Two-time Emmy and Three-time NAACP Image Award-winning, television Executive Producer Rushion McDonald interviewed Karla Trotman.
President and CEO of Electro Soft Incorporated, an electronics manufacturing and engineering firm. The discussion focused on breaking barriers for women and minority business owners in manufacturing and closing the racial wealth gap.
🔑 Key Themes & Highlights
Redefining Manufacturing
- Manufacturing isn’t just industrial factories—it includes baking, cabinet-making, and assembling office furniture.
- Trotman’s company specializes in electronics assembly, wiring harnesses, and circuit board manufacturing.
Challenges in Domestic Manufacturing
- U.S. manufacturing has been outsourced overseas, making it difficult to bring production back.
- Policies supporting domestic manufacturing must include workforce training and component production.
Workforce Development & Training
- Many trade schools and apprenticeship programs are growing to meet demand.
- Electro Soft trains employees within 90 days to work in electronics assembly.
Closing the Racial Wealth Gap
- Wealth transfer is hindered by lack of financial planning, such as GoFundMe funerals and unclear property titles.
- Entrepreneurship and business ownership are key to building generational wealth.
Acquiring Businesses as a Path to Wealth
- Minority entrepreneurs should buy existing businesses rather than starting from scratch.
- Many retiring business owners are willing to finance deals, allowing buyers to use business profits to pay off acquisitions.
📘 About Karla Trotman
Karla Trotman is a third-generation entrepreneur who took over her family’s business, Electro Soft Incorporated. She has a background in logistics, purchasing, and e-commerce, with experience at Honeywell, Gap, and IKEA.
She is also the author of Dark, Dirty, Dangerous, a book about manufacturing, entrepreneurship, and wealth-building strategies.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi. I am Rashan McDonald, a host the weekly Money
Making Conversation Masterclass show. The interviews and information that this
show provides are for everyone. It's time to stop reading
other people's success stories and start living your own. If
you want to be a guest on my show, please
visit our website, Moneymaking Conversations dot com and click the
be a Guest button. Press submit and information will come
(00:23):
directly to me. Now let's get this show started. My
next guest is the president and CEO of Electrosoft Incorporated
and electronics manufacturing and engineering firm and the United States.
She's on the show to discuss many topics including breaking
down barriers for women and minority business owners, and manufacturing.
Please work with the Money Making Conversations Masterclass caller Tropman.
(00:45):
How are you doing, miss Tropman?
Speaker 2 (00:47):
I'm doing well.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
How are you pretty good? When you say the word manufacturing,
you know what does that mean?
Speaker 2 (00:53):
So? I think people oftentimes think manufacturing is where you're
going to a dark industrial building, come out with soot
on your face and it's really loud, and it's not
that way. Manufacturing is actually whenever you take something from
its most simple form and then you do something additive
to it and create it into something else. So, if
(01:13):
you think about it, a baker is a manufacturer, a
cabinet maker is a manufacturer. Even if you assemble office furniture,
you are considered a manufacturer.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
I know when I do hear the word manufacturing, I
think of a hard hat. They are told boots. I
think of blue collar, you know, type manual work. Am
I the am I in the right direction or when
I'm talking to I'm just wondering about a stereotyping what
manufacturing the whole scope of what it really.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
Is definitely stereotyping. I'm yeah, Yeah, we're my company. It's
very clean. Uh. I think the loudest thing we have
is compressed air. Because we manufacture, we actually assemble electronic assemblies, components,
do cables, wiring harnesses, box building closures, printed circuit board assemblies.
(02:08):
It's very different. It's no hard hats.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
Well, you know the amazing thing about the word by manufacturing,
because there's also your word that's using politics a lot
manufacturing manufacturing, And they're always talking about policies, and whenever
you have a new person who goes into office of
presidency of the United States, they always talk about policies
and talk about support domestic manufacturing pipelines and things like that.
(02:32):
Nature you in the game, when you hear statements like
new policies or policies that will support support the domestic
increase of manufacturing state side, what are your comments call them?
