# Why Selling Isn’t “Selling Out” | Richelieu Dennis on Essence Fest Fallout & Black Business Issues

An episode of [Earn Your Leisure](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1450211392), 26 Mar 2026, 1 h 30 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/8dbc4f54-a337-4481-9ef2-b355012b0a3d/1ea2c657-5a73-4720-a126-b41901067a2e/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=eac4c628-29cb-469a-b5c8-b355012b0a48

00:00 Fear of Selling Out 01:09 Meet Rich Dennis 04:40 SheaMoisture Origin Story 06:41 Family Business Rules 08:33 From Harlem Table to Retail 12:37 Building the Right Team 15:00 Impact Supply Chain in Africa 17:32 Backlash and Exit Strategy 26:36 Generational Wealth Reality 30:50 Capital Talent and Competition 36:53 Grace and Community Support 44:09 Why Big Brands Get a Pass 47:39 Economic Pressure Builds 49:43 Entrepreneurship at Risk 51:18 Unemployment Gap Explained 53:07 Capital Over Credentials 55:41 Losing Cultural Institutions 58:03 EssenceFest Backlash Lessons 59:51 Festival Pillars and Vision 01:03:45 Teyana Taylor Curator Role 01:04:22 Future of Media and Wealth 01:08:27 Building Black Business Infrastructure 01:16:22 Identity Critique Response 01:19:51 New Orleans Economic Impact 01:23:11 Why Print Still Matters 01:25:19 Celebrating Black Women Platforms 01:27:26 Festival Dates and Closing In this episode of Earn Your Leisure, we sit down with Richelieu Dennis to break down his journey from selling products on the streets of Harlem to building SheaMoisture into a billion-dollar company and securing a historic $1.6 billion exit. He shares why building the right team was critical, the realities of working with family, and the key decisions that allowed the business to scale to its full potential. We also dive into the backlash he faced after selling the company, addressing the “sellout” criticism and the larger issue of how Black entrepreneurs are judged. Richelieu speaks on investing 10% of revenue into Black women, the importance of unity within the community, and why negative public opinion can slow down economic progress. The conversation also touches on economic instability, unemployment disparities, and whether Black consumers should give more grace to Black-owned businesses. Finally, we explore the future of media, ownership, and cultural influence through platforms like Essence Festival of Culture. Richelieu discusses the impact of Essence Fest on New Orleans, addresses past criticism, and shares his vision for the future—including new leadership with Teyana Taylor. We close with gems on generational wealth, building lasting infrastructure, and how to use market volatility as an advantage in today’s economy. #EarnYourLeisure #RichelieuDennis #SheaMoisture #EssenceFest #BlackWealth #Entrepreneurship #GenerationalWealth #BlackBusiness #Investing #FinancialFreedom #MarketMondays #BusinessLeadershipSubscribe and watch more videos here: https://www.youtube.com/@EarnYourLeisure Join the EYL community for deeper training and a more detailed approach: https://www.eyluniversity.com Join the number one stock club in the world: https://www.ianinvest.com Invest Fest | August 7-9, 2026 Grab early bird tickets now: https://www.investfest.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: If my community turns on me, am I going to
[0:02] Speaker 1: be able to stay in business.
[0:03] Speaker 2: There's a narrative that when black businesses sell their company,
[0:06] Speaker 2: what they sold out.
[0:07] Speaker 1: A driving factor and why they want to sell is
[0:10] Speaker 1: because they're afraid.
[0:11] Speaker 2: How can we ever have generational wealth if we selling out,
[0:14] Speaker 2: we don't have anything to pass down.
[0:15] Speaker 1: Well, that's not how generational wealth is created. I don't
[0:17] Speaker 1: think they understand how hard it is to actually build
[0:20] Speaker 1: these things.
[0:21] Speaker 2: A company like Meta has billion dollar loss to where
[0:24] Speaker 2: they were actually selling people's data, and nobody actually unstall Instagram.
[0:28] Speaker 1: There's a lot of mistrust in our community, some of
[0:30] Speaker 1: it earned and some of it not. We're not afforded
[0:33] Speaker 1: the ability to make the mistake.
[0:35] Speaker 3: What is your thoughts on family business the dynamics of GOVNBOG.
[0:39] Speaker 1: Certainly, one of the most rewarding things you can do
[0:41] Speaker 1: as a business owner is to build a business with
[0:44] Speaker 1: your family. And the business deserves to have the best players.
[0:48] Speaker 3: When we look out at the playing field, who gives opportunity?
[0:51] Speaker 1: Our business was built so that we could invest back
[0:53] Speaker 1: into this community. But now you've got to go compete
[0:56] Speaker 1: against laurel. How do you compete against that? When you
[0:59] Speaker 1: can't go to your local bank and get a twenty
[1:02] Speaker 1: million dollar loan. At the end of the day, it
[1:04] Speaker 1: always just comes back to capital.
[1:09] Speaker 2: All right, gush, Welcome back on Alesia and got special episode.
[1:14] Speaker 1: This is like the Mentor edition, very rare.
[1:18] Speaker 2: That's a fact.
[1:19] Speaker 1: Who's the mentor.
[1:24] Speaker 2: Obviously, so yeah, a good friend of ours, definitely in
[1:29] Speaker 2: one of our business mentors, somebody that has been very
[1:31] Speaker 2: gracious with his time and his wealth of knowledge, not
[1:36] Speaker 2: only us, but a variety of different entrepreneurs that we're
[1:39] Speaker 2: friendly with that we know Rich Lou Dennis. You may
[1:43] Speaker 2: not be familiar with him, but you're definitely familiar with
[1:45] Speaker 2: the brands that he's helped launch, invest in be a
[1:50] Speaker 2: part of. And you know, we're gonna have a great conversation.
[1:54] Speaker 2: When you think of his entrepreneurial ship journey, A lot
[1:58] Speaker 2: of people probably are familiar with the Shade butter Shade
[2:03] Speaker 2: moisture that was I think what really puts you on
[2:06] Speaker 2: the map as far as becoming a major a major
[2:09] Speaker 2: figure in entrepreneurship. And then of course essence, So you
[2:14] Speaker 2: purchased essence, you are the you, You own.
[2:17] Speaker 1: Essence yep, correct me and my family?
[2:19] Speaker 2: Yes, And then you also have New Voice Ventures. That's
[2:24] Speaker 2: New Voice fun.
[2:25] Speaker 1: New Voice is fun.
[2:25] Speaker 2: Yeah, and that invests in a variety of different businesses. Yeah,
[2:29] Speaker 2: you've invested in Milano, right, Pinky col Yeah, Derek Hayes. Yeah,
[2:36] Speaker 2: so a lot of a lot of the businesses that
[2:39] Speaker 2: our audience.
[2:40] Speaker 1: Well, Mi Milano we've invested in from a time and
[2:43] Speaker 1: mentorship perspective, the other two from a capital perspective. Okay,
[2:51] Speaker 1: And now.
[2:52] Speaker 3: I was gonna say, I feel like from two thousand obviously,
[2:55] Speaker 3: since we started to show a lot of the entrepreneurs
[2:57] Speaker 3: that we meet that have skilled one of the one
[3:00] Speaker 3: thing that they have in common is that they sat
[3:01] Speaker 3: down with you or you've invested them.
[3:04] Speaker 1: Yeah. We spend a lot of time building an ecosystem
[3:10] Speaker 1: and supporting supporting that ecosystem, and then you you know,
[3:14] Speaker 1: you name it. If if they're if they're if they're
[3:19] Speaker 1: driving a business that's impacting our community, we've invested in them. Yeah,
[3:23] Speaker 1: and you have an eye for it. I'll tell everybody this.
[3:26] Speaker 3: I feel like, you know, maybe our first year and
[3:29] Speaker 3: a half, we got a call like rich du Dennis
[3:32] Speaker 3: wants to have lunch.
[3:33] Speaker 1: With you, and we were like, oh, okay, okay, Uh.
[3:38] Speaker 3: And so from that that conversation, we've obviously developed a relationship.
[3:41] Speaker 3: We got a lot of insight from it. Uh And
[3:43] Speaker 3: like Rashad said, always valuable with your time.
[3:46] Speaker 1: So we appreciate you being here. Yeah, well, you know,
[3:48] Speaker 1: thank you guys, and it's it's it's been an absolute
[3:52] Speaker 1: joy getting to know you guys and watch you grow
[3:54] Speaker 1: and see the impact, see the impact that you have. Right.
[3:57] Speaker 1: My the way I look at it is my my
[3:59] Speaker 1: job is to share as much of the journey that
[4:03] Speaker 1: I've been on and what I've learned, and then help
[4:07] Speaker 1: people figure out how to not make the same mistakes
[4:10] Speaker 1: that I make. And because I'm always so far in front,
[4:13] Speaker 1: I make a tonne of So you get, you get
[4:16] Speaker 1: to watch them, and you get and you get to
[4:18] Speaker 1: learn from them.
[4:19] Speaker 2: So, yeah, this is a rare conversation, Like you don't
[4:21] Speaker 2: really speak too much publicly, you've kind of been behind
[4:24] Speaker 2: the scenes for a long time.
[4:26] Speaker 1: Yeah, but.
[4:29] Speaker 2: We're finally having a conversation. Yeah, it's a lot to
[4:32] Speaker 2: talk about.
[4:33] Speaker 1: So they only took us five years years five years Yeah, scouting, Yeah,
[4:38] Speaker 1: thank you, join us.
[4:39] Speaker 2: Appreciate it. So let's let's start. Let's start at the
[4:42] Speaker 2: beginning Shae Moisture.
[4:45] Speaker 1: We opened up in that journey, opened up the opportunities
[4:52] Speaker 1: for others to come through. You know, when we when
[4:56] Speaker 1: we started back in nineteen ninety one, which is many,
[4:59] Speaker 1: many many years ago, probably for many of your your
[5:04] Speaker 1: your your audience were even born, there was very little
[5:10] Speaker 1: opportunity for black brands and black owned businesses that catered
[5:16] Speaker 1: to black consumers at retail. And so we UH were
[5:23] Speaker 1: really able to pioneer that that journey with some incredible
[5:27] Speaker 1: team members and some some real insight and and understanding
[5:33] Speaker 1: of what the consumer needed, what was missing. You know,
[5:38] Speaker 1: people weren't focused on Black women. They weren't focused on
[5:41] Speaker 1: building products specifically for for her needs. And at the time,
[5:46] Speaker 1: they were primarily only building products that were sort of
[5:49] Speaker 1: like for women with perms, right, and then the maintenance
[5:53] Speaker 1: products that went along with that. And so we we
[5:56] Speaker 1: came in with a focus on natural hair and and
[5:59] Speaker 1: and natural role solutions, and and then went into retail
[6:07] Speaker 1: and transformed how retail engaged with Black women. It was
[6:11] Speaker 1: it was completely unacceptable the way that retailers were treating
[6:18] Speaker 1: Black women as consumers. And so we're very proud of
[6:22] Speaker 1: the work that we did that with people like Joel
[6:24] Speaker 1: and our barn and you know, all the creatives that
[6:30] Speaker 1: that that we're there to help along the way. But
[6:34] Speaker 1: that was the idea, was to transform the way the
[6:38] Speaker 1: retailer treated black consumers.
[6:41] Speaker 3: I'm interested. I've never asked you this, but now I'm
[6:44] Speaker 3: interested in it. We always get, you know, the feedback
[6:47] Speaker 3: you shouldn't mix family and business, And our model is like,
[6:51] Speaker 3: you know, our family works in the business and it's
[6:53] Speaker 3: worked for us because we obviously have established roles.
[6:56] Speaker 1: I wonder what your take is.
[6:58] Speaker 3: Obviously you know, we know the team and obviously your brother,
[7:01] Speaker 3: so you know, what do you what is your thoughts
[7:03] Speaker 3: on family business the dynamics of having both.
[7:07] Speaker 1: Look, I think it's it's certainly one of the most
[7:10] Speaker 1: rewarding things you can do as a business owner is
[7:12] Speaker 1: to build is to build a business with your family.
[7:17] Speaker 1: The joy of building something that is transformative and doing
[7:24] Speaker 1: with people that you care about and that care about you,
[7:27] Speaker 1: there's no there's no you know, it's a great it's
[7:31] Speaker 1: a great thing. It feels it feels really really special
[7:36] Speaker 1: when you're on the journey. But beyond that, I think
[7:41] Speaker 1: about it as it's how you build a community. So
[7:44] Speaker 1: it's it's not hey, let me have my family member
[7:46] Speaker 1: here because they're my family member. It's are you the
[7:50] Speaker 1: best or do you have the opportunity to be the
[7:53] Speaker 1: best at what you can do? Right? And that's a criteria, right,
[7:58] Speaker 1: And if you can grow and you can scale, then
[8:00] Speaker 1: we can rock. But if you can't grow in if
[8:02] Speaker 1: you can't scale, then you can't really be a part
[8:05] Speaker 1: of this. So it's not just hey, because you're a
[8:08] Speaker 1: family member, you you automatically get a free pass, you
[8:11] Speaker 1: get the opportunity, right, because if you're if you're not
[8:15] Speaker 1: able to deliver, then you're just taking up opportunity from
[8:18] Speaker 1: somebody else that can. And the business deserves to have
[8:22] Speaker 1: the best players in it in order for it to
[8:26] Speaker 1: be successful. And it's only through that can you then
[8:29] Speaker 1: leverage the business to drive impact in your community.
