:09:08] Speaker 1: social media and ask people, what are they paying per month?
[1:09:12] Speaker 1: What are they paying for? Are they paying for Netflix?
[1:09:16] Speaker 1: Are they paying for Prime Video? Or is it part
[1:09:17] Speaker 1: of their Amazon deal? Are they paying for Hulu? Are
[1:09:21] Speaker 1: they paying for, what service are they paying for? And
[1:09:24] Speaker 1: then begin to say, okay, so of all the things
[1:09:26] Speaker 1: that you're paying for per month, what are you paying.
[1:09:29] Speaker 2: For that's black owned? Do you have a subscription to
[1:09:33] Speaker 2: a black newspaper? I don't know.
[1:09:37] Speaker 1: You might. We know the magazine business has pretty much
[1:09:41] Speaker 1: been obliterated, so you're not like you have an Essence
[1:09:43] Speaker 1: subscription or an Ebony subscription or a Black Enterprise subscription.
[1:09:48] Speaker 2: So what are you paying for?
[1:09:52] Speaker 1: And so we say, oh, man, yeah, man, we need
[1:09:54] Speaker 1: our own movies, man.
[1:09:55] Speaker 2: We need this.
[1:09:56] Speaker 1: It's real easy to type on social.
[1:10:00] Speaker 2: Media, we need this and we need that and we
[1:10:03] Speaker 2: need this.
[1:10:04] Speaker 1: But the question is, what do you support? Every year,
[1:10:11] Speaker 1: every month, every day. Because you need a base. What
[1:10:21] Speaker 1: is it going to take to run your business? Let
[1:10:24] Speaker 1: me tell you something right now. Y'all heard me say this.
[1:10:30] Speaker 1: If 20,000 people annually give us 50 bucks each a
[1:10:41] Speaker 1: year for what we produce for this show and eight
[1:10:45] Speaker 1: others in the Black Star Network, that would be a
[1:10:49] Speaker 1: million dollars raised.
[1:10:53] Speaker 2: Offset our expenses.
[1:10:59] Speaker 1: Do you understand that that is an actual drop in
[1:11:01] Speaker 1: the bucket for a media company? Here's the people who
[1:11:09] Speaker 1: also don't understand running a business. Let's say you've got
[1:11:15] Speaker 1: 20 employees.
[1:11:19] Speaker 2: Let's say your payroll costs.
[1:11:24] Speaker 1: About $ 4 million, let's just say $ 5 million. Do you
[1:11:29] Speaker 1: understand when people talk about benefits? I just want you
[1:11:31] Speaker 1: to understand the business.
[1:11:35] Speaker 7: If you do health.
[1:11:38] Speaker 2: Dental.
[1:11:40] Speaker 1: We ain't even talking about a 401k program. If you
[1:11:46] Speaker 1: do health and dental for all your employees, you essentially
[1:11:53] Speaker 1: double the payroll cost.
[1:11:57] Speaker 2: So now to provide.
[1:11:59] Speaker 1: Benefits to all your employees, your business costs are going
[1:12:06] Speaker 1: to be about $ 8 million a year. Did you know
[1:12:12] Speaker 1: what I just said? If your payroll is $ 5 million, no, no, no.
[1:12:17] Speaker 1: It's almost basically doubled it, $ 5 to $ 10 million. So
[1:12:20] Speaker 1: if your payroll is $ 5 million, you're doing benefits, you're
[1:12:25] Speaker 1: going to add on another $ 3 to $ 5 million.
[1:12:26] Speaker 2: Now all.
[1:12:30] Speaker 1: Of a sudden your business changes. We haven't even factored
[1:12:34] Speaker 1: in travel, equipment, all of the different costs. Why am
[1:12:38] Speaker 1: I saying all of this? It's because what I really
[1:12:43] Speaker 1: want our people to understand is that the reality of
[1:12:50] Speaker 1: being a business owner is real. And it's very easy
[1:12:58] Speaker 1: to say certain things on social media or on panels
[1:13:05] Speaker 1: when you've never actually run a business. When you've never
[1:13:13] Speaker 1: been the one who had to not pay yourself to
[1:13:18] Speaker 1: make sure people get paid. And so, and listen, Ryan, Fred, Chet,
[1:13:27] Speaker 1: those guys were NFL players. They can also invest in
[1:13:32] Speaker 1: themselves because of the money they earn from sports. I
[1:13:37] Speaker 1: never had a network show. I never got paid a million, two, three, four,
[1:13:42] Speaker 1: five million dollars from a network. Oh, it's easy as
[1:13:45] Speaker 1: hell for Megyn Kelly to launch her own shit, because
[1:13:47] Speaker 1: when she lasted at NBC for a year and a half,
[1:13:50] Speaker 1: she walked away with $ 67 million. In addition to the
[1:13:54] Speaker 1: million she made at Fox. See, people need to understand
[1:13:57] Speaker 1: how all this works. I'm saying all of this because
[1:14:03] Speaker 1: what you've heard me say is that we are facing
[1:14:11] Speaker 1: a critical issue in black-owned media that is so serious.
[1:14:20] Speaker 1: And people need to understand, media companies are shrinking. It's
[1:14:26] Speaker 1: not like you can go get you a major deal
[1:14:27] Speaker 1: from a Spotify or whatever.
[1:14:29] Speaker 2: Y'all, those deals are gone. So when people say, man,
[1:14:34] Speaker 2: do your own.
[1:14:34] Speaker 1: Thing, y'all better understand what do your own thing really,
[1:14:40] Speaker 1: really means.
[1:14:42] Speaker 2: Greg? Absolutely, Roland.
[1:14:49] Speaker 14: I mean, you know, I spent many, many an hour
[1:14:52] Speaker 14: down there at the network. And as I tell folk
[1:14:54] Speaker 14: all the time, as impressive as your setup looks on camera,
[1:15:01] Speaker 14: as everyone streams, it pales in comparison to what you
[1:15:06] Speaker 14: see when you get a chance to go down there,
[1:15:09] Speaker 14: to come down there. And the fact that you are
[1:15:12] Speaker 14: just a couple of blocks from the White House even
[1:15:16] Speaker 14: enhances the fact, because you're at the tip of the spear,
[1:15:19] Speaker 14: the heart not only of the US empire domestically, but internationally.
[1:15:23] Speaker 14: And every conversation that is held on this network, every
[1:15:27] Speaker 14: contact that is made when you're on the road, you
[1:15:29] Speaker 14: didn't even talk about the two rollover bills. People, I
[1:15:34] Speaker 14: think we take for granted those who become the tip
[1:15:37] Speaker 14: of the spear. And there's an element of sacrifice in
[1:15:41] Speaker 14: all of this. By that, I mean, I think when
[1:15:45] Speaker 14: we take you for granted and we know that you
[1:15:48] Speaker 14: work to exhaustion, but we know also that you are reliably,
[1:15:54] Speaker 14: you're going to be there, you're reliable. But people don't
[1:15:56] Speaker 14: know the toll that takes, not just the economic toll,
[1:15:59] Speaker 14: the financial toll, the toll on your body, the weariness.
[1:16:02] Speaker 14: And your staff works, you know, so hard And so
[1:16:07] Speaker 14: when we talk about supporting the Black Star Network, I mean,
[1:16:09] Speaker 14: I think it really becomes it comes down to a
[1:16:12] Speaker 14: simple question.
[1:16:13] Speaker 2: What is the price of liberation?
[1:16:15] Speaker 14: What are we willing to pay to fund our liberation,
[1:16:19] Speaker 14: to support our liberation, to engage in this struggle? Finally,
[1:16:24] Speaker 14: you know, you're not just carrying Roland Martin unfiltered five
[1:16:29] Speaker 14: nights a week, a full show that you are present for.
[1:16:32] Speaker 14: that you schedule the interviews for, that you've got that
[1:16:35] Speaker 14: team there, Carol and the whole crew and Henry and
[1:16:37] Speaker 14: everyone else there who are doing that work. But then
[1:16:41] Speaker 14: you're doing Roland's Book Club. You're doing Roland with Roland.
[1:16:43] Speaker 14: And then you have the rest of us. You know,
[1:16:46] Speaker 14: you've got the other shows there, including the Black Table.
[1:16:48] Speaker 14: And I can't tell you how grateful I am just
[1:16:51] Speaker 14: for the opportunity to be able to be in conversation
[1:16:54] Speaker 14: with folk that collectively, when you look at all those
[1:16:56] Speaker 14: shows anchored with RMU five nights a week, You have
[1:17:00] Speaker 14: elevated the standard for what we think about when we
[1:17:04] Speaker 14: think of serious news, information, commentary.
[1:17:09] Speaker 7: There is nothing like it.
[1:17:10] Speaker 14: And then we just have to ask ourselves, are we
[1:17:13] Speaker 14: really that damaged, that disconnected, that, to use Malcolm in
[1:17:18] Speaker 14: the Nation of Islam's language, hoodwink, bamboozle, run amok, led astray,
[1:17:22] Speaker 14: that we would prefer to look at subsidized buffoonery chitchat
[1:17:28] Speaker 14: about things that are not serious? Are we really that
[1:17:32] Speaker 14: turned out that we would rather sit back and imbibe
[1:17:37] Speaker 14: and kill ourselves and drug and deaden our senses on
[1:17:40] Speaker 14: these things that are subsidized by other people, not.
[1:17:43] Speaker 7: From our community?
[1:17:45] Speaker 14: Rather than spend a fraction of what it would take,
[1:17:49] Speaker 14: a fraction of what it would take to run an MSNBC,
[1:17:51] Speaker 14: to run a CNN, to run these digital platforms that
[1:17:55] Speaker 14: are OTT. I didn't even know what that was until,
[1:17:57] Speaker 14: you know, you walked me through it as you're walking
[1:17:59] Speaker 14: us through it. Are we that drug that we wouldn't
[1:18:01] Speaker 14: spend a fraction of that to fund something that is
[1:18:05] Speaker 14: not only platforming those who are fighting for our liberation,
[1:18:08] Speaker 14: but participating in the work of liberation itself? I got
[1:18:11] Speaker 14: to believe the answer to that is that we are
[1:18:13] Speaker 14: not that dead. but we got to do more than
[1:18:15] Speaker 14: talk about doing it. We have to do it.
[1:18:18] Speaker 1: See, Mustafa, what bothers me is when I see these people, man, Ryan,
[1:18:24] Speaker 1: they should be doing this, they should be doing that,
[1:18:26] Speaker 1: and why y'all doing it there and why y'all doing it...
[1:18:30] Speaker 1: What y'all talking about? Like, this is what drives me crazy.
[1:18:35] Speaker 1: Let me explain. We're going over here. Y'all may not
[1:18:40] Speaker 1: be able to see this over here, y'all. Do y'all...
[1:18:47] Speaker 1: see this table right here? Y'all see this table? This
[1:18:53] Speaker 1: is a glass tabletop. This is the tabletop. They call
[1:19:00] Speaker 1: them high rises as well. We call them different names
[1:19:02] Speaker 1: for them. There are four of them over here. Do
[1:19:06] Speaker 1: y'all understand that this was the original set.
[1:19:11] Speaker 2: Of this show? Do y'all understand that?
[1:19:17] Speaker 1: Do y'all understand that these chairs were the original chairs
[1:19:27] Speaker 1: of this show? Do you understand that this TV right here.
[1:19:36] Speaker 2: Was one of four TVs that was the backdrop of
[1:19:41] Speaker 2: the show.
[1:19:45] Speaker 7: That was the show.
[1:19:48] Speaker 1: Do y'all understand these black sheets down here that y'all
[1:19:51] Speaker 1: see down here.
[1:19:52] Speaker 2: Were at the bottom below the TVs so it covered
[1:19:58] Speaker 2: up what it was sitting on?
[1:20:00] Speaker 1: Why am I saying all of that? Because you got
[1:20:03] Speaker 1: to start somewhere to go somewhere. And so it really
[1:20:12] Speaker 1: pisses me off, Mustafa, when I see these people making
[1:20:16] Speaker 1: comments and sitting here and wanting like.
[1:20:22] Speaker 7: This, like this here.
