January 31, 2022 • 27 mins
Issac is a record producer, voice actor, and entrepreneur who has a name that should sound familiar to everyone. He is the son of the late soul icon Issac Hayes. Like his father before him, Issac has entered the realm of entrepreneurship.
Issac joins us and talks about the value of ownership. In addition, he shares some personal life lessons he learned about his father and the reality of the music industry. Finally, he reminisces about the early signs of his entrepreneurship and his experience from 9-5 jobs that sparked his decision to become an entrepreneur. Issac speaks about the odd jobs that led to him becoming a music producer and his new venture in the tech space with Fanbase.
If you ever wanted to learn how to monetize your social media, Issac is the one to listen to.
Host IG: @itstanyatime
Guest IG: @isaachayes3
Fanbase: @fanbaseapp_
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, Money Movers, Welcome back to Money Moves, the daily
podcast determined to give you the keys to the kingdom
of financial stability, wealth and abundance. Hey, Money Moves Family,
Welcome to the Money Moves Podcast powered by Greenwood. Our
(00:22):
celebrity guest this week is an American record producer, voice actor,
entrepreneur who has a name that should sound familiar to everyone.
He is the son of the late great soul icon
Isaac Hayes. Money Moves. Let's welcome Isaac Hayes, the third
to the podcast. Isaac, Welcome, Thank you, thanks for having
(00:45):
It is our honor and pleasure to have you today,
so happy you could join us. You've clearly come from
a legacy of greatness and continue to exude greatness and excellence,
and it's amazing to see what you're doing on your
own accord. Well, thank you very which I really appreciate it.
I'm carving my own lane to see. No, that's absolutely true,
(01:06):
and we love to hear that. You know, Money Moves
is about that. It's about creating generational wealth, and it's
about creating um family futures and just excellence. So I
think this is a perfect conversation I'm really excited to
see what you're working on, especially because you grow grew
up with a father that was deep into the music business. Um,
can you tell us a little bit about how that
(01:28):
has really set the tone and pathway for your own
excellence coming forward? Now? I mean it starts with entrepreneurship.
It was a career entrepreneur. Um. He started from the bottom.
You know, he started picking cotton and working in hall factories.
You know. UM, say that again, y'all do you understand
(01:50):
like when when when we're talking about growing up in
the South and starting from the bottom picking cotton. Yeah. Yeah.
He was born in nineteen forty two, UM in Memphis, Tennessee. Uh,
and his parents were sharecroppers and he picked cotton. Um,
you know, grew up a very very meager, poor existence.
(02:13):
But he was self educated and a self taught musician
and became like this, you know, international icon um, coming
straight out of Memphis, Tennessee and a boy with dreams.
You know what I'm saying that that rose to heights
of success through music. It's incredible story. Wow, that's incredible.
So you know, on money, we was we really like
(02:35):
to talk about this mindset not just of excellence, but
how financial literacy was passed down. And I love how
you framed your dad as an entrepreneur, not just a musician,
but an entrepreneur. Talk about some of the lessons that
he left with you in terms of how you view money,
building wealth within your family. Well, I mean, it's they're
(02:55):
hard lessons because he was an artist in the music
industry that was taking advantage of He lost rights to
a lot of his music, and sometimes that resulted in
him losing millions and millions of dollars worth of revenue.
And so you learned, you learned the lesson of ownership. Um.
The music business can be savage contracts, things like that.
(03:17):
So UM, for him, my conversations were always about ownership,
always about owning your content, owning your publishing, owning your brand. Um.
And and and that's really, you know, kind of what sustained
him throughout his career. He did things that were so
great that he was always someone that people called on
to work um. And he said, you know, he set
(03:39):
a tone for I think future future generations to really
understand and learned, especially in the hip hop business, about
how they were treated, telling kids to own their things
with sampling and stuff like that when that came back
around and how that was extremely important. So for me,
those are the lessons that he taught. It was always
like I always had an entrepreneurial mindset from my parents,
(04:00):
and they didn't really force me, you know, saying like
you're gonna go out here and get a job. They
kind of let me do my thing. Um. And so
when I got a chance to really venture out and
decided that I was going to be a career entrepreneur,
it was a very scary decision, but it was the
best decision that I ever made, you know what I'm saying,
you know, going down that path. So talk about your
early days of you know, deciding to be an entrepreneur.
(04:22):
What were some of your first ventures and well, okay,
so my family makes fun of me all the time
because I have a little brother he's fifteen years old.
I've been working since I was like nine years old.
I was always the kid that with molaws help people
move anything to make some money, right, So I mean, yeah,
(04:43):
always like that. You know, I did that as a kid. Um.
I got in trouble with school one time for like
creating a club and selling like memberships to it with
kids lunch money. I was in like elementary school and
like um. But then you know, I worked. I worked.
I went to the marriage Youth Leadership program um in Atlanta,
(05:07):
and then I worked at the public library. And then
I graduated high school and I decided that I was
going to to just get a regular job. I hadn't.
I was in between the side. But I'm really gonna
do this or not as a producer. So I worked
a job at this this place called the lin In
Law for two years. It was like dead bathro yard
before that, and I remember it took so long to
(05:29):
get to work that when I quit my job. I
quit my job in February of nineteen ninety six. I said,
there's two things I never want to do again in life.