[8:33] Speaker 2: So we'll go through this journey as far as like
[8:35] Speaker 2: this this shade moisture because a lot of people might
[8:39] Speaker 2: not be familiar with your business journey.
[8:41] Speaker 1: Right.
[8:42] Speaker 2: So before we bring up the speed, we got to
[8:44] Speaker 2: look back at like how you started. So you start
[8:47] Speaker 2: a company shape butter from my understanding, comes from West Africa. Right, Yes,
[8:51] Speaker 2: it's been a thing for a long time. You introduced
[8:53] Speaker 2: it to America, Are you responsible for that or no?
[8:57] Speaker 1: We are responsible for introducing it broadly and creating scale,
[9:02] Speaker 1: scale at scale. Yes, So people have been bringing shade
[9:06] Speaker 1: to this to the US since you know, forever.
[9:11] Speaker 2: But like as far as how it's shade butter is
[9:13] Speaker 2: a stable now, yes, and not just for black people anybody,
[9:17] Speaker 2: like yes, CBS, any everybody has Shade Butter. Yes, it
[9:21] Speaker 2: wasn't always like that. Yes, are you responsible for that?
[9:24] Speaker 1: We we are. We had a large role to play
[9:27] Speaker 1: in that. I can't say that. I can't say I'm
[9:31] Speaker 1: responsible for He's a humble guy, isn't. Yeah, it wasn't.
[9:37] Speaker 1: You know, shad Shade wasn't at retail when we start,
[9:40] Speaker 1: but it's brought into retail, so you're playing there wasn't
[9:44] Speaker 1: all right?
[9:44] Speaker 2: So how do you?
[9:45] Speaker 3: So?
[9:45] Speaker 2: How do you start the business and scale it to
[9:47] Speaker 2: the point where you can sell it for a lot
[9:48] Speaker 2: of money? Like that this is something that you started
[9:51] Speaker 2: up I believe in, like you know, the living room,
[9:54] Speaker 2: dining room, Like how do you how are you able
[9:56] Speaker 2: to grow it and have the distribution and have the
[10:00] Speaker 2: packaging and have ls stuff?
[10:01] Speaker 1: Yeah, as a start as a street vendor in Harlem, Right,
[10:07] Speaker 1: twenty fifth and fifth. You were selling on a street, yeah,
[10:10] Speaker 1: and twenty fifth and fifth. And the idea was, hey,
[10:17] Speaker 1: there's there's a need here again natural products. And again
[10:25] Speaker 1: remember this is nineteen ninety one, so this this wasn't
[10:30] Speaker 1: a the natural hair product movement as it came to
[10:35] Speaker 1: be known, wasn't wasn't yet known as a movement. However,
[10:40] Speaker 1: there were millions and millions of black women all across
[10:44] Speaker 1: the country that were looking for an alternative to the relaxers. Right.
[10:48] Speaker 1: Their hair was getting damaged, they were actively pursuing healthier lifestyles, right,
[10:56] Speaker 1: and there was no offering for them, right, And and
[11:00] Speaker 1: that's what we offered, right. We offered that in a
[11:03] Speaker 1: in a zip lock bag and we would sell it
[11:07] Speaker 1: by the outs, right, And from there started to supply
[11:12] Speaker 1: other vendors. But the learning was, you know, when somebody
[11:16] Speaker 1: comes to you and says, hey, you know, my grandmother
[11:19] Speaker 1: made this in South Carolina, and she used these ingredients.
[11:23] Speaker 1: She wasn't obviously using shade, but there were all the
[11:26] Speaker 1: different ingredients that they were using to make their homemade remedies, right,
[11:30] Speaker 1: and same thing, whether it's in Alabama or in Georgia
[11:36] Speaker 1: or right in Maryland and all these and so we
[11:41] Speaker 1: started to then go from just the shade, but it'll
[11:44] Speaker 1: incorporate these different ingredients for at our customer's requests. So
[11:48] Speaker 1: customer will come and say, hey, can you I like this,
[11:50] Speaker 1: but can you add some in hooba oil because I
[11:52] Speaker 1: want to accomplish this. Can you add some avocado? I
[11:55] Speaker 1: want to accomplish this, And then we'd make it up
[11:57] Speaker 1: for them and give it them said. It became really
[12:00] Speaker 1: a a lot of customization for our individual customers on
[12:05] Speaker 1: the street. And then we started to realize like, hey,
[12:08] Speaker 1: this is there's there's a real demand here and a
[12:11] Speaker 1: real need here because nobody's really thinking about what she
[12:16] Speaker 1: needs and giving it to her in the way that
[12:18] Speaker 1: she needs it right. And so that's where the that's
[12:21] Speaker 1: where the scale then came from. So we went from
[12:23] Speaker 1: selling on one table to then supplying other vendors, to
[12:28] Speaker 1: then going into beauty supply stores and then to hold foods,
[12:33] Speaker 1: and then to Macy's and then national distribution.
[12:38] Speaker 3: You have partners in the early stages, I wonder what
[12:40] Speaker 3: your strength was, right, Like, we are a company with
[12:44] Speaker 3: three founders.
[12:45] Speaker 1: Each of us have different strengths. What what was your.
[12:48] Speaker 3: Strength at this time in the brand, right? Was it
[12:51] Speaker 3: product management? Was it accounting, was it logistics?
[12:54] Speaker 1: What was you? So my my mother takes care of
[12:59] Speaker 1: the money. That's that's what my mother does. But when
[13:03] Speaker 1: we started, she she was very focused on making sure
[13:09] Speaker 1: that we made the product right right, So that was
[13:13] Speaker 1: that was her that was her thing. My partner, who
[13:16] Speaker 1: was also my college roommate, Nima, was very focused and
[13:22] Speaker 1: very gifted at figuring out how to make it and
[13:25] Speaker 1: how to make it at scale right, And so those
[13:30] Speaker 1: were the those were the beginnings, right, and then my
[13:33] Speaker 1: sister came in and took it to a whole another level,
[13:36] Speaker 1: and then we started to get in other other people
[13:39] Speaker 1: that joined along the way. That brought all these different
[13:42] Speaker 1: talents and all these and all these different skills. But
[13:46] Speaker 1: to your point, I don't know of a business where
[13:50] Speaker 1: there's one person that does it all and can do
[13:54] Speaker 1: it all and then can help that and they can
[13:56] Speaker 1: make that business scale. Most of the time, when you
[13:58] Speaker 1: have that sort of individual, it becomes very difficult for
[14:02] Speaker 1: the business to grow and scale because they have to
[14:05] Speaker 1: have their hands in everything, and that slows down, that
[14:09] Speaker 1: slows down scale that slows down decision making. It takes
[14:15] Speaker 1: away perspective, right Like, one of the things that we're
[14:19] Speaker 1: big on is diversity of thought. I want to hear
[14:23] Speaker 1: what everybody thinks about it, how I feel about it.
[14:26] Speaker 1: Let's make a decision, Let's make a decision quick, and
[14:28] Speaker 1: let's execute against that decision. But getting input from different
[14:32] Speaker 1: perspectives allows you to build things that you wouldn't as
[14:36] Speaker 1: one individual think about, which, when you come to think
[14:39] Speaker 1: about it, was really that one of the core pillars
[14:41] Speaker 1: of our success starting on a table and listening to
[14:45] Speaker 1: women telling you what they want and then going back
[14:48] Speaker 1: and figuring out how to give them what they want.
[14:52] Speaker 2: So when you decided to sell, how did you know
[14:55] Speaker 2: it was the right time to transition?
[15:00] Speaker 1: Well, I had always been focused on building businesses to
[15:06] Speaker 1: reinvest back in our communities, right Like. That was that
[15:10] Speaker 1: was always the focus, right and so even as we
[15:14] Speaker 1: were building Shay, we were doing that at a time
[15:17] Speaker 1: when nobody else was really thinking about If you think
[15:19] Speaker 1: about the cooperatives that we had that were producing the shade,
[15:23] Speaker 1: where we went from just buying Shay to investing in
[15:27] Speaker 1: supply chain with those women in Ghana and in uh
[15:33] Speaker 1: now it's Ghana, it's Ivory Coast, it's uh sire Leon,
[15:39] Speaker 1: it's uh used to be called Ulta Vault upper volta
[15:46] Speaker 1: Uh anyway, it'll come to me. But in all these
[15:50] Speaker 1: we're in like five different countries now where we're we're
[15:55] Speaker 1: investing in their supply chain and and helping those women manufacturer, store, distribute,
[16:03] Speaker 1: so move from become from being sort of gatherers of
[16:07] Speaker 1: nuts to now producing semi finished product, improving the value
[16:12] Speaker 1: of the product that they build so that they're able
[16:14] Speaker 1: to sell out a premium. Because prior to that, what
[16:17] Speaker 1: would happen is that the women like my grandmother would
[16:20] Speaker 1: gather the gather the nuts, and then that the men
[16:24] Speaker 1: would take the nuts and they would go process the
[16:27] Speaker 1: nuts and they would make the premium on the on
[16:32] Speaker 1: the actual button. Right, we sort of say, hey, that's
[16:36] Speaker 1: not fair, that's not the way this should work. And
[16:39] Speaker 1: in Africa it's called women's gold right, and so if
[16:43] Speaker 1: it's women's gold, they should they should benefit from the
[16:45] Speaker 1: gold right. So we started to say, okay, we won't
[16:49] Speaker 1: just buy the the the finished products here. What we're
[16:53] Speaker 1: going to from from these sort of wholesalers. What we're
[16:56] Speaker 1: going to do is We're going to go to the
[16:57] Speaker 1: to the very beginning of the pyramid. We're going to
[16:59] Speaker 1: work with the women. We're going to train them. We're
[17:02] Speaker 1: going to provide equipment, We're going to provide safety, We're
[17:06] Speaker 1: going to provide infrastructure. We're going to build processing facilities.
[17:11] Speaker 1: We're going to invest in processing facilities alongside them so
[17:15] Speaker 1: that they can produce the finished product, they can store it,
[17:18] Speaker 1: they can have the capital to buy the to buy
[17:21] Speaker 1: the supply, and then we buy from them to finish,
[17:25] Speaker 1: to finish aye better. Right, And that program has now
[17:29] Speaker 1: impacted hundreds of thousands of points.
[17:32] Speaker 3: So the idea of selling right, like because alluding to
[17:36] Speaker 3: that part and I'm going to shit as well knowing
[17:40] Speaker 3: when to do it. But also I'm thinking back to
[17:42] Speaker 3: the time when it happened, when you sell, what was
[17:45] Speaker 3: the environment, right, because we're looking at now we see
[17:48] Speaker 3: companies sell. There's always critique, there's negative critique. I think
[17:53] Speaker 3: it has a lot to attribute to the lack of
[17:56] Speaker 3: education around it. I guess when you were in this process,
[18:00] Speaker 3: again knowing the time and of it, but was there
[18:03] Speaker 3: criticism at the time of yourself or like what was it?
[18:06] Speaker 1: Yeah, when we when we saw there was it was
[18:08] Speaker 1: tremendous criticism because it was it was like it was
[18:11] Speaker 1: like the first of it's the first of its of
[18:14] Speaker 1: its kind and of its size. I think before that
[18:16] Speaker 1: only BT had gotten that kind of recognition or got
[18:20] Speaker 1: gotten that kind of scale. And then the recognition around
[18:24] Speaker 1: around the exit and and there were the concerns. But
[18:27] Speaker 1: what I was alluding to and telling that story about
[18:29] Speaker 1: the supply chain was our business was built differently. Our
[18:33] Speaker 1: business was built so that we could invest back into
[18:36] Speaker 1: this community. So that was that was the first place
[18:39] Speaker 1: that we that we did that. Right, then we started
[18:41] Speaker 1: to recognize and realizing, hey, look there's all these there's
[18:45] Speaker 1: all these black women that are buying our product, right
[18:49] Speaker 1: and the same issues that those women in Africa have
[18:53] Speaker 1: are the same issues that black American women have here.
[18:58] Speaker 1: There's no access to capital for them. If they have
[19:00] Speaker 1: ideas of businesses that they want to run, there's nobody,
[19:04] Speaker 1: there's nobody providing them that capital. And remember now this
[19:07] Speaker 1: is back in the nineties, so it was even it
[19:09] Speaker 1: was even more foreign than it is today. Right, So
[19:13] Speaker 1: there was nobody, there was nobody that was really supporting
[19:16] Speaker 1: our community of women entrepreneurs in an organized way. So
[19:23] Speaker 1: we then said, Okay, what we're going to do is,
[19:25] Speaker 1: as we build this business, we're going to take ten
[19:28] Speaker 1: percent of our top line revenue against the brands that
[19:31] Speaker 1: we're putting through here, right, and we're going to invest
[19:34] Speaker 1: that back in African American women and in entrepreneurs in
[19:41] Speaker 1: their communities, right. And so that's what we started to do.