[1:20:24] Speaker 2: You cannot sit here.
[1:20:26] Speaker 1: First of all, so for Ryan and those guys to
[1:20:29] Speaker 1: launch their show in that studio coming out of the box,
[1:20:34] Speaker 1: they just have a Netflix deal. Okay?
[1:20:38] Speaker 2: That means resources.
[1:20:40] Speaker 1: So I need people to understand that there are a
[1:20:43] Speaker 1: lot of folk who can't even launch their show in
[1:20:46] Speaker 1: that type of studio.
[1:20:48] Speaker 2: We couldn't have done that. We visited places, couldn't afford it.
[1:20:53] Speaker 1: So I just want people, when they're chattering and banging
[1:20:57] Speaker 1: on their keyboards and their phones, commenting on shit they
[1:21:01] Speaker 1: know nothing about, think about the reality that when you
[1:21:07] Speaker 1: build something, you got to start from something and you're
[1:21:11] Speaker 1: not going to come out of.
[1:21:12] Speaker 2: The box and it's perfect.
[1:21:14] Speaker 1: There's so many people, Mustafa, who I've heard bitch and
[1:21:19] Speaker 1: moan about fan banks.
[1:21:21] Speaker 3: Oh, this.
[1:21:22] Speaker 2: Oh, it's glitchy. It's this.
[1:21:25] Speaker 1: So was Facebook. So was Twitter. So I can show
[1:21:32] Speaker 1: you numerous. So was Instagram. So was Snapchat. But if
[1:21:37] Speaker 1: I showed you the amount of money that was invested.
[1:21:42] Speaker 1: And all of those apps, before they were able to
[1:21:46] Speaker 1: solve those problems and then show you how much fan
[1:21:49] Speaker 1: base has been able to raise, then you're going to
[1:21:53] Speaker 1: be like, oh, damn. Oh, damn, they spent $ 300 million
[1:21:58] Speaker 1: over here and they've only spent $ 10.
[1:22:00] Speaker 2: Million over here.
[1:22:02] Speaker 1: Yeah, when your ass raised $ 300 million, you can hire
[1:22:06] Speaker 1: a shitload of engineers and software developers to fix your problem.
[1:22:12] Speaker 1: And that just, what drives me crazy is that for
[1:22:15] Speaker 1: a lot of black folks, we are expecting out of
[1:22:19] Speaker 1: the box our stuff to look like this where millions
[1:22:26] Speaker 1: upon millions were invested in those platforms and small amounts
[1:22:32] Speaker 1: invested over here. No, you build based upon what you're
[1:22:35] Speaker 1: bringing in and you just want to be able to
[1:22:38] Speaker 1: get bigger and bigger and that's what you do. But, folk,
[1:22:41] Speaker 1: it just drives me crazy when I hear these conversations, Mustafa.
[1:22:46] Speaker 13: Yeah, unfortunately, our folks, and I say our folks, often
[1:22:51] Speaker 13: expect magic when it comes from us, you know, to
[1:22:55] Speaker 13: be able to do what others are able to do
[1:22:58] Speaker 13: with huge amounts of money, but for us to be
[1:23:00] Speaker 13: able to do with nickels and dimes.
[1:23:01] Speaker 5: And yes, there is a history.
[1:23:03] Speaker 7: Dr.
[1:23:03] Speaker 13: Carr can talk about that history of all the amazing
[1:23:06] Speaker 13: things that we have done with nickels and dimes, but
[1:23:08] Speaker 13: this is a whole new moment and a whole new era.
[1:23:12] Speaker 13: The way I often describe the Black Star Network is
[1:23:16] Speaker 13: being able to make the impossible possible, because I've seen
[1:23:19] Speaker 13: so many others who have now looked at what you've
[1:23:22] Speaker 13: been able to create, what you've been able to do,
[1:23:25] Speaker 13: and are trying to find ways to do something very similar,
[1:23:28] Speaker 13: which is always a good thing. We want our people
[1:23:31] Speaker 13: to be able to build powerful entities, to be able
[1:23:35] Speaker 13: to get the message out, to be able to uplift,
[1:23:36] Speaker 13: to do all the things that the Black Star Network
[1:23:38] Speaker 13: has been able to do. When I talk about the
[1:23:40] Speaker 13: impossible being made possible, you know, we've also had folks
[1:23:45] Speaker 13: through the years, Marcus Garvey as one example, you know,
[1:23:49] Speaker 13: a number of the others who have been able to
[1:23:51] Speaker 13: build networks important entities, but it did not happen overnight.
[1:23:55] Speaker 13: And it also happened because our folks woke up and
[1:23:59] Speaker 13: they made investments in those entities, whether it is on
[1:24:02] Speaker 13: the education side, on the insurance side, and Black businesses
[1:24:07] Speaker 13: on the female beauty side. So we have a responsibility
[1:24:12] Speaker 13: when we see someone who is serious about trying to
[1:24:15] Speaker 13: uplift our community to make the investments ourselves. Because if
[1:24:19] Speaker 13: we don't, we know that we will continue to get
[1:24:23] Speaker 13: others who will not necessarily be authentic about what's going
[1:24:26] Speaker 13: on in our community, what our needs are, but also
[1:24:28] Speaker 13: the beauty that exists inside of our community. And that's
[1:24:31] Speaker 13: why when someone can make the impossible possible and can
[1:24:35] Speaker 13: actually create a roadmap for others to see how it
[1:24:38] Speaker 13: was done, we need to stand behind them. And if
[1:24:41] Speaker 13: we don't, there's no one's fault but our own if
[1:24:43] Speaker 13: we turn around and look and find that we no
[1:24:46] Speaker 13: longer have Black magazines or Black newspapers or Black media networks.
[1:24:52] Speaker 13: So it's really in our hands to make sure that
[1:24:54] Speaker 13: we are supporting those who are willing to support us.
[1:24:58] Speaker 1: All I ask of folk is to let people Build.
[1:25:05] Speaker 1: Don't think that something that just start, let them build. Stop,
[1:25:14] Speaker 1: and while people are building, actually support. Actually support. Even
[1:25:23] Speaker 1: if it's a dollar. A thousand people giving a dollar
[1:25:28] Speaker 1: is a thousand dollars. That's a thousand dollars that I
[1:25:31] Speaker 1: could actually pay for something. I'm just telling y'all right
[1:25:34] Speaker 1: now that there are African Americans who are trying to
[1:25:38] Speaker 1: start media companies and businesses who are trying to do it,
[1:25:42] Speaker 1: and I need our folk to stop expecting something to
[1:25:47] Speaker 1: look like CNN and MSNOW when they've had billions of
[1:25:53] Speaker 1: dollars injected into them and have earned billions more and
[1:25:58] Speaker 1: still are. But what you should be asking is, and
[1:26:02] Speaker 1: this is what y'all should be doing, y'all should be saying,
[1:26:07] Speaker 1: let me sit down, and I'm going to give y'all
[1:26:09] Speaker 1: some homework. Y'all should sit down over the next 24
[1:26:13] Speaker 1: hours and say, I'm going to record all the shows
[1:26:18] Speaker 1: on CNN, and I'm going to record all the shows
[1:26:22] Speaker 1: on Fox News, and I'm going to record all the
[1:26:25] Speaker 1: shows on MSNOW, and I'm going to document Every advertiser
[1:26:31] Speaker 1: that advertises on those three networks, and then you should
[1:26:37] Speaker 1: then ask, why do I not see any of those
[1:26:42] Speaker 1: companies on Black-owned media platforms? That will be your answer
[1:26:49] Speaker 1: as to why we cannot grow to be their size,
[1:26:55] Speaker 1: because when the brands keep giving them the billions of dollars,
[1:27:01] Speaker 1: it ain't coming to us.
[1:27:04] Speaker 2: And I'm just going to give you all these two numbers.
[1:27:07] Speaker 1: Nearly $ 400 billion is spent every single year on advertising,
[1:27:12] Speaker 1: and black-owned media gets 0.5 to 1% of the $ 400 billion.
[1:27:19] Speaker 1: The federal government spends billions. Black-owned media gets 0.5 to 1%.
[1:27:28] Speaker 2: So the reason we.
[1:27:29] Speaker 1: Do not have black news shows on networks, the reason
[1:27:35] Speaker 1: we don't black-owned networks, the reason we don't see it,
[1:27:37] Speaker 1: because we're not getting the same advertising support.
[1:27:42] Speaker 2: Now, how about this?
[1:27:45] Speaker 1: If more y'all would comment on my post about lack
[1:27:49] Speaker 1: of advertising on black-owned media, if y'all commented at the
[1:27:52] Speaker 1: same rate y'all do about Jasmine Crockett giving an award
[1:27:56] Speaker 1: to Chris Brown and Usher, Do you understand what I'm saying?
[1:28:07] Speaker 1: We comment and talk about a lot of trivial stuff.
[1:28:14] Speaker 1: We oftentimes ignore and don't comment and like and speak
[1:28:20] Speaker 1: on how we're being left out of billions upon billions
[1:28:26] Speaker 1: of dollars. That's why you need to understand the business
[1:28:30] Speaker 1: of the business. I'll be right back, Roland Martin Unfiltered
[1:28:33] Speaker 1: on the Black Star Network.
[1:28:34] Speaker 16: All right, folks, let me get personal for a second.
[1:28:42] Speaker 1: My mom had questions about her Medicare, so she called Chapter,
[1:28:45] Speaker 1: a Medicare advisory company, and she texts me right after
[1:28:48] Speaker 1: saying it's a great benefit.
[1:28:50] Speaker 2: It was easy.
[1:28:51] Speaker 1: A real person walked her through the whole thing, and
[1:28:53] Speaker 1: now she understands better what's going on.
[1:28:56] Speaker 18: But it's also not just her.
[1:28:57] Speaker 16: A woman in Yonkers wrote in.
[1:28:59] Speaker 1: Saying the process was so simple, the enrollment was easy,
[1:29:02] Speaker 1: and she was so glad she called. Then there's Marilyn,
[1:29:05] Speaker 1: 90 years old in Florida, living on Social Security. Her
[1:29:08] Speaker 1: premium climbed every single year north of $ 400 a month
[1:29:12] Speaker 1: for coverage she could barely afford anymore.
[1:29:15] Speaker 2: So what does she do?
[1:29:16] Speaker 7: She called Chapter.
[1:29:17] Speaker 1: They found her the same top-tier coverage for hundreds of
[1:29:20] Speaker 1: dollars less. 90 years old, and finally somebody in her corner.
[1:29:25] Speaker 1: I hear stories like that again and again from our community.
[1:29:29] Speaker 1: The Medicare system was not built to work for you.
[1:29:31] Speaker 1: Too much fine print, too many plans. Yet, Chapters advisors
[1:29:35] Speaker 1: are independent and honest, the only Medicare advisors that compare
[1:29:38] Speaker 1: every plan nationwide. They're focused on one thing, what actually
[1:29:42] Speaker 1: works for you. If you're already in the right plan,
[1:29:44] Speaker 1: they'll tell you. No games, People who switched with Chapter
[1:29:49] Speaker 1: saved an average of $ 1, 100 a year. All it takes
[1:29:52] Speaker 1: is 20 minutes. You talk to a real person, and
[1:29:54] Speaker 1: it's completely free help. So call Chapter at 724-264-8281.
[1:30:00] Speaker 17: 724-264-8281.
[1:30:00] Speaker 1: That's Chapter. Let me ask you a question.
[1:30:08] Speaker 18: Why do so many people seem to think they know
[1:30:09] Speaker 18: black men so well? What they think we want, what
[1:30:12] Speaker 18: they think we need. Hell, they even tried to tell
[1:30:14] Speaker 18: us why and how we voted. They never had a
[1:30:16] Speaker 18: conversation with us. Never asked us how we felt. What
[1:30:19] Speaker 18: brings us joy? What makes us angry? What makes us scared?
[1:30:22] Speaker 7: How do we live?
[1:30:23] Speaker 18: That's what this show is about. No translation, because we
[1:30:26] Speaker 18: don't need anybody speaking for us. We can speak for ourselves.