One is worked for another person in the second one
was ride public transportation. I made that decision. I haven't
done both. I haven't been on the bus. So I
haven't had a boss since February nineteen ninety six. Interesting
(05:51):
conscious decision. You were like, no more. I want to,
you know, be my own owner, own my own businesses,
and not work for anybody else. And I didn't. I
didn't go to college, so so I didn't go to
college when a different world was on TV. So let
me tell you something. I was like the last the
(06:12):
last guy that a girl wanted to talk to. You
seriously hits because everybody was watching a different world and
it was like you needed to be at Hillman So
I get you. I was. I was an outcast. I
was at home like you know. But um what I
learned was my college was I had earned enough money
(06:36):
to buy some equipment and learn how to start to
produce an engineer records. Right, So those four years from
ninety six to two thousand, those are my four years
of learning how to make records use. UM I got
my first chance to really do jump into music business
with Tricky Stewart over at Red Zone. UM I produced
a record. I made like four thousand dollars from my
first record. I was like, wow, okay, I could do this,
(06:58):
you know what I'm saying, Like that was a lot
of money at the time for me coming up like
all right, but um that started me on my journey
of really learning how to hustle because everything that I
did was always learning how to have a skill set
that could get me in places where I could I
could use my skill set to make money but also
use my skill set to hustle. I love that, you know.
(07:19):
Like I worked at recording studio, so the studio needed
a studio manager. I know how to do that. But
then during the downtime, I could use the studio to
make beats. So that's kind of how I got my
foot in the music industry, was learning how to engineer,
burning c ds. All these kind of like eye jobs,
you know what I'm saying. That really just got me
into spaces and places where I could be around music,
(07:41):
and then they led to opportunities that led to my
break in the music industry. Well, you were being very
humble because you've been behind some of the most memorable
tracks and soundtracks of the last twenty years, a little scrappy,
there's a whole litany of them. Um, and now you've
sort of taken a twist and you're getting into the
technology arena. And I love this because it's completely in
(08:02):
line with what your the legacy your father's left behind
in terms of ownership. Can you tell us about fan Base? Yes,
So fan Base was a venture that I started in
It was an idea that I had about I saw
a kid dancing in a spider Man costume um in
(08:24):
a game stop to Aha take on Me. And he
was from Memphis, Tennessee. He goes by the name of
Ghetto Spider Um and he quickly had like three thousand
followers out of nowhere. And I just shot him at
d M and I was like, hey, congratulations, young Memphis.
You know, just to say it was casual, so casual,
and his his immediate response was are you a manager?
(08:45):
And I was like no, not, like thanks, I really
need a manager. Like he was really on me about
the fact that he needed management. I said, well, give
me your number. Um, let's talk about it. You know
what I'm saying. I'll see maybe if I can help
you out. But I left the conversation like, Yo, this
kid is like a deer caught in the headlights and
he's having this viral moment and he doesn't know how
to monetize it. I said, he needs to be able
(09:07):
to monetize his dancing. I said, there needs to be
a platform where people can can subscribe to you, but
follow you. So I said that was the birth of
fan base. UM. I got extremely lucky with my attorney
introducing me to my now c c O and his firm,
and we built the We built the app from July
(09:29):
to December. And this was a This was a bootstrapped
company like fan Base cost me two hundred thousand dollars
to build own money. Y'all understand what bootstrap means. You know,
people think you're just going out asking for investor money,
like this is his own blood, sweat and equity, right,
And it was a lot, you know, I, you know,
(09:51):
earned money um in the music industry and spaces and
places like that, and I was able to use some
of that to really, like I said, go out and
and and and put this idea into the space. And
so we launched the company like January twenty nineteen, but
I didn't tell anybody that I built it. I was
really quiet about it. And the reason was because I
(10:15):
wanted to raise money at some point. But I knew
that if I ever raised money and told people like, okay,
how many users you got, what's your traction? Like if
I told people that I told this famous person or
this famous person to download it, and they would be like,
that's b s. That's not real data. So I left
the Apple loan for a year, and in the course
(10:35):
of the year, a couple of people made some money,
but one person, one user, made about six thousand dollars
and we had about ten thousand users. I was like, okay,
I have a proof of concept. Now I know that
this will work. Now we can scale this. Now we
can take it and say all right, if this person
can do it, that other people can do it and
make money. So as soon as I plan to do that,
covid hit came down like an animal. The world was
(10:57):
the world was shut down. So so body that we
both know Monique, I had to let her absolutely rain
venture shout out to them. Monique said, you need to
go and raise money on this platform called starting It.
I showed her fan base. She says, this is dope,
Like there's nothing out there like this. And and only
Fans was a thing that was out there, and I
(11:17):
was totally aware of them, and I always knew that
they were gonna blow up. I was like, only fans
are gonna have this viral moment that when the strippers
find out about this thing that crazy, And it happened
during and when Beyonce said started only Fans, I was like,
this is out of here, this thing is it's nuts,
it's crazy. So Anyway, my initial goals to raise a
million on start Engine. I got accepted to the platform.
(11:39):
But when I got accepted to the platform, I simultaneously
got yes. So at the time that I was that
I got accepted the Start Engine, I got invited to
this app called Clubhousehouse. So so the end like the
clubhouse came. And when you're raising me in a REXI
(12:00):
if you can't tell anybody that you you you you're
you're raising money until the race goes live, you have
to be quiet about it. So I got on Clubhouse
and there were a lot of cool people on a clubhouse.
Don't don't get me wrong, there are a lot of
brilliant people out of vcs. But but one thing that
I noticed was they were black people on a clubhouse.
(12:21):
But there were some black people that I knew personally
that knew a lot of the vcs and a lot
of the other people in the clubhouse that we're not
black that might go white or whatever. And I'm like,
why are they not here? I'm like, oh no, this
isn't right. I was like, I'm finding, like the hood
to clubhouse, I'm finding I'm gonna turn up. So I
got some invites so invited like uh Snoop Dogg, Van
(12:44):
Lathan Cortez, Brian who managed Little Lines that Should Be Read,
invited Sean Garrett, I invited um Brian, Michael Cox, I
invited just a ton of like people, Dina Mark, because
I feel like you were certainly early to the game,
and you know, I was early on Clubhouse as well.