[19:44] Speaker 1: So we would go to we would go sell a
[19:46] Speaker 1: product to whatever retailer and say it was Walmart or
[19:50] Speaker 1: Target or CBS or whoever, and we say to them, Okay,
[19:54] Speaker 1: when we get on shelf, we're going to take ten
[19:56] Speaker 1: percent of this revenue. We're going to put it right
[19:58] Speaker 1: on the package so that people, no, we're going to
[20:00] Speaker 1: take tempests into this revenue, and we're going to go
[20:02] Speaker 1: invest it in these places. Right. So the first place
[20:06] Speaker 1: that we did that was around education. So we partnered
[20:09] Speaker 1: with with the Tuch School of School of Business and said, hey,
[20:15] Speaker 1: we want to build a program. They they already had
[20:18] Speaker 1: a an executive ED program, and we said, we want
[20:24] Speaker 1: to partner with you on this executive program, but we
[20:27] Speaker 1: want you to tailor it to the needs of black
[20:30] Speaker 1: women entrepreneurs, right. And so we worked with them to
[20:34] Speaker 1: develop that program. Right today, we've probably i'd lose try
[20:38] Speaker 1: to probably three four hundred women have gone through that
[20:42] Speaker 1: program today and that program still runs as we speak today.
[20:46] Speaker 1: So the idea there was, hey, we can help our
[20:53] Speaker 1: consumers and our community actually be better partners, better customers.
[21:02] Speaker 1: They can grow, they can scale, they can run their businesses,
[21:04] Speaker 1: they can do they can do these things, and so
[21:07] Speaker 1: we focus very heavily on that. But they would come
[21:10] Speaker 1: out of these programs and we all have heard this
[21:14] Speaker 1: I don't know how many times before, but they would
[21:17] Speaker 1: come out of these programs and be like, this is fantastic.
[21:22] Speaker 1: I now have the Tuck Network. I've now met all
[21:25] Speaker 1: these incredible black women that you guys have put through
[21:27] Speaker 1: this program. We have tons of ideas. My business is.
[21:31] Speaker 1: I can't wait to get back to my business. The
[21:33] Speaker 1: only problem is, now I know all this stuff. I
[21:35] Speaker 1: got no money, right, I can't go to the bank
[21:39] Speaker 1: and get the loan. All I need is twenty five
[21:43] Speaker 1: thirty thousand dollars right, And back then those numbers were
[21:47] Speaker 1: real right in helping and helping them get their businesses
[21:50] Speaker 1: off the ground. So we then started to rethink it
[21:53] Speaker 1: and say, you know this education piece. This is great, right, Like,
[21:57] Speaker 1: we're creating like a real entrepreneurial class of women here,
[22:02] Speaker 1: but they can't run their businesses because nobody will invest
[22:07] Speaker 1: in them. So we then said, okay, as the business grows,
[22:11] Speaker 1: we're going to continue to investment, not just in the education.
[22:14] Speaker 1: We're not going to take it up to invest in
[22:16] Speaker 1: them so they can run there, they can they can
[22:19] Speaker 1: develop and grow their businesses. So as we started to
[22:22] Speaker 1: do that, then we started to recognize how much greater
[22:25] Speaker 1: the need was than what it was that we even
[22:29] Speaker 1: thought when we started it, which then started to get
[22:32] Speaker 1: to thinking, well, we've built we've not built value in
[22:35] Speaker 1: this business, right, We've built significant value here. We need
[22:39] Speaker 1: to unlock that value so we can go and continue
[22:43] Speaker 1: this work of building out an economic infrastructure for the
[22:46] Speaker 1: women in our in our in our communities. Right. And
[22:49] Speaker 1: so that's that was the impetus of that thinking. So
[22:53] Speaker 1: we started to think about it that way and say, okay,
[22:56] Speaker 1: if we do this, that now allows us to go
[23:00] Speaker 1: create twenty shame oistures, right to go to go support
[23:04] Speaker 1: twenty shame oistures, and and how many lives can that
[23:09] Speaker 1: transform and and change? And so that was that was
[23:13] Speaker 1: that was the impetus for us. It hadn't been done before,
[23:22] Speaker 1: certainly not at that scale, right, And because of the
[23:24] Speaker 1: scale it was done at, it became very public. You know,
[23:27] Speaker 1: we're not we're not very public, but because of that,
[23:30] Speaker 1: it became it became very public. And there were sort
[23:34] Speaker 1: of three sides to it, right. It was the one
[23:37] Speaker 1: side of, well, you know they're selling out right, they've
[23:42] Speaker 1: they've they've sold out right, you build something and then
[23:46] Speaker 1: and then they sold that and and we should we
[23:48] Speaker 1: should probe what that means. Right. Then the the other
[23:52] Speaker 1: side of it was great, this is fantastic because we
[23:57] Speaker 1: don't see we don't see this. That was not as
[24:00] Speaker 1: loud as the you so you saw that piece, right,
[24:04] Speaker 1: And then there was the there was the yeah, I
[24:07] Speaker 1: hear what you say you're gonna go do, but I
[24:09] Speaker 1: don't believe it. Right, This is this is marketing, this
[24:13] Speaker 1: is this is this is talk. Right. And so we
[24:18] Speaker 1: actually did what we said we were going to do,
[24:19] Speaker 1: and we can we continue we continue to do it.
[24:23] Speaker 1: And for those that were excited and motivated and inspired
[24:28] Speaker 1: by it, I think we saw we saw a huge
[24:33] Speaker 1: uptake in businesses that were then thinking about hey, how
[24:41] Speaker 1: do we how do we become multi generational? Right? How
[24:44] Speaker 1: do we how do we come how do we create scale? Right?
[24:48] Speaker 1: So here's a pathway to scale, like like Shaane Morshure
[24:53] Speaker 1: has shown us how you can scale. And so you
[24:56] Speaker 1: saw then saw a ton of companies starting to do that,
[24:58] Speaker 1: and we can unpack that as well. And then there's
[25:02] Speaker 1: still the contingent that was very skeptical, right, and and
[25:08] Speaker 1: and I think in a lot of ways had been
[25:14] Speaker 1: I had been disappointed so many times before right around
[25:19] Speaker 1: products that they thought, hey, you know when when when
[25:23] Speaker 1: this company was doing this, they were focused. I mean
[25:25] Speaker 1: they went watering down the products. Product. Something change, something changed,
[25:30] Speaker 1: And that's not necessarily the case. I'm not here to
[25:33] Speaker 1: say that you know, things don't change over time, because
[25:36] Speaker 1: they do. But there's a there's a physiological change that
[25:41] Speaker 1: happens in the human body. Right, So when you're twenty two,
[25:47] Speaker 1: where your hair needs are are very different from after
[25:50] Speaker 1: you've had a baby, and you know you've you've gone
[25:53] Speaker 1: through certain life stages and then you move on, you
[25:55] Speaker 1: go on, and so then it's so so part of
[25:58] Speaker 1: that is the journey of the human being themselves to say, hey, oh, No,
[26:02] Speaker 1: this changed because it's not working the way that it was.
[26:04] Speaker 1: And it doesn't necessarily mean that the product change. The
[26:08] Speaker 1: human changed, right, And in some cases when you do
[26:11] Speaker 1: sell to these companies and that in some cases, in
[26:14] Speaker 1: most cases, they're finding ways to maximize their return. So
[26:19] Speaker 1: they're saying, Okay, were this company, we have this scale,
[26:23] Speaker 1: we can change this, change that, and we can, and
[26:27] Speaker 1: we can, and we can get a bigger return.
[26:29] Speaker 3: We changed this ingredient might cost as much, we get
[26:32] Speaker 3: more revenue if we add this one.
[26:34] Speaker 2: So let's have this conversation so that there's a three
[26:37] Speaker 2: pound Let's have this conversation a very black and white format.
[26:43] Speaker 2: There's a narrative that when black businesses sell their company
[26:46] Speaker 2: that they've sold out, right, Yeah, and you've been you've
[26:49] Speaker 2: sold the company, but you've also invested in a lot
[26:51] Speaker 2: of companies that have been purchased.
[26:54] Speaker 1: And sold more companies. Okay, yeah, meel Mayo Mayo. That
[26:59] Speaker 1: was someuming.
[27:00] Speaker 2: That was a recent one that was very you know,
[27:03] Speaker 2: being on Twitter, but an incredible couple of right money,
[27:08] Speaker 2: the most incredible definitely. So let's really examine this on
[27:17] Speaker 2: several different levels, right, Like the idea that we we
[27:24] Speaker 2: can never have generational wealth because we always sell out.
[27:27] Speaker 2: You don't see, that's not how generational wealth is created.
[27:31] Speaker 2: But I'm explaining each one, you know, all right, So
[27:33] Speaker 2: that's the first GOT three.
[27:34] Speaker 1: I'm a little passionate about that. That's the pain point.
[27:37] Speaker 2: That's the first one. That's the first one. That's the
[27:39] Speaker 2: first critique is that how can we ever have generational
[27:42] Speaker 2: wealth if we if we're selling out, we don't have
[27:44] Speaker 2: anything to pass down with your critiques to.
[27:46] Speaker 1: That, Well, look, I think there's history is littered with
[27:59] Speaker 1: black owned businesses that thought that way, waited too late
[28:08] Speaker 1: to take advantage of the wealth that they had created, right,
[28:12] Speaker 1: and are no longer around. Right, And they're not around
[28:15] Speaker 1: for a whole host of reasons. Right. Market dynamics change.
[28:19] Speaker 1: The biggest part of this, and the common thread is,
[28:22] Speaker 1: and we'll talk about this hopefully a little bit later,
[28:25] Speaker 1: the grace that is not given to the black entrepreneur, right,
[28:30] Speaker 1: which then takes away the opportunities that the black entrepreneur
[28:37] Speaker 1: could earn. Right, So most of these companies don't have
[28:46] Speaker 1: access to capital. To thirty thousand dollars, right, what about
[28:54] Speaker 1: to thirty million dollars? Right? There's probably ten fifteen black
[29:03] Speaker 1: entrepreneurs and businesses that you can that you can point
[29:06] Speaker 1: to that have raised more than fifty million dollars. Even
[29:09] Speaker 1: if that I'd be surprised, right. But the challenge with
[29:16] Speaker 1: that is that, say you were building something in the
[29:19] Speaker 1: in the seventies, and there's plenty of examples. There were great,
[29:23] Speaker 1: great brands in the seventies, Brown and Brothers, Luster Products,
[29:33] Speaker 1: Johnson Products, TCB like you can go on and on right,
[29:37] Speaker 1: And these these brands our mothers and grandmothers grew up
[29:41] Speaker 1: on right. Many of them had the same idea of
[29:47] Speaker 1: I'm going to pass this down from one generation to
[29:52] Speaker 1: the next, right, and they did that. And when demands change,
[30:00] Speaker 1: when tastes change, not all kids are equipped to run businesses.
[30:05] Speaker 1: Just because I had this child doesn't mean that this
[30:08] Speaker 1: child can now do the things that I did. And
[30:11] Speaker 1: is it even fair to put that burden on a
[30:13] Speaker 1: kid whose true calling may have been to be a doctor, right,
[30:19] Speaker 1: or to play a sport or to But now you
[30:22] Speaker 1: have to be tied to this business because we created
[30:25] Speaker 1: and this is how the family survives. Right. Many of
[30:30] Speaker 1: those businesses made it from one generation into the second
[30:36] Speaker 1: generation and then failed, right, Not necessarily not just because hey,
[30:42] Speaker 1: the second generation can do it. But it's a multitude
[30:45] Speaker 1: of things. Let's say the second generation was exceptionally running
[30:48] Speaker 1: the business. Right. Now you've built a business and this
[30:52] Speaker 1: was one of the things that kept me up at night.
[30:55] Speaker 1: Now you've built a business that's gone and taken share
[30:59] Speaker 1: away from a multinational corporation that believes that they own
[31:06] Speaker 1: that shelf space, right, and who's who's who's whose infrastructure
[31:11] Speaker 1: is set up to compete to maintain that shelf space
[31:15] Speaker 1: against competitors that have the same scale, in the same reach, right,
[31:20] Speaker 1: that have the same resources, the same the same paths
[31:24] Speaker 1: to market. Right. That's how they're set up. I'm not
[31:27] Speaker 1: saying they sit down and think, oh, here's this small brand,
[31:30] Speaker 1: let me go kill it. But their machine is built
[31:33] Speaker 1: to either eat or kill anything that comes on that
[31:38] Speaker 1: on that shelf space. So now I'm generation two. I've
[31:42] Speaker 1: now broken in. We'll use a brand like RS organic
[31:47] Speaker 1: Roots Stimulator. Perfect example. Organic Roots Stimulator came out of
[31:53] Speaker 1: soft Sheen Carson and Softing Carson built a beautiful brand.
