Episode Transcript
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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. Today's guests are the
owners of a mom and pop lifestyle brand called Grits Coe,
(00:23):
a Southern inspired brand from Houston, Texas that is widely
known for its detailed representation of the Southern experience in
an unapologetic way. The company's slogan is simple, No grits,
No Glory. It is a reminder to never give up
on your dreams in life and to give your whole
self to get the hard work done. Money Movers please
(00:44):
welcome Reuben and Toya Levy. Hi, Ruben and Toya, how
are you Hi? Thank you so much for having us well,
it is wonderful to have you on the podcast today.
I'm so excited. I feel like your brand embodies so
much of what we like to talk about on Money Moves,
and in particular the facts that you know you sort
(01:04):
of call yourself this mom and pop lifestyle brand that
resonates so much with us because we saw so much
of that in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in the Greenwood District where
we had all these incredible black brands and companies that
sort of we're starting into entrepreneurship and really paved the
way for black excellence. So it's a pleasure to have
you here and I cannot wait to hear more about
(01:25):
your story. Yeah, thank you so much. UM. We definitely
have taken a lot of our culture and where we're from.
Me being a girl from Oklahoma, him being from Texas.
We bought both of our southern lifestyles together and have
been able to reflect on that and keep this brand
going in in building this as a family. UM to
(01:47):
create a legacy in a generation, generational wealth for our family.
So we take pride in what we've learned from the
people for us. UM our ancestors and his great grandfather,
his grandfather owned companies, both of them did UM so
always being our own entrepreneurs working for ourselves. UM, it's
(02:08):
been instilledness and to put it into our clothing, into
our lifestyle on a day day basis, it's been amazing.
And to be able to turn it into something lucrative,
it's been a fun time. I love that and I
mean I feel this this slogan of saying like no grits,
no glory, you know, really embodies like Black people as
(02:28):
a whole, like if we got nothing, we have grit,
we have perseverance. And so to put that into a
slogan and to build a lifestyle brand around it, I'm
sure that so many in the community not only appreciate it,
but support it. So let's go back. Let's talk about
how you started to form this company. You said you
have this longstanding history of entrepreneurial roots. How did you
(02:49):
know that you wanted to create a lifestyle brand, you know,
and starting with clothing. I always always done art all
my life. I went to school for our I went
to high school for performing visual arts and went on
to like you evasion, did some architecture, but art and
like that mixture of design has always been my passion
(03:09):
why I love to do And actually I first started
looking Actually I've run across the article in Black Enterprise
when I was like twelve, and it was like this
kid selling T shirts and it was like, oh man,
I would love to do that one day, really making
you know, so like fast forward, like seeing like the
(03:30):
urban brands of food Woo and different things come and
gone and just to now today. Um, it's just something
that's always kind of like been something I wanted to do,
and uh, I always want to kind of marry like
what you did? What? What? What I like to I
want to see, Oh my gosh, Ruben. I appreciate that
passion because I feel like I'm the other side. I'm
definitely the consumer in the arts because I barely draw
(03:52):
a stick person. But I could always appreciate good design,
and that's one of the things that I think I
really love about your brand. There's great design. You can
see that you've got talent and sort of this creative
eye behind it. I cannot create it, so I always
shout out the creators. But then on the other side,
you guys are sort of running a business, so how
(04:12):
do you balance this as a team so that you
can also be creative but then have sort of a
business eye towards success in creating generational wealth behind it.
It's just like just like you, I'm not an artist.
I play music, I love dancing, but I can barely
draw a stick figure. And um, the thing about it
is our children are so talented. They have his eye,
(04:34):
like they can draw and it's crazy. But I have
the management in the marketing side to it. So it's
a Yin and yang Um. We also sit down and
throw ideas out, toss ideas out on what we should
design next, and I give him input input and he
tells me, what do you think about this? It always
runs by me before we go to print. We always
(04:55):
agree on things. So it definitely has been a balance
of knowing it I bring to the table versus what
he brings to the table for us to run a
successful company, because that it takes work. It takes a
lot of work. You don't kind of know your roles.
You know. It's like we got a little a little
input on either side from time to time, which is normal,
(05:16):
but you know, you still gotta trust on for the
other like their expertise. So it's like a certain point toy.