[1:30:29] Speaker 18: This will be a show where we bring brothers on
[1:30:31] Speaker 18: that you don't see on every other talk show.
[1:30:33] Speaker 8: Nope.
[1:30:34] Speaker 18: Brothers that are doing work in local communities with black
[1:30:36] Speaker 18: men for black communities. We're going to hear each other
[1:30:40] Speaker 18: and try to understand so perhaps we can move forward together.
[1:30:44] Speaker 18: No translation, because we don't need anybody speaking for us.
[1:30:47] Speaker 7: Nope.
[1:30:47] Speaker 18: What we need is each other. No translation. Right here
[1:30:50] Speaker 18: on the Black Star Network.
[1:30:51] Speaker 12: Check it out.
[1:30:57] Speaker 20: A decade of love, joy, and power. Black Voters Matter
[1:31:01] Speaker 20: is 10 years old, and we are just getting started.
[1:31:04] Speaker 20: This is love with a purpose. This is black joy
[1:31:08] Speaker 20: in motion. This is unstoppable power. Across campuses, neighborhoods, and
[1:31:16] Speaker 20: back roads, we show up, not.
[1:31:19] Speaker 21: Just to vote, but to be seen, to be heard,
[1:31:23] Speaker 21: to belong. We ride together. We organize together.
[1:31:28] Speaker 20: We remind each other that our voices matter because they
[1:31:32] Speaker 20: always have.
[1:31:34] Speaker 21: Black Voters Matter is about more than ballots. It's about
[1:31:37] Speaker 21: housing and healthcare.
[1:31:39] Speaker 20: Clean water and living wages, education, reproductive freedom, and dignity.
[1:31:48] Speaker 20: It's about turning pain into action, turning belief into movement,
[1:31:52] Speaker 20: turning community into power.
[1:31:55] Speaker 21: We don't wait to be invited. We bring the energy.
[1:31:59] Speaker 21: We bring the love. We bring the people.
[1:32:04] Speaker 20: Because when Black communities come together, we don't just survive,
[1:32:07] Speaker 20: we thrive. This is how change happens. This is how
[1:32:13] Speaker 20: history moves.
[1:32:17] Speaker 21: We organize. We build.
[1:32:21] Speaker 20: We whip.
[1:32:24] Speaker 4: This week on The Other Side of Change.
[1:32:26] Speaker 11: Black life, black death in a country that was never
[1:32:29] Speaker 11: built for us.
[1:32:30] Speaker 22: We are talking about 18-year-old Nolan Wells, his family's search
[1:32:34] Speaker 22: for answers, and the way that our own trauma is
[1:32:37] Speaker 22: showing up in how we're reacting to the news.
[1:32:40] Speaker 1: Where was Nolan in the 90 minutes between when you're
[1:32:42] Speaker 1: claiming you last.
[1:32:43] Speaker 5: Saw him and when you actually left the island?
[1:32:45] Speaker 1: Because 90 minutes is a lot of time.
[1:32:48] Speaker 5: So where was he?
[1:32:49] Speaker 11: Tune in on The Other Side of Change only on
[1:32:51] Speaker 11: the Black Star Network.
[1:33:01] Speaker 23: With medicine and science under attack, I want to keep
[1:33:04] Speaker 23: you and.
[1:33:04] Speaker 5: Your family informed and healthy.
[1:33:07] Speaker 10: I'm Dr.
[1:33:07] Speaker 23: Ebony Hilton, and I knew at the age of eight
[1:33:09] Speaker 23: that I wanted to be a doctor. So I studied
[1:33:12] Speaker 23: hard and became the first African-American female anesthesiologist hired at
[1:33:16] Speaker 23: the Medical University of Sacramento since its opening in 1824.
[1:33:21] Speaker 23: And I always say I was made into a doctor,
[1:33:23] Speaker 23: but I was born to be a mom. And as
[1:33:25] Speaker 23: a new mom, wife, sister, daughter, and friend, I understand
[1:33:29] Speaker 23: how frightening a medical crisis can be. I care for
[1:33:32] Speaker 23: individuals on some of the worst days of their lives,
[1:33:35] Speaker 23: and it's my mission to provide you with a safe
[1:33:38] Speaker 23: space to gain clarity on issues.
[1:33:39] Speaker 5: Affecting your mind, body, and soul.
[1:33:42] Speaker 23: I recognize that there are health disparities, particularly as it
[1:33:45] Speaker 23: pertains to race. And I want to help bridge the
[1:33:48] Speaker 23: gap between you and your healthcare providers. Join me every
[1:33:51] Speaker 23: Thursday for Second Opinion on the Black Star Network, where
[1:33:55] Speaker 23: each week I'll invite experts from various medical fields to
[1:33:58] Speaker 23: share their.
[1:33:58] Speaker 5: Latest health tips.
[1:33:59] Speaker 23: We'll discuss topics such as the vaccine debate, mental and
[1:34:03] Speaker 23: central health, medical bias, infertility, menopause, andropause, nutrition, and aging.
[1:34:09] Speaker 23: Together with my medical colleagues, we aim to provide.
[1:34:12] Speaker 11: You with a second opinion. Don't miss it.
[1:34:16] Speaker 24: Thursdays only on the Black Star Network. This week on
[1:34:23] Speaker 24: A Balanced Life with Dr. Jackie, we're talking all things entrepreneurship.
[1:34:28] Speaker 25: Whether you want to jump right in, take a leap
[1:34:30] Speaker 25: of faith, or you've just been thinking about it for
[1:34:32] Speaker 25: a while, we're having a one-on-one candid conversation with Dr. Tierney,
[1:34:37] Speaker 25: our level-up coach and YouTuber of the amazing K-Sugar.
[1:34:41] Speaker 6: So let's talk about entrepreneurship.
[1:34:44] Speaker 22: Before you jump out here, know that it is some
[1:34:47] Speaker 22: work that goes into it, and not necessarily the work
[1:34:50] Speaker 22: in the business itself, but some inner work.
[1:34:53] Speaker 11: That's this week on A Balanced Life with Dr.
[1:34:56] Speaker 5: Jackie on Black Star Network.
[1:35:12] Speaker 21: Hi, Roland.
[1:35:13] Speaker 12: Congratulations on your eighth anniversary launching Roland Martin Unfiltered. Black
[1:35:20] Speaker 12: Star Network and all the opportunities you have provided for
[1:35:26] Speaker 12: so many to tell our stories, to provide platforms for
[1:35:30] Speaker 12: those who are journalists and political strategists and so on
[1:35:36] Speaker 12: and so forth.
[1:35:37] Speaker 10: But most importantly, I want to thank you. I remember
[1:35:39] Speaker 10: when you first started, I'm.
[1:35:40] Speaker 12: So glad the National Coalition was able to be one
[1:35:43] Speaker 12: of the first investors in supporting your vision.
[1:35:48] Speaker 21: You're there when nobody else shows up.
[1:35:50] Speaker 12: And now more than ever, we need black media now
[1:35:54] Speaker 12: more than ever. And so I just want to, I
[1:35:57] Speaker 12: wish I could be there, but family duties call. But
[1:36:00] Speaker 12: just wanted to stop in and say thank you, thank you, thank.
[1:36:03] Speaker 10: You, thank you, thank you.
[1:36:05] Speaker 21: Roland Martin, you are the best.
[1:36:07] Speaker 5: You're my brother from another mother.
[1:36:09] Speaker 12: Bless you and many, many more anniversaries to come and
[1:36:14] Speaker 12: even more higher heights as you continue to fight to
[1:36:17] Speaker 12: make sure Black media is front and center telling the
[1:36:21] Speaker 12: story of Black America.
[1:36:23] Speaker 5: Thank you so much. Enjoy your night.
[1:36:51] Speaker 2: So, consumer buying, it's a choice. It's a choice.
[1:36:55] Speaker 1: And the person makes a decision what they want to buy. Now,
[1:36:59] Speaker 1: I remember, what was it? I'm Gonna Get You Suck
[1:37:01] Speaker 1: in one of those movies when Chris Rock goes into
[1:37:03] Speaker 1: the restaurant and he asks for order ribs and they
[1:37:05] Speaker 1: tell him how much it.
[1:37:06] Speaker 2: Is and he's like, well, how much is it for one?
[1:37:08] Speaker 1: I've literally walked into stores and I've seen black people ask,
[1:37:12] Speaker 1: how much for this hat or for this shirt? And
[1:37:14] Speaker 1: then say, well, what kind of deal can I get? Now,
[1:37:16] Speaker 1: when they walked ass in Wal-Mart, They don't ask the
[1:37:19] Speaker 1: Walmart manager how much I can get it for.
[1:37:22] Speaker 2: They say there's a scanner over there.
[1:37:24] Speaker 1: You stick their tag underneath their scanner, and whatever that
[1:37:26] Speaker 1: price that comes out, that's how much that damn item is.
[1:37:29] Speaker 1: That literally is something that black-owned businesses have to deal with.
[1:37:33] Speaker 1: I tell you all the time, my grandmother had a
[1:37:35] Speaker 1: catering business. I could not stand to sit there when
[1:37:38] Speaker 1: she booked a wedding, and I'm sitting over there on
[1:37:40] Speaker 1: the couch with the groom or the bride's daddy, And
[1:37:44] Speaker 1: my grandmother's over there in the dining room with the.
[1:37:47] Speaker 2: Bride and her mama.
[1:37:49] Speaker 1: And they might be over there for two, three, four,
[1:37:51] Speaker 1: five hours booking this whole wedding. And then when they
[1:37:53] Speaker 1: get done, my grandmother had this legal pad and get
[1:37:56] Speaker 1: to the bottom and she's add the whole number up.
[1:37:59] Speaker 2: And then it might be 12,000, 14,000, 20,000. It's like.
[1:38:04] Speaker 10: Oh, Ms.
[1:38:04] Speaker 2: Lamar, all we have is $ 7, 000.
[1:38:06] Speaker 1: And I'm sitting over there like, well, why you didn't
[1:38:09] Speaker 1: bring your ass in here and say I got $ 7, 000
[1:38:12] Speaker 1: for this damn wedding, and I didn't sit here and
[1:38:13] Speaker 1: waste my damn time, four or five hours, going over
[1:38:16] Speaker 1: this shit that your ass can't afford?
[1:38:18] Speaker 2: Y'all, we got to be honest.
[1:38:20] Speaker 1: That actually happens all of the time. Then, of course,
[1:38:23] Speaker 1: how about this one?
[1:38:25] Speaker 2: This one.
[1:38:26] Speaker 1: Why y'all prices so high? Well, if you don't understand
[1:38:29] Speaker 1: right now, tariffs. If you don't understand cost of supplies,
[1:38:33] Speaker 1: what has increased. If you don't understand that Donald Trump's
[1:38:36] Speaker 1: war with Iran has a direct impact on shipping supplies
[1:38:40] Speaker 1: and oil going through the straight-up horror moves. First of all,
[1:38:42] Speaker 1: most people don't even understand how many products in the world, um, have...
[1:38:49] Speaker 1: that oil is used to make the products with. So again,
[1:38:53] Speaker 1: we start talking about the realities of business. A lot
[1:38:56] Speaker 1: of people have no idea, but we love talking about
[1:38:58] Speaker 1: how we need more black owned businesses. And on that point,
[1:39:01] Speaker 1: when we say we need more black owned businesses, what
[1:39:03] Speaker 1: I keep saying, no, actually we don't.
[1:39:05] Speaker 2: What we need is.
[1:39:07] Speaker 1: More black owned businesses with scale because 95% of all
[1:39:12] Speaker 1: black owned businesses in America have $ 5 million of revenue
[1:39:16] Speaker 1: or less. In fact, if there are 2.4 million black-owned
[1:39:21] Speaker 1: businesses in America, 2.3 million of them have one employee.
[1:39:27] Speaker 1: Those are not businesses. Those are sole proprietors. So I
[1:39:30] Speaker 1: want you to think about what I just said. Out
[1:39:33] Speaker 1: of the 2, 3 million, whatever the number is, black-owned businesses,
[1:39:38] Speaker 1: only 100,000 of those black-owned businesses have more than one employee.
[1:39:46] Speaker 2: And if you.