[31:59] Speaker 1: They actually sold that brand to Laurel. They were one
[32:01] Speaker 1: of the first ones to sell to Lrel. I mean
[32:04] Speaker 1: is to sell to a multinational, right, and the Sun
[32:12] Speaker 1: started up a second brand called RS Organic Root Stimulator, right,
[32:16] Speaker 1: and it took off. Right. So Gary obviously highly one
[32:23] Speaker 1: of the most competent people I've ever met. Right, But
[32:26] Speaker 1: now you've got to go compete against Laoreel who owns Softsheet, right,
[32:35] Speaker 1: or you've got to go compete against Panteen, Or you
[32:39] Speaker 1: got to go and compete against Cream of Nature or
[32:43] Speaker 1: Revlon or whomever it is. Right. And they have access
[32:49] Speaker 1: to capital, they have the infrastructure to produce at scale.
[32:52] Speaker 1: They've been doing it for you know, forty fifty some
[32:56] Speaker 1: of them one hundreds of years. If you look at
[32:58] Speaker 1: a p ANDNG, it's like hundreds of years. And so
[33:01] Speaker 1: how do you compete against that when you can't go
[33:05] Speaker 1: to your local bank and get a twenty million dollar loan, right,
[33:09] Speaker 1: or go to a fund and get a fifty million
[33:14] Speaker 1: dollar investment to go scale a business like that, Right,
[33:19] Speaker 1: So you run into these structural challenges. Right. So you
[33:25] Speaker 1: have two things. You have, Hey, does the next generation
[33:27] Speaker 1: actually want to do it? And if the next generation
[33:29] Speaker 1: can actually do it, are they going to have access
[33:32] Speaker 1: to the resources in the capitol to do it? And
[33:35] Speaker 1: when you come from our community. If you've built a
[33:39] Speaker 1: business that's doing ten million dollars a year, twenty million
[33:42] Speaker 1: dollars a year, thirty million dollars a year, that oftentimes
[33:46] Speaker 1: is probably the largest black owned business in your neighborhood,
[33:49] Speaker 1: in your community, maybe even in your state. Right. And
[33:54] Speaker 1: so as a community we look at it and say, wow,
[33:56] Speaker 1: they're doing so well, and they're so you know, they
[34:00] Speaker 1: they've gotten so big. But to the broader marketplace, that says, hey,
[34:04] Speaker 1: you guys have unlocked something here that is taking away
[34:07] Speaker 1: shelf space from my business. I need to either acquire it,
[34:12] Speaker 1: or I need to knock it off, or I somehow
[34:15] Speaker 1: need to compete against it, because that's how we survive.
[34:20] Speaker 1: And so you end up now in an environment where
[34:23] Speaker 1: you may be a big fish in our world, but
[34:28] Speaker 1: when you hit the when you hit the larger world,
[34:31] Speaker 1: it's it's a much it's a much different game, and
[34:33] Speaker 1: it becomes much much harder for these companies, for our
[34:37] Speaker 1: companies to compete. And then the other problem that we
[34:42] Speaker 1: have is talent. Right, So, if you think about what
[34:48] Speaker 1: it takes to become a an executive inside of a
[34:58] Speaker 1: of a corporation, right, the investment in your education, right,
[35:04] Speaker 1: the student loans that you have, the uh, the investment
[35:10] Speaker 1: in self development, the things that you have to go
[35:13] Speaker 1: through in those in those organizations, because many places you
[35:17] Speaker 1: don't feel a sense of belonging, you don't have the
[35:21] Speaker 1: same levels of mentorship, it's not the same access to
[35:25] Speaker 1: to getting pulled up. So you're you're you're clawing your
[35:28] Speaker 1: way up every day. Right, you have to be, as
[35:30] Speaker 1: our parents used to tell us, you got to be
[35:32] Speaker 1: six times as good as the next guy just to
[35:35] Speaker 1: get to first base, right, Like, you've got to literally
[35:38] Speaker 1: be that much better. Right. And then you think, well,
[35:45] Speaker 1: I'd love to go work for a block owned business, right,
[35:50] Speaker 1: And you stop to think about it and realize, hey, yeah,
[35:53] Speaker 1: that business may not be able to get the capital
[35:56] Speaker 1: that is going to take to get from point A
[35:58] Speaker 1: to point B. So now what I've done is I've
[36:01] Speaker 1: I'm going to take a risk on all that I've
[36:05] Speaker 1: built here, on all of the uh the cost of
[36:11] Speaker 1: my education. Right, I now have two kids that I've
[36:15] Speaker 1: got to put through through college or or or other
[36:19] Speaker 1: other sort of familiar obligations. And so then the really
[36:25] Speaker 1: great talent starts to think, well, that's just too much
[36:29] Speaker 1: of a risk because I don't know if that company
[36:32] Speaker 1: can survive, right, I don't know if they can get
[36:34] Speaker 1: the capital that they need. And we're seeing that all
[36:37] Speaker 1: around us today. Right, So that's that's that's that's the
[36:40] Speaker 1: other thing that goes into that into that mindset when
[36:43] Speaker 1: you talk about going from one generation to the next, right,
[36:46] Speaker 1: it's like how do how do you do it? And
[36:49] Speaker 1: there's a reason that so few are able to do it?
[36:53] Speaker 2: So and then also talk about like how public opendon
[36:58] Speaker 2: can actually sway even the future valuations of a company,
[37:02] Speaker 2: Like if somebody's getting targeted on Twitter, like the next
[37:05] Speaker 2: person that sells their company, the company that purchases that
[37:09] Speaker 2: is going to say, Okay, well I'm gonna have to
[37:12] Speaker 2: buy it at a discount because I know that there's
[37:14] Speaker 2: gonna be backlash. Yeah, right, So that's actually hurting black founders.
[37:20] Speaker 2: It hurts, It hurts trumental.
[37:21] Speaker 1: It doesn't just hurt black founders, it hurts the black
[37:24] Speaker 1: community period because I think what we don't we don't
[37:29] Speaker 1: truly one of the things to really appreciate and understand
[37:35] Speaker 1: is what impact can a business or does a business
[37:39] Speaker 1: like Mael have on their community in Indiana? Right, the
[37:47] Speaker 1: jobs that they provide. And it's not just the jobs
[37:50] Speaker 1: that they provide, and and and and the income that
[37:54] Speaker 1: they make, but it's also that you're in a safe,
[37:56] Speaker 1: comfortable environment to work in, right, And that is that
[38:01] Speaker 1: is priceless, Right. But I think what to getting back
[38:07] Speaker 1: to your point, I think today many entrepreneurs a driving
[38:13] Speaker 1: factor and why they want to sell is because they're afraid, right,
[38:20] Speaker 1: They're afraid the things that I just talk about. Am
[38:23] Speaker 1: I going to be able to get the capital to continue?
[38:26] Speaker 1: Am I going to be Is the market going to
[38:29] Speaker 1: change on me? And I'm not going to be able
[38:32] Speaker 1: to react? Am I going to be able to get
[38:34] Speaker 1: the type of talent support that I need to run this?
[38:39] Speaker 1: And more than anything else, if my community turns on me,
[38:44] Speaker 1: am I going to be able to stay in business? Right?
[38:46] Speaker 1: And recently we've seen examples of where the community turns
[38:51] Speaker 1: and the business can't recover or the individual can't recover,
[38:55] Speaker 1: therefore the business can't recover, right, And so I think
[38:59] Speaker 1: you you put those you put those factors in there,
[39:02] Speaker 1: and it's a very very it's a very very harsh
[39:07] Speaker 1: environment for black entrepreneurs, right because the places that you
[39:10] Speaker 1: should find comfort oftentimes you don't you don't get that comfort, right,
[39:15] Speaker 1: you don't get that grace, you don't get that you
[39:18] Speaker 1: don't get that forgiveness, right, and you don't have the
[39:22] Speaker 1: access to the things that can help solve the problem. Right.
[39:26] Speaker 1: So it's it's a double it's a double edged sword.
[39:29] Speaker 1: But I believe a lot of I mean, when we
[39:31] Speaker 1: I give you the reasons why we did what we did,
[39:35] Speaker 1: and we caught a lot of backlash for for selling, right,
[39:40] Speaker 1: and when we were selling the business, were very clear
[39:43] Speaker 1: and saying we're going to unlock wealth to invest in
[39:50] Speaker 1: in in black businesses. And I think to date we've
[39:53] Speaker 1: probably invested more in black businesses than just about any
[39:59] Speaker 1: fund out there. There you're up there.
[40:01] Speaker 3: I mean, the fear sounds like it comes from the
[40:05] Speaker 3: grace conversation, right, or the lack thereof grace conversation, because
[40:11] Speaker 3: we're not afforded the ability to make a mistake because
[40:14] Speaker 3: of that, if we do, what will happen? Right, or
[40:17] Speaker 3: I might sell because I'm at the point where I
[40:20] Speaker 3: haven't made the mistake. So let me get out while
[40:22] Speaker 3: in my head, Yeah, what what I mean, You've You've
[40:25] Speaker 3: invested in a lot of businesses you've seen them not
[40:28] Speaker 3: be afforded that lack of grace. What do you say
[40:30] Speaker 3: to both populations, the people who are not extending it
[40:35] Speaker 3: into the entrepreneur who's actually living in it.
[40:38] Speaker 1: Yeah, Look, I think I think it's where we're getting
[40:44] Speaker 1: to a place in our society where we're forgetting that
[40:49] Speaker 1: the only way our ancestors got through this environment was
[40:52] Speaker 1: by loving each other, right, and and that's the only way.
[40:56] Speaker 1: That's that's and that's that's what we need to that's
[40:59] Speaker 1: what we need to stick with, right. It's we can
[41:02] Speaker 1: be we can be critical, right, especially if that is
[41:11] Speaker 1: to help you get better. There's there's no there's no
[41:15] Speaker 1: I mean I take it all the time. I enjoy
[41:19] Speaker 1: learning and saying hey, oh I missed that, Oh we
[41:22] Speaker 1: could have done that better, Oh we should do this.
[41:25] Speaker 1: This is differently, right, That's different from when there's sort
[41:31] Speaker 1: of this it's it's so venomous that you can't see
[41:35] Speaker 1: past it that that you then the message gets lost, right,
[41:38] Speaker 1: and now it's it's it's fight or flight, and you
[41:40] Speaker 1: get you get defensive and and you lose it. I
[41:43] Speaker 1: think that there's a way for us to help each
[41:46] Speaker 1: other get better through through love and care and hard conversations. Right,
[41:53] Speaker 1: You've got to have the hard conversations, but it's not
[41:57] Speaker 1: always this sort of black and white thing, right. So
[42:02] Speaker 1: that so that's that's that's the way that there's like.
[42:07] Speaker 3: I guess it's a reconciliation moment, right, Like there must
[42:10] Speaker 3: be internal healing because the criticism a lot of times, yeah,
[42:14] Speaker 3: it can be fair and you can learn from it,
[42:16] Speaker 3: but when it's vile and there's no idea of hey,
[42:20] Speaker 3: if that gets torn down, you know, there's not not
[42:23] Speaker 3: anything coming after it.
[42:25] Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't do you.
[42:26] Speaker 3: I mean, I feel like that's not part of the
[42:28] Speaker 3: consciousness of that population that is creating that.
[42:32] Speaker 1: What are your thoughts? I mean, I I think it's
[42:37] Speaker 1: I think for people that say that or that that
[42:40] Speaker 1: that behave that way, I don't think they understand how
[42:45] Speaker 1: hard it is to actually build these things, right, And
[42:53] Speaker 1: even if they understand how hard it is to build it,
[42:58] Speaker 1: it is it is imperative that you still try to
[43:03] Speaker 1: preserve what it is that's been built. Right. There's you
[43:08] Speaker 1: don't need to burn this down to go build something else.
[43:11] Speaker 1: I look around at other communities, I look around in
[43:13] Speaker 1: other places. That's not what I see happening, right, And
[43:18] Speaker 1: so it used to be that we could take comfort
[43:22] Speaker 1: and solace, we can retreat back inside, get our strength,
[43:27] Speaker 1: and then go back out and fight. Right, if we
[43:30] Speaker 1: get to a place of where, you know, there's nowhere
[43:34] Speaker 1: for me to retreat, right, there's there's no where, there's
[43:37] Speaker 1: nowhere to take solace, there's no way to regroup, there's
[43:39] Speaker 1: no way to to recuperate. Right, there's no safe environment.
[43:44] Speaker 1: Because the community that I've built is Look, I've I've
[43:48] Speaker 1: met tons of entrepreneurs, We've invested in tons of them.