(13:04):
And then all of a sudden, Isaac gets on Clubhouse,
and I'm telling you, you definitely changed the culture of
Clubhouse for shut like Atlanta represented heavy. Now, yeah, it came,
it came in and like maybe a week later, like
Fia got on there and then it was over. It
was like, all right, it was just action packed and
so Clubhouse was having these really viral moments. But when
(13:26):
we got there, everybody black got on the app. The
first thing that people started saying was here we go again.
We're finna blow up another app. But is it is
it really? Like is it really for us to do?
We earn it? And I was thinking, like I said, well,
I'm about to raise money for this startup, So I
just sat back and let people complain for like three months,
(13:47):
like all this Exeptember, my raise didn't go line to
October twenty nine, so people were coming on the platform
and I was like, I hear you talking all this
big ship. That's what I'm gonna come back around and
be like, well guess what so so clubhouse were starting
to blow up, right, you know, like one Savage got
on there popping so um. October twenty night comes and
(14:08):
I go back on clubhouse and hold my first room,
and from that room, I think the first ten or
twenty dollars of investment in fan base came off a
clubhouse having rooms and explain to people the opportunity to
invest because you know, doing a RecF raise, um a
regulation crowdfund, you're actually raising money from the general public.
(14:31):
So you're giving people a chance to invest in a
tech company that are aren't accredited investors, that never get
the costs to invest in Uber lift clubhouse like that,
And I love this because this is what money Moves
is about. It's about being able to create generational life
and expose our community to you know, investments and wealth
building that we've previously been excluded from. Because people, are
(14:53):
you an accredited investor? Can you get into this round?
Are you connected in the valley? And here's a perfect example, Um,
you creating opportunity for so many people to invest some
money and you know, get returns down the line. Yeah,
and so so that was extremely important for two reasons.
I know that in social media the users were three reasons.
(15:16):
The number one, the users are the ones that directly
affect the value of the platform. So that's one. And
then too, I understand the effect that black culture has
on the valuation of these text startups because we just
watch it on Clubhouse. It just Clubhouse literally went from
a hundred million dollar company to a billion dollar company
from August to January. I just seen it. We've seen
(15:36):
it happen in real time. So, um, the fact that
I know I could go to the community and say, hey,
look here's a chance to invest in the startup and
have a piece of equity in it, and we could
turn around and the cheat code is we leverage our
culture in the same way. Yeah, and and and and
make it happen that way. It will be extremely important.
(15:58):
And then what what really was important to me was
when fan Base is successful, because I'm just claiming it
it's gonna be a multibillion dollar starter. When it is,
you know, whatever exit or I p O we have
when I do this, and when we do this, it
will be the largest distribution of wealth of black people
(16:19):
in the history of this country. We have overstors, most
of them are black people, most of the first time investors.
And the fact that these people took a chance in
this company and they're gonna rise and see a return.
It becomes a model for the way that we can
fund our own businesses, because if this works for fan base,
it can work for a multitude of businesses. It can
(16:41):
work for a record label, it can work for a barbershop,
It could work for anything. Like you know, Okay, I'm
gonna start a barbershop. Okay, I'm gonna raise a million
dollars on fan base, and then all we do is
go to that barbershop we invest in, we have piece
of it, and that and I tell my friends, is
the only barbershop we go used. And then we blow
that thing up and so on and so forth. And
we could do that with our businesses. So I thought
(17:02):
that was extremely important. Taking it, taking advantage of the
rex CF regulation is important. And it also one thing
also it says is you know, and I know, I
know we've heard it before. How people say Barack Obama
hasn't done anything for black people. I was like, you
understand this job act, this job that is something that
(17:23):
people don't understand that they should be taking advantage of.
And since then I referred at least two or three
people to start it and who are gonna raise capital
on there, and other people have asked me about it,
and they're black and brown people. So I'm telling everybody,
take your take your opportunity to go to start engine
and raise money. And that's what I'm doing. That's amazing,
and it's it's sets such precedent for how we continue
(17:43):
to look at business supporting business. And again, like those
people that invested in fan base, when they get their returns,
they now have the ability to take that money and
reinvest it back. And that's the cycles. And that's sort
of what we need to start seeing happen. Is that
trickle down effect occurs again in a Again, I mean,
the accredited investor rule has been around his nineteen thirty three.
(18:05):
One thing I can say is coming out of the
Great Depression, it don't matter if you were black or white.
It was really about rich people making themselves rich or
like oh yeah, go here and invested. IBM's like, don't worry.
You gotta be accredited, and I'm like you. And the
thing that I tell people all the time, even when
I was raising capital, was they said that the accredited
(18:26):
investor rules to protect people from squandering life savings and
making bad investments. But I asked people to questions. And
when I asked them these questions, they'd be like, wait
a minute, it is some bullshit, Like you have to
be accredited to go buy five thousand dollars worth a
lottery tickets? No? Do you have to be accredited to
go to Vegas and gamble your life savings away? No?
(18:47):
So it's BS. So someone like or in Michaels, we
don't know who he is. Or Michaels was a seed
investorent uber He put five thousand dollars into Uber right
in twenty nineteen with an I p O that five
thousand worth two million dollars detaining We in a TM rappers, producers,
(19:09):
fall riders, strippers, street dudes, everybody. We all got five
gs in Atlanta, like we're not getting the call we're
getting yea, And now this is what I love where
but this is what I think is also so important
that we're recognizing that we can create our own and
you know that narrative has been changing. We're especially in
(19:32):
a city like Atlanta, and I know you're you get this,
Like we have, we drive the culture, we have the creators,
we have all these things. And so now it's not
only that we're taking a seat at the table, we're
creating our own table and harnessing our own power. And
this is also what I love about fan base, because
number one, you've allowed people to invest in it, but
fan Base is also about being able to monetize our
(19:55):
own I p our own creative content. So just so
that people understand and exactly what fan base does, can
you give us the lowdown on fan Base the app? Yeah,
So fan Base, like I said, it's a platform that
allows you to monetize any content via subscription or virtual
currency we call love. So like on platform where you
(20:17):
can like content, you can do that on fan Base.