[1:39:46] Speaker 1: Start to go on 2, 3, 4, 5, 10, the
[1:39:50] Speaker 1: numbers shrink, shrink, shrink, shrink.
[1:39:52] Speaker 2: And so that is a reality.
[1:39:54] Speaker 1: I want to introduce right now, folks, in the studio,
[1:39:56] Speaker 1: Jessica DuPard Harris, founder and CEO, Kaleidoscope Hair Products, Kim Roxy,
[1:40:01] Speaker 1: founder and CMO. She like Lameek. I call it Lameek,
[1:40:05] Speaker 1: Lameek Beauty. Joining us virtually, Lisa Price, Black Beauty founders.
[1:40:09] Speaker 1: And like this, it really does irk me, really does
[1:40:15] Speaker 1: irk me Jessica, I'll start with you.
[1:40:18] Speaker 3: When.
[1:40:18] Speaker 1: And a lot of us don't want to have this conversation.
[1:40:20] Speaker 1: We don't want to have this conversation about products, about sales, uh,
[1:40:26] Speaker 1: and what I call the unrealistic expectations that black people
[1:40:32] Speaker 1: put on black entrepreneurs that they do not put on
[1:40:36] Speaker 1: white entrepreneurs.
[1:40:38] Speaker 10: Whoo!
[1:40:39] Speaker 1: Um.
[1:40:40] Speaker 10: Yeah, you say we don't want to.
[1:40:41] Speaker 2: Have the conversation. It's a hot seat.
[1:40:43] Speaker 10: I know.
[1:40:44] Speaker 3: Um.
[1:40:45] Speaker 26: I mean, I agree, but I also feel like in
[1:40:48] Speaker 26: the time that we are right now, it's, I'm not
[1:40:50] Speaker 26: going to say it's even worse. You have people that
[1:40:52] Speaker 26: have less money and they have more bills. And then
[1:40:55] Speaker 26: I feel like that affected us the most. And then
[1:40:58] Speaker 26: we have, you know, like, I feel like also as brands,
[1:41:02] Speaker 26: as a black owned brand, oftentimes we want to make
[1:41:05] Speaker 26: sure that our community supports us. But then I also
[1:41:08] Speaker 26: feel like we have a responsibility on how.
[1:41:09] Speaker 10: We show up.
[1:41:10] Speaker 26: So if my consumer has less money, more bills, then
[1:41:14] Speaker 26: I feel like it's my responsibility to now become more
[1:41:16] Speaker 26: accessible to her, to become more affordable to her. And
[1:41:19] Speaker 26: although that might be hard on my business, I think
[1:41:22] Speaker 26: it's our responsibility to figure that out.
[1:41:24] Speaker 1: But here's the thing, and they gave me the wrong
[1:41:28] Speaker 1: title for Lisa. She's finally the president of Carol's Daughter.
[1:41:30] Speaker 1: They had Black Beauty, so that's Lisa. They didn't put
[1:41:33] Speaker 1: Lisa's title in initially. But Lisa, here's the deal. And
[1:41:37] Speaker 1: this is something that we have to be honest about.
[1:41:42] Speaker 1: We expect a black entrepreneur to show up for us
[1:41:46] Speaker 1: in a way that we do not demand of white entrepreneurs.
[1:41:54] Speaker 27: I would say yes and no. Two things can exist
[1:41:57] Speaker 27: at the same time. We have a different relationship with
[1:42:05] Speaker 27: business and with entrepreneurship.
[1:42:07] Speaker 5: It's not something that.
[1:42:10] Speaker 27: we are familiar with in the same way as our
[1:42:14] Speaker 27: white counterparts. So there's a different expectation because we think
[1:42:22] Speaker 27: that that's perhaps what happens on the other side. And
[1:42:26] Speaker 27: I've always tried to approach the process very much what
[1:42:30] Speaker 27: Jessica was saying, meet in the middle, move with grace,
[1:42:37] Speaker 27: educate as I'm serving.
[1:42:42] Speaker 5: It's difficult.
[1:42:43] Speaker 27: It's more work for us to do. But because we're
[1:42:47] Speaker 27: passionate about that consumer, we want to serve her as
[1:42:50] Speaker 27: best as possible.
[1:42:53] Speaker 1: Kim, one of the things that trips me out, I mean, look,
[1:42:55] Speaker 1: Carol started to deal with this here. It was like, oh,
[1:42:57] Speaker 1: when they got, when it was so, oh, is the
[1:43:00] Speaker 1: formula going to change? Shea Marshall dealt with the exact
[1:43:03] Speaker 1: same thing. When Bob Johnson, Sheila Johnson sold BET, black
[1:43:07] Speaker 1: folks lost their minds immediately. And I remember saying, hold up,
[1:43:11] Speaker 1: all y'all who are yelling and screaming, y'all never had
[1:43:14] Speaker 1: to make payroll. Y'all never had to pay anybody. Y'all weren't, like,
[1:43:18] Speaker 1: it wasn't your money to start it. And I said, wait,
[1:43:20] Speaker 1: I said, Bob and Sheila Johnson took $ 20, 000 of their
[1:43:22] Speaker 1: own money to launch BET, sells it for $ 2. 4 billion,
[1:43:27] Speaker 1: including $ 400 million in debt, $ 2.
[1:43:28] Speaker 2: 8 billion.
[1:43:29] Speaker 7: $ 2.
[1:43:29] Speaker 10: 8 billion.
[1:43:32] Speaker 1: And people were upset, and I understand this whole deal
[1:43:34] Speaker 1: about owning media, uh, but the reality is, when you
[1:43:39] Speaker 1: own a business, there are people who... Listen, white folks
[1:43:42] Speaker 1: start businesses, scale them, sell them, and go start something else.
[1:43:46] Speaker 1: And what I say to our people, it's an unrealistic
[1:43:49] Speaker 1: expectation for you not expect someone to build something and
[1:43:54] Speaker 1: actually sell it to make a profit and for you
[1:43:58] Speaker 1: to then potentially live your life or go on and
[1:44:00] Speaker 1: build and invest in something else.
[1:44:02] Speaker 10: But look at their background, though. And I say that respectfully.
[1:44:04] Speaker 26: I feel like white people have more examples of what
[1:44:07] Speaker 26: that's looking like. White people have more... I feel like
[1:44:11] Speaker 26: they're taught more than we are. We are taught to...
[1:44:14] Speaker 26: Hold and keep. We are taught that when we let go,
[1:44:17] Speaker 26: we're letting go of legacy. People don't understand what legacy
[1:44:21] Speaker 26: comes with.
[1:44:21] Speaker 2: Yeah, they also don't understand there's debt involved with legacy.
[1:44:23] Speaker 2: They also don't understand that.
[1:44:25] Speaker 26: No, but being next to a... Like, I 100% own
[1:44:29] Speaker 26: my company, right? But I might be next to a
[1:44:31] Speaker 26: Procter & Gamble. Standing next to a Procter & Gamble-owned company,
[1:44:35] Speaker 26: it is extremely difficult.
[1:44:37] Speaker 7: Yes.
[1:44:38] Speaker 10: So people don't understand what legacy requires.
[1:44:40] Speaker 1: They also don't understand shelf space, the marketing, the investment.
[1:44:45] Speaker 1: But the thing that's still, I guess, for me, what
[1:44:48] Speaker 1: just irks me is that if you do not understand
[1:44:52] Speaker 1: what an owner has to deal.
[1:44:54] Speaker 2: With every day.
[1:44:57] Speaker 1: I'm sorry, you commenting on what an owner does with
[1:45:00] Speaker 1: their business, I'm like, maybe you should listen first. That's
[1:45:04] Speaker 1: probably what, because I dealt with this when BET got sold,
[1:45:07] Speaker 1: when Essence got sold.
[1:45:08] Speaker 22: Well, I'm just going to chime in here with Lisa,
[1:45:11] Speaker 22: because Lisa has always been a mentor to me, always
[1:45:13] Speaker 22: been a friend. Jessica has been in the game for years.
[1:45:17] Speaker 22: And I just want to say that things are not permanent.
[1:45:20] Speaker 22: Like and I think that a lot of times we
[1:45:22] Speaker 22: jump to conclusions and we're looking for we hold we
[1:45:26] Speaker 22: hold other black folks to this high bar that I
[1:45:29] Speaker 22: think is not attainable for us and not sustainable. And
[1:45:34] Speaker 22: so a lot of times in our businesses, I think
[1:45:36] Speaker 22: we should have diversity of businesses. We should have some
[1:45:38] Speaker 22: businesses that are scaling, selling some businesses that are black owned.
[1:45:43] Speaker 10: We need the mix.
[1:45:44] Speaker 22: Everybody cannot be the same. And it is not realistic,
[1:45:48] Speaker 22: as you say, to hold people to those type of standards.
[1:45:50] Speaker 22: But like, I mean, Lisa's here to tell her own story.
[1:45:52] Speaker 22: But I mean, you know, to sell, to buy back,
[1:45:55] Speaker 22: to do these things. And for me to have my business,
[1:45:58] Speaker 22: I've been very grassroots and growing. So it's been slower.
[1:46:02] Speaker 22: Sometimes customers ask you things like, well, why don't you
[1:46:04] Speaker 22: have this? Why aren't you doing this? Why don't you
[1:46:06] Speaker 22: have that? And it's like because we're funding it. That's
[1:46:10] Speaker 22: the reason why. I'm not a trust fund baby.
[1:46:12] Speaker 1: But that was the point I was making earlier, and
[1:46:15] Speaker 1: it just irks me. When people make those comparisons, they
[1:46:19] Speaker 1: don't understand marketing budgets. Marketing budgets mean marketing dollars. Where
[1:46:25] Speaker 1: are the marketing dollars going to come from? If somebody
[1:46:28] Speaker 1: tells me, well, man, I'm seeing these commercials for all
[1:46:32] Speaker 1: these other shows on these other YouTube channels. Yes, because
[1:46:36] Speaker 1: somebody paid money for those commercials, which then means if
[1:46:40] Speaker 1: you don't get revenue to pay for the... You're not
[1:46:43] Speaker 1: gonna be able to pay for those commercials. And that's where...
[1:46:47] Speaker 1: That's where the unrealistic expectations bothers me when people do
[1:46:53] Speaker 1: not understand what I keep referring to as the business
[1:46:58] Speaker 1: of the business.
[1:46:59] Speaker 26: I was gonna say, do you honestly feel like black
[1:47:04] Speaker 26: people have the same.
[1:47:06] Speaker 10: What's the word?
[1:47:08] Speaker 26: Opportunity education, because I feel like the when when you
[1:47:12] Speaker 26: divide it with race. I feel like we are far
[1:47:16] Speaker 26: more less educated on what business is like.
[1:47:22] Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. Listen, John Hope Bryant has talked about that.
[1:47:24] Speaker 1: He John John Hope Bryant.
[1:47:25] Speaker 2: He calls it.
[1:47:26] Speaker 1: He said we never got in a whole book called
[1:47:28] Speaker 1: We Never Got the Memo on that very issue.
[1:47:32] Speaker 2: And I do agree.
[1:47:34] Speaker 1: But what I'm often saying, though, is, for a lot
[1:47:37] Speaker 1: of our people, it's you may not know, so listen
[1:47:42] Speaker 1: to the folk who do know and hear their story.
[1:47:45] Speaker 10: That's fair.
[1:47:45] Speaker 1: The problem is when folk... I mean, let's just be honest. Lisa,
[1:47:49] Speaker 1: you can speak to this. If a black person sells
[1:47:52] Speaker 1: their business, or even a portion of their business... They
[1:47:56] Speaker 1: catch holy hell.
[1:47:57] Speaker 10: Oh, yeah.
[1:47:59] Speaker 1: And people don't understand infusion of capital, trying to grow.
[1:48:04] Speaker 1: Even the idea of 100% ownership, Jeff Bezos don't own 100%
[1:48:09] Speaker 1: of Amazon.
[1:48:09] Speaker 10: No, I know.