[43:51] Speaker 1: We spend a ton of time with them, like like
[43:54] Speaker 1: we do with each other, talking about hard things, talking
[43:57] Speaker 1: about challenges, how do we work together, how do we
[44:00] Speaker 1: how do we figure this out? How do we how
[44:02] Speaker 1: do we move forward? If that's not what we're fostering,
[44:05] Speaker 1: then we've got no chance.
[44:08] Speaker 2: So but yeah, more like let's let's break this down
[44:12] Speaker 2: a little bit more as far as the grace that
[44:14] Speaker 2: black businesses are not given because a company like Meta,
[44:17] Speaker 2: you know, has billion dollar lossuit where they were actually
[44:20] Speaker 2: selling people's data and nobody actually unstalled Instagram, Yeah, or
[44:27] Speaker 2: you know Apple, you know has glitches every single iPhone
[44:31] Speaker 2: that comes out right and purposely messed it up. As
[44:34] Speaker 2: far as for Android users, there's not a mass to
[44:37] Speaker 2: get rid of iPhones. When Mercedes Benz has a recall,
[44:40] Speaker 2: nobody stops buying Mercedes bins. But it's like a T
[44:45] Speaker 2: shirt comes three weeks late, and it's like you make
[44:49] Speaker 2: a TikTok video to actually bash the company and say
[44:53] Speaker 2: how poor And this is why you don't buy from
[44:54] Speaker 2: black businesses because black people don't know how to handle
[44:58] Speaker 2: business the right way. So like explain that, because that's
[45:07] Speaker 2: that's the level of not only grace that's not given,
[45:10] Speaker 2: but it's it's it's campaigns that's run out of the
[45:16] Speaker 2: enjoyment of seeing people fail when that same energy is
[45:20] Speaker 2: never put into organizations and companies that have historically made
[45:26] Speaker 2: ten times worse of a of a of a blunder,
[45:30] Speaker 2: yeah than somebody mismanaging, you know, things on a small
[45:35] Speaker 2: business level.
[45:37] Speaker 1: Yeah. Look, I I don't know what the solution is,
[45:41] Speaker 1: but I can tell you there's a lot of mistrust
[45:48] Speaker 1: in our community, and some of it earned and some
[45:54] Speaker 1: of it not right. But the way that I choose
[45:59] Speaker 1: to live, and I I think the way that is
[46:04] Speaker 1: grace is that word is that word grace because the
[46:08] Speaker 1: challenges that those businesses are facing and those individuals that
[46:13] Speaker 1: are running those businesses are facing just to get that
[46:17] Speaker 1: product on the market that you're so proud to see
[46:20] Speaker 1: when you see it, like when you see that T
[46:22] Speaker 1: shirt or you see that dress, or you see that scar,
[46:25] Speaker 1: or you see that shampoo or that like the pride
[46:29] Speaker 1: that you feel because you know how hard it is
[46:31] Speaker 1: to get it there. Right, the grace has to be
[46:36] Speaker 1: come in to help us sustain it, you know, it
[46:40] Speaker 1: has to come in to help us pick it up
[46:42] Speaker 1: and grow it right, and not when it becomes successful.
[46:46] Speaker 1: You know, just because somebody's business gets successful doesn't mean
[46:50] Speaker 1: that they stop caring about the people that they've always
[46:52] Speaker 1: cared about. Doesn't mean that they stop wanting to solve
[46:55] Speaker 1: the problems that they're solving right now, dealing at a
[47:01] Speaker 1: whole other level, what a whole other set of problems
[47:04] Speaker 1: that they haven't dealt with before, and that they may
[47:08] Speaker 1: not have a network around them that has dealt with
[47:10] Speaker 1: it before, So they may not have the good fortune
[47:14] Speaker 1: of you being able to pick up the phone and
[47:15] Speaker 1: call me and say, hey, rich here's what I'm dealing with.
[47:19] Speaker 1: How do we how have you solved it right? How
[47:20] Speaker 1: do you get to it? They may not have that
[47:23] Speaker 1: around them, right, They may not have that person in
[47:26] Speaker 1: their organization that has run a business like this somewhere
[47:31] Speaker 1: else and has that expertise because of what I said
[47:33] Speaker 1: earlier is the risk of people coming over and that
[47:36] Speaker 1: gets that becomes a very lonely place, right. So now
[47:40] Speaker 1: you're seeing women saying and men saying, hey, you know what,
[47:45] Speaker 1: I'm just going to shut it down. I'm just I'm
[47:47] Speaker 1: just gonna pause right because I can't. I can't do it.
[47:52] Speaker 1: And that's not what our community wants. That's very detrimental
[47:58] Speaker 1: to our to our community actually out of time where
[48:02] Speaker 1: we're under pressure from. So like we're talking about unemployment
[48:08] Speaker 1: rate is seven point seven percent for black people right now, right,
[48:13] Speaker 1: that's double right, what it is for the white community.
[48:19] Speaker 1: Right six hundred seven hundred thousand women losing their jobs,
[48:25] Speaker 1: are being displaced from their jobs. That's real economic pressure
[48:28] Speaker 1: that we're feeling. Right between the unemployment, the direct loss
[48:33] Speaker 1: of DII means that the contracts that you were able
[48:36] Speaker 1: to go bid for on a on a on a
[48:39] Speaker 1: more even playing field, you can no longer bid for
[48:42] Speaker 1: in a more even playing field. And that's got nothing
[48:44] Speaker 1: to do with race. It's got to do with economics.
[48:46] Speaker 1: If I don't have the capital to put the presentation together,
[48:50] Speaker 1: to drive the programs to build the infrastructure, I'm not
[48:54] Speaker 1: going to be able to I'm not going to be
[48:55] Speaker 1: able to win that. Right. Then you add in their
[48:58] Speaker 1: you know, healthcare, right, and the cost of what that is.
[49:01] Speaker 1: So you take a population that has a high unemployment
[49:05] Speaker 1: rate that's now losing its businesses. You add in that
[49:12] Speaker 1: we're disproportionately impacted by these health issues. Right. So now
[49:17] Speaker 1: you know every time I got is going to just
[49:20] Speaker 1: helping me stay alive or taking care of my mother,
[49:23] Speaker 1: or taking care of my father. And you start to
[49:25] Speaker 1: add these things together, and we're ending up in a
[49:29] Speaker 1: place of extreme economic destabilization.
[49:33] Speaker 3: Right.
[49:34] Speaker 1: And so all of that coming together puts a lot
[49:37] Speaker 1: of pressure not just on not just on the business,
[49:41] Speaker 1: but on the individuals.
[49:42] Speaker 3: Is that forecast a population that is predominantly going to
[49:49] Speaker 3: shy away from entrepreneurship careers. We had a conversation about
[49:53] Speaker 3: AI and the impact that it's going to happen. How
[49:56] Speaker 3: at some point everybody's going to have to have an
[49:58] Speaker 3: entrepreneurial journey based on that, it feels like, No, that
[50:03] Speaker 3: doesn't seem like it's going to be the path. In fact,
[50:05] Speaker 3: there's going to be more of us that are going
[50:07] Speaker 3: to be employees after employee after employee.
[50:10] Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean that's that's where we're headed unless
[50:14] Speaker 1: we course correct, right, and we've got a course correct
[50:18] Speaker 1: internally right amongst ourselves and within our community, so that
[50:23] Speaker 1: we can go out right and go and go fight
[50:26] Speaker 1: for these things to go go out and fight to
[50:28] Speaker 1: get the capitol, go out and fight to get the
[50:30] Speaker 1: shelf space, go out and fight right like we've we've
[50:33] Speaker 1: got to fix that internally. And quite frankly, you know,
[50:38] Speaker 1: I don't believe that this is an overwhelming part of
[50:45] Speaker 1: our community. I think it's a small part of it,
[50:48] Speaker 1: But I think it's a loud part, right, and so
[50:50] Speaker 1: it becomes something that you you you can't get away from.
[50:54] Speaker 1: But there's also lessons to be learned in there, right.
[50:58] Speaker 1: It's it's not to say, hey that these things don't matter,
[51:01] Speaker 1: that there's lessons to be learned in there.
[51:03] Speaker 2: Well, it's the vocal, vocal minority of us, yeah, but
[51:07] Speaker 2: I mean as far as the but it's it's harmful
[51:09] Speaker 2: no for sure. Even that, yeah, mentioned the more employees.
[51:15] Speaker 2: I don't know if we're can have more employees because unemployment.
[51:17] Speaker 2: To talk about that, talk about the disproportion as far
[51:22] Speaker 2: as black unemployment white unemployment, how alarming that is? How
[51:26] Speaker 2: you know your thoughts on that?
[51:28] Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, I mean it's it's the gap is growing
[51:32] Speaker 1: wider right right now, it's it's two x plus, right,
[51:36] Speaker 1: and that that gap is growing wider.
[51:38] Speaker 2: So there's two times more black people that's unemployed than
[51:41] Speaker 2: white people as a percentage. Yet as a percentage, it's
[51:44] Speaker 2: like eight percent of black people.
[51:46] Speaker 1: It's seven point seven, seven point seven, seven point eight
[51:49] Speaker 1: depending on what they a round it to eight.
[51:51] Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's like four percent of white people three
[51:54] Speaker 2: point three point something.
[51:56] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[51:57] Speaker 2: So black unemployment is two times that of white people. Yeah,
[52:01] Speaker 2: and it's growing.
[52:01] Speaker 1: Yeah. And it's higher than every other group too. It's
[52:04] Speaker 1: higher than Latinas, it's higher than Asians.
[52:07] Speaker 2: Why is that? Because we know that per capita, black
[52:12] Speaker 2: women have the most college degrees.
[52:14] Speaker 1: So why they have the most college degrees, but they
[52:19] Speaker 1: don't have an equal proportion of the opportunities right right, So,
[52:25] Speaker 1: and and for many that are in jobs, they're really underemployed, right,
[52:29] Speaker 1: So they're not necessarily leveraging all it is that their
[52:33] Speaker 1: degrees give them all. It is that their experience give
[52:35] Speaker 1: them because they're now having to accept jobs that are
[52:38] Speaker 1: not necessarily on par with what their experience or their
[52:41] Speaker 1: expertise is. So it's it's not just the it's not
[52:44] Speaker 1: just the rate of unemployment, but it's also the rate
[52:49] Speaker 1: of underemployment.
[52:50] Speaker 2: So how do we because in black men are losing
[52:54] Speaker 2: jobs that rapid rate. Also similarly, so education is not
[52:59] Speaker 2: dance obviously to solve this problem.
[53:03] Speaker 1: I don't I don't know, right, I think education. Look,
[53:11] Speaker 1: I grew up in a world where everything was education, education, education, Right.
[53:16] Speaker 1: We now live in a world where you can certainly
[53:18] Speaker 1: do tons of things without having to have all of
[53:21] Speaker 1: the rigor of the educational structure and the costs of
[53:26] Speaker 1: the educational structure that we had. And you talk about
[53:29] Speaker 1: you know, you said you guys were talking about AI. Right,
[53:32] Speaker 1: you talk about AI and what that's going to level.
[53:35] Speaker 1: At the end of the day, it always just comes
[53:37] Speaker 1: back to capital, Right, That's the thing is, it's I
[53:42] Speaker 1: can be the smartest guy in the world, the best
[53:44] Speaker 1: business guy in the world, if I can't get access
[53:47] Speaker 1: to capital to build a business, I'm just not going
[53:51] Speaker 1: to be able to do it right. Or I'm going
[53:53] Speaker 1: to be able to build a fraction of what it
[53:56] Speaker 1: is that I could build. And what's going to happen
[53:59] Speaker 1: is somebody else is going to see that fraction and
[54:01] Speaker 1: they're going to go build something that goes to the mood.
[54:05] Speaker 1: So it boils back down to capital. Right, It's the
[54:10] Speaker 1: economics of it. And if you think about it, I
[54:14] Speaker 1: think like stats are like twenty twenty one, it was
[54:17] Speaker 1: like one point two percent of capital went to went
[54:23] Speaker 1: to black businesses. Right today it's zero point three percent. Right.
[54:30] Speaker 1: That's a period of five years, right, And that is
[54:34] Speaker 1: a dramatic decline on an already tiny number. If we're
[54:40] Speaker 1: thirteen fourteen percent of the population, right, and the investments
[54:44] Speaker 1: that come our way are less than one percent of
[54:48] Speaker 1: the of the of the funds that are that are
[54:51] Speaker 1: being invested, then we're not going to be able to
[54:55] Speaker 1: build these businesses. And then the few that we do build,
[54:59] Speaker 1: we have to make sure. So it's.
[55:02] Speaker 3: It's alarming. It is alarming, right, And somebody might hear
[55:06] Speaker 3: was point four and now it's point three. It's one
[55:08] Speaker 3: basis point. But we're talking like in terms of billions
[55:11] Speaker 3: and millions of dollars that go to to black founders.