But you can love it, but when you love it,
you wind up giving the person that posted that content,
the user, the creator, half a penny per love. And
you can love a post as much as you want.
So if you want to give somebody a hundred dollars
a thousand dollars on one post. You can do it
when they go live if you want to love. When
those hearts float up on Instagram, that don't mean nothing,
(20:38):
but with them hearts flow up. For fan Base, you're
making half a penny and people can hold hold a
button down and actually give you something called big Love,
which is like one hundred, five hundred or a thousand
loves at one time. And you can hold that on
big Love and go one thousand, two thousand, three thousand,
four thousands. So you can just shoot somebody twenty dollars
a hundred dollars really really quick. What's the biggest love
someone's ever got so far? Oh man? I mean, I
(21:00):
don't I don't know. While I did something Banana's but
I don't want to. I did a case study and
we had a creative conference in Atlanta, and I had
a hat leftover. I had a I had a snapback
left over, and I posted the snapback on fan base
and I said, whoever loves this post the most in
the next forty eight hours, I'm gonna send you the hat.
(21:22):
In forty eight hours, it was twenty fours worth of
love given to me. And I made twelve hundred dollars
off a forty dollar hat in forty eight hours. Now,
mind you, I'm not like, I ain't Travis Scott Beyonce like,
so I'm thinking, like, yo, man, when they figured this out,
it's gonna go crazy. Or you know, I went live
(21:44):
and I was maybe live for like thirty minutes, but
I had two hundred and two hundred and thirty six
viewers and I made two hundred and fifty six dollars. Okay,
So this tells me that one day somebody's gonna go
live on fan Base with a million viewers and make
a million dollars. Is gonna change the game. It's gonna
be like, Okay, I see, and and I'm seeking to
(22:04):
be I'm seeking to democratize access to distribution and and
um and access to capital for everybody, because I consider
we use this term content creator all the time, right,
and I think every single user is a content creator.
You mean anybody. You know, if if we're out at
lunch and I take a picture of some hummus and
(22:25):
post it, I'm creating content because in between those posts,
they're running ads, and so at the end of the day,
we're all contracrates. Collectively, these platforms use us and run
ads and make billions of dollars and don't give anything
back to the creators. So I feel like the ad
model is a little bit stale um and and the
rev share model and the subscription based model is the
(22:46):
wave of the future. And so that's what we seek
to do is be extra, extra disruptive. So fan Base
is really giving. You know, we got we have a
long form, right, so we have a long form up
to one hour, so you can post up to one
hours where the content on fan Base, So literally every
single person on the globe is their own Netflix. So
if you spend the time to shoot a sitcom podcast
(23:07):
the reality show, you can post it put it behind
a paywall. But the cool thing about that is you're
you're doing it in a community environment. But different different
differentiates us from platforms like Patreon and Only Fans is
those are platforms that are sent it in in in
seing one individual and they're not community based. So once
you go there to see the one person on Patreon
(23:27):
or the hot like naked girl on page on on
Only Fans, once you leave, once you see that, there's
nothing else left for you to do. You're like, I'm
out in a community environment. You're sending content, you're sharing content,
you're commenting. You know, we and and I did build
audio rooms like Clubhouse, And I know it's a little
bit controversial, but the but the reason why I did
(23:51):
that was there was a little a little turbulence during
the election that happened, and and I feel they feel
like Clubhouse put everybody to their prospective side. They put
the Republicans and the Democrats, the liberals and conservatives and say, look,
it's too crazy over here. And in that process, I
think people felt like they didn't necessarily have a voice
(24:12):
in audio. I felt like was a vertical. And I
was right. I felt like audio was a vertical that
no matter what, how how great Clubhouse did, the other
platforms were going to duplicate. I feel like they built
their version of what like when Snapchat did stories, I
feel like Clubhouse did audio, and like like Paris Scope,
and people didn't live in these platforms. I said, they
built a vertical that's gonna be amazing, and everybody's gonna
(24:34):
try to copy them. And I said, there's no sense
in me not at least trying to add that functionality.
But add monetization. So when you're on the stage talking
in fan Base, there's a little hard icon above your
profile picture, and somebody who loves what they're you're saying,
they can give you money, and they can hold down
and give you bread to while you're talking. So people
make money. We had a kid I was talking to
you yesterday and he said he made about a hundred
(24:54):
and fifty seven dollars a month on fan Base. And
he just said by simply talking audio rooms. He doesn't
have any some scribers, but all that money came from
him talking at audio rooms. That's where that's where most
of the revenue on the platform is coming from, is
people talking at audio rooms and getting love. I love
that part of the plan. Sorry, okay, So tell us, Isaac,
(25:14):
how we can all get involved. Tell us where we
can find you on social media. Tell us where we
can download the fan Base app and make some money.
So fan Base is available on iowas and Android, um
and um. You can find me on fan base at
Isaaca three, Twitter, isaacase three, Instagram, isaacase three, Clothouse Isaac three.
(25:38):
Oh man, Isaac, this was such a great conversation and
I'm really excited to see what you're building, what's next
with you and with fan base, And thank you, thank you,
thank you for creating a platform for incredible creatives to
monetize and create wealth. And this is all about what
Money Moves is. So I appreciate you and thank you
so much for your time. Will be sure to get involved,
stay on top of the growth of the platform. So y'all,
(26:00):
span base app get it downloaded and let's get cracking.
Thank you so much for tuning in Money Moves audience.
If you want more or a recap of this episode,
please go to Bank Greenwood dot com and check out
the Money Moves podcast blogs. Stay tuned tomorrow and every
day this week. We owned a tailor shop, which is
(26:21):
actually on the same street, so this is our street.
