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How to Build Black Business Communities Equitably with Gerald Jones
Episode 51 • 4th March 2019 • Women Conquer Business • Jen McFarland
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Hello, and welcome to the third Paddle podcast. I'm your host, Jen McFarland.

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Have you ever felt like somebody might just be really cool?

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Well, when I read Gerald Jones's podcast

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guest profile, I got to tell you, he looked pretty cool to me.

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And then we talked, and it was like,

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mind blown. And I think you're going to think the same thing

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after you hear this interview, so please stay tuned.

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Welcome to the third Paddle podcast recorded at the Vandal Lounge

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in beautiful southeast Portland, Oregon. Why the third paddle?

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Because even the most badass entrepreneurs get stuck up

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in business. Shit Creek management consultant Jennifer McFarland is

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your third paddle helping you get unstuck?

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Did you know that social media was literally designed

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to be like a slot machine? Having us come back and

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back and back and see how many people like this, how many people are doing

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that? And if you run a business or are in

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the business of running a family, you don't have time for that.

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So if you're feeling a little chained to your phone or like maybe

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you're not getting as much out of email and social media as you're putting into

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it, go to Jenmcfarland.com ebooks and download

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the digital tradeoffs ebook today. Start looking at your time and

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seeing if you can be more effective toward reaching your goals.

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Thanks a lot. Gerald Jones is an experienced leader,

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coach, speaker, and training facilitator with over 18

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years of experience building and mentoring higher performance

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teams. He has been producing business focused audio

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content since 2017.

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In addition to his podcast, By Black Podcast,

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the Voice of Black Business, he has been a guest on a variety

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of other shows. Gerald is a captivating public speaker

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with a unique ability to explain complex ideas clearly

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and concisely. He also interviews seasoned business owners

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in a manner that helps him share their knowledge and experience with a

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general audience. In February 2018,

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Gerald was requested to deliver the keynote presentation at the

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establishing Sustainable Connections Building Black Wealth Seminar

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in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. In June, he was asked to return

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as a guest instructor for the Conscious Youth Solutions

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Youth League apprenticeship program.

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That's a mouthful, but I will tell you what,

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gerald Jones is amazing, and I am so pleased to

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have him on the show. We're talking about a variety of amazing topics,

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so let's listen to what he has to say. So let's talk

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about you. Can you tell the listeners about your journey with

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By Black Podcast? I can. So that

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podcast started about a year before it started.

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And everybody knows about this now, right? In July

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of 2016. July 5, in fact.

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Alton Sterling was killed in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

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We all saw the videotape, and then it was even plastered on

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the front page of newspapers the next day.

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And that next day, Philandel Castile was killed in

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Minneapolis. And for some reason,

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and I know the reasons at that time, I was really undergoing

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a transformation of heart. I just finished my bachelor's

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degree and I was kind of going through a

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period of trying to, I guess, finally find who I

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am, but those things happened at a time where they

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shook me and things like that happened before, but those two really shook me.

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And I was free because I'd finished my degree

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and I was looking for my next project. And so those

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told me, whatever I do, it has to be in service to

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the black community. And I want to change the outlook,

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I want to change the future. I want things like this to not happen.

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And then I started trying to process through my head,

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how do I see these things not happening? And so I just

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spent the next several months trying to figure out how can I use my skills

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and background to help? And eventually I started listening to

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podcasts. I found one called the Black Entrepreneur Blueprint.

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As I was listening to that show, I listened to an episode that

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played a speech of Dr. Claude Anderson, who has this

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concept called the five levels of control. That first level being

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control of economics. And then I was like, okay,

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so if we can figure out a way to

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take control of the economy, then we can

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have more people with jobs,

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we can build more wealth, we can start investing in our communities.

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Fewer people are going to be out on the streets, which means fewer

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people are going to be seen as threats, which means the police

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relationship with the black community will eventually change if we only just

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start being able to depend on ourselves economically.

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So that was when I started connecting with people who

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are all about this Buy Black movement. And the

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idea came to me for the podcast, and I immediately said,

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somebody's already doing that. That's too big a thing that

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people are talking about for there not to be a Buy Black podcast. So I

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went search and search and search, and there's no Buy Black podcast.

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And I was like, okay, so maybe

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a thing. And then I went to a blog

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and I found 20 black business owners and their emails

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for different articles of new businesses that were out. And I literally sent

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20 Cold emails to people I'd never heard of before that basically

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said, hey, I'm Gerald, you don't know me. I've got an idea.

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Would you want to be a part of it? And 20 Cold emails

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to business owners, I got ten responses, and of those ten responses,

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I got five that said, yes, absolutely. So I'm like, I don't

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know much about marketing, but that's definitely a really high conversion rate. I must be

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on to something. And so I just went full bore and set

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everything up for the podcast and got the Libson hosting

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and got the COVID art made and came

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up with a structure and everything. And then did my first interviews,

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and I did the interviews a little bit in advance,

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but I debuted the first episode on

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July 5, 2017, specifically because

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it was hatched by that event.

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And I wanted to make sure that I launched the show

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on the anniversary of that event. Amazing.

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I mean, it's amazing. It's so

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sad that it takes the

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repeated problems in the community to

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cause action, but it's so amazing that you're taking

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action and making change.

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One of the things that we've talked about is kind of how the podcast

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has changed then subsequent to the launch.

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Do you want to speak a little bit about that? Yes. So I

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launched the podcast, and originally the show name was buy black,

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build the new black wall street. That was,

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again, a concept that threw back to

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the old days, where in tulsa,

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oklahoma, in the early 19 hundreds, there was

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a community called greenwood, and that was

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a segregated black community in tulsa, oklahoma.

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That because of segregation,

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all the black people there had to buy

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from black owned businesses. And so in that

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community, there were lawyers,

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there were doctors, there were bus lines, there were hospitals,

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there were schools. There was so much money

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flowing through the greenwood community over

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and over and over again that there was massive wealth that was

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built within this small black community because the money

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came in, and then the money just kept turning

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over, and it kept growing, and it became one of the richest

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communities in the United States. Well, in june

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actually, I think it was june 19, 20th and 21st

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of 1921,

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they called it a riot. But it wasn't a riot. It was a massacre

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where one of the things that happens in history

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is a woman accused a black man of something.

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And because of that accusation, the community just said, well,

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let's just go in and kill everybody. And they burned down the entire community.

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And so they burned down what was called black

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wall street at the time. And then the state of oklahoma

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prevented outside entities from coming in and investing

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to rebuild it. So the community was

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burned to the ground. Over 300 people were killed, and then

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the state of oklahoma prevented it from being able to build back up.

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So this idea, this terminology of we need to

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build the new black wall street is the thing

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that, again, is part of kind of the culture of folks who are trying

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to empower the black community. And that was how I originally started the show.

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As I was building the show over the course of the year, I started noticing

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that the listenership and

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the folks who engaged with the show a lot more were those entrepreneurs

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and those business owners who either wanted to learn

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how to better start their business or grow their business or who wanted

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to get to the platform to get a voice for their business. And so I

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did have a lot of listeners who wanted to support black owned businesses.