[1:48:10] Speaker 1: And again, it's just one of those things about business, Lisa,
[1:48:14] Speaker 1: that a lot of folk don't know, but they're making
[1:48:18] Speaker 1: demands of the entrepreneur. and then are questioning their motives
[1:48:23] Speaker 1: when they make their decisions.
[1:48:26] Speaker 5: That's very true.
[1:48:28] Speaker 27: And I think that the way that I've been able
[1:48:32] Speaker 27: to deal with it is I have to.
[1:48:35] Speaker 6: Accept that that's how they view it.
[1:48:39] Speaker 27: But I know that that's not the truth. And I've
[1:48:43] Speaker 27: taken the position of educating. And it's also what I
[1:48:48] Speaker 27: describe as the job that comes to you when you
[1:48:52] Speaker 27: are the first. You are the person who's done it
[1:48:55] Speaker 27: for the first time. So you take the hits, you
[1:49:00] Speaker 27: take the backlash, and then maybe the person who comes
[1:49:03] Speaker 27: after you gets it a little less.
[1:49:06] Speaker 10: Mm-hmm. And I just hope that.
[1:49:09] Speaker 27: It continues to grow and it continues to get better.
[1:49:12] Speaker 27: And I do ask that, especially in this day and
[1:49:17] Speaker 27: age of social media, when we can tear each other
[1:49:21] Speaker 27: down pretty effectively, take a moment and pause before you
[1:49:29] Speaker 27: use your voice for negative. And my cousin always says,
[1:49:33] Speaker 27: bring the light. You know, bring the light. Don't call
[1:49:36] Speaker 27: the darkness. Bring the light.
[1:49:37] Speaker 1: I also think that when we were talking about, I
[1:49:42] Speaker 1: also believe that just being straight up honest. I was
[1:49:45] Speaker 1: having a conversation with a couple of owners, and I said.
[1:49:49] Speaker 2: Be transparent.
[1:49:51] Speaker 1: I purposely, now other people don't do this here, since
[1:49:54] Speaker 1: we started this show, I will walk folk through, oh,
[1:49:59] Speaker 1: y'all should be doing that. Do you know how much
[1:50:01] Speaker 1: that costs?
[1:50:01] Speaker 10: Mm-hmm.
[1:50:03] Speaker 2: I ain't got, I'll do it. I'm like, no, let
[1:50:05] Speaker 2: me explain to you how much that costs.
[1:50:06] Speaker 1: Let me explain to you when you see this, this,
[1:50:09] Speaker 1: this little live view box, understand that's $ 16, 000 and the
[1:50:14] Speaker 1: rack unit is $ 20, 000. And I do that because people
[1:50:19] Speaker 1: need to understand that. And when, when, when, when Ferguson
[1:50:24] Speaker 1: went off, I was at TV one. And I happened
[1:50:27] Speaker 1: to be at the Jeffrey Osborne Golf Classic when it
[1:50:29] Speaker 1: jumped off. And folks were like, yo, why are you
[1:50:32] Speaker 1: not on the ground? First of all, I have a
[1:50:34] Speaker 1: morning show on TV One. You need to have the
[1:50:36] Speaker 1: equipment to be able to broadcast remotely. We don't have
[1:50:40] Speaker 1: the equipment to broadcast remotely. Yeah, but so-and-so is, but
[1:50:43] Speaker 1: so-and-so don't have the same show that I have, and
[1:50:47] Speaker 1: you need to understand what that cost is.
[1:50:50] Speaker 2: And folks were sitting here, yeah, it don't matter, fool.
[1:50:53] Speaker 1: How do you think you're going to do a two-hour
[1:50:56] Speaker 1: show if you do not have the requisite equipment to
[1:51:00] Speaker 1: actually do it? And I was sitting here just... And
[1:51:03] Speaker 1: I didn't give a damn. I was like, you don't
[1:51:05] Speaker 1: know what the hell you're talking about. And so I
[1:51:08] Speaker 1: ain't got no problem letting folks know this how much
[1:51:10] Speaker 1: that cost.
[1:51:11] Speaker 10: This is how much it cost. And that's what I
[1:51:13] Speaker 10: was about to go to.
[1:51:14] Speaker 22: Because when I launched National Direct-to-Consumer, I actually did a
[1:51:19] Speaker 22: crowdfunding campaign. And it was a rewards-based crowdfunding campaign. But
[1:51:24] Speaker 22: I literally did the campaign and the theme was show
[1:51:27] Speaker 22: them who we are because I couldn't raise venture capital.
[1:51:29] Speaker 22: Because I had went through accelerators and they told me
[1:51:31] Speaker 22: in Austin, Texas, and you went to Texas A &
[1:51:34] Speaker 22: M so you would know about this culture, but they
[1:51:36] Speaker 22: told me when I was the only black woman in
[1:51:38] Speaker 22: these tech accelerators, oh, we just raised this such and
[1:51:42] Speaker 22: such from a trustee over at UT.
[1:51:44] Speaker 10: Go over there and have a meet. I'll set you
[1:51:45] Speaker 10: up with a meeting with him, Kim.
[1:51:46] Speaker 22: Now, I'm the only black woman in this tech accelerator
[1:51:48] Speaker 22: with these bros, these tech bros.
[1:51:50] Speaker 10: They're like, oh, no, no, he's cool.
[1:51:52] Speaker 22: I mean, I'm not even there yet.
[1:51:53] Speaker 10: You got customers in the pipeline.
[1:51:55] Speaker 22: He wrote me a $ 200, 000 check.
[1:51:57] Speaker 10: Surely he'll write, you know.
[1:51:58] Speaker 22: And I go have a meeting with him and he
[1:52:01] Speaker 22: finished the meeting saying, well, you know, yeah, maybe I
[1:52:05] Speaker 22: can connect you with this woman and you can, maybe
[1:52:08] Speaker 22: she can mentor you. It always turned into something else,
[1:52:11] Speaker 22: not let's do business. And these are guys who ideas
[1:52:16] Speaker 22: weren't even fully developed. And they would come back and
[1:52:19] Speaker 22: they'd be so shocked. And because we had become friends
[1:52:21] Speaker 22: and things like that, they just couldn't understand it.
[1:52:24] Speaker 1: So this show launched 2018. And Greg and Mustafa, I'm
[1:52:27] Speaker 1: going to y'all next for questions. John Holliman, this other guy,
[1:52:31] Speaker 1: they launched the Recap media company, digital company. They raised
[1:52:36] Speaker 1: $ 32 million. They announced in December 2022 they were shutting down.
[1:52:43] Speaker 1: And they literally said, y'all, I'm not lying, they literally
[1:52:49] Speaker 1: said they had not been able to figure out a
[1:52:55] Speaker 1: business plan for the company. And I went, how in
[1:53:01] Speaker 1: the hell did your ass raise $ 32 million and you
[1:53:05] Speaker 1: never had a business plan?
[1:53:09] Speaker 2: I'll give you one more. Quibi.
[1:53:12] Speaker 1: Jeff Katzenberg founds the company, brings on Meg Whitman, former CEO, eBay,
[1:53:19] Speaker 1: and other companies. Two big names. Katzenberg, Disney, all this
[1:53:23] Speaker 1: sort of stuff. So Quibi, they launched right before when
[1:53:28] Speaker 1: COVID hit. So basically, you can see vertical videos, but
[1:53:33] Speaker 1: you can turn your phone and see it horizontal. They
[1:53:36] Speaker 1: actually got sued by a company for stealing any technology.
[1:53:38] Speaker 2: That's another story. But here's what was amazing.
[1:53:42] Speaker 1: Quibi had no track record, no data, no metrics, nothing,
[1:53:51] Speaker 1: but sold out their inventory, ad inventory, of $ 150 million
[1:53:56] Speaker 1: for the whole year.
[1:53:58] Speaker 2: They lasted eight months.
[1:54:02] Speaker 10: Damn.
[1:54:02] Speaker 1: Raised almost $ 2 billion on an unproven concept that literally,
[1:54:11] Speaker 1: I think it lasted nine months being generous.
[1:54:14] Speaker 2: Boom, out of business.
[1:54:16] Speaker 1: And that's also a reality that people have to understand
[1:54:19] Speaker 1: what you're talking about when you're sitting next to somebody
[1:54:24] Speaker 1: and white is right, and they'll fund that idea, and
[1:54:27] Speaker 1: then you sitting here, yes, customers, revenue, all that sort
[1:54:31] Speaker 1: of stuff, and it's like, well, maybe we can do $ 100, 000.
[1:54:33] Speaker 1: And you're like, you got to be kidding me.
[1:54:36] Speaker 7: Greg, question.
[1:54:40] Speaker 2: Thank you, Roland.
[1:54:41] Speaker 14: I'm just fascinated listening to the conversation. And Sisters Jessica, Kim,
[1:54:47] Speaker 14: and Lisa, much respect. Last night I was in class
[1:54:53] Speaker 14: with my law students here at Howard, and the conversation
[1:54:57] Speaker 14: was about Black self-determination and reparations. We were reading something
[1:55:03] Speaker 14: on reparations. But one of the young women, one of
[1:55:07] Speaker 14: the young sisters, made a comment about her hairstyle and
[1:55:12] Speaker 14: trying to find someone to do her hair here in
[1:55:15] Speaker 14: the D.C.
[1:55:15] Speaker 3: Area.
[1:55:16] Speaker 7: She's not from here.
[1:55:18] Speaker 14: That sparked a 30-minute conversation about networks for identifying Black-owned
[1:55:25] Speaker 14: businesses in beauty, hair care, hair products. It was fascinating
[1:55:30] Speaker 14: to me. My question to all of you, and Kim,
[1:55:33] Speaker 14: it's good to see you. We were all in Tulsa together.
[1:55:35] Speaker 3: Yes.
[1:55:36] Speaker 5: It's good to see you.
[1:55:37] Speaker 10: Good to see you, Dre. Absolutely.
[1:55:40] Speaker 14: My question for all of you, or whoever wants to
[1:55:43] Speaker 14: answer it, what role does really reinforcing networks play that
[1:55:53] Speaker 14: inform people that you are around, that you're doing this work,
[1:55:57] Speaker 14: that you have these products?
[1:55:59] Speaker 5: What role does network play?
[1:56:02] Speaker 14: And what role of even you all being here on
[1:56:04] Speaker 14: the Black Star Network with many people watching to become
[1:56:06] Speaker 14: aware of you? And you know, this is the segment,
[1:56:08] Speaker 14: one of the segments that Roland does consistently. What role
[1:56:11] Speaker 14: does advertising, and I know there's no advertising budget, but
[1:56:14] Speaker 14: what role does platforming play? in making people aware, because
[1:56:21] Speaker 14: I was stunned to see these black women all on
[1:56:24] Speaker 14: the verge of having law degrees, literally unaware of where
[1:56:27] Speaker 14: in the neighborhood or where in the city or where
[1:56:30] Speaker 14: in the region they could literally go to get their hair.
[1:56:32] Speaker 7: Done, get their products.
[1:56:33] Speaker 14: And I thought, well, damn, these are sophisticated young women
[1:56:36] Speaker 14: and they just don't know. So could you talk a
[1:56:38] Speaker 14: little bit about network and platform and what we can
[1:56:41] Speaker 14: do to kind of strengthen those things?
[1:56:45] Speaker 27: I think the network is out there, but there's a
[1:56:51] Speaker 27: lot of us have grown up with certain styles.
[1:56:55] Speaker 2: They're in our family.
[1:56:56] Speaker 10: They're in our neighborhood.
[1:56:58] Speaker 27: We're very protective about who touches our hair, who styles.
[1:57:03] Speaker 7: It, what their energy is.
[1:57:06] Speaker 27: So when we're in some place that's not familiar to us,
[1:57:10] Speaker 27: that network is what my husband refers to as the
[1:57:14] Speaker 27: sister girl network. We want someone else's trusted and sage opinion.
[1:57:22] Speaker 27: Social media helps with that. It's still very word of mouth. Advertising,
[1:57:29] Speaker 27: marketing plays a role, but advocacy is big.
[1:57:38] Speaker 22: I would say, you know, when you say networks, I
[1:57:40] Speaker 22: just think about the intentional women who shop Lameek Beauty.