The tailor's shop was literally across the street from where
we are today from our expert Sometimes black people were
so innovative that we innovate at a pace that we
don't realize. We're creating economies and we're creating infrastructures that
we don't owe and you won't want to miss. My
(26:44):
grandmother had a catering business, and so I started working
with that business when I was seven years old, so
I was making money when I was seven. Mom had
a cake business and which was tired to him. My
dad was executive show. Money Moves is an I heart
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Welcome to the Money Moves Podcast powered by Greenwood. Our
(00:22):
celebrity guest this week is an American record producer, voice actor,
entrepreneur who has a name that should sound familiar to everyone.
He is the son of the late great soul icon
Isaac Hayes. Money Moves. Let's welcome Isaac Hayes, the third
to the podcast. Isaac, Welcome, Thank you, thanks for having
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It is our honor and pleasure to have you today,
so happy you could join us. You've clearly come from
a legacy of greatness and continue to exude greatness and excellence,
and it's amazing to see what you're doing on your
own accord. Well, thank you very which I really appreciate it.
I'm carving my own lane to see. No, that's absolutely true,
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and we love to hear that. You know, Money Moves
is about that. It's about creating generational wealth, and it's
about creating um family futures and just excellence. So I
think this is a perfect conversation I'm really excited to
see what you're working on, especially because you grow grew
up with a father that was deep into the music business. Um,
can you tell us a little bit about how that
(01:28):
has really set the tone and pathway for your own
excellence coming forward? Now? I mean it starts with entrepreneurship.
It was a career entrepreneur. Um. He started from the bottom.
You know, he started picking cotton and working in hall factories.
You know. UM, say that again, y'all do you understand
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like when when when we're talking about growing up in
the South and starting from the bottom picking cotton. Yeah. Yeah.
He was born in nineteen forty two, UM in Memphis, Tennessee. Uh,
and his parents were sharecroppers and he picked cotton. Um,
you know, grew up a very very meager, poor existence.
(02:13):
But he was self educated and a self taught musician
and became like this, you know, international icon um, coming
straight out of Memphis, Tennessee and a boy with dreams.
You know what I'm saying that that rose to heights
of success through music. It's incredible story. Wow, that's incredible.
So you know, on money, we was we really like
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to talk about this mindset not just of excellence, but
how financial literacy was passed down. And I love how
you framed your dad as an entrepreneur, not just a musician,
but an entrepreneur. Talk about some of the lessons that
he left with you in terms of how you view money,
building wealth within your family. Well, I mean, it's they're
(02:55):
hard lessons because he was an artist in the music
industry that was taking advantage of He lost rights to
a lot of his music, and sometimes that resulted in
him losing millions and millions of dollars worth of revenue.
And so you learned, you learned the lesson of ownership. Um.
The music business can be savage contracts, things like that.
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So UM, for him, my conversations were always about ownership,
always about owning your content, owning your publishing, owning your brand. Um.
And and and that's really, you know, kind of what sustained
him throughout his career. He did things that were so
great that he was always someone that people called on
to work um. And he said, you know, he set
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a tone for I think future future generations to really
understand and learned, especially in the hip hop business, about
how they were treated, telling kids to own their things
with sampling and stuff like that when that came back
around and how that was extremely important. So for me,
those are the lessons that he taught. It was always
like I always had an entrepreneurial mindset from my parents,
(04:00):
and they didn't really force me, you know, saying like
you're gonna go out here and get a job. They
kind of let me do my thing. Um. And so
when I got a chance to really venture out and
decided that I was going to be a career entrepreneur,
it was a very scary decision, but it was the
best decision that I ever made, you know what I'm saying,
you know, going down that path. So talk about your
early days of you know, deciding to be an entrepreneur.
(04:22):
What were some of your first ventures and well, okay,
so my family makes fun of me all the time
because I have a little brother he's fifteen years old.
I've been working since I was like nine years old.
I was always the kid that with molaws help people
move anything to make some money, right, So I mean, yeah,
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always like that. You know, I did that as a kid. Um.
I got in trouble with school one time for like
creating a club and selling like memberships to it with
kids lunch money. I was in like elementary school and
like um. But then you know, I worked. I worked.
I went to the marriage Youth Leadership program um in Atlanta,
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and then I worked at the public library. And then
I graduated high school and I decided that I was
going to to just get a regular job. I hadn't.
I was in between the side. But I'm really gonna
do this or not as a producer. So I worked
a job at this this place called the lin In
Law for two years. It was like dead bathro yard
before that, and I remember it took so long to
(05:29):
get to work that when I quit my job. I
quit my job in February of nineteen ninety six. I said,
there's two things I never want to do again in life.
One is worked for another person in the second one
was ride public transportation. I made that decision. I haven't
done both. I haven't been on the bus. So I
haven't had a boss since February nineteen ninety six. Interesting
(05:51):
conscious decision. You were like, no more. I want to,
you know, be my own owner, own my own businesses,
and not work for anybody else. And I didn't. I
didn't go to college, so so I didn't go to
college when a different world was on TV. So let
me tell you something. I was like the last the
(06:12):
last guy that a girl wanted to talk to. You
seriously hits because everybody was watching a different world and
it was like you needed to be at Hillman So
I get you. I was. I was an outcast. I
was at home like you know. But um what I
learned was my college was I had earned enough money
(06:36):
to buy some equipment and learn how to start to
produce an engineer records. Right, So those four years from
ninety six to two thousand, those are my four years
of learning how to make records use. UM I got
my first chance to really do jump into music business
with Tricky Stewart over at Red Zone. UM I produced
a record. I made like four thousand dollars from my
first record. I was like, wow, okay, I could do this,
(06:58):
you know what I'm saying, Like that was a lot
of money at the time for me coming up like
all right, but um that started me on my journey
of really learning how to hustle because everything that I
did was always learning how to have a skill set
that could get me in places where I could I
could use my skill set to make money but also
use my skill set to hustle. I love that, you know.