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But far and wide, the folks who reached out and the

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folks who were engaging with the show and sharing the show, they were

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business owners who were just happy to hear the voices of other

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black business owners like them and who were reaching out to get on the show

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so they could get their voice heard. Because it's so hard for a

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small business without a whole lot of resources to get earned.

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Media. And so for free, I was creating a

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platform that was really growing, that was getting them access to an audience

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that didn't cost them anything. And so it turned out that the

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show was really more of a voice for black business.

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And so I changed the name of the show from Buy Black building Black Wall

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Street to Buy Black, the voice of black business. And so

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I've been doing that and here recently I've put the show

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on hiatus. I ended what we call season one. I'll be bringing it

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back this summer on July 5 of 2019.

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And we're just going to cut the Buy

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Black off the front of it and the show is going to come back just

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as the voice of black business because that's really what it has grown into,

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is there are other business podcasts, there's other

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black entrepreneurship and business podcasts out there. But I'm really

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focused on trying to make sure that that black business owner who

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doesn't have a name, who doesn't have a huge brand,

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who doesn't have folks beating down their door saying, come over here and

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be my expert. I want their story to get told because

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I have talked to so many great business owners over the year who

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never would have been heard, and their stories and their experience and

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their knowledge is second to none. Those stories need to

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get told and that knowledge needs to get out to the community. And a podcast

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is a great way to capture that for literally

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decades. I mean, the content is going to be here. The Internet's not going anywhere.

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So I love the direction the show has grown and I'm

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just looking forward to the next iteration of it. That just

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sounds so amazing.

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You're right. There are so many people that really for

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all of us, right. It's hard to get any sort of coverage,

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period, let alone free coverage. And so

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to be a platform for people to tell their stories and engage

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and stand in their power and expertise is really huge.

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So I appreciate everything about what you said and what you're

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doing. And it's interesting that

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you mentioned Black Wall Street. There's a documentary about it.

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Have you seen it? I haven't seen that one, but I know that there's been

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a few. It's hard to find information. I found that there are a

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lot of folks in the black American community who've never heard of

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Greenwood, I've never heard of it. And somebody sent

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me on Twitter because I sent out a message and said,

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I'm doing a new segment called Equity Corner, what should I talk about?

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And a woman sent me

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information about it, and I was like, what's that? And she sent

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me the links to, I think,

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several different maybe excerpts

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from the different documentaries. I haven't watched it yet.

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It was on Monday, but I had never heard

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of it. And then you're describing it more, and it

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seems to me that that's what's happened again and again

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in the African American community because it's happened here

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in Portland. If you look up vanport,

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it's a large flood that basically displaced

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our African American community here. And I know that when we

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talked before, we before today, we kind

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of we talked about how important it is to build

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community around African American entrepreneurship.

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Why do you think that that's so critical? It's critical

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because the natural

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tendency of people, of humans is to

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gravitate, to like people, right?

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And that's not just skin color. I mean, that's even among

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different ethnic groups who have the same skin color.

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We have cultural things in common. We have history in common.

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We've been educated in a way where we just get each other. Our vernacular

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is the same. All of these things are there and

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in every other culture in society.

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And I mean, even within the United States, there's a link back

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to something that draws people together.

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If you look at every immigrant population in the United States

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within two generations of that immigrant population

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coming to the United States, they have completely assimilated, they have completely

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become a part of the economy, even while those

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populations still have economic sectors

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and businesses that are tied

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to their culture. And other people in the United States go to

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specific places where those people live in order to consume the

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authentic culture.

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And businesses within those

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communities are built up

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by the people in the community. People support each other in

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their businesses in those communities. And it happens like

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that with every immigrant population, and that includes immigrant

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populations who come from Africa.

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But the black American community, we don't have

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that link. And the links that we

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have tried to reestablish over decades,

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for a long time, they kept getting ripped apart. Like you were just saying,

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black Wall Street vanport, those are just two of

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literally dozens of examples of the exact same thing.

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In fact, in the early 19 hundreds

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and I don't mean to go on a history lesson here, but when the

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Great Migration was going on, where black people were leaving

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the south in droves because all this manufacturing

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was happening in the north and all of these jobs were available in

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the north. You mean I can do anything other than being a sharecropper

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who ends up further in debt at the end of the year with my family

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never being able to move up? Oh, we're packing up. We're leaving overnight.

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We're going. And so now you have all of these new black

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families going into these places, and they're competing for work

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with poor whites. And now that's when

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labor unions start being developed. Partially it's

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developed because the management is not being fair, but a lot of them were developed

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because we need to keep the black people out. We need to make it where

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we can still get paid without them driving down our wages.

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And where that didn't work, that's when the violence came in.

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That's when, oh, this guy over here whistled at me. Okay,

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we'll kill all of them. And it happened over and over again and again.

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And the outcome, the long term outcome of that, is that every

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time that we started building community and wealth and

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this bridge to the next generation, someone would

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come in and literally burn it all down. And then once we got

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to the 1960s and the Civil Rights Act

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was passed and the voting Rights Act passed and not the

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New Deal, the Great society, war and poverty laws

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passed through integration,

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we lost whatever, entrepreneurship. And business

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ownership was left because now it became a symbol

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of status. To say, I don't have to shop in

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this black owned business. I can shop where white people

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shop. So now, even within the black

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community, there was no sense of, I need to take care

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of my neighborhood first. We need to take care of each other first.

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For so long, this group of people had been shut

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out that it became a psychological and an emotional

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need to be seen as part of.

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And that meant, if I can buy from you, that means that I'm

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part of you, not realizing that they were literally killing all

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the businesses that were supporting their community. And so

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that's where we've been for the last 50 years. And we have

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to educate people of just how important it

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is that the black community has that sense of support

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economically, both within the community and from outside the

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community, as every other group in the United States has.

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Because you will go say you live in the Bay Area,

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you will go to Chinatown so that you can consume authentic

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Chinese goods. People don't go into the

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black community to consume authentic black american goods.

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They go to other companies who assimilate our culture and

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then sell it back to us. And they give them the money

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because they want to look like it, but they don't want to actually go to

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where we are and consume it from us. And so it's

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an internal need to reestablish the

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importance of community, and then it's an external need to

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set the precedent of this is how you interact with every

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other group and their goods, services, and authentic culture.

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We need to normalize that. This is how the black american community

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is interacted with as well, both internally and by everybody else.

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Absolutely. I couldn't agree more.

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I think that we need to build community and support

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one another. And I think it's important to acknowledge that

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in the African American community, there isn't that same

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just a support, dedication to like, this is my community,

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I'm going to buy from other people because then

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it gets better for everyone. And I think you're right.

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I think it has to do with this idea of status and

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how can we encourage people to see that there's

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a lot of status around owning a business. So buying from each

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other is helpful.

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And that understanding of status, of being a business owner

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is there a lot of people who want to start a business.

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But on the flip side of it,

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if you go on the social media and you tell people, hey, I got a

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new job, loves, likes,

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hearts, I mean, you'll get 50,000 comments.

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Hey, I just opened a business. Nothing or criticism.