Speaker 2 (02:44):
It's not as simple as they make it seem. Right,
you'd say, Okay, we're going to put tariffs on anything
that comes from this particular region, and it's going to
cause everyone to turn internally to state side for manufacturing. Well,
we've since outsourced mostly manufacturing overseas. A lot of the
parts that we have are overseas. Manufacturing is primarily in
(03:05):
a lot of people's minds overseas, especially for high volume.
So now if we say we want it all state side, well,
we don't have the people who are trained to do
the work. We don't have the components stateside being created
here for us to even build here. So it's not
as simple as just creating policy of tariffs. We need
(03:29):
to have a whole re education of people in the
trades to be able to handle manufacturing here in the US.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
Well, when I hear you talk like that, that means
you're talking about years from now, how do you've set
in place you right there in manufacturing game, how do
you fix it or can it be fixed to be
the creative workforce for a job demand that might come
about that we can't even supply the workforce for.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
Well, there's been a lot of state side initiatives actually
on a state level to create more manufacturing jobs. Apprenticeships
have started up again. There's a lot of the trade
schools right now are just bursting at the seams. They
just can't they're turning down students because there's so much
of an interest in doing it. And even here at
(04:13):
my company, we've created our own pipeline where we train
people within ninety days to go from knowing nothing about
electronics to being able to do simple electronics assemblies based
off of blueprint. So we've had to go internal to
fix our own problems within the industry.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
So, okay, how do they find out about that? Because
I'm an old school I used to go to knock
on the office door and then I sat down. I've
turned to my application. Now they tell you go online
and they'll let you know. When they let you know.
It's so impersonal now and it can be frustrating be
able to introduce yourself to a new opportunity. How does
one find about I'm just saying using your company as
(04:53):
an example, you saying you're training your workforce, which means
that your company that has the infrastructure to uplift and deliver.
How do we know about a company like yours when
the system is so impersonal nowadays.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
Yeah, we've done a terrible job at just even marketing
manufacturing positions. But I know here in Pennsylvania, in the
Philadelphia region, we have really great industry partnerships and training
programs that we've been marketing to attract more people into
our industry and just doing a better job at marketing.
(05:28):
We've been opening our doors doing open houses. We have
Manufacturing Day that's held in October. I believe it's the
first Friday of every October where we're letting folks know
what's going on in manufacturing. This is how many people
were hiring. It's very much a high and demand career
within our state because we recognize the importance of manufacturing
(05:52):
to the state of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. So right
now you will start hearing a lot of programs such
as they build Submarines campaign that's because there's not enough
manufacturers to even help build up the submarine industrial base
that we have.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
Wow their jobs out there, We're just not prepared to
do the jobs because we don't have the training, the
proper training correct and so along the line because of
the fact that the jobs were just shipped out.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
Cool, Now I'm talking to call a trot Munchie the
presidency of Electrosoft, which is an electronics manufacturing engineering firm
in the United States. You know, when I think about
the different jobs that we have out there, you know,
you talk about the minorities, and minoritists can be white women,
minorities can be Asian. Minoritists don't because whenever they use
to worry minority, they always throw the word black on it,
(06:47):
like black people are minority. And we know that term
has changed over the years tremendously. Yeah, but we always
seem to be the victim when they try to start
talking about minorities. But then how do we as minority
or these start to trim down that racial wealth gap
that sits out there. That can that actually happen? Carl?
(07:08):
Is that just some really great term that they talk
about on TV. You read about in the books. Can
the racial wealth gap really be closed?
Speaker 2 (07:16):
I think there's things that we can do as a
community to really close it. I mean, think about the
fact that we are a generation of people that do
go fundme funerals because we don't think to take out
even a insurance policy to bury ourselves, which is very inexpensive.
We have siblings fighting over the family homestead because there's
(07:37):
no clear title or there's no will done. That costs
a couple hundred bucks to make sure that it doesn't
get caught up in court trying to figure out how
do we liquidate this and split the assets. We don't
do the very bare minimum that allows wealth to pass