[55:15] Speaker 3: I think the piece, the capital piece, is important. I
[55:18] Speaker 3: think the opportunity piece is equally is important. Right, Like
[55:21] Speaker 3: the capital buys opportunity, it buys opportunity, which what I'm saying,
[55:24] Speaker 3: which is why when we look out at the playing field,
[55:28] Speaker 3: who gives opportunity?
[55:29] Speaker 2: Right?
[55:30] Speaker 3: And if we attack places that give opportunity, then we
[55:33] Speaker 3: have none. Obviously, you guys have essence. We invest fast.
[55:37] Speaker 3: These are structural opportunities. We're bringing people together to create opportunities.
[55:41] Speaker 3: Talk about being mindful of losing spaces because you even
[55:45] Speaker 3: gave us education. On look, this institution is no longer here.
[55:48] Speaker 3: This institution is no longer here. We're losing them fast.
[55:52] Speaker 3: We're losing them fast. You know, when I was coming up.
[55:57] Speaker 1: There were there was no greater holy grail in the
[56:01] Speaker 1: beauty world than Browner Brothers, no greater holy girl. Right
[56:08] Speaker 1: for I think brown and Brothers. Speaking of multi I
[56:13] Speaker 1: think Brown Brothers is in its third generation of operation now, right.
[56:17] Speaker 1: And I just saw online on social maybe two weeks
[56:23] Speaker 1: ago that the Browner brother Hare Show is not happening
[56:26] Speaker 1: this year. That every hair stylist, every every black makeup artist,
[56:35] Speaker 1: every designer, every that came out of the black community
[56:45] Speaker 1: in the seventies, eighties, nineties, two thousands, Brown and brother
[56:52] Speaker 1: was where they got their start. Browner Brothers is where
[56:54] Speaker 1: they got access to customers. Brown That's that's where they
[56:57] Speaker 1: got their start. Right. For that to be happening is
[57:05] Speaker 1: devastating to us culturally and socially and historically. Right, there
[57:13] Speaker 1: are going to be people who never heard of it,
[57:17] Speaker 1: who never missed it, who never but that grounding that
[57:26] Speaker 1: we had as a community is not happening this year. Right.
[57:29] Speaker 1: And then there's you know, carl Fest last year, and
[57:34] Speaker 1: you can go, you can go up and down, up
[57:36] Speaker 1: and down the list the losing these businesses, losing these institutions,
[57:43] Speaker 1: and there's a mindset that can be, Yeah, business is business.
[57:45] Speaker 1: It's not performing, it's not doing these things. No argument here,
[57:50] Speaker 1: But the fact that we're in this place of where
[57:53] Speaker 1: the things that we are culturally connected to are being
[57:57] Speaker 1: lost is something that we've we've got to do something about.
[58:02] Speaker 1: So let's have this conversation.
[58:03] Speaker 2: Essence Fest last year gotta got some negative backlash, do
[58:10] Speaker 2: you think that that backlash was warranted. How how do
[58:14] Speaker 2: you as a leader address that? What changes were made?
[58:18] Speaker 2: What's the roadmap moving forward?
[58:21] Speaker 1: Yeah, So look, when you're when you're building a business,
[58:25] Speaker 1: and I've said this and we continue to do that,
[58:29] Speaker 1: when there's backlash, there's always some reason for it. Right,
[58:33] Speaker 1: It's it's it's not it's not now. The scale that
[58:36] Speaker 1: it gets, how it gets, you know, the way that
[58:40] Speaker 1: it travels, the misinformation that may come with that or
[58:43] Speaker 1: not come with that. You know, those those can be
[58:46] Speaker 1: dealt with individually. But to just say hey, no, there
[58:50] Speaker 1: was that's that's not That's not the way to think
[58:54] Speaker 1: about it. Is not the way that that we think
[58:56] Speaker 1: about it. I think there were there were some structural
[59:02] Speaker 1: challenges in terms of transitioning and building for growth. Because
[59:07] Speaker 1: it's the same thing that we're talking about earlier. Is
[59:10] Speaker 1: if you know, essence is the Essence is really the
[59:14] Speaker 1: only black owned platform, the essence of scale. Right, that's
[59:21] Speaker 1: the only independent one. Right, It's it's either live nation
[59:26] Speaker 1: or ag or I mean, you guys know this. So
[59:30] Speaker 1: it's it's what we have left and and and what
[59:33] Speaker 1: is extremely important is that it is the home and
[59:39] Speaker 1: it's the place that we can come to and love
[59:44] Speaker 1: on each other, right, and be with each other and
[59:46] Speaker 1: and and and enjoy being with each other, and we
[59:49] Speaker 1: can develop and we can grow. And that's that's why,
[59:53] Speaker 1: you know, the essence festival of culture. Right. So we're
[59:57] Speaker 1: highly focused on the music. The music is still incredible,
[1:00:00] Speaker 1: it's still still great. Three nights of incredible music. But
[1:00:04] Speaker 1: then there's also the cultural aspects that are now in
[1:00:07] Speaker 1: the festival. The Food and Wine Festival. Come and experience
[1:00:13] Speaker 1: black chefs, black owned vineyards and and and and and
[1:00:21] Speaker 1: spirits right and and come and get that whole experience.
[1:00:24] Speaker 1: There's the Film Festival now where you come in. We
[1:00:29] Speaker 1: had over six hundred submissions last year. We're on pace
[1:00:33] Speaker 1: to get that same amount of submissions this year. Come
[1:00:36] Speaker 1: and support the directors in our community, the filmmakers that
[1:00:42] Speaker 1: all of and especially as Ai comes in, what's the
[1:00:45] Speaker 1: new model going to be? So you get you get
[1:00:49] Speaker 1: all of that right. Then there's the Book and Author Festival.
[1:00:54] Speaker 1: You know, I think we had almost sixty authors last
[1:00:57] Speaker 1: year doing signings and panels and and discussing their books
[1:01:01] Speaker 1: and and and and and all it like so and
[1:01:04] Speaker 1: then it goes it goes on and on and on.
[1:01:06] Speaker 1: There's beauty con where there's all the celebration of our beauty, right,
[1:01:10] Speaker 1: whether it's the brands and the products, the hairstyles, the uh,
[1:01:16] Speaker 1: the master classes, the like, all of that. Right. So
[1:01:22] Speaker 1: the idea is to continue to bring to our community
[1:01:28] Speaker 1: the things that are that are most important to us,
[1:01:31] Speaker 1: that that are that are grounding us, that we that
[1:01:35] Speaker 1: we're building on them, that we're driving, and then for
[1:01:37] Speaker 1: us to take ownership of that because that's that's another
[1:01:40] Speaker 1: big part of this is you know a lot of
[1:01:43] Speaker 1: people talk about our culture, right, but we're not always
[1:01:46] Speaker 1: the ones that monetize that culture. We're not the ones
[1:01:48] Speaker 1: that benefit from it economically. So creating an environment where
[1:01:53] Speaker 1: that can happen is extremely important. And so that's the vision,
[1:01:58] Speaker 1: right the vision, the vision is to really take all
[1:02:02] Speaker 1: of these pillars and provide them back to our community
[1:02:06] Speaker 1: or give our community an opportunity to platform themselves on there.
[1:02:09] Speaker 1: So you have all the the the professors, you have
[1:02:14] Speaker 1: all you have, all the educators, you have, all the entertainers,
[1:02:17] Speaker 1: you have, all the all of these different genres, the entrepreneurs.
[1:02:20] Speaker 1: You know, we we we've done over a million dollars
[1:02:24] Speaker 1: in in pitch competition grants, right, So investing in businesses there.
[1:02:31] Speaker 1: We have over four hundred black owned businesses that are
[1:02:36] Speaker 1: that are there, that are selling their products, that are
[1:02:39] Speaker 1: that are getting exposure to almost you know, the convention
[1:02:43] Speaker 1: center will have somewhere between forty and fifty thousand people
[1:02:46] Speaker 1: come through come through every day, and we provide all
[1:02:50] Speaker 1: of that free right. So you know, any of these
[1:02:53] Speaker 1: other experiences there are some some charge of general admissions
[1:02:59] Speaker 1: for the entire higher Convention Center is free, right. And
[1:03:03] Speaker 1: it's I'm not talking about We're not talking about having
[1:03:07] Speaker 1: you know, like we're having top tier UH guests that
[1:03:12] Speaker 1: are teaching classes, that are talking on panels, that are
[1:03:17] Speaker 1: that are signing books, that are giving lectures that are
[1:03:20] Speaker 1: you know, last year we had Katanji Brown Jackson doing
[1:03:23] Speaker 1: a lecture. We had uh Oprah two years ago, we've
[1:03:30] Speaker 1: had Kamala Harris, we have so so it's it's this
[1:03:35] Speaker 1: idea of continuously giving back and reinvesting in our community,
[1:03:41] Speaker 1: especially around our cultural anchors. You announced, did you know
[1:03:47] Speaker 1: we had all of that? Well, I know.
[1:03:50] Speaker 3: The world knows you announced, and this is something that
[1:03:52] Speaker 3: the world knows, but even I was confused to what
[1:03:56] Speaker 3: it really meant Tianna Taylor, who's having an incredible year
[1:03:59] Speaker 3: Golden Globe, want to I mean obviously musician events, all
[1:04:02] Speaker 3: the things.
[1:04:03] Speaker 1: It's super talented and credible.
[1:04:05] Speaker 3: The chief curator of Yeah, of the entire event, explain
[1:04:10] Speaker 3: what that means, because I'm like, I don't rich runs it.
[1:04:12] Speaker 1: So what does what does this mean? Yeah? Yeah, Well
[1:04:16] Speaker 1: so the first thing is I don't run it. There's
[1:04:20] Speaker 1: an incredible team that does that. But what it means is,
[1:04:25] Speaker 1: so if you think about the future of me and
[1:04:27] Speaker 1: we should talk about this, what's the future of media? Right, Like,
[1:04:30] Speaker 1: what's what's the future and how do brands legacy brands
[1:04:35] Speaker 1: that have served our community all these years. Essence is
[1:04:38] Speaker 1: going to be fifty seven to fifty eight years old
[1:04:42] Speaker 1: this year, right, How's how does what has to happen
[1:04:46] Speaker 1: for Essens to be here another fifty years? Right? In
[1:04:50] Speaker 1: an environment where everything's changed, right that that you know,
[1:04:57] Speaker 1: the facebooks, the instagrams, tiktoks, the that's the destination of
[1:05:03] Speaker 1: choice today, right, That's where that's where everybody is going.
[1:05:06] Speaker 1: We don't own any of that, Right. We create the
[1:05:10] Speaker 1: content for it, right, we make it hot, but we
[1:05:13] Speaker 1: don't monetize it. Let me rephrase that proportionately, we don't.
[1:05:19] Speaker 1: So you can monetize YouTube, you can monetize Instagram, you
[1:05:23] Speaker 1: can do that. As a creator, you absolutely can. But
[1:05:26] Speaker 1: as far as the ownership and the wealth that gets created,
[1:05:29] Speaker 1: and then the other thing, going back to your your
[1:05:31] Speaker 1: earlier question is they build it, they sell it, they
[1:05:37] Speaker 1: trade it, they take it public. Right, They're free to
[1:05:42] Speaker 1: do that, right, which means they can then take a
[1:05:46] Speaker 1: look at what's happening now with and I admire the
[1:05:52] Speaker 1: business acumen and the and the skill here of David Ellison. Yeah,
[1:06:01] Speaker 1: second generation. Right, his father created enormous wealth right invested
[1:06:07] Speaker 1: in him in a small business called Skuidance. He proved
[1:06:12] Speaker 1: himself there, right, or did what he did there, earned
[1:06:15] Speaker 1: his father's trust, in some other people's trust, and then
[1:06:19] Speaker 1: now Paramount, then next thing, Warner Brothers. Right, they're able
[1:06:27] Speaker 1: to do that because his father was able to capture
[1:06:33] Speaker 1: that wealth in oracle right, release it and move it forward.
[1:06:40] Speaker 1: That's where we have to get to, because that's when
[1:06:43] Speaker 1: we'll be able to When you talk about true generational wealth,
[1:06:46] Speaker 1: it's not just I build it and I give it
[1:06:48] Speaker 1: to my kids. It's I build it and I put
[1:06:50] Speaker 1: my kids in position to go build too, right. So
[1:06:53] Speaker 1: now they go build, they go build the next thing, right,
[1:06:56] Speaker 1: another and I know we're going back. Was another model
[1:06:59] Speaker 1: that I'd love and talk about this all the time
[1:07:02] Speaker 1: is the Walmart model. Sam Walton builds an incredible business, decided, Hey,
[1:07:09] Speaker 1: my kids for whatever reason, are not going to run
[1:07:12] Speaker 1: this business. Right. I'm going to go out and get
[1:07:15] Speaker 1: the best team that I can right. I'm going to
[1:07:17] Speaker 1: put the best financial financial infrastructure together, right, and we're
[1:07:23] Speaker 1: going to continue to rock. But my kids now get
[1:07:27] Speaker 1: like they're like in the top ten of richest people
[1:07:30] Speaker 1: in the world. Right. There's different ways to do this.