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It's a long road. And one of

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the things that has really helped me and one of the things that I think

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that really helps African American people,

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especially in business or actually just anywhere, is when

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you have a lot of friends who are African immigrants

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and you can sit and listen to them as a black person and

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how they see us if they'll tell you

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the truth. Most of them pity

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the black American because we don't see that

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we are still connected, that we still have a link.

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They know that they have that link back to Africa,

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and they know that if we could open our

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eyes and see that connection, that we could have that link too.

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But our mind frame has been so warped through

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slavery and then not official slavery

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and then 400 years of oppression.

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Right. 400 years of oppression will do that to you.

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Right. Generations of it. And so now we don't

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see the connection. It's a world

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of, I wish they could see what's right in front of them, but we have

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to rebuild it. It's been gone for

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generations. Yeah, well, something that

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we talked about leading up to the interview was the whole

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idea that we're a nation of immigrants, but we're

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not. And we need to start acknowledging that that

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some people were brought here against their will and ripped from their communities,

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and other people were already here. So they're the

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African American community who were brought here as slaves against their will,

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and then the Native American community who was already here.

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And when we start to put everybody in

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this generalization, I think it does a lot of harm and

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it just continues the cycles of oppression by

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not acknowledging, especially for me

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as a white person, it's not acknowledging different

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experiences and how that affects

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generations, like you were mentioning.

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Yeah, that's really interesting.

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I've never heard anybody say that Africans pity

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African Americans.

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It's a thing. And it's interesting.

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I tell a lot of stories. I was speaking at

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a black economy event up in Sioux Falls,

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South Dakota, last year, and then I got to hang out with

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some of the folks who were up there, and there's a large immigrant population

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up there from all different countries across Africa. So I was hanging out

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with some folks who had come from Nigeria,

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and we were having a conversation I was having a conversation with one of them,

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and we were having a conversation about ownership.

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And I started talking about the fact that a lot of the

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manufacturing that happens in the United States now, even when it's in

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the United States, a lot of those companies have already been purchased by

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Chinese companies, and they own a lot

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of our manufacturing businesses here in the United States. And we're

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basically exporting all of our wealth.

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And one of the other guys who came over as he was hearing

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me talk about this, he was like, wait a minute. You know about that?

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And I was like, well, yeah, I know about this. He was like, I haven't

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talked to any black American who knows about that. It's just

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common knowledge among a lot of kind of educated and smarter African

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immigrants because they've seen that happen a lot across the continent with

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China there as well. But the

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things happening behind the scenes, we are really cut out

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of a lot of that here in the US. And so they come here,

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and then they see our eyes aren't open to a lot of what's going

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on around us because we're just not part of the economy

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like that. We don't generally see all of these things going

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on behind the scenes. And without that context, it's hard to be to

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own your economy. It's hard to be a successful business owner

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or network when you don't have the context of what happens away

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from just the customer facing side of business.

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Yeah, absolutely. And as I started really

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educating myself a little more around,

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so it started for me on several fronts, but my most recent,

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I guess, research around African

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American women in particular started because I

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had a really crappy experience as a woman in tech.

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And then I started thinking, well, how many women

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are there in tech? And it's like 22%. But then

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as soon as you start looking at women of color,

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we're down to 2%. It's a very

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isolating experience. And then you go into

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venture capitalists. 8% of

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all venture capital goes to women owned businesses.

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The statistic I saw earlier this week was that three

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zeros 6% goes to black

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women. And I have yet to

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figure out how many businesses get venture capital

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and then do the math. But basically,

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black women are cut out of a lot of

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business entrepreneurship. There aren't a lot of women founders,

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but then not a lot of black

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women in particular that are getting access to

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the money. And when you start to look across the board, you begin

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to see, I think, real patterns of obstacles

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that I, as a white person, don't get.

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I don't have those same obstacles in front of me.

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So what do you see as some of the obstacles to success

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for black entrepreneurs? And you can speak in general

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or even what you've seen based on gender.

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So what I have done a lot over the last year

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or two is I've tried to look at a lot of comparisons between

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racism and sexism because obviously

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everything is intersectional. Being a woman

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puts you at a disadvantage. Being of a particular race

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may put you at a disadvantage. Being a woman of a particular race puts you

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at a combined disadvantage. It's like it's

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when you take it's a multiplier effect. Yeah.

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Alcohol and a downer and one plus one equals four.

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Right. Like, I remember that in chemistry class. This is why you overdose

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so easily if you do this, because you add one to the other, it's not

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two, it's four. And that's how intersectionality works.

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So when I look at things, and a

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lot of times when I have conversations,

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especially with white women, I use a

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lot of these comparisons. And I've never been a woman.

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I can't speak to what it is to be a woman, but in

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a lot of cases, I just kind of wing it. And I substitute

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misogyny for racism and I substitute woman for black,

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but I use the exact same words of a thing that happened to me

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and the Head Start. Now it's like that happens to me

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all the time, and I'm like, and what do you think? Freaking sexism. I'm like,

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exactly. That's also how racism works.

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Power treats the disadvantaged

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in very similar ways. We just call it different things. And so

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I think one of the biggest things is just recognizing that when

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you have a system that was originally built such

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that only land owning white males had a say in

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anything, it's really hard to first

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of all, you have to recognize that every other

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law and practice and cultural norm underneath

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that original document is also built towards

-->:

that. And so it's hard to take that in over

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centuries to pull that stuff out.

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But it also becomes so normal that the people who are

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within that group, which today would be kind of

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your white Christian male,

-->:

the people in that group, it's impossible for them to see that

-->:

there's a disadvantage even to the white Christian

-->:

woman. Right. Because they just think it's normal the way that we do this

-->:

thing. And then as you go further down the

-->:

line, the disadvantages stack.

-->:

And really the disadvantages just come back to these

-->:

cognitive biases that people have.

-->:

I would say, by and large, today, most of the people in society

-->:

that you talk to, if you just asked them survey questions and said, should things

-->:

be like this and should things be like that, most of them would say it

-->:

should all be equal, and they would genuinely mean it.

-->:

There's only really a few buttholes out there.

-->:

But most of those people also don't realize

-->:

that things aren't that way. They don't realize when they're

-->:

saying or doing something that is shutting a woman out. They don't

-->:

realize that the 22% of women in

-->:

tech are probably more competent than 90% of the men in tech.

-->:

Because to be a woman getting into tech, you have to

-->:

give them no reason that they could possibly discount you.

-->:

You have to be better, because then it's like, oh, well, I see

-->:

why she's here, because she's almost as good as me. No,

-->:

she's better than you. Way better,

-->:

because otherwise she wouldn't have gotten through the door. And like

-->:

we said with, the one plus one equals four.

-->:

When you are a woman, when you're a woman of color, when you are

-->:

a LGBTQ woman or man of color,

-->:

if we're talking about trans,

-->:

then it just stacks and stacks and stacks. And in

-->:

order to get yourself through that door, you have to walk

-->:

in more qualified than the person who's probably leading the

-->:

entire thing just to get entry level. And the folks

-->:

who are in charge, they look at that and say, oh, well, that person actually

-->:

met our minimum qualifications, not realizing that literally the

-->:

standard that they required of this person is nowhere near

-->:

the standard that they required of the guy who they just literally looked and said,

-->:

he's got a nice face and he finished college. Here's a job.