[1:57:44] Speaker 22: A lot of my customers are like intentional shoppers. Because
[1:57:48] Speaker 22: we're not available everywhere. So they have to put some
[1:57:50] Speaker 22: thought into it. You know, they might have to order,
[1:57:52] Speaker 22: wait a couple of days to get it in the mail.
[1:57:54] Speaker 22: But their intent for wanting it is stronger. So that
[1:57:57] Speaker 22: word of mouth that Lisa speaks of is very strong.
[1:58:01] Speaker 22: because they are almost like evangelists for the brand. And
[1:58:05] Speaker 22: so having a platform like this one is really good
[1:58:08] Speaker 22: because even me and Jessica were talking in the back
[1:58:10] Speaker 22: just about the strong nature of the customers, like the
[1:58:13] Speaker 22: people who watch this show. The sophisticated women. A lot
[1:58:16] Speaker 22: of women who I know watch Roland, they like love
[1:58:18] Speaker 22: this show, right? And they're like dedicated to it. And
[1:58:22] Speaker 22: I think that those are the kind of customers for
[1:58:24] Speaker 22: me who really last in our brand and really make
[1:58:27] Speaker 22: a difference because They're the ones who are going to
[1:58:30] Speaker 22: travel with you along the journey and are sticky. So
[1:58:35] Speaker 22: I think this type of platform is really important for
[1:58:38] Speaker 22: us at Lameet.
[1:58:40] Speaker 26: I feel like in today's day and age, social media
[1:58:44] Speaker 26: is like almost the top thing.
[1:58:47] Speaker 10: But I feel like outside.
[1:58:48] Speaker 26: Of that, you got to touch the consumer far more
[1:58:51] Speaker 26: times than you had two, three years ago. So if
[1:58:53] Speaker 26: you had to touch them seven times three years ago,
[1:58:56] Speaker 26: now you got to touch them like 13 times. So
[1:58:58] Speaker 26: I feel like, one, you can't rely on social as
[1:59:00] Speaker 26: much as you're used to because we don't.
[1:59:02] Speaker 10: Own the platforms.
[1:59:04] Speaker 26: I feel like in real life, events are great. I
[1:59:09] Speaker 26: feel like doing the things that you had to do
[1:59:11] Speaker 26: a long time ago when we first started.
[1:59:13] Speaker 10: Like, I'm a person, I'll hit the streets. We snuck
[1:59:16] Speaker 10: on Morehouse campus.
[1:59:17] Speaker 6: I just saw you did that.
[1:59:18] Speaker 26: Yeah, and I posted it. I said, I'm probably, I'm
[1:59:21] Speaker 26: getting in so much trouble. So we, you know, we
[1:59:22] Speaker 26: snuck on the campus. I talked to the college students.
[1:59:25] Speaker 26: I didn't have permission. but I try to blend in.
[1:59:27] Speaker 26: I might not, it might be 40 something.
[1:59:29] Speaker 2: You didn't have permission?
[1:59:30] Speaker 10: No, we snuck on. A hundred percent. I sure did.
[1:59:33] Speaker 8: Yes.
[1:59:34] Speaker 10: And I filmed it.
[1:59:34] Speaker 6: Well, he just said that he has.
[1:59:36] Speaker 10: I sure did. And I posted it.
[1:59:37] Speaker 2: And I posted it at Howard.
[1:59:38] Speaker 10: And everybody was excited. But look what I said.
[1:59:40] Speaker 2: I'm telling you.
[1:59:41] Speaker 10: Everybody said, my mama love you. And I was like, oh,
[1:59:44] Speaker 10: I'm auntie for real.
[1:59:45] Speaker 2: First of all, what were you selling on the boathouse camp?
[1:59:48] Speaker 10: I wasn't selling. I was passing out samples, my products.
[1:59:50] Speaker 2: Oh, got it, got it.
[1:59:51] Speaker 3: No, no, no.
[1:59:52] Speaker 2: Okay, I got this.
[1:59:53] Speaker 1: No, I thought you snuck over to the campus and, like,
[1:59:56] Speaker 1: set a table up and was selling stuff.
[1:59:58] Speaker 3: No, no, no.
[1:59:58] Speaker 2: Okay, how about.
[1:59:59] Speaker 6: Don't knock, no. Somebody hustle though, how'd they get down?
[2:00:02] Speaker 10: I'm just asking.
[2:00:03] Speaker 26: So we found out they had some kind of fair.
[2:00:05] Speaker 26: So it was Morehouse and Spellman, whatever, they was together.
[2:00:09] Speaker 2: Spellhouse.
[2:00:09] Speaker 3: Yes.
[2:00:09] Speaker 10: Spellhouse.
[2:00:10] Speaker 2: Okay, so it was them together. Just like they had
[2:00:13] Speaker 2: their homecoming. Yeah, same thing.
[2:00:14] Speaker 10: Right, so since they was together, I said this was
[2:00:16] Speaker 10: the perfect time.
[2:00:17] Speaker 26: So it was me and it was like three of
[2:00:19] Speaker 26: us and I brought my videographer and it was like,
[2:00:20] Speaker 26: come on, let's go. And they let me... I mean,
[2:00:22] Speaker 26: I got on there, so... You know, I just feel
[2:00:24] Speaker 26: like you have to do the things that we hadn't
[2:00:26] Speaker 26: done in a while. And I feel like another thing
[2:00:28] Speaker 26: that people don't discuss, everybody feels like black people don't
[2:00:32] Speaker 26: stick together.
[2:00:33] Speaker 10: Like, that's a thing.
[2:00:34] Speaker 26: Like, and people feel like we attack each other or,
[2:00:38] Speaker 26: you know, like, I'm coming after her customer or me
[2:00:41] Speaker 26: and Lisa in the same industry, I'm coming after her customer,
[2:00:43] Speaker 26: and it's actually the opposite. Like, we be on each
[2:00:45] Speaker 26: other's phone. Like, girl, did this happen to you? Or, girl,
[2:00:49] Speaker 26: did this retailer do this or do that?
[2:00:51] Speaker 10: You know... So I feel like that's another thing, too.
[2:00:53] Speaker 1: We'll go to Mustafa, but I'm going to come back.
[2:00:56] Speaker 1: My last question is going to actually deal with something
[2:00:58] Speaker 1: you just said about that in terms of communicating.
[2:01:01] Speaker 2: Mustafa, go.
[2:01:03] Speaker 13: Well, I just want to say thank you to Jessica
[2:01:06] Speaker 13: and Kim for everything that you.
[2:01:08] Speaker 5: All continue to do.
[2:01:10] Speaker 13: I wanted to build a little bit on what Jessica
[2:01:13] Speaker 13: had mentioned.
[2:01:14] Speaker 5: She had talked about social media. We have these new
[2:01:18] Speaker 5: 21st century tools that many people are utilizing. Do you
[2:01:22] Speaker 5: see those as a way for Black businesses to continue
[2:01:25] Speaker 5: to grow, or will it pull us apart?
[2:01:29] Speaker 10: And when you say that, you mean like AI?
[2:01:32] Speaker 17: Yes.
[2:01:33] Speaker 7: Oof.
[2:01:36] Speaker 10: I think if we.
[2:01:37] Speaker 26: Don't participate in it, we're going to get left behind.
[2:01:39] Speaker 26: I personally, between my socials, have about, I don't know,
[2:01:43] Speaker 26: 10 million.
[2:01:43] Speaker 10: Followers or so. And that can be good and bad.
[2:01:46] Speaker 26: I feel like you can use your platform to speak
[2:01:50] Speaker 26: to the community, but that doesn't guarantee that there's going
[2:01:53] Speaker 26: to be a sale. I feel like I've been successful
[2:01:56] Speaker 26: in my business, and we have been blessed to see
[2:01:58] Speaker 26: over 100 million in sales, which is great, but it's
[2:02:01] Speaker 26: because I talk to my consumer. They got to see
[2:02:04] Speaker 26: the good, the bad, the ugly. They got to see
[2:02:06] Speaker 26: me with, without makeup. They got to see the inventory
[2:02:09] Speaker 26: when it was one box, and then when it became
[2:02:11] Speaker 26: a warehouse.
[2:02:12] Speaker 10: I feel like when you build a community.
[2:02:14] Speaker 26: no matter what systems kind of get in front of you,
[2:02:17] Speaker 26: nobody can take away your community. Because even though I
[2:02:19] Speaker 26: have my social platforms, I have also taken them off
[2:02:22] Speaker 26: of that and put them inside of my text message
[2:02:25] Speaker 26: list and my email list.
[2:02:27] Speaker 10: So while I have that many followers on social media.
[2:02:29] Speaker 2: So you can control data.
[2:02:30] Speaker 10: Yeah, exactly.
[2:02:31] Speaker 26: So I can speak to them when I want to
[2:02:33] Speaker 26: and not when the algorithm allows me to.
[2:02:35] Speaker 7: Right.
[2:02:36] Speaker 2: Lisa?
[2:02:38] Speaker 27: Yeah, I just wanted to say that it's... What's interesting
[2:02:42] Speaker 27: is Jessica just talked about how she has 10 million
[2:02:45] Speaker 27: followers amongst her platforms. So her brand is one that
[2:02:51] Speaker 27: launched and got to be built in front of that
[2:02:55] Speaker 27: audience and community larger. It may even be a bit
[2:03:00] Speaker 27: stickier than the community that I have. Because when I
[2:03:06] Speaker 27: was founding Carol's Daughter, there were no websites.
[2:03:09] Speaker 5: There was no social media.
[2:03:12] Speaker 27: So people don't always know how true my founding story is.
[2:03:19] Speaker 27: And so I always share it and I incorporated it
[2:03:22] Speaker 27: into the branding process. But I live in a different
[2:03:26] Speaker 27: space when it comes to social because I didn't get
[2:03:29] Speaker 27: to build in that network.
[2:03:32] Speaker 10: I didn't get to.
[2:03:33] Speaker 27: Build in the fishbowl of social media, if you will.
[2:03:38] Speaker 22: I say, you know, when I look at social media
[2:03:41] Speaker 22: and to Mufasa's question, I think that It's a great
[2:03:45] Speaker 22: opportunity to communicate. It's a great opportunity to have those
[2:03:48] Speaker 22: lines there. I think, you know, we talk about building
[2:03:52] Speaker 22: out loud. A lot of times people also are looking
[2:03:55] Speaker 22: at our journeys for inspiration. It's like pass the product
[2:03:58] Speaker 22: to like. So also to, you know, a lot of
[2:04:01] Speaker 22: times videos or conversations you have, it could be the
[2:04:04] Speaker 22: most random thing, maybe something that comes up on your
[2:04:06] Speaker 22: heart you talk about. And that's what people use. And
[2:04:09] Speaker 22: that could be a conversion to your website. But you
[2:04:12] Speaker 22: didn't look at it that way. You know, and I
[2:04:15] Speaker 22: think the transparency matters. The vulnerability matters right now.
[2:04:19] Speaker 7: And.
[2:04:19] Speaker 10: It's a marketing thing right now.
[2:04:21] Speaker 26: And before, it was, like, people want to know what
[2:04:24] Speaker 26: the founder's doing, where they're spending their money, almost where
[2:04:26] Speaker 26: they're at.
[2:04:27] Speaker 10: What kind of underwear they're wearing. That's the thing. That's...
[2:04:31] Speaker 10: It's so bad.
[2:04:32] Speaker 1: I think the thing that people need to understand is
[2:04:34] Speaker 1: social media, you have followers. Your job as an entrepreneur
[2:04:38] Speaker 1: is actually to create, is to convert fans. You can
[2:04:43] Speaker 1: have 10 million, but 10 million ain't buying. Also, on
[2:04:46] Speaker 1: the social media platforms, you're not reaching 10 million. You're
[2:04:50] Speaker 1: reaching max 5% of your following. So what I keep telling,
[2:04:55] Speaker 1: when Lizzo was complaining about her album, my whole deal is, yo,
[2:04:59] Speaker 1: you can't bank on that social media following. How many
[2:05:02] Speaker 1: fans do you have? Fans buy tickets. Supporters slash fans
[2:05:09] Speaker 1: buy product.