[1:07:35] Speaker 1: We just as a community haven't had and for a
[1:07:38] Speaker 1: whole host of reasons, and I think we all know
[1:07:40] Speaker 1: what those reasons are, haven't had the opportunity to do
[1:07:42] Speaker 1: those types of spectacular things right. And so it's going
[1:07:46] Speaker 1: to take one of us, two of us, five of us,
[1:07:49] Speaker 1: ten of us doing it, doing a consistently over a
[1:07:53] Speaker 1: period of time for it to become natural to us
[1:07:56] Speaker 1: and for us and for us to understand it. Do
[1:07:58] Speaker 1: you think we're at that inflection point.
[1:08:00] Speaker 3: I'll talk about this all the time about having grace
[1:08:03] Speaker 3: and black wealth transforming over the past ten, fifteen, twenty years. Well,
[1:08:07] Speaker 3: you have more black billionaires. We don't know what second
[1:08:10] Speaker 3: rate generation looks like because we haven't gotten it yet.
[1:08:13] Speaker 3: Most of them are well pretty much all of them
[1:08:16] Speaker 3: are first generation. So what do you they're all first generation.
[1:08:19] Speaker 3: Do you feel like we're here now at that inflection, like, Okay,
[1:08:22] Speaker 3: let's plan to build so that your kids can build
[1:08:25] Speaker 3: and so we can help.
[1:08:27] Speaker 1: I think everybody's thinking that way. The next step is
[1:08:31] Speaker 1: going to be instituting the infrastructure that enables it to happen, right,
[1:08:38] Speaker 1: And that's that's a hard thing to do, and that's
[1:08:41] Speaker 1: not one person can do that. It's going to take
[1:08:44] Speaker 1: you know, twenty thirty forty fifty sixty one hundred people
[1:08:47] Speaker 1: thinking similarly and doing that right. Like I said, from
[1:08:52] Speaker 1: our perspective, it was, Hey, when we unlock this, we're
[1:08:56] Speaker 1: going to go invest in the best black businesses and
[1:09:01] Speaker 1: black business minds that we can't and we're going to
[1:09:03] Speaker 1: try to provide them infrastructure. We're going to try to
[1:09:05] Speaker 1: provide them capital, We're going to try to provide them access.
[1:09:08] Speaker 1: And we've done that and so now you have the
[1:09:11] Speaker 1: maels of the world. Right, you have the honeypots of
[1:09:15] Speaker 1: the world. You have the Big Dave cheese steaks of
[1:09:18] Speaker 1: the world. Derek is right, you have the money points
[1:09:22] Speaker 1: of the world, you have the caribe of the world.
[1:09:24] Speaker 1: You have and I could rattle off thirty or forty
[1:09:27] Speaker 1: of them. Right, That's how you start to build infrastructure, right.
[1:09:34] Speaker 1: But you've got to invest in it, and it takes time.
[1:09:37] Speaker 1: And I think these other people that are doing these
[1:09:39] Speaker 1: incredible things too are thinking similarly, right, But I don't
[1:09:43] Speaker 1: know that this next generation is going to be where
[1:09:46] Speaker 1: it's already. And then the other thing is everything that
[1:09:49] Speaker 1: we knew about business is out the window. It's nothing
[1:09:53] Speaker 1: that you knew about business five years ago that you
[1:09:56] Speaker 1: should be relying on today because it's all gone. Right.
[1:10:00] Speaker 1: If I were to tell you five years ago that
[1:10:05] Speaker 1: sky Dance would own Warner Brothers, right, or that twenty
[1:10:10] Speaker 1: years ago that Amazon would own what's the studio they
[1:10:15] Speaker 1: know they own they owned one of the large MGM, Yes, right, MGM,
[1:10:24] Speaker 1: as well as owning Whole Foods. Yes, I had told
[1:10:28] Speaker 1: you that Amazon was going Whole Foods. If I had
[1:10:31] Speaker 1: told you that Navidia would be what it is today,
[1:10:36] Speaker 1: and IBM would be where it is today, you would
[1:10:39] Speaker 1: have been like, you're crazy. You wouldn't be sitting here
[1:10:42] Speaker 1: exactly right. So the point is, like everything that we know,
[1:10:47] Speaker 1: we have to we have to be thinking differently and
[1:10:49] Speaker 1: we have to throw it out and start over. So
[1:10:52] Speaker 1: part of what's good about that is that our people
[1:10:54] Speaker 1: are thinking about the future. You're now building infrastructure on
[1:10:58] Speaker 1: new technology and new thinking, right, So that's good. The
[1:11:02] Speaker 1: part that is going to be hard is that those
[1:11:05] Speaker 1: people have already hit escape velocity. Right, They've already done it,
[1:11:09] Speaker 1: and they're now on to the next thing. When you
[1:11:11] Speaker 1: talk about the black billionaires that exist, or even the
[1:11:14] Speaker 1: black millionaires that exist, what we should be concerned about.
[1:11:17] Speaker 1: What I remain concerned about is the black woman who
[1:11:23] Speaker 1: graduated Spelman seven years ago has gone out and gotten
[1:11:28] Speaker 1: some experience at a at Pfizer and now has an
[1:11:34] Speaker 1: idea on the next miracle drug, and that she gets
[1:11:39] Speaker 1: an opportunity to bring that idea to life. Right, That's
[1:11:42] Speaker 1: That's where I'm concerned, and that's where I think we
[1:11:46] Speaker 1: really need to build the infrastructure so that that can
[1:11:49] Speaker 1: happen at scale. We got to business.
[1:11:51] Speaker 3: I'll never let you get to tell us what tis
[1:11:54] Speaker 3: a business does that I get excited about that.
[1:12:03] Speaker 1: Tiana is one of the most incredible human beings I've
[1:12:05] Speaker 1: ever absolutely right, and and she has been a part
[1:12:12] Speaker 1: of the Essence journey, or Essence has been a part
[1:12:15] Speaker 1: of her journey from Jump right over the over the years.
[1:12:20] Speaker 1: Lots of love, lots of support, and everybody at Essence
[1:12:24] Speaker 1: is so proud of the journey that she's that she's
[1:12:27] Speaker 1: come on. And as we think about what the future
[1:12:30] Speaker 1: is going to look like, when we think about, hey,
[1:12:32] Speaker 1: we've got this brand that means so much to so
[1:12:37] Speaker 1: many people, right, who are the people though that truly
[1:12:41] Speaker 1: embodies the brand, it's Tiana, right. And so to say
[1:12:45] Speaker 1: we're now turning this platform over to our community, right,
[1:12:50] Speaker 1: We we're building infrastructure so that people can be successful
[1:12:54] Speaker 1: on this infrastructure. They can bring scale to this. To
[1:12:58] Speaker 1: this infrastructure, we can leve rich the scale that we
[1:13:01] Speaker 1: have as a media company. If you compare Essence to
[1:13:04] Speaker 1: the to the giants, we're nothing, right, But if you
[1:13:07] Speaker 1: compare us to our community, we're it. Right. So to
[1:13:11] Speaker 1: be able to take the infrastructure that we have and
[1:13:14] Speaker 1: now put people on our platform, people that can take
[1:13:20] Speaker 1: it to the next level that can that can that
[1:13:22] Speaker 1: can drive it. I'm not saying that, you know, I'm
[1:13:25] Speaker 1: not putting that pressure on Tiana. That's that's what it is.
[1:13:27] Speaker 1: That's that's the vision that we have. Right, and now
[1:13:31] Speaker 1: for Tiana is to come in and take a look
[1:13:34] Speaker 1: at the festival. How do we make it better? Right,
[1:13:37] Speaker 1: Let's get let's get different, a first set of eyes
[1:13:39] Speaker 1: on it, right, help us make it better? Right? Everything
[1:13:44] Speaker 1: from how it looks to how it feels, to what
[1:13:48] Speaker 1: the themes are to to what should what should the
[1:13:53] Speaker 1: place smell like? What should it feel like? Right? And
[1:13:57] Speaker 1: we're not asking her to do it all on on
[1:14:01] Speaker 1: our own, like, hey, come right, it's there's an infrastructure here,
[1:14:05] Speaker 1: there's teams here, she's got a great company and aunties. Right,
[1:14:09] Speaker 1: She's done this time and time again. Is not like
[1:14:12] Speaker 1: she hasn't done it right, but now she gets an
[1:14:15] Speaker 1: opportunity to do it for something that she cares about,
[1:14:18] Speaker 1: something that she she got an opportunity to be a
[1:14:22] Speaker 1: part of from early on in her career. And we're extreme,
[1:14:25] Speaker 1: we're extremely proud of it. And and so even some
[1:14:27] Speaker 1: of these conversations that we're having is like she and
[1:14:30] Speaker 1: I had to have like a real hard conversations because
[1:14:33] Speaker 1: she wanted to make sure, Hey, what am I getting into? Right?
[1:14:36] Speaker 1: Are you? Are you guys really serious about this? What
[1:14:39] Speaker 1: is the what is the what is the plan, what
[1:14:42] Speaker 1: is the path, what is the what's the journey going
[1:14:44] Speaker 1: to look like? And so so we had those conversations
[1:14:48] Speaker 1: because I think the other thing in business and and
[1:14:51] Speaker 1: and like with family is if you shy away from
[1:14:55] Speaker 1: the hard conversations, you're never going to be successful because
[1:15:00] Speaker 1: eventually they will pop up in some other way. Right,
[1:15:04] Speaker 1: So we had we had some great conversations and we're like, Okay,
[1:15:08] Speaker 1: let's let's go. Our community deserves us. So we're excited.
[1:15:12] Speaker 1: We're excited for her to be doing this. She's you know,
[1:15:15] Speaker 1: we're going to have other folks join uh in these
[1:15:20] Speaker 1: different capacities like the book festival, Like let's get somebody
[1:15:24] Speaker 1: who's really transformed the book industry, like like the the
[1:15:30] Speaker 1: the way we think about literature, the way we think
[1:15:35] Speaker 1: about community, the way we own community. Let's let's have
[1:15:38] Speaker 1: let's have somebody that can that can think about that
[1:15:42] Speaker 1: as well, right, and then connect with with the vision
[1:15:47] Speaker 1: and the mission and all those things. So we're we're
[1:15:50] Speaker 1: excited about it. And you'll see that same thing with
[1:15:52] Speaker 1: with with beauty con on the beauty side. I mean
[1:15:55] Speaker 1: this mic right up in your face. I'm not used
[1:15:57] Speaker 1: to this, you know, I like to talk, but damn
[1:15:59] Speaker 1: you so. So it's it's really getting into all of
[1:16:04] Speaker 1: these things that we call cultural pillars and making sure
[1:16:08] Speaker 1: that we have fresh minds on them, that we have
[1:16:12] Speaker 1: people that are actually moving the culture, that are impacting
[1:16:15] Speaker 1: the culture a part of developing it for our community, right,
[1:16:19] Speaker 1: because that's super, super important.
[1:16:22] Speaker 2: There was a conversation about critique of Africans and African
[1:16:30] Speaker 2: Americans and the infrastructure of Essence being African driven and
[1:16:37] Speaker 2: the audience being African American, and that was a that
[1:16:40] Speaker 2: was a critique on Essence Fest last year. Yeah, what's
[1:16:44] Speaker 2: your thoughts on that?
[1:16:45] Speaker 1: Well, that's not true, right, that the infrastructure is not
[1:16:49] Speaker 1: African driven. The infrastructure is black driven. Right. It is
[1:16:55] Speaker 1: it is it is focused on serving black women, right,
[1:17:00] Speaker 1: which are overwhelmingly Black American women. Right. And we are
[1:17:07] Speaker 1: focused though on our culture broadly, right, because I think
[1:17:13] Speaker 1: that the notions of separation makes us smaller, right, The
[1:17:18] Speaker 1: idea of expanding how we think about each other, the
[1:17:22] Speaker 1: things we can do to each other is what's going
[1:17:24] Speaker 1: to open up those opportunities and those broader, those broader
[1:17:27] Speaker 1: opportunities that we talk about. So it's not it's not, hey,
[1:17:32] Speaker 1: we're we're we're focused on African now with effoc that's
[1:17:37] Speaker 1: that's nothing could be nothing could be further from the truth. Right.