-->:

So true. Oh, my God. Yeah. No.

-->:

And it extends often, not always, to even

-->:

if a woman is willing to apply, they they say

-->:

that women are more likely to be like, okay, I qualify for every

-->:

single bullet point. And I think that and

-->:

men are just like, okay, I want to do this. And I would

-->:

say that if you are a white dude, you know

-->:

that you can skate in on some stuff,

-->:

and then if you're not,

-->:

then, you know you have to check every single box. Yes,

-->:

absolutely. And I think that's another case where

-->:

the misogyny and the racism can be

-->:

flipped. I think that that's a would you agree

-->:

with that? That that's a agreed 100%. And then

-->:

the next piece of getting in there, once you're in every

-->:

you have to be perfect. Any one mistake

-->:

is a reason why, see, we were right. She didn't

-->:

belong. Right? Right. Or she didn't belong, or he didn't

-->:

belong. You have to be perfect.

-->:

There are no second chances. And so where you have the guy

-->:

who's literally just like, it's no big deal.

-->:

I made a mistake. It's whatever, we all do it.

-->:

It really is from everybody's perspective, it's not a big

-->:

deal. For the woman, for the person of color, it's like,

-->:

this is the end of the world,

-->:

and it extends to our children.

-->:

Sorry. Another quick story. Sorry. And I'm not.

-->:

Don't. Apologize. I love stories. I love it.

-->:

I can't say for sure this is exactly what this is,

-->:

but it's just one of those things. Another thing about racism and sexism

-->:

is that a lot of times you suspect it's there,

-->:

but you can't prove it, and so you don't want to say anything

-->:

about it because you can't. But something

-->:

happened a few weeks ago. My youngest daughter,

-->:

six years old, in the first grade, she came home, and she said that she

-->:

got kneed in the stomach by a little boy at recess,

-->:

and so she was fine. We talked to

-->:

her. We asked her what happened. We asked her what happened with the teacher,

-->:

blah, blah. And she said she had never

-->:

had a problem with this kid before. He wasn't a kid who picked on her.

-->:

He wasn't a kid who picked on people, but apparently he was mad about

-->:

something. She was the closest person. He just decided to knead her in the stomach.

-->:

So send an email to the teacher to ask about this

-->:

event. She sends an email back saying, oh,

-->:

yeah, this happened. I talked to her after. I talked to him

-->:

after I made him apologize, and then I gave him consequences afterwards.

-->:

And I'm like, okay, if anything like this ever happens again,

-->:

we need to hear it from you before school is out,

-->:

rather than my six year old coming home and saying,

-->:

hey, violence was done to me today, and me having heard

-->:

nothing about it from an adult. So we just had our parent

-->:

teacher conferences this week, and I brought that back up,

-->:

and I said, I don't need to know how this child was disciplined, but I

-->:

do need to know, were his parents told what he

-->:

did? No, because he's a good kid,

-->:

and we've never seen anything like this before, and he's

-->:

just such a sweetheart, and we took care of it,

-->:

and I'm like, wasn't a big deal that this kid

-->:

need my kid in the stomach because he'd never done anything like

-->:

that before. So now there's no paperwork. His parents

-->:

don't know what he did, and if this pattern of behavior continues,

-->:

no one is there to correct it. No one is there to say what's

-->:

going on in your life that you think this is how you deal with anger.

-->:

And because he's a good kid,

-->:

we don't say anything to his parents. Again,

-->:

I can't say sexism. I can't say racism. I can't go in and say,

-->:

if that had been one of my kids, you would have been trying to kick

-->:

him out of the school. Because I don't know. I don't know if that's just

-->:

how they deal with all kids who are violent in that school, but based

-->:

on the policies I've seen, no, but it's

-->:

one of those things where you can't say, if it was my kid,

-->:

you would have done this. Because I don't know. Because my kid and wouldn't have

-->:

done that, but I know that you should have done something different, and I suspect

-->:

that the reason you didn't was an unconscious bias towards but

-->:

he's just a sweet little boy, and he's never done this before.

-->:

Those types of things eat at you because if you

-->:

go and make accusations, you're the butthole. Right? And it's like that with

-->:

kids right there as an adult. It's like that when you're in

-->:

your own business and things happen to you, and it's

-->:

psychologically draining to have to constantly live in that.

-->:

I mean, it's like a white man rapes a woman, and the woman

-->:

has to do everything in her power to prove it.

-->:

And then at the end, they don't give the

-->:

white guy much of a sentence because they don't want to ruin his life.

-->:

They don't want to mess his life up or kavanaugh

-->:

or whatever, and that plays out over and over again. And that's a way that,

-->:

as a woman, that it just perpetuates this.

-->:

I think you could look at the

-->:

industrial prison complex and say, well, they're not

-->:

really worried about ruining other people's lives, and the

-->:

black community has been devastated by unfair

-->:

sentencing and just locking people up.

-->:

It sounds like bias to me, and it sounds like racist to me,

-->:

because I'm assuming the little boy is a little white boy.

-->:

Right? It's one of those things where

-->:

all the people involved are good people. We love her teacher,

-->:

but it's just you don't realize in your mind the

-->:

decisions you're making are already colored by 400

-->:

years of history. It's just ingrained in us,

-->:

and opening people's eyes to that,

-->:

especially when they're on the privileged side of it,

-->:

sparks usually a very violent response to that.

-->:

Nobody wants to be told you're doing this because of something that

-->:

you don't even realize is inside of you, because it

-->:

hurts to be told that somewhere in you is this

-->:

predisposition. Because we all want to think we're good people.

-->:

And good people have predispositions that were there before they

-->:

ever even knew that they were picking this up from TV,

-->:

from parents, from friends of parents, from wherever. It just becomes

-->:

normalized. Yeah. And that's why I love Harvard's.

-->:

Implicit Bias, where you just have you are

-->:

you familiar with that? I'm not, no. So they did a study

-->:

of just what people's Implicit Biases

-->:

are, and you can actually go and take the test yourself.

-->:

It's basically a series of faces,

-->:

and it'll give you an emotion, like scary, and you pick which one,

-->:

and you're not supposed to think about it. And then at the end, it tells

-->:

you if you have gender bias, if you have race bias.

-->:

And it's pretty, like, you see it, and you're

-->:

like, oh, my God, because it's just right in

-->:

front of you.

-->:

Something that I talked to my friend Cole about is the

-->:

white fragility, right? So people that

-->:

look like me don't like to be told when they've done something wrong

-->:

based on race. But we have to start having those conversations

-->:

because that's how it changes. Right. And it has to come from someone

-->:

in the same group. That's the thing about it, is that

-->:

it's always got to be an internal thing for it to work.

-->:

A man going to tell a woman you've done something wrong or

-->:

a woman going to tell a man you've done something wrong is not going to

-->:

be met the same way as another man or another woman coming and pulling them

-->:

to the side and saying, look, this is what it is. They still

-->:

won't want to hear it, but the reaction won't be so violent, and they'll

-->:

actually go back and reflect. And the reflection is where the change starts happening.