[2:05:10] Speaker 2: They give. It's a whole bunch of people. Oh, Roland, man,
[2:05:15] Speaker 2: I love your show.
[2:05:17] Speaker 1: I can pull the list up and see if they're
[2:05:21] Speaker 1: on the donor list.
[2:05:23] Speaker 10: Mm-hmm.
[2:05:24] Speaker 2: It's a whole bunch of people.
[2:05:25] Speaker 1: Oh, man, I support your show. Do you support by watching?
[2:05:31] Speaker 1: Do you support by retweeting, resharing? Or do you support financially?
[2:05:35] Speaker 1: There are different ways to support. And I only say
[2:05:37] Speaker 1: that because, again, so I tell anybody who is relying
[2:05:42] Speaker 1: on social media, your job is to not look at likes.
[2:05:46] Speaker 2: You got to look at sales.
[2:05:47] Speaker 10: But people assume.
[2:05:49] Speaker 22: that you're doing so well.
[2:05:51] Speaker 1: That's the other part, too.
[2:05:52] Speaker 2: Oh, no. But again, that's... They just.
[2:05:54] Speaker 27: No.
[2:05:55] Speaker 26: I feel like that got exposed a long time ago
[2:05:57] Speaker 26: where the big people didn't have sales. And so now
[2:06:01] Speaker 26: it has been said, just because you have this many followers,
[2:06:04] Speaker 26: you don't have that many sales. That's why I was
[2:06:06] Speaker 26: so adamant about pulling the people off of my list.
[2:06:09] Speaker 1: Right.
[2:06:10] Speaker 26: So having a million email... I mean, having a million
[2:06:13] Speaker 26: email subs... or having a half a million tech subs,
[2:06:17] Speaker 26: it was the key to it. I was only using
[2:06:19] Speaker 26: the number as an example of growing a community.
[2:06:23] Speaker 1: No, that's why, the reason Tyler Perry got his distribution deal,
[2:06:27] Speaker 1: because when he sat down with them, he said, these
[2:06:30] Speaker 1: are the number of emails that I have. He said,
[2:06:34] Speaker 1: this is the percentage of people who are going to
[2:06:35] Speaker 1: go see my movie the first weekend. And if you
[2:06:37] Speaker 1: look at most of Tyler Perry's movies, when he had
[2:06:40] Speaker 1: the distribution deal with Liongate and the others, He knew
[2:06:43] Speaker 1: that his movies were going to do anywhere from $ 15
[2:06:46] Speaker 1: to $ 20 million opening weekend.
[2:06:48] Speaker 3: Yep.
[2:06:49] Speaker 1: He understood that because he had the data. The problem
[2:06:53] Speaker 1: is when you are left at the mercy of the platform,
[2:06:57] Speaker 1: and then what happens if something happens and you get
[2:06:59] Speaker 1: kicked off the platform? Now you don't have access to
[2:07:02] Speaker 1: the data. I know numerous media people, and I've told
[2:07:05] Speaker 1: numerous people who have worked at networks, and they've been
[2:07:08] Speaker 1: there 5, 10, 15, 20 years, and then they get
[2:07:10] Speaker 1: laid off or they get fired, and I'm like.
[2:07:15] Speaker 1: You didn't create your own Facebook fan page. You didn't
[2:07:17] Speaker 1: create this platform. You got 20,000. Your ass was on
[2:07:21] Speaker 1: national television for 10 damn years, and all you got
[2:07:24] Speaker 1: is 15,000, 20,000 followers. Now you got to build something
[2:07:30] Speaker 1: when you should have been building the whole time. Last
[2:07:32] Speaker 1: question I have here, because you made a point about conversing.
[2:07:36] Speaker 1: I do believe one of the greatest mistakes is when
[2:07:39] Speaker 1: we hold information. I've made a clip to numerous people
[2:07:43] Speaker 1: who want to start, who want to do.
[2:07:45] Speaker 2: What I do. Call me.
[2:07:47] Speaker 1: I'll walk you through it. I ain't got a problem
[2:07:49] Speaker 1: telling you. I'm going to be honest with you and
[2:07:51] Speaker 1: straight up about it. But it's amazing to me the
[2:07:53] Speaker 1: number of people who won't call. There's a friend of mine,
[2:07:56] Speaker 1: this guy, well-known media person, was trying to start his
[2:08:03] Speaker 1: own thing. And so he calls his agent, his business.
[2:08:09] Speaker 2: Manager, who's a friend of mine.
[2:08:11] Speaker 1: And this person, she says, you need to call Ronald.
[2:08:14] Speaker 2: He's like, no, I'm not calling him. And she's like, okay.
[2:08:18] Speaker 7: Good luck.
[2:08:20] Speaker 1: And, uh, and, and she sit here and seeing him
[2:08:23] Speaker 1: struggle has had some, some marginal success, but it was
[2:08:26] Speaker 1: the dumbest thing in the world.
[2:08:28] Speaker 2: What I'm taking this call.
[2:08:29] Speaker 7: Yeah.
[2:08:29] Speaker 2: Do I think it's an asshole?
[2:08:30] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[2:08:31] Speaker 1: Uh, but I would have said, Hey, if you want
[2:08:33] Speaker 1: to do this, this is what the thing requires. So
[2:08:35] Speaker 1: when you were talking about communicating rally, if you're doing
[2:08:38] Speaker 1: a deal with a big box, yo, Talk to somebody
[2:08:42] Speaker 1: who's already been there because the things that you don't know,
[2:08:45] Speaker 1: the things that you don't know to even ask for.
[2:08:47] Speaker 1: And that to me, Lisa, it drives me crazy when
[2:08:50] Speaker 1: there are people who want to hold the information and
[2:08:54] Speaker 1: I get competitive.
[2:08:55] Speaker 2: I get.
[2:08:56] Speaker 1: But my whole deal is if we ain't even in
[2:08:57] Speaker 1: the same space, hell, that ain't hurting me sharing information
[2:09:02] Speaker 1: with you.
[2:09:05] Speaker 11: Right.
[2:09:06] Speaker 27: Uh, I don't think any of the people that you
[2:09:08] Speaker 27: have on your show tonight holds information.
[2:09:13] Speaker 10: We share it.
[2:09:14] Speaker 5: I share it.
[2:09:15] Speaker 27: If the person is a hair care company, I share it.
[2:09:18] Speaker 27: If they're a makeup company, Jessica has given me great advice.
[2:09:23] Speaker 27: Kim has given me great advice. Melissa Butler from the
[2:09:26] Speaker 27: lip bar has given me great advice. Tracy Ellis Ross, um,
[2:09:32] Speaker 27: All of us hold hands. Monique Rodriguez, Janelle Steven.
[2:09:38] Speaker 5: We are a sisterhood.
[2:09:40] Speaker 27: Technically, we're competitors, but we really are a sisterhood.
[2:09:45] Speaker 26: Yeah, I wouldn't have gotten as far as I got
[2:09:47] Speaker 26: without actually. And then you actually you got to be
[2:09:50] Speaker 26: OK with accent. I think that's the point that you
[2:09:51] Speaker 26: were trying to make, though. If somebody has their too
[2:09:55] Speaker 26: big of a head to ask, they.
[2:09:57] Speaker 10: Can't get the information.
[2:09:58] Speaker 26: I ain't never scared to run.
[2:09:59] Speaker 10: Up in anybody's DM.
[2:10:00] Speaker 26: I don't care how many followers you got. You can
[2:10:02] Speaker 26: have five or you can have 50 million. I'm going
[2:10:04] Speaker 26: to ask because all you can do is not answer.
[2:10:06] Speaker 26: I'm going to ask.
[2:10:08] Speaker 6: This is so true.
[2:10:09] Speaker 27: I have so many relationships from DMs.
[2:10:12] Speaker 7: Yeah, I'm curious.
[2:10:14] Speaker 27: Just reaching out and saying, hey, can we talk?
[2:10:18] Speaker 6: Yeah.
[2:10:19] Speaker 22: And then on top of that, people don't realize entrepreneurship
[2:10:22] Speaker 22: can be lonely.
[2:10:24] Speaker 10: Girl.
[2:10:26] Speaker 26: Because, I mean, I'm married to somebody that... They are
[2:10:29] Speaker 26: entrepreneurial technically, but not, you know, they're not a business.
[2:10:33] Speaker 26: And I'm talking to my wife, it ain't shit. I
[2:10:36] Speaker 26: can tell about what's going on with Shopify. She don't,
[2:10:38] Speaker 26: it's not that she don't, she gonna listen. She don't
[2:10:40] Speaker 26: wanna support me, but she don't give a shit about
[2:10:42] Speaker 26: the apps.
[2:10:43] Speaker 1: She don't care about none of that.
[2:10:44] Speaker 10: None of that stuff, right?
[2:10:46] Speaker 22: And so it's like having those conversations, even for us
[2:10:49] Speaker 22: a lot of times, it's like therapy too.
[2:10:51] Speaker 10: Absolutely.
[2:10:51] Speaker 22: Because also too, sometimes people make you feel like you
[2:10:54] Speaker 22: the only one.
[2:10:55] Speaker 3: Right.
[2:10:55] Speaker 10: You feel so isolated.
[2:10:56] Speaker 22: And that's another thing, too, that we didn't... I want
[2:10:58] Speaker 22: to touch on this real quick for us black folks, too,
[2:11:01] Speaker 22: is sometimes you'll get built up just to get torn
[2:11:04] Speaker 22: down sometimes. And also, too, the thing is, is that
[2:11:07] Speaker 22: you also don't want to disappoint people. And so even
[2:11:10] Speaker 22: when you're going through stuff, You know, we think about
[2:11:13] Speaker 22: mental health and all of those kind of different things.
[2:11:16] Speaker 22: When we're able to have a sisterhood and a brotherhood
[2:11:18] Speaker 22: and be able to talk to each other, then that
[2:11:20] Speaker 22: helps with that because it's therapeutic for.
[2:11:22] Speaker 10: Us to talk about, oh, the same thing happened to you? Like,
[2:11:25] Speaker 10: the same thing. That's... Okay, so I'm not crazy. So
[2:11:28] Speaker 10: it's not just me. They're not just gays like me.
[2:11:30] Speaker 2: You know what I mean?
[2:11:30] Speaker 10: Like, you can get that part out.
[2:11:32] Speaker 1: Best therapeutic thing for me is cussing folk out. Keeps
[2:11:35] Speaker 1: blood pressure low. Listen.
[2:11:40] Speaker 2: First of all, I know your parents. It don't matter.
[2:11:44] Speaker 2: They'll tell you. They'll tell you.
[2:11:46] Speaker 7: Listen, listen.
[2:11:47] Speaker 27: Roland, I have to suggest try it our way for
[2:11:54] Speaker 27: a little bit.
[2:11:55] Speaker 2: Nope. Nope.
[2:11:58] Speaker 1: You're just like my wife.
[2:12:01] Speaker 10: She won't curse everybody out there. She won't curse them
[2:12:03] Speaker 10: out first.
[2:12:04] Speaker 2: It's my point when I say that.
[2:12:06] Speaker 1: Again, first of all, when there are people who are
[2:12:10] Speaker 1: chattering who ain't never been where you've been, all they're.
[2:12:14] Speaker 2: Doing is talking.
[2:12:15] Speaker 1: OK? So I don't, it's a ton of people I
[2:12:18] Speaker 1: don't listen to. I don't pay them no mind. And
[2:12:22] Speaker 1: when I say I don't pay them no mind, they
[2:12:23] Speaker 1: literally don't exist to me. And what I'm not going
[2:12:29] Speaker 1: to do is, for any amount of energy that I'm
[2:12:33] Speaker 1: expending on them, that I'm not focused on what I'm doing.
[2:12:39] Speaker 1: I've said to other folk who've come at me.
[2:12:44] Speaker 2: Go do you. I'm not going to watch you. I'm
[2:12:48] Speaker 2: not going to listen to you.
[2:12:50] Speaker 1: And if y'all want to go listen to them, knock
[2:12:52] Speaker 1: yourselves out.
[2:12:54] Speaker 2: Listen, I've said.