(07:19):
Like I worked at recording studio, so the studio needed
a studio manager. I know how to do that. But
then during the downtime, I could use the studio to
make beats. So that's kind of how I got my
foot in the music industry, was learning how to engineer,
burning c ds. All these kind of like eye jobs,
you know what I'm saying. That really just got me
into spaces and places where I could be around music,
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and then they led to opportunities that led to my
break in the music industry. Well, you were being very
humble because you've been behind some of the most memorable
tracks and soundtracks of the last twenty years, a little scrappy,
there's a whole litany of them. Um, and now you've
sort of taken a twist and you're getting into the
technology arena. And I love this because it's completely in
(08:02):
line with what your the legacy your father's left behind
in terms of ownership. Can you tell us about fan Base? Yes,
So fan Base was a venture that I started in
It was an idea that I had about I saw
a kid dancing in a spider Man costume um in
(08:24):
a game stop to Aha take on Me. And he
was from Memphis, Tennessee. He goes by the name of
Ghetto Spider Um and he quickly had like three thousand
followers out of nowhere. And I just shot him at
d M and I was like, hey, congratulations, young Memphis.
You know, just to say it was casual, so casual,
and his his immediate response was are you a manager?
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And I was like no, not, like thanks, I really
need a manager. Like he was really on me about
the fact that he needed management. I said, well, give
me your number. Um, let's talk about it. You know
what I'm saying. I'll see maybe if I can help
you out. But I left the conversation like, Yo, this
kid is like a deer caught in the headlights and
he's having this viral moment and he doesn't know how
to monetize it. I said, he needs to be able
(09:07):
to monetize his dancing. I said, there needs to be
a platform where people can can subscribe to you, but
follow you. So I said that was the birth of
fan base. UM. I got extremely lucky with my attorney
introducing me to my now c c O and his firm,
and we built the We built the app from July
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to December. And this was a This was a bootstrapped
company like fan Base cost me two hundred thousand dollars
to build own money. Y'all understand what bootstrap means. You know,
people think you're just going out asking for investor money,
like this is his own blood, sweat and equity, right,
And it was a lot, you know, I, you know,
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earned money um in the music industry and spaces and
places like that, and I was able to use some
of that to really, like I said, go out and
and and and put this idea into the space. And
so we launched the company like January twenty nineteen, but
I didn't tell anybody that I built it. I was
really quiet about it. And the reason was because I
(10:15):
wanted to raise money at some point. But I knew
that if I ever raised money and told people like, okay,
how many users you got, what's your traction? Like if
I told people that I told this famous person or
this famous person to download it, and they would be like,
that's b s. That's not real data. So I left
the Apple loan for a year, and in the course
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of the year, a couple of people made some money,
but one person, one user, made about six thousand dollars
and we had about ten thousand users. I was like, okay,
I have a proof of concept. Now I know that
this will work. Now we can scale this. Now we
can take it and say all right, if this person
can do it, that other people can do it and
make money. So as soon as I plan to do that,
covid hit came down like an animal. The world was
(10:57):
the world was shut down. So so body that we
both know Monique, I had to let her absolutely rain
venture shout out to them. Monique said, you need to
go and raise money on this platform called starting It.
I showed her fan base. She says, this is dope,
Like there's nothing out there like this. And and only
Fans was a thing that was out there, and I
(11:17):
was totally aware of them, and I always knew that
they were gonna blow up. I was like, only fans
are gonna have this viral moment that when the strippers
find out about this thing that crazy, And it happened
during and when Beyonce said started only Fans, I was like,
this is out of here, this thing is it's nuts,
it's crazy. So Anyway, my initial goals to raise a
million on start Engine. I got accepted to the platform.
(11:39):
But when I got accepted to the platform, I simultaneously
got yes. So at the time that I was that
I got accepted the Start Engine, I got invited to
this app called Clubhousehouse. So so the end like the
clubhouse came. And when you're raising me in a REXI
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if you can't tell anybody that you you you you're
you're raising money until the race goes live, you have
to be quiet about it. So I got on Clubhouse
and there were a lot of cool people on a clubhouse.
Don't don't get me wrong, there are a lot of
brilliant people out of vcs. But but one thing that
I noticed was they were black people on a clubhouse.
(12:21):
But there were some black people that I knew personally
that knew a lot of the vcs and a lot
of the other people in the clubhouse that we're not
black that might go white or whatever. And I'm like,
why are they not here? I'm like, oh no, this
isn't right. I was like, I'm finding, like the hood
to clubhouse, I'm finding I'm gonna turn up. So I
got some invites so invited like uh Snoop Dogg, Van
(12:44):
Lathan Cortez, Brian who managed Little Lines that Should Be Read,
invited Sean Garrett, I invited um Brian, Michael Cox, I
invited just a ton of like people, Dina Mark, because
I feel like you were certainly early to the game,
and you know, I was early on Clubhouse as well.
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And then all of a sudden, Isaac gets on Clubhouse,
and I'm telling you, you definitely changed the culture of
Clubhouse for shut like Atlanta represented heavy. Now, yeah, it came,
it came in and like maybe a week later, like
Fia got on there and then it was over. It
was like, all right, it was just action packed and
so Clubhouse was having these really viral moments. But when
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we got there, everybody black got on the app. The
first thing that people started saying was here we go again.
We're finna blow up another app. But is it is
it really? Like is it really for us to do?