-->:

Nobody else sees that. But you first got to get them in a place where

-->:

they're actually thinking about the thing from a different perspective

-->:

because you put that seed in their head. That has to come from somebody in

-->:

the same demographic. We need more people, need more men going to

-->:

other men and saying, that was jacked up. Here's why you

-->:

need to change this about yourself and being willing to take the backlash

-->:

at the moment, but stand your ground and then let that person go on,

-->:

because if they're a human, they will reflect on

-->:

it, and small change will start happening.

-->:

Absolutely. And then all the buttholes at a certain point,

-->:

get weeded out because there are people that aren't

-->:

going to listen. But we don't worry about that. We worry about making change where

-->:

we can, because I think there's far more people who

-->:

want to be a good person absolutely. Are a good person.

-->:

And I think it's absolutely right. As you were talking about

-->:

being within your same cohort or your same group,

-->:

I have two stories. I won't bore your interview.

-->:

No, please. I love stories, too. Okay.

-->:

So the first one is when my

-->:

boss, before I started my own business,

-->:

sat me down for my review and said,

-->:

I don't know if I'm saying this to you because you're a woman or not.

-->:

And basically, I didn't hear the rest of the review because I was just sort

-->:

of like, if you have to ask yourself that and you're saying

-->:

it out loud, I think we know the answer. And a

-->:

lot of the things that he was saying, I'm like, you would never say this

-->:

to a guy. You would never tell a man that

-->:

they stood up for opinion. They had opinions.

-->:

My whole job was to be an analyst. Right. So, like, yes,

-->:

I had opinions. You were asking me I did all the research.

-->:

Just because it wasn't what you wanted.

-->:

Right, okay. Would it make you feel better if I

-->:

called an assessment next time? Right.

-->:

So there's that, right. I'm not

-->:

even saying that the review was great overall,

-->:

but it was like the preface, and then it just discounted everything

-->:

for me because anything I was just like, oh, is that because

-->:

I'm a woman? Is that because I'm a woman?

-->:

So you're right when people aren't aware of their

-->:

biases or they aren't aware of how something like that would be

-->:

perceived, some of that stuff needs

-->:

to be delivered woman to woman because

-->:

we deal with that a lot,

-->:

being too strong or all of that. So that's the

-->:

first one. The second one is when I did I was

-->:

in a four day intensive around equity.

-->:

It was a huge training and at the

-->:

end we were put in to cohorts, right?

-->:

So all the white folks went into one room and

-->:

all the people of color were in another room and we

-->:

could hear the people of color were telling all kinds of stories. We couldn't hear

-->:

what they were saying, but they were like having a good time.

-->:

And in the white cohort, people were crying.

-->:

Nobody would talk. It was like all of this shame

-->:

and guilt and fragility like just

-->:

this room of like probably 20

-->:

people. And I

-->:

think about that quite a bit and how

-->:

I can change that so that people are able to

-->:

act. Because what we need is not that

-->:

that doesn't get us anywhere. That doesn't bring us forward at all.

-->:

For people to

-->:

be in that place of just crying and not wanting

-->:

to talk about things the way that we change things is to say, well,

-->:

that shit's fucked up and what are we going to do about it?

-->:

Because otherwise it's all

-->:

just going to be separate and it's not going to improve. At least

-->:

that's my opinion. Yeah, I completely agree.

-->:

There are a few situations that I've encountered over and over my

-->:

life where these are the people you need to look

-->:

to if you want to see kind of where

-->:

the learning begins.

-->:

White women who have either

-->:

born or adopted children of color suddenly

-->:

recognize racism because they see

-->:

other people looking at their beautiful babies and young children and young men

-->:

as they grow up as things that they are not,

-->:

as threats, as problems or jumping to conclusions

-->:

about a behavior here or there that this person

-->:

has never experienced in their life. Those women

-->:

mainly, especially those mothers,

-->:

most of them tend to get it right. The ones who are paying attention,

-->:

they tend to be like, I see this and

-->:

this is wrong. And then another one and this is very short lived. But another

-->:

thing to pay attention to, and I've seen it so many times,

-->:

is people who have,

-->:

let's say, black friends who they hang out with in

-->:

situations where it's not like the one black person and then a bunch of

-->:

white people, but where it's just maybe a one to one where

-->:

something will happen, especially something will happen with the police where

-->:

they are there and they witness the tone

-->:

difference, the quickness to violence difference.

-->:

The fact that this person is in their presence being treated

-->:

like an animal or a second class citizen,

-->:

literally, just for being there, and they get so mad

-->:

and so furious and ready to fight,

-->:

and we got to do this, and bro, blah, blah,

-->:

blah. And it's like, Chill, dude. Why are you

-->:

not pissed about this? My daily, every day,

-->:

if I got pissed about this every time it happened, I would

-->:

be a time bomb, and I wouldn't last long.

-->:

And it's those situations where you just get a glimpse

-->:

into it, and it's unbearable.

-->:

And then to see the person that you're next to is like,

-->:

that's a Tuesday afternoon, right?

-->:

Nobody pulled the gun on me, and I'm still walking home. It's a good day,

-->:

and it flappigated. Like, how can you exactly.

-->:

How can an entire population of people live like that in

-->:

this nation and be expected to function as

-->:

equals when our daily didn't

-->:

get shot, didn't get knocked down, didn't get taken to jail he's a good day,

-->:

right? Let alone thrive. I mean,

-->:

function, all of it.

-->:

But no,

-->:

and you're right, and the same thing is true in I can

-->:

speak for my own family. My family was very conservative

-->:

until my brother came out as gay, and then

-->:

all of a sudden, all those LGBTQ policies matter,

-->:

and it changes.

-->:

I mean, I was already liberal, but my parents were like, Whoa,

-->:

whoa. Can't treat my kid like that. Can't treat my kid like that,

-->:

which is great. I just wish that

-->:

we could apply it to other things other than just our own experience.

-->:

And that's, I guess, what I

-->:

want to do. And I'm passionate about equity and inclusion.

-->:

And so my question is, how can white folks like me best

-->:

support black entrepreneurs and the issues that they've discussed, that we've

-->:

discussed today, and then also just,

-->:

like, making life more livable in

-->:

general? Yeah. So specifically, black entrepreneurs.

-->:

The best way to support the huge,

-->:

massive difference between black business owners

-->:

and everybody else is that we don't have access

-->:

to the resources or the networks or

-->:

the connections that everybody else has. Inherently, we've been

-->:

disconnected from those. And I grew

-->:

up I was the only black kid in

-->:

my grade in my Catholic

-->:

parochial school growing up, all the way up until the 9th grade.