[1:17:41] Speaker 1: The organization, the structures that we've built, the teams that
[1:17:47] Speaker 1: like everything is in service of this vision of how
[1:17:52] Speaker 1: do we put Black people in the best light we
[1:17:55] Speaker 1: possibly can on this planet and how do we give
[1:17:58] Speaker 1: them the maximum opportun tunity that we can, leveraging this
[1:18:03] Speaker 1: platform and leveraging this infrastructure. So we're highly highly, highly
[1:18:10] Speaker 1: highly focused on that, right. And the thing that you know,
[1:18:14] Speaker 1: if you think about when Essence again you go back
[1:18:19] Speaker 1: to when Essence was formed, right fifty seven years ago,
[1:18:27] Speaker 1: that's a lot of generations that Essence has served, and
[1:18:32] Speaker 1: every time a new generation comes in, there's a new
[1:18:35] Speaker 1: set of needs. We've got to create space for our children,
[1:18:41] Speaker 1: right and for their children. Because again, when you talk
[1:18:45] Speaker 1: about this generational thing, if we're only serving the people
[1:18:51] Speaker 1: that started with Essence, then we won't be here in
[1:18:55] Speaker 1: another ten years. Right. But if we're serving the people
[1:19:00] Speaker 1: that started with essence, and we're doing that deeply. We're
[1:19:03] Speaker 1: providing her everything that she needs there, but we're also
[1:19:07] Speaker 1: serving her granddaughter in some cases now her great granddaughter,
[1:19:10] Speaker 1: and we're providing her what she needs. Then there's one
[1:19:13] Speaker 1: place for them that canvene. There's no other place like
[1:19:16] Speaker 1: that on Earth. There's no other place for four generations
[1:19:21] Speaker 1: of black women to go and be with each other
[1:19:25] Speaker 1: and fellowship with each other, and love on each other,
[1:19:27] Speaker 1: and party with each other, and eat together and travel
[1:19:30] Speaker 1: together and go all over and do it in mass
[1:19:34] Speaker 1: You can do it as a family, yeah right, you
[1:19:37] Speaker 1: can do it as a family reunion, But can you
[1:19:40] Speaker 1: do it with four hundred thousand people that have the
[1:19:42] Speaker 1: same sort of zest for you as a human being.
[1:19:49] Speaker 1: That's the place to do it.
[1:19:51] Speaker 3: I mean, it brings me to the point of the
[1:19:53] Speaker 3: economic impact, right, Like when people think New Orleans, especially
[1:19:59] Speaker 3: people who are New Orleans, it's a part of the fabric, right,
[1:20:02] Speaker 3: Like I yes, they had the Super Bowl a year.
[1:20:04] Speaker 1: Ago, and it was like, oh, that's a huge that
[1:20:06] Speaker 1: every ten years. Only every ten years, you're there every year.
[1:20:09] Speaker 3: People understand like, yes, there's vendors there, but the amount
[1:20:13] Speaker 3: of people that you're employing the local businesses to travel
[1:20:15] Speaker 3: at the hotel. Talk about the economic impact because obviously
[1:20:19] Speaker 3: we have an event. People can completely not understand that discounted,
[1:20:24] Speaker 3: not really appreciated, unpacked that from them.
[1:20:29] Speaker 1: Wow, that's a big one. It's big. It's big because
[1:20:35] Speaker 1: it is. I think of things in terms of infrastructure,
[1:20:48] Speaker 1: flywheel and scale. Right. The infrastructure that we continue to
[1:21:02] Speaker 1: build allows this flywheel to happen every year, right. And
[1:21:11] Speaker 1: what the flywheel does is millions and millions of dollars
[1:21:17] Speaker 1: directly into jobs during that week period, right, Talent, security, transportation,
[1:21:36] Speaker 1: those are all those are all black businesses, right, or
[1:21:41] Speaker 1: employees that work for a business that gets paid because
[1:21:44] Speaker 1: essence is there and essence is investing in them. Right.
[1:21:49] Speaker 1: So the scale of it, right, then the work is
[1:21:54] Speaker 1: in the hotel. It's like you go to New Orleans
[1:21:56] Speaker 1: and New Orleans is a black city, Like people say
[1:21:59] Speaker 1: Atlanta's a black city. Yes, Atlanta is a black city,
[1:22:02] Speaker 1: but it's not black light in terms of the population distribution. Right.
[1:22:09] Speaker 1: And so you're bringing Super Bowl type economics every year, right,
[1:22:16] Speaker 1: And we're not the super Bowl, We're not the NFL, right,
[1:22:19] Speaker 1: we are we are a small to medium sized business.
[1:22:23] Speaker 1: When you compare to the rest of the world, like
[1:22:25] Speaker 1: I say, if you said, hey, in black media, yes
[1:22:28] Speaker 1: we have some left. But if you compare to the
[1:22:31] Speaker 1: people that we compete against, because our competitors are Live Nation, right,
[1:22:36] Speaker 1: our competitors are are Aeg. Our competitors are Conde Nast
[1:22:41] Speaker 1: and Vogue and right, we're competing with Vogue to get
[1:22:45] Speaker 1: people on our cover. Right, we're not competing in fact
[1:22:49] Speaker 1: can Unfortunately we're the only ones left. Right, We're the
[1:22:55] Speaker 1: only ones left if you, if you and we have
[1:22:57] Speaker 1: an incredible issue coming out for Festival, which would be
[1:23:02] Speaker 1: our first one this year, and it's a double issue
[1:23:06] Speaker 1: and we're going hard at it. But we're the only
[1:23:09] Speaker 1: ones of magazine, of magazine.
[1:23:11] Speaker 2: Are you still doing magazine.
[1:23:12] Speaker 1: It's just digital? No, we're doing We're still doing Magazi,
[1:23:14] Speaker 1: physical magazine, still doing physical magazine.
[1:23:16] Speaker 2: Does it even make sense to do physical magazines anymore?
[1:23:19] Speaker 1: Economically it may not, but culturally it does, right because
[1:23:24] Speaker 1: where else do our women see themselves on their on
[1:23:26] Speaker 1: the on the cover, on the newsstand on a regular basis?
[1:23:30] Speaker 1: Where do our daughters see themselves in a physical space?
[1:23:34] Speaker 1: And now with with Ai coming. Lord knows what they're
[1:23:36] Speaker 1: going to be seeing, right, So where where else is that?
[1:23:40] Speaker 1: So it becomes extremely important. This is a place where
[1:23:43] Speaker 1: partners are saying, oh, we don't, we don't. We're not
[1:23:46] Speaker 1: advertising in in magazines anymore. Right, We're we're only now
[1:23:52] Speaker 1: doing digital, right, We're only doing we're only doing social
[1:23:56] Speaker 1: So as a cultural artific do we just let that go? Right?
[1:24:04] Speaker 1: That's why we need the support because we need our
[1:24:10] Speaker 1: daughters need to see themselves physically, right, they need to
[1:24:14] Speaker 1: as much as even as they say, you know, now
[1:24:16] Speaker 1: all the kids are on the phones, but every once
[1:24:18] Speaker 1: in a while, that kid wants to go outside and play, right,
[1:24:21] Speaker 1: they want to go run around, right, they want to go.
[1:24:24] Speaker 1: We have we have to be there for our kids, right.
[1:24:28] Speaker 1: This has to be here two generations, three generations, five
[1:24:32] Speaker 1: generations from now. So that becomes extremely important. So that
[1:24:36] Speaker 1: means we've got to make money in other places in
[1:24:39] Speaker 1: order to make sure that that that that happens. Right.
[1:24:43] Speaker 1: When when a young black star is coming up, who's
[1:24:49] Speaker 1: going to cover her? She's only going to get covered
[1:24:53] Speaker 1: once she's hit it big, But who's going to put
[1:24:56] Speaker 1: her in front of her community? Right? How is she
[1:24:59] Speaker 1: going to learn her community? How's our community going to
[1:25:02] Speaker 1: learn her? We saw three weeks ago, four weeks ago
[1:25:07] Speaker 1: the BAFTA Awards. Right, as long as we're in somebody
[1:25:15] Speaker 1: else's space, those things are bound to happen. We just
[1:25:19] Speaker 1: did Black Women in Hollywood the ninth nineteenth one, right,
[1:25:23] Speaker 1: nineteen years. We've been doing it to celebrate our women
[1:25:26] Speaker 1: who don't get the same recognition. And even when they
[1:25:31] Speaker 1: get the recognition, they don't get the time. Right, it's
[1:25:35] Speaker 1: not consistent. Right, So you have a black woman in
[1:25:39] Speaker 1: Hollywood that's there expressedly to make sure that she gets
[1:25:44] Speaker 1: the time, that they get, the that they get to shine,
[1:25:47] Speaker 1: that they're that they're the focal point. Right. So I'm
[1:25:51] Speaker 1: very passionate about this stuff because it is what it
[1:25:55] Speaker 1: is that we have to do in order to live
[1:25:58] Speaker 1: up to why God put us here. Yeah, all right,
[1:26:01] Speaker 1: it's a great room to be into. Amazing. We have
[1:26:04] Speaker 1: the privilegs. Well I appreciate them, but I don't. I
[1:26:08] Speaker 1: don't know, I don't. We we we slummed that year.
[1:26:15] Speaker 1: But it's it's an incredible thing, right and and and
[1:26:18] Speaker 1: and we need that. And then we have we have
[1:26:21] Speaker 1: black women in music at festival this year, so that
[1:26:25] Speaker 1: we're we're celebrating the women that are that are driving music, right.
[1:26:29] Speaker 1: And it's not just the the the women that are
[1:26:33] Speaker 1: the incredible women that are performing music, but there's all
[1:26:36] Speaker 1: of these women that are actually making it possible for
[1:26:40] Speaker 1: music to remain true to our community and true to
[1:26:43] Speaker 1: our culture, right. And and they're they're in, they're behind
[1:26:46] Speaker 1: the scenes driving this stuff and they're doing big deals. Man.
[1:26:50] Speaker 1: You know, the the women and the music and the
[1:26:52] Speaker 1: ones that are hitting are hitting. Boy, you know they're
[1:26:55] Speaker 1: they're they're they're they're really running. So to be able
[1:26:58] Speaker 1: to to be able to celebrate them and be to
[1:27:00] Speaker 1: give them that platform, right to give them to be
[1:27:05] Speaker 1: able to create an environment where that love and joy
[1:27:09] Speaker 1: can be can can be like harnessed right. And and
[1:27:13] Speaker 1: then you leave there in your soul motor even for
[1:27:15] Speaker 1: you right, for you guys, for me, when I walk
[1:27:18] Speaker 1: out of that room, I can do anything. You know,
[1:27:22] Speaker 1: that's true. We could do anything surround us with black women.
[1:27:26] Speaker 2: Well, why thank you for coming. Definitely I think you
[1:27:30] Speaker 2: shed a lot of light and a lot of wisdom.
[1:27:33] Speaker 1: So thank you, guys.
[1:27:34] Speaker 2: I appreciate When is that since best August I mean.
[1:27:36] Speaker 1: July July fourth weekend July fourth, July third, fourth, and fifth,
[1:27:42] Speaker 1: and we may you heard it, we may extend a
[1:27:45] Speaker 1: day on Monday. We're not sure yet. It's it's the
[1:27:51] Speaker 1: demand has been it has been extremely high. So we're
[1:27:56] Speaker 1: trying to figure out do we do that or do
[1:27:58] Speaker 1: we sit tight and then do that next year. Probably
[1:28:02] Speaker 1: we'll see, but I think let's get it right this year.
[1:28:06] Speaker 1: Let's get it right this year. Let's let's make sure
[1:28:09] Speaker 1: all the all the bugs that we had, make sure
[1:28:12] Speaker 1: all the issues are resolved, and then and then we
[1:28:15] Speaker 1: can start to expand further again. But it's it's an
[1:28:19] Speaker 1: exciting time and I'm really excited about about Tiana and
[1:28:24] Speaker 1: what she's going to be able to to do for
[1:28:27] Speaker 1: her community and help us deliver. I think I think
[1:28:30] Speaker 1: that's going to be out of this world. Yeah, well,
[1:28:35] Speaker 1: I like I like to think that we called it
[1:28:38] Speaker 1: because we were honoring her last year, right, So we
[1:28:41] Speaker 1: honored her Black Women in Hollywood for for what she
[1:28:45] Speaker 1: had been doing. Yeah, well no, actually it wasn't. That
[1:28:51] Speaker 1: was the kickoff for her. Yeah, yeah, her, yeah, yeah
[1:28:54] Speaker 1: yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah. I met her at Black
[1:28:57] Speaker 1: Women in Hollywood. Oh really yeah. And and the other
[1:29:01] Speaker 1: thing is, you know, to see that room, man, and
[1:29:03] Speaker 1: to see those women loving on each other and protecting
[1:29:06] Speaker 1: each other, it's it's really special. And then it's it's
[1:29:09] Speaker 1: the same thing at It's the same thing at festival,
[1:29:11] Speaker 1: right and I and I think a lot of it
[1:29:14] Speaker 1: is people don't want to lose that, and they're they're
[1:29:17] Speaker 1: concerned also, like all with all that's going on in
[1:29:21] Speaker 1: the world, is is is just going to be here
[1:29:24] Speaker 1: all right? And I'm here to tell you it's gonna
[1:29:26] Speaker 1: be here all right.
[1:29:29] Speaker 3: Do you have it?
[1:29:30] Speaker 2: And I will see you guys next week, please please,

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