We earn it? And I was thinking, like I said, well,
I'm about to raise money for this startup, So I
just sat back and let people complain for like three months,
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like all this Exeptember, my raise didn't go line to
October twenty nine, so people were coming on the platform
and I was like, I hear you talking all this
big ship. That's what I'm gonna come back around and
be like, well guess what so so clubhouse were starting
to blow up, right, you know, like one Savage got
on there popping so um. October twenty night comes and
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I go back on clubhouse and hold my first room,
and from that room, I think the first ten or
twenty dollars of investment in fan base came off a
clubhouse having rooms and explain to people the opportunity to
invest because you know, doing a RecF raise, um a
regulation crowdfund, you're actually raising money from the general public.
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So you're giving people a chance to invest in a
tech company that are aren't accredited investors, that never get
the costs to invest in Uber lift clubhouse like that,
And I love this because this is what money Moves
is about. It's about being able to create generational life
and expose our community to you know, investments and wealth
building that we've previously been excluded from. Because people, are
(14:53):
you an accredited investor? Can you get into this round?
Are you connected in the valley? And here's a perfect example, Um,
you creating opportunity for so many people to invest some
money and you know, get returns down the line. Yeah,
and so so that was extremely important for two reasons.
I know that in social media the users were three reasons.
(15:16):
The number one, the users are the ones that directly
affect the value of the platform. So that's one. And
then too, I understand the effect that black culture has
on the valuation of these text startups because we just
watch it on Clubhouse. It just Clubhouse literally went from
a hundred million dollar company to a billion dollar company
from August to January. I just seen it. We've seen
(15:36):
it happen in real time. So, um, the fact that
I know I could go to the community and say, hey,
look here's a chance to invest in the startup and
have a piece of equity in it, and we could
turn around and the cheat code is we leverage our
culture in the same way. Yeah, and and and and
make it happen that way. It will be extremely important.
(15:58):
And then what what really was important to me was
when fan Base is successful, because I'm just claiming it
it's gonna be a multibillion dollar starter. When it is,
you know, whatever exit or I p O we have
when I do this, and when we do this, it
will be the largest distribution of wealth of black people
(16:19):
in the history of this country. We have overstors, most
of them are black people, most of the first time investors.
And the fact that these people took a chance in
this company and they're gonna rise and see a return.
It becomes a model for the way that we can
fund our own businesses, because if this works for fan base,
it can work for a multitude of businesses. It can
(16:41):
work for a record label, it can work for a barbershop,
It could work for anything. Like you know, Okay, I'm
gonna start a barbershop. Okay, I'm gonna raise a million
dollars on fan base, and then all we do is
go to that barbershop we invest in, we have piece
of it, and that and I tell my friends, is
the only barbershop we go used. And then we blow
that thing up and so on and so forth. And
we could do that with our businesses. So I thought
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that was extremely important. Taking it, taking advantage of the
rex CF regulation is important. And it also one thing
also it says is you know, and I know, I
know we've heard it before. How people say Barack Obama
hasn't done anything for black people. I was like, you
understand this job act, this job that is something that
(17:23):
people don't understand that they should be taking advantage of.
And since then I referred at least two or three
people to start it and who are gonna raise capital
on there, and other people have asked me about it,
and they're black and brown people. So I'm telling everybody,
take your take your opportunity to go to start engine
and raise money. And that's what I'm doing. That's amazing,
and it's it's sets such precedent for how we continue
(17:43):
to look at business supporting business. And again, like those
people that invested in fan base, when they get their returns,
they now have the ability to take that money and
reinvest it back. And that's the cycles. And that's sort
of what we need to start seeing happen. Is that
trickle down effect occurs again in a Again, I mean,
the accredited investor rule has been around his nineteen thirty three.
(18:05):
One thing I can say is coming out of the
Great Depression, it don't matter if you were black or white.
It was really about rich people making themselves rich or
like oh yeah, go here and invested. IBM's like, don't worry.
You gotta be accredited, and I'm like you. And the
thing that I tell people all the time, even when
I was raising capital, was they said that the accredited
(18:26):
investor rules to protect people from squandering life savings and
making bad investments. But I asked people to questions. And
when I asked them these questions, they'd be like, wait
a minute, it is some bullshit, Like you have to
be accredited to go buy five thousand dollars worth a
lottery tickets? No? Do you have to be accredited to
go to Vegas and gamble your life savings away? No?
(18:47):
So it's BS. So someone like or in Michaels, we
don't know who he is. Or Michaels was a seed
investorent uber He put five thousand dollars into Uber right
in twenty nineteen with an I p O that five
thousand worth two million dollars detaining We in a TM rappers, producers,
(19:09):
fall riders, strippers, street dudes, everybody. We all got five
gs in Atlanta, like we're not getting the call we're
getting yea, And now this is what I love where
but this is what I think is also so important
that we're recognizing that we can create our own and
you know that narrative has been changing. We're especially in
(19:32):
a city like Atlanta, and I know you're you get this,
Like we have, we drive the culture, we have the creators,
we have all these things. And so now it's not
only that we're taking a seat at the table, we're
creating our own table and harnessing our own power. And
this is also what I love about fan base, because
number one, you've allowed people to invest in it, but
fan Base is also about being able to monetize our
(19:55):
own I p our own creative content. So just so
that people understand and exactly what fan base does, can
you give us the lowdown on fan Base the app? Yeah,
So fan Base, like I said, it's a platform that
allows you to monetize any content via subscription or virtual
currency we call love. So like on platform where you
(20:17):
can like content, you can do that on fan Base.
But you can love it, but when you love it,
you wind up giving the person that posted that content,
the user, the creator, half a penny per love. And
you can love a post as much as you want.