[2:12:56] Speaker 1: Go back to my TV one days.
[2:12:58] Speaker 2: I made it clear.
[2:13:00] Speaker 1: I don't do gossip shit on the show. I don't
[2:13:05] Speaker 1: talk to housewives. I don't like reality shows. If y'all
[2:13:11] Speaker 1: want to know....
[2:13:13] Speaker 2: If y'all... Somebody in the chat.
[2:13:17] Speaker 1: Mention who you married to. I was like, oh, that
[2:13:20] Speaker 1: shit don't mean nothing to me. And the reason I
[2:13:23] Speaker 1: say it don't mean anything to me, because I ain't
[2:13:25] Speaker 1: talking about nobody's marriage. We discussing a business. So I
[2:13:30] Speaker 1: tell people, if y'all care about who dating who, who
[2:13:34] Speaker 1: married who, who had a baby, who came out, who DL,
[2:13:40] Speaker 1: who straight.
[2:13:41] Speaker 2: I go watch somebody else's show. And guess what?
[2:13:45] Speaker 1: They can have those clicks. I'm good with that. And
[2:13:49] Speaker 1: I literally don't care. I ain't having the conversations because
[2:13:54] Speaker 1: we gonna do what we do and we gonna do
[2:13:57] Speaker 1: it well and we not gonna worry about anywhere. But see,
[2:14:01] Speaker 1: that's when you're focused on your mission and your goal,
[2:14:05] Speaker 1: and you don't expend energy worrying about other people. And also,
[2:14:09] Speaker 1: if somebody else, oh my God, they blew up, great,
[2:14:15] Speaker 1: knock yourself out. Like I say, somebody hit me, they
[2:14:17] Speaker 1: were like, yo, don't let me do this channel. I'm like, okay,
[2:14:21] Speaker 1: that's great. I did it four years ago. I got
[2:14:24] Speaker 1: rid of them for a reason. Good luck with it.
[2:14:28] Speaker 7: I'm like, cool.
[2:14:30] Speaker 1: Me and Shannon Sharp have talked. I'm like, Shannon, kill
[2:14:34] Speaker 1: him with the numbers. I'm not trying to do you.
[2:14:36] Speaker 1: You're not trying to do me. There's space for everybody
[2:14:39] Speaker 1: in this thing. That's just what drives me crazy that
[2:14:41] Speaker 1: people don't learn how to focus on what they do.
[2:14:46] Speaker 2: Be experts at what they do.
[2:14:47] Speaker 22: Now you life coaching at this point.
[2:14:49] Speaker 1: No, no, I'm just, it's just, I'm telling you, the
[2:14:52] Speaker 1: entrepreneurs that fail are the ones who are trying to
[2:14:57] Speaker 1: compare themselves to somebody else and understand, if I'm good where.
[2:15:02] Speaker 2: I'm at, I'm straight. I'm good. I'm not measuring myself
[2:15:08] Speaker 2: next to you.
[2:15:09] Speaker 1: That is a mistake because then you're constantly involved in
[2:15:13] Speaker 1: a rat race that you will never be able to
[2:15:15] Speaker 1: win and that will jack up your mental health and
[2:15:18] Speaker 1: it will screw you up. And so again, I don't
[2:15:20] Speaker 1: worry about that. So you come at me like that,
[2:15:23] Speaker 1: I'm going to cut a shot and I'm going to
[2:15:24] Speaker 1: keep it moving. All right, I appreciate y'all being on
[2:15:27] Speaker 1: the show. Thank you so very much. Lisa, I appreciate
[2:15:28] Speaker 1: you being by virtual. Mustafa, Greg, I appreciate y'all being
[2:15:32] Speaker 1: on the panel as well. Folks, I got to jump
[2:15:35] Speaker 1: out of here because the Alphas have their reception.
[2:15:38] Speaker 2: I ain't going to many CBC stuff, y'all. I'm not, okay?
[2:15:40] Speaker 2: I got a lot of stuff to do.
[2:15:41] Speaker 1: So I'm going to drop by the Alpha event, say
[2:15:43] Speaker 1: what's up to the frat, the only real frat, the
[2:15:46] Speaker 1: rest of my youth groups.
[2:15:48] Speaker 2: Include, yeah, yeah. Yeah, they know that.
[2:15:51] Speaker 10: Shout out to the Sigma Gamma Rose out there watching.
[2:15:54] Speaker 2: I said frat. That's a sorority.
[2:15:56] Speaker 10: Sorority.
[2:15:57] Speaker 7: I got you.
[2:15:57] Speaker 2: That's a sorority.
[2:15:58] Speaker 22: I just still had to shout them out.
[2:15:59] Speaker 2: I know that.
[2:15:59] Speaker 1: I'm talking about that little youth group.
[2:16:02] Speaker 2: Terrell is a member of all of them.
[2:16:04] Speaker 22: But you might need to also come out to the
[2:16:05] Speaker 22: reception for the Greater Houston Black Chamber of Commerce.
[2:16:07] Speaker 2: Nope. I ain't doing none of that. When is that?
[2:16:10] Speaker 10: That's tonight.
[2:16:11] Speaker 11: Nope.
[2:16:11] Speaker 2: I ain't doing it.
[2:16:12] Speaker 10: That's tonight.
[2:16:13] Speaker 2: Where is it? What time did it start?
[2:16:15] Speaker 10: I'll give you the address.
[2:16:16] Speaker 2: It's still 12. It's still 12. Well, they on damn reception.
[2:16:19] Speaker 10: It is a reception.
[2:16:20] Speaker 2: Girl, what time did it start?
[2:16:21] Speaker 1: At 6? 8.
[2:16:22] Speaker 2: Hell, that ain't no reception. If it lasts four hours,
[2:16:24] Speaker 2: there ain't no reception. That's a party.
[2:16:25] Speaker 1: Stop it.
[2:16:26] Speaker 2: All right, y'all. That's it for us.
[2:16:29] Speaker 1: If y'all want to join our Bring the Funk fan club,
[2:16:31] Speaker 1: don't forget we've had more than 50,000 folks contribute to
[2:16:33] Speaker 1: our show since we launched eight years ago. and then
[2:16:36] Speaker 1: that goes to support this show and the eight other
[2:16:38] Speaker 1: shows on the Black Star Network. If you want to
[2:16:39] Speaker 1: use Cash App, use the Stripe Cure code you see
[2:16:41] Speaker 1: right here on the screen.
[2:16:42] Speaker 2: That's for credit cards as well.
[2:16:44] Speaker 1: And, of course, if you're listening, go to BlackStarNetwork.com for
[2:16:47] Speaker 1: ways to give. Checks and money in order to make
[2:16:49] Speaker 1: it payable to Roland Martin Unfiltered. PO Box 57196, Washington, D.C.
[2:16:54] Speaker 1: Thank you.
[2:16:55] Speaker 3: 200-379-0196.
[2:16:55] Speaker 2: PayPal, R. Martin Unfiltered. Venmo, R.M. Unfiltered.
[2:16:58] Speaker 1: Zelle, Roland at RolandSMartin.com. RollerNet, RollerMart, Unfiltered.com. Download the Black
[2:17:03] Speaker 1: Star Network app, Apple Phone, Android Phone, Apple TV, Android TV, Roku,
[2:17:07] Speaker 1: Amazon Fire TV, Xbox, Samsung Smart TV.
[2:17:10] Speaker 2: Baby, I ain't got to read nothing.
[2:17:12] Speaker 1: Don't forget to also, if you want to get our apparel,
[2:17:15] Speaker 1: our shirts and T-shirts, hats, mugs, all that good stuff, RollerMart, Unfiltered,
[2:17:19] Speaker 1: and Black Star Network, go to ShopBlackStarNetwork.com, our online marketplace.
[2:17:24] Speaker 1: And if you go to our marketplace, there are 88
[2:17:27] Speaker 1: Black-owned businesses that are on our marketplace.
[2:17:31] Speaker 2: You go to shopblackstarnetwork.com.
[2:17:33] Speaker 1: When you buy products from them, you also are supporting
[2:17:36] Speaker 1: our show as well. Don't you have Lameek stuff on there?
[2:17:39] Speaker 10: I do have Lameek things here. Yeah, that's right.
[2:17:40] Speaker 1: That's the last time you were on the show.
[2:17:42] Speaker 10: Y'all go shop Lameek Beauty, please. And Kaleidoscope. And Carol's Daughter. Please.
[2:17:47] Speaker 3: Thanks.
[2:17:47] Speaker 2: I don't think Kaleidoscope and Carol's Daughter are on.
[2:17:49] Speaker 1: But they can still shop there. They can't buy it
[2:17:51] Speaker 1: from them. Shop by Sunnetwork.com. They got to be on
[2:17:53] Speaker 1: the website.
[2:17:56] Speaker 3: All right, Roland.
[2:17:56] Speaker 1: No, but you got to say go to their website.
[2:17:58] Speaker 10: Go to their website. I was just saying shop them.
[2:18:00] Speaker 2: Go to their website. Go to Kaleidoscope's website.
[2:18:03] Speaker 1: That's why you don't let Madison High School people talk
[2:18:05] Speaker 1: too long on your show.
[2:18:06] Speaker 10: Don't even go there.
[2:18:07] Speaker 2: Oh, Lord.
[2:18:08] Speaker 1: So, I'm going to send this to the control room
[2:18:09] Speaker 1: as well. I think I showed this because I sent
[2:18:12] Speaker 1: it to Vince Young.
[2:18:12] Speaker 2: He's so petty. Because we beat y'all ass.
[2:18:15] Speaker 10: He's so petty.
[2:18:16] Speaker 2: First of all, let me finish.
[2:18:17] Speaker 1: The Marketplace, 88 black-owned companies that are on shopblackstarnetwork.com. And,
[2:18:24] Speaker 1: of course, when you buy products from them, you also
[2:18:28] Speaker 1: are supporting this show as well.
[2:18:30] Speaker 2: So please do so.
[2:18:32] Speaker 1: And don't forget to support all the other shows that
[2:18:36] Speaker 1: are available here on the Black Star Network, all the shows.
[2:18:40] Speaker 1: And so we appreciate it. all that uh y'all do
[2:18:43] Speaker 1: i just put it in group me and so um
[2:18:46] Speaker 1: yeah y'all go ahead and pull up on the screen
[2:18:48] Speaker 1: uh so because y'all remember when um somebody right here
[2:18:52] Speaker 1: was on this show she was just going on and
[2:18:54] Speaker 1: on about her little high school and how great they
[2:18:56] Speaker 1: are and all that sort of good stuff then i
[2:18:58] Speaker 1: told her y'all are absolutely small potatoes compared to jackie's
[2:19:02] Speaker 1: high school in houston And so there's a huge game
[2:19:06] Speaker 1: every year in Houston. And it's called the Southside Challenge.
[2:19:10] Speaker 2: And they are 5A school. We used to be 5A.
[2:19:12] Speaker 2: We were 4A, so we're a little bit smaller.
[2:19:15] Speaker 1: But 4A beat that Madison Marlin ass. And you see
[2:19:20] Speaker 1: the graphic. It says Fish Fry Challenge. And they got
[2:19:24] Speaker 1: fried 30 to 6 times.
[2:19:27] Speaker 22: Well, if you've ever been to a high school, a
[2:19:30] Speaker 22: black high school game, you know it's about halftime and
[2:19:33] Speaker 22: it's about the cheerleaders and how they look.
[2:19:35] Speaker 6: And I would love.
[2:19:36] Speaker 2: Let me explain something to y'all.
[2:19:37] Speaker 1: Any school that's never won a state football championship, that's
[2:19:41] Speaker 1: what they say.
[2:19:43] Speaker 2: It's everything but the game.
[2:19:44] Speaker 1: But when your school has won seven or eight state
[2:19:46] Speaker 1: football championships, it's about the game.
[2:19:50] Speaker 7: Yeah.
[2:19:50] Speaker 2: All right, y'all.
[2:19:51] Speaker 1: I'm going to see y'all tomorrow right here at Roland
[2:19:53] Speaker 1: Martin Unfiltered on the Black Star Network.
[2:19:59] Speaker 3: Thank you.

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