-->:

And then I was the only kid. Maybe there was one or two

-->:

others in private school at my church. So I

-->:

grew up in a situation where I was kind of outcast in both

-->:

societies. However, going to school every day with kids

-->:

whose parents were wealthy,

-->:

I mean, wealthy wealthy, they owned stuff, and other people

-->:

in the family owned stuff. Those kids grew up,

-->:

and when they got done with college, whatever they wanted to do,

-->:

there was a family member who they could call out

-->:

to who would give them access to resources,

-->:

access to connections, access to suppliers,

-->:

access to knowledge, use what I've got because you're

-->:

family, and there is nothing wrong with that. Nepotism is how

-->:

wealth grows. There's nothing wrong with that. Right. But knowing

-->:

that there's a community that has literally, intentionally been disconnected

-->:

from all of the sources of wealth generationally,

-->:

we need access to those resources. We need people who are willing to

-->:

say, oh, you need this. Here is my connection,

-->:

here are my resources, here is the knowledge. Here is how you XYZ,

-->:

and I'm going to walk you through it as if we were their own family.

-->:

Because it's through those connections

-->:

that business grows and moves. It's through those connections

-->:

that your 1st 1234 or five clients can come who are

-->:

paying you money to get you off the ground.

-->:

In our community, you're trying it on your own

-->:

from nothing every time.

-->:

And it is an uphill battle from

-->:

the bottom of a very steep hill that most people aren't starting

-->:

from that bottom. And I'm not saying because of not access to

-->:

personal resources, because there's individual wealth in

-->:

the black community, but even if you have the money to

-->:

start your own business, all of the other things

-->:

involved with connecting yourself into the economy,

-->:

you've got to get plugged in. And if you're not

-->:

starting off with access to all those resources to get you plugged

-->:

in to the folks who have the answers to questions or the resources you

-->:

need to succeed, or those first clients who need what you've got,

-->:

you're starting off dead in the water.

-->:

Yeah, absolutely. And just I

-->:

think understanding that difference

-->:

and how we can help each other, I think is

-->:

a really big thing. I think it's all about communication

-->:

and access. It's like Dr.

-->:

Claude Anderson. Like his steps, right? We all have to start with that economy

-->:

level, and it's all the resources, right. And then you can start

-->:

to excel to the other places, right? Yes,

-->:

absolutely. And so we're all there,

-->:

and I

-->:

think it's changing in certain groups. But what I think that people don't

-->:

understand is if we help each other, we all rise.

-->:

Yes, indeed. If you just think about,

-->:

all right, if there's three times as much unemployment in the black

-->:

community as every other community, and I talk to

-->:

people about this as well, sometimes when I'm trying to get them to see a

-->:

shift in mindset around race relations, right.

-->:

I show them these statistical disparities.

-->:

And then I asked a question of do

-->:

you believe that there is something inherently

-->:

broken about black people that inherently makes us

-->:

inferior as humans, such that we are so self destructive

-->:

and incapable? And they're like, no.

-->:

Okay. So then if you believe that we all

-->:

come out of the womb equally capable of great things,

-->:

then there must be some other factor in play that

-->:

is generationally making this group of people not perform like

-->:

everybody else. So either you are

-->:

literally a racist and you think, well, it's just their fault they're

-->:

less capable or you have to acknowledge, no,

-->:

there's an intervening factor. We need to find

-->:

the roots of those intervening factors and we need to start breaking those

-->:

barriers down so that this group can function

-->:

the same as every other group. We'll have our own criminal element

-->:

like everybody else does, and we'll have our entrepreneurs and we'll have our workers and

-->:

we'll have everything else. But if

-->:

we're in a world where we would say that statistically,

-->:

based on per capita, we should have about the

-->:

same average amount of whatever type of thing, whether it's good

-->:

or bad in the community. If you notice there's a community that's

-->:

not performing the same as everyone else and you

-->:

believe that all people start out the same, you have to

-->:

then logically go to the place of what are the interventions that

-->:

are preventing these folks from performing? Let's find them.

-->:

Let's get rid of them collectively so that they can perform at

-->:

the level of everyone else, so that our economy

-->:

can grow, so that we have less unemployment, we have less crime, we have fewer

-->:

people in prisons. We have a flourishing society,

-->:

and we are that Ronald Reagan beacon on a hill.

-->:

The rest of the world can look and say, I want to go there.

-->:

Because anybody, including those of

-->:

us who are either brought here or those of us who were

-->:

killed and pushed away, who were here,

-->:

anybody can come here and they're going to be able to succeed

-->:

with hard work that needs to eventually become true,

-->:

and that requires self reflection as a

-->:

nation. What are the barriers that we still have in

-->:

place that are preventing this from happening?

-->:

And it takes more people who look like me to speak out

-->:

when they see injustice and when

-->:

the media is being racist,

-->:

just flat out racist with what they cover and what they choose not to cover.

-->:

And when the messaging doesn't

-->:

match up with reality, which happens a lot.

-->:

And when all of those all of those pieces,

-->:

when we all talk to the people who are in power and

-->:

say, this isn't acceptable anymore, I'm not going to buy from you,

-->:

I'm not going to watch your TV or whatever it is,

-->:

these things all add up. And then also it's about supporting each

-->:

other in business, whether it's with resources or buying

-->:

from each other as small business owners

-->:

and saying, yeah, I believe in what you're doing here and

-->:

I'm going to buy from you. And I'm going to help you in any way

-->:

that I can, whether it's taking you to a networking event

-->:

with me or connecting you with somebody I know in your

-->:

field or anything. All of those small steps,

-->:

they lead to big results. They're so critical

-->:

to helping people get what's theirs.

-->:

Yeah, the first time we talked, we talked

-->:

a lot about that privilege right, and use of it. We haven't

-->:

even talked about that. Oh, yeah,

-->:

but you brought it up, right, the dirty word of

-->:

privilege. But I think it's because a lot of folks abuse it, and they

-->:

try to use the word privilege to make people feel guilty rather

-->:

than to use it as an empowering thing.

-->:

Privilege means I get access to things other

-->:

people don't, just simply by being and

-->:

recognizing that that's a reality is the first step. And then the next thing

-->:

is, now that I know I have access to these things, what am I going

-->:

to do with that access? Who am I going to serve with my privilege?

-->:

And we talked about this before.

-->:

I talk about privilege from the standpoint of myself.

-->:

I am a black man in the United States. I am six

-->:

foot three. I used to be a Marine. I have

-->:

been an athlete my entire life. I am almost 40 and

-->:

I look great. People like tall people,

-->:

people like attractive people. I have lighter skin, which means I'm

-->:

less of a threat. I went to private schools, which means I

-->:

speak whatever kind of English America believes that I should be speaking,

-->:

right? None of those things I had control of. I had no control over

-->:

my genetics. I had no control over the fact that I had parents who sacrificed

-->:

to put me through private schools. I had no control over any of those

-->:

particular factors. And yet, because of that implicit bias you

-->:

talked about, when someone sees me, they are more likely

-->:

to want to engage with me. Maybe not because of the

-->:

black part of it, but all those other things are working in my favor.

-->:

And so I get access to places and things with a lot

-->:

less work than a lot of other black people do or a lot of women

-->:

do, or even black women do, right? And so when

-->:

I have that privilege, when I have that access,

-->:

who am I going to serve? Am I going to go in there, take the

-->:

knowledge, come back, build my thing, and say, you all need to figure it out?