Its kind of well you I think I invested, but
you got it, And I'm kind of and I'm gonna say, wait,
were her? I love this because you guys really are
the epitome of a mom and pop business. You said
you have kids, so now you work together, you grow together,
and you know, oftentimes people will say, oh my gosh,
(05:38):
I don't know how you could work with your spouse.
I would go crazy. And so I always love I
work with my spouse as well, and I always love
it because I think it's actually the best type of partnership. Right,
how do you guys find navigating You know, you're the creative,
you're the business person, and how do you sort of
get over the bumps in the road where you might
disagree to laughing because it's like I was gonna He's
(06:02):
gonna have bumps in the road. Like it's no different
than having a like a partner in the business. Like
it's still like a marriage. You still got to deal
with the day and day out. Yeah, it's gonna be frustrating.
Sometimes you're just like one person is like low while
someone is going, you know, running high. So like it's
always a balance that you have to work out. And
sometimes we might even get in then argument and then
(06:24):
like afterward were like what we were fighting about and
we don't even know or like it was just like
stress or something. And then you're like, man, this is
like you kind of come back to your foundation. Was
like we were what we're doing, what we're building on
is importance. So like having that ground floor, like that
foundation bill Like ultimately we're always kind of like we
kind of based decisions and things off of that, you know,
(06:46):
and even you know, disagreements or what not. Yeah, and
we've been you know, we've been married for ten years now. UM.
We had a very quick romance. We met May and
got married in September and we've been married ever since.
So and we've been working together for ten years now. UM.
So I think we've found our day to day vibe
(07:06):
on what what it takes for each of us to
have our own time, UM to better both of our
mental health, our emotional health, making sure we have our
family time as well as just taking our time to create.
So it's definitely UM disciplined to be able to work
with your spouse and be able to UM meet the
(07:27):
needs that you need to on a business level, but
you also have to meet the responsibilities on the emotional
level as well, being that that's someone that you're in
love with. So we know when to turn it on
turn it off, and what works best for UM the
family at the end of the day is what we're
creating is a good environment for our daughters to grow
up in. And we want them to see loving parents
(07:48):
and see us be successful. And each time they're able
to see that, UM, we feel like we're doing a
good job. It's like a pound back. So especially you know,
I think it's so important in our community. You know,
you guys are entrepreneur words. You're really putting out very
intentional messaging about success and glory and building wealth and
bringing your daughters and showing that not just probably for
(08:10):
your daughters, but maybe their friends, the people in your community.
I think it's such a beautiful thing and it leaves
a real impact for so many people that I think
is really important. So it's a it's a pleasure, and
I want to like uplift you guys, shout you out
for what you're building. Thank you. I think it's very important,
like to have just having our children with us, because
(08:32):
we think about like entrepreneurs, we think, well, we think
about a lot of like the wealth of the past
and what's come on, like a lot of family businesses,
a lot of like a lot of the companies that
we haven't built from family businesses. So like you know,
like in order to have the kids are having anythings,
if you're talking about generation wealth, we have to start
them early. We can't like start them late. Like they
(08:52):
have to like understand just like salesmanship, just talking to
people opening themselves up to that understanding money counting, like
you know, you know all kinds of stuff, you know
what what was profit loss? All kind of like stuff
that we got to like to start, like we kind
of trying to instill in them. So maybe they may
not they may or may not want to continue with Grits,
but I hope that it was it was sparked them
(09:15):
be able, like to be able to take to take
it on to another level or maybe just like doing
something else. And we we have a lot of nieces
and nephews UM that where our brand and love us.
A lot of family members, brothers and sisters that where
our brand and love it. So we've gotten a huge
support from our family UM through this whole time. Every
(09:37):
year they're looking for a Grits shirt for Christmas, they
think automatically that's what they're supposed to get, but it's
it's like you said, we have been influential to friends
of Brooklyn's UM, different families that have come around and
let's see what we're doing. And uh, it's a different
mindset because you know when they hear about Grits and
(09:57):
then they see it on Instagram, our visual their understanding
that we're representing, you know, African Americans. This is who
we are, this is what we're representing the Black Americana,
you know, and showing elements that aren't seeing often making
sure those elements are still seen in educating not only
them but their children along the way. So let's talk about,
(10:17):
you know, the design elements. This is really interesting to
me because you guys also have a very intentional mascot, Roscoe,
that is a crow. Talk about you know why you
chose that, And I think there is a lot of
intentionality and why you're creating sort of this, you know,
the themes that you that you put on your clothes.