So if you want to give somebody a hundred dollars
a thousand dollars on one post. You can do it
when they go live if you want to love. When
those hearts float up on Instagram, that don't mean nothing,
(20:38):
but with them hearts flow up. For fan Base, you're
making half a penny and people can hold hold a
button down and actually give you something called big Love,
which is like one hundred, five hundred or a thousand
loves at one time. And you can hold that on
big Love and go one thousand, two thousand, three thousand,
four thousands. So you can just shoot somebody twenty dollars
a hundred dollars really really quick. What's the biggest love
someone's ever got so far? Oh man? I mean, I
(21:00):
don't I don't know. While I did something Banana's but
I don't want to. I did a case study and
we had a creative conference in Atlanta, and I had
a hat leftover. I had a I had a snapback
left over, and I posted the snapback on fan base
and I said, whoever loves this post the most in
the next forty eight hours, I'm gonna send you the hat.
(21:22):
In forty eight hours, it was twenty fours worth of
love given to me. And I made twelve hundred dollars
off a forty dollar hat in forty eight hours. Now,
mind you, I'm not like, I ain't Travis Scott Beyonce like,
so I'm thinking, like, yo, man, when they figured this out,
it's gonna go crazy. Or you know, I went live
(21:44):
and I was maybe live for like thirty minutes, but
I had two hundred and two hundred and thirty six
viewers and I made two hundred and fifty six dollars. Okay,
So this tells me that one day somebody's gonna go
live on fan Base with a million viewers and make
a million dollars. Is gonna change the game. It's gonna
be like, Okay, I see, and and I'm seeking to
(22:04):
be I'm seeking to democratize access to distribution and and
um and access to capital for everybody, because I consider
we use this term content creator all the time, right,
and I think every single user is a content creator.
You mean anybody. You know, if if we're out at
lunch and I take a picture of some hummus and
(22:25):
post it, I'm creating content because in between those posts,
they're running ads, and so at the end of the day,
we're all contracrates. Collectively, these platforms use us and run
ads and make billions of dollars and don't give anything
back to the creators. So I feel like the ad
model is a little bit stale um and and the
rev share model and the subscription based model is the
(22:46):
wave of the future. And so that's what we seek
to do is be extra, extra disruptive. So fan Base
is really giving. You know, we got we have a
long form, right, so we have a long form up
to one hour, so you can post up to one
hours where the content on fan Base, So literally every
single person on the globe is their own Netflix. So
if you spend the time to shoot a sitcom podcast
(23:07):
the reality show, you can post it put it behind
a paywall. But the cool thing about that is you're
you're doing it in a community environment. But different different
differentiates us from platforms like Patreon and Only Fans is
those are platforms that are sent it in in in
seing one individual and they're not community based. So once
you go there to see the one person on Patreon
(23:27):
or the hot like naked girl on page on on
Only Fans, once you leave, once you see that, there's
nothing else left for you to do. You're like, I'm
out in a community environment. You're sending content, you're sharing content,
you're commenting. You know, we and and I did build
audio rooms like Clubhouse, And I know it's a little
bit controversial, but the but the reason why I did
(23:51):
that was there was a little a little turbulence during
the election that happened, and and I feel they feel
like Clubhouse put everybody to their prospective side. They put
the Republicans and the Democrats, the liberals and conservatives and say, look,
it's too crazy over here. And in that process, I
think people felt like they didn't necessarily have a voice
(24:12):
in audio. I felt like was a vertical. And I
was right. I felt like audio was a vertical that
no matter what, how how great Clubhouse did, the other
platforms were going to duplicate. I feel like they built
their version of what like when Snapchat did stories, I
feel like Clubhouse did audio, and like like Paris Scope,
and people didn't live in these platforms. I said, they
built a vertical that's gonna be amazing, and everybody's gonna
(24:34):
try to copy them. And I said, there's no sense
in me not at least trying to add that functionality.
But add monetization. So when you're on the stage talking
in fan Base, there's a little hard icon above your
profile picture, and somebody who loves what they're you're saying,
they can give you money, and they can hold down
and give you bread to while you're talking. So people
make money. We had a kid I was talking to
you yesterday and he said he made about a hundred
(24:54):
and fifty seven dollars a month on fan Base. And
he just said by simply talking audio rooms. He doesn't
have any some scribers, but all that money came from
him talking at audio rooms. That's where that's where most
of the revenue on the platform is coming from, is
people talking at audio rooms and getting love. I love
that part of the plan. Sorry, okay, So tell us, Isaac,
(25:14):
how we can all get involved. Tell us where we
can find you on social media. Tell us where we
can download the fan Base app and make some money.
So fan Base is available on iowas and Android, um
and um. You can find me on fan base at
Isaaca three, Twitter, isaacase three, Instagram, isaacase three, Clothouse Isaac three.
(25:38):
Oh man, Isaac, this was such a great conversation and
I'm really excited to see what you're building, what's next
with you and with fan base, And thank you, thank you,
thank you for creating a platform for incredible creatives to
monetize and create wealth. And this is all about what
Money Moves is. So I appreciate you and thank you
so much for your time. Will be sure to get involved,
stay on top of the growth of the platform. So y'all,
(26:00):
span base app get it downloaded and let's get cracking.
Thank you so much for tuning in Money Moves audience.
If you want more or a recap of this episode,
please go to Bank Greenwood dot com and check out
the Money Moves podcast blogs. Stay tuned tomorrow and every
day this week. We owned a tailor shop, which is
(26:21):
actually on the same street, so this is our street.
The tailor's shop was literally across the street from where
we are today from our expert Sometimes black people were
so innovative that we innovate at a pace that we
don't realize. We're creating economies and we're creating infrastructures that
we don't owe and you won't want to miss. My
(26:44):
grandmother had a catering business, and so I started working
with that business when I was seven years old, so
I was making money when I was seven. Mom had
a cake business and which was tired to him. My
dad was executive show. Money Moves is an I heart
Radio podcast houred by Greenwood Executive produced by Sunwise Media, Inc.
For more podcasts on I heart Radio, visit the I
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