-->:

Or am I going to go in there, grab the knowledge, come back, build a

-->:

podcast, teach people for free so that they can

-->:

start building and growing as well. That's what privilege privilege

-->:

is power. But you need to have people who

-->:

recognize first that it exists. It's not a dirty word.

-->:

And when you recognize you have it now, you start trying

-->:

to figure out, well, what places can I get into? What can I learn

-->:

while I'm there? Or who can I bring with me? And it almost becomes like

-->:

this scavenger hunt of, how can I use this today

-->:

to serve somebody? Yeah, I mean, I became aware of

-->:

privilege before. It was a word that was used,

-->:

right, because I was treated different in Peace Corps because I

-->:

wasn't Kazakh or Russian.

-->:

But the place that I start, when people

-->:

get all however they get about privilege, because people

-->:

do get upset is I just look at them because they're white people

-->:

usually. And I'm like, how many

-->:

times every day do you think about your race?

-->:

And white people never do. I don't have to think about my race.

-->:

I'm a woman. I case a joint to make sure that there's no creepy dudes

-->:

around. And if I'm going to

-->:

my car at night, I'm checking everything, which is something that

-->:

a lot of men, I don't think, have to do.

-->:

But I don't think about my race.

-->:

I've never been tailed in a grocery store

-->:

because of my color, because people just automatically assume

-->:

that I'm going to steal. I've never had

-->:

these different experiences. And I think that when you just start with that,

-->:

how often do you think about the color of your skin? Because that's

-->:

privilege. If you don't have to think about it,

-->:

that's privilege. And you can just look at it from that

::

perspective and it takes out the but I grew up poor, and I grew

::

up because it's really about what you have to think about,

::

right? What you're worried about on the daily.

::

And if you don't have to think about certain things,

::

that's privilege. And then it's like, okay, what are you going to do with that?

::

Because you do get access to

::

other things. I'm short, but I'm pretty spunky, so I can typically

::

weasel my way into things. But I'm white.

::

Look at me. I'm sure that you got the request for a

::

podcast guest and you're like, what? Could this person want to talk to me?

::

No, I actually looked and I looked at your bio and I said, I want

::

to talk to her. But I'm

::

just saying it's unusual, I think, for someone to

::

be as passionate about equity as I am. And it's because

::

once I saw how bad it sucked, I was like, I don't want other people

::

to feel that. That's terrible. And then it's

::

slowly building into speaking out when

::

I see situations and just

::

having these conversations and reminding other people,

::

has that ever happened to you? So I'm

::

trying to be that person in my cohort. But, man,

::

there are a lot of people that don't really seem to want to listen sometimes.

::

You just keep trying. It's funny.

::

When we first talked and you talked about your experience in the Peace Corps,

::

that's another one of those groups of people, right? You got mothers of

::

children of color, and then you have typically

::

bros who are hanging out with one of their black bros, and they get pissed

::

off when the black bro gets treated unfairly. But then you have

::

white people, male or female,

::

who have spent time serving the world outside

::

of these borders, and they have seen and experienced

::

life outside these borders. Usually when I talk

::

to someone who is as passionate about breaking these things

::

down as you are, it's because they went out and they either experienced from

::

the other side or they went out and they saw what unbridled

::

racism looks like, and then they come back.

::

And it's funny when you've seen it without a cover on it, and then

::

you come back to the United States, even though there's a cover on it,

::

you still see it because now you know

::

the lingo, you know the code words. There's something

::

in the black community we call code switching, which is, as I'm

::

talking to you right now, Jen, I feel really comfortable with you, but I'm

::

not being completely gerald right. When I go home to Arkansas

::

and I am with my family and we are

::

sitting around playing domino's space till 02:00 in the morning, this isn't

::

the voice you get. And it's not that I'm putting on a show for you,

::

but it's just ingrained in my being. This is how

::

you engage with the world, and then this is how you get to engage when

::

you just take it all off and relax. And racism

::

works that way, too. America has put a code

::

into our language in the way that we talk about and with other

::

people to where, you know, this is the real thing behind

::

what I'm saying. If you know the code and if you don't know the

::

code, you just think this is normally how people talk. But when you've gone out

::

and you've served the world and you've seen racism and you've seen it without

::

the cloak on it, and then you come back to a place where there's a

::

cloak but the code is there and you've already cracked the code, you're like,

::

man, this is jacked up. I see what's going on here. And the person next

::

to you is just like, there's nothing going on. What are you talking about?

::

Right. Yeah. No, and it's so

::

funny. So, yeah, I mean, I've had that experience. The other thing that there's

::

a code for in this country that I didn't realize until I was out

::

of it for a significant period of time is we like to act like we

::

don't have a lot of corruption here. And I lived someplace

::

where the corruption was just out.

::

It is just out. Why are we still sitting here? He's waiting

::

for his bribe. Yeah, exactly.

::

We would take vans back and forth to the city, right. And there'd be a

::

police officer. And you'd see him, and I'm like, oh, God, he just wants a

::

bribe. So he waves the guy over, and the

::

driver, as he's slowing down, is like, grabbing his wallet because

::

he knows that there's nothing. He just wants

::

money. And it happened again and again

::

and again. And it was similar to my experiences around

::

equity over there. It was like, at first I'm shocked and

::

then I'm mad. And then I have to break down why

::

I'm mad and then reverse engineer it to be like,

::

oh, yeah, we've got all that stuff. It just looks different. And then

::

you begin to. See it and how it plays out in

::

other places. And it's kind of another part

::

of the privilege, right, is that corruption and realize

::

that I can get away with it.

::

And part of that is about having that power and realizing

::

it. I think one of the biggest things that disappoints me

::

about the United States is when I travel,

::

there are so few Americans out there, and I

::

think that people need to get out and they need to see more

::

of the world. And I think that's a way that we build

::

more understanding back home is when people travel and see

::

things and have experiences. And I mean,

::

almost half the people here don't even have a passport. And I'm like, what are

::

you going to do if something happens, right? You got to get out.

::

And so if there's one thing that people can do is travel

::

and have those experiences because it changes your perception,

::

it changes your reality, and then it's also just being awake

::

and seeing things for what they are.

::

Yeah, that's another the flip side of that.

::

In the black community. There's a lot of people who are trying to get younger

::

kids and get them more experiences out of the country,

::

traveling to go experience things, because, especially as

::

a black American, getting out of this country shows you that you can.

::

So many people never even leave their neighborhood

::

of the city they're born in their entire life. And so that's

::

the only reality. You know, one trip out

::

even a lot of times just to another city in the country

::

is enough to break somebody out and see there's more out here for

::

me. And that's one of the things that's needed

::

to break that mental block in

::

a lot of young black people's minds, is it just

::

takes seeing that there's another opportunity out there

::

than the one that you were born into a lot

::

of times to just trigger the creativity, the passion,

::

the drive. It's hard to have those things if you've never

::

either been told or shown that there's another way.

::

And I'm not just saying towards either bad or good, but just

::

there's another way other than just saying, I've got to get a good job and

::

I got to get married and I got to raise my kids in this city

::

that I was born in. That's not the only option.