Can you speak a bit on on that. Well, Yeah,
when I first started, I was thinking of like a
(10:40):
Southern lifestyle brand, like what will kind of icon could
represent like a Southern thing out of a crow. And
I mean you already know like the connotations that come
with just crow, Jim Crow like through just like cartoons
or history. That's like a little bit. So I was
I was very interesting like kind of like playing off
(11:01):
of like uh like disney Esque or kind of like
a lot of like the older cartoons and stuff from
the you know, the cars, crows from the whiz and stuff.
So it was like you know, make make something and
make a new character. But it's really kind of like
HARKing to like some some to what some good traits
of what crows were. I was thinking about, like you
(11:23):
know you look at crows, they're they're actually look there's
some one of the smartest birds. There's not animals in
the animal key. You know, like you have like YouTube
videos where you're solving puzzles, and I was watching videos
like how how they how they protect each other, Like
when someone's like with one hok, I mean one crow
was hunting, you got two other codes watching over them,
like sounding and like calling out. You know you've got
(11:46):
the whole. Like a group of crows like they cut
like converse or they call it the murder crows, but
they all converse. Like there's a lot there's a power
in numbers. Is a power of them working with each other?
Is I also look at like them like as a
spiritual animal. It has has a lot of meaning but
ultimately tying to something greater that like like to me, like, uh,
(12:07):
black people like we take on things that we think
are negative and then we find out they're actually power
in it. It's like we're able to reclaim that narrative
of this imagery that you know for a long time.
I mean even even in asking my question, I was like, Wow,
this was really such a distinct choice. I appreciate it. So,
I you know, I love that we're able to do
(12:29):
that and do it through fun stuff like expression on clothing. Yeah,
so you see that and you're like, you know, in
time to like our his like I think Black Americans
are like the creative, like American culture like me from
blue like jazz, two blues, so really to the creation
(12:49):
of like fifties sixties rock and roll. And I wanted
to make sure that when we see things, we're always
talking like, oh, we never did this before. And then
I go a generation back and then you're like, oh
my god, Black people were doing it. Yeah, generations like
cash were buying cars, people racing. We're playing like the
(13:10):
music of the day like Chuck Berry like um Bo Didley,
um they mean a little Richard like they're like the
young thugs, like little babies like today, and they were
doing like the same thing. They came up from the
gutter up and we're doing making music, you know, by
making like my talent. So I want to like highlight
(13:30):
that kind of ancestral and like have you know, make
our make sure we have our own place in America,
saying that we're like we're this is us too. You
have a history, and I love that because you've really
stuck to this sort of vintage design look, which again
I think it speaks to adding our legacy. You know,
we're very we're fast moving culture right now, and especially
if you look at our urban culture, it's new, it's this,
(13:52):
but you know, this gives us deeper roots. You mentioned
Chuck Berry and all these old greats that you know,
and even judging from your background there, it just shows
us that we have way deeper roots than sometimes we remember.
So I think there's a lot to be said for that.
Oh yeah, we mean the average probor African American probably
(14:13):
goes back at least eight generations. Yeah, that's I mean,
that's a lot. You know, we're totally fully Americanized by amy. Yeah.
Oh my goodness. Well, Ruben and Toya, this was such
a pleasure having you on, and it is not over.
We're gonna have you to come back for another deep
dive and talk about how you built this incredible business.
How you can help inspire others to help launch clothing
(14:36):
brands lifestyle brands as well. Ruben and Toya, can you
tell our Money Moves audience where they can find you
on social media and or buy your shirts and lifestyle apparel.
Sure you can find us at where grits. That's w
E A R Grits g R I t s across
all handles on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook, or you can
(14:57):
get online in order at where grit dot com. Awesome. Alright,
Money Movers, that's all the time we have for today,
but let's make sure you follow Reuben and Toya on
all their social media handles and if we helped you
make your money move, please make sure to let us
know by sending us alike, sharing the knowledge and leave
us a review on Apple podcast. Thank you so much
(15:18):
for tuning in Money Moves audience. If you want more
or a recap of this episode, please go to the
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(15:40):
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