::

Go out, experience the world, and then start thinking about how

::

you can make an impact on it. Travel is so

::

very important to young people just to that's

::

when their minds are most malleable. That's when the best ideas come and

::

so many people and it's not just black, it's all different colors, just everybody

::

make it all the way through adulthood without ever having had the chance to

::

dream or to scheme about how they could make an

::

impact. And I think that's a perfect bridge

::

to talking about your work because I think that you do a Lot

::

Of Helping People See Those Possibilities.

::

I think travel definitely among kids,

::

opens people's minds to possibilities. But I

::

think you do that with the people that you work with. Indeed.

::

So my coaching as a business coach,

::

I've launched a coaching program called Dopebusinessplan.com.

::

And Dope is an acronym. It stands for

::

define your strategic objectives, organize your business model around

::

your lifestyle, prioritize your work streams to

::

automate, delegate and outsource what you can, and then execute your

::

role as the chief executive of your business. And I started

::

this because of doing the podcast. Over the

::

course of the last year and a half, I've interviewed almost 50

::

business owners. I've had emails and then conversations

::

with dozens more. And they're hungry. They're passionate.

::

But like a lot of business owners, regardless of race or

::

gender, they start a business because they're passionate about

::

something. They're really good at something. They want to serve people doing it.

::

And the problem with doing that successfully is

::

that eventually you have so many people who want your service

::

that you have to actually run a business.

::

And a lot of them either don't have a business background

::

or don't know how to make that transition from self employed

::

to being a CEO. And that takes structure. That takes

::

building the right pieces in place so that your business

::

can be an entity in and of itself. That works whether you're in

::

the office or not. And so I started my program

::

specifically to hit those business owners who've been doing it

::

for a few years. They're successful, but they're

::

in the business all the time. They're missing their kids events

::

because they're on the phone or they just can't be there.

::

They're not present on vacations. If they take them at all.

::

And family life is suffering. Business might be doing

::

good, but if you can't step away from it

::

ever, eventually something's going to break.

::

So I want to see people win. I want

::

to see business owners win. And winning in

::

business eventually means being able to make

::

money without physically having to be at the helm all

::

the time. And that doesn't start once you have a medium or

::

a full large company that starts literally with the structure

::

you put in place at the very beginning. So that's what

::

my program is about. I know it says business plan,

::

but it's not about the business plan. It's not about writing some 15 page

::

document you're never going to use. It's really about the business model

::

and getting the right structure around the business and then

::

building in the pieces so that I can actually just go enjoy life with

::

my family. And it keeps working.

::

Yes,

::

Absolutely. I think that's what even when I

::

started, I was like, yeah, I want to be sitting on a beach somewhere

::

just watching the money come in.

::

I think it's good. Even If You Have Some Service Delivery

::

Direct with Clients, it's Always Good To Leverage

::

into other places where you don't have to be there because

::

things happen, life happens, and you do need

::

to be present for

::

your family and your friends.

::

Well, and a lot of business owners, really, they don't think within

::

their business model structure. They don't think about how they make

::

money, right? They start out just saying, we just need to serve clients and we

::

need to make money. And it's all very transactional, right? They don't

::

think about structuring in, how do I first move from transactional

::

to recurring, right? And then once I

::

move from transactional to recurring, how do I move from recurring to passive?

::

And it's a big thing nowadays,

::

right? Create passive income. Passive, passive, passive income, right? But passive

::

income doesn't come day one. Passive income

::

is something that you structure to eventually get to.

::

I'll use myself as an example because I love transparency.

::

This dope business plan program, I'm focused on the

::

experienced business owner right now because it's a coaching program.

::

And we're going to get together for group coaching periodically

::

on video conference calls where I record those calls.

::

And as I go through that with my coaching clients

::

and those recordings, those are going to eventually become a

::

self paced course that you can just buy and

::

you can watch the videos on your own time and get the same value

::

and make the changes in your business. If you don't want to spend as much

::

money on group coaching, So you start out

::

by creating a transactional

::

relationship. I coach you one time. You're better

::

hopefully on the backside of that, you see, hey, I still need this guy's advice

::

and you put me on a retainer and every month you're paying me

::

a certain amount of money just so you can call and ask me questions and

::

I make sure that you keep getting better, right? So transactions

::

are recurring, but I'm creating the content as I go

::

along so that on the backside, I can put it all together in a

::

course and just say, come to this site, this is what you need.

::

It is proven. Buy it from me. Here's the money, here's the

::

course. I have nothing to do with that. And that's

::

passive income. But you structure from day one to

::

eventually get there. And that's exactly what the dope

::

business plan is about, structuring for that

::

eventual hands off business.

::

Which is fantastic because what you're also getting if

::

you structure that in from the beginning is and I'm

::

sure that you're finding this right, with like group coaching, you're getting that

::

feedback. So you're collecting information,

::

you're getting data from the people you're working with. So then actually

::

future group programs are better and your online program is

::

also better. I mean, it's truly leveraging everything, all of

::

your expertise, all of what you're hearing from people into

::

a product that you don't have to be present for. And that

::

is beautiful. That's what

::

everybody needs to be aspiring to, especially since more and more

::

I think people want to just buy things online and do it themselves.

::

And that's really our 21st century economy. I mean, since the financial

::

breakdown in 2008, so many people just said, I'm done with this and this

::

whole economy has blown up. But now it's a

::

matter, we got to refine it. There's a lot of not real people out there

::

who are just wasting people's money and time. We got to refine this

::

economy so that it's a structured way

::

of going about the business of eventually getting to that passive income by delivering

::

value. I think that's great.

::

Do you have anything to offer? Like how can we go get the dope business

::

plan? Yeah, so the first question I have for you is

::

when will this likely be airing? Within the next

::

couple of weeks. Okay, good. So we'll be good by then.

::

Right now I have an actual ebook in production

::

that is called the Five Low Cost

::

Automation Tools to Transform Your Small Business.

::

And I'd love to do a whole other podcast about a

::

really easy way to put together a valuable ebook because I did

::

this process and I had it built in a week, but right

::

now it's out on fiver getting made pretty,

::

but yeah. So five low cost automation tools to transform your small business.

::

You will be able to get that@dopebusinessplan.com,

::

getthebook no dashes in between. Just gethebook the

::

regular main page is dopebusinessplan.com

::

and then for me, you can reach out to me on any

::

social media site that's normal. Like I'm not on Snapchat or any of that

::

stuff, but all of my socials are the same. It's Gwjones

::

II on all the socials and my email is Gerald@hapticconsulting.com

::

and we'll put all of that in the show notes.

::

Thank you so much for being here. I've had so much fun. I'm hoping,

::

yes, we will talk about ebooks or whatever you want. You're welcome to come back

::

anytime. I would love that. So I

::

went through this process, it was so quick. I said I have a 25 page

::

book and it only took me a day. This is awesome. So yeah,

::

I would love to come back and share what I learned with that because like

::

I said, I love helping people win. Thank you for listening to

::

The Third Paddle Podcast guest be sure to catch every episode by subscribing

::

on itunes. To learn more, check out our website@www.thirdpaddle.com.

::

The Third Paddle podcast is sponsored by Fostergrowth LLC

::

online at www dot fostergrowth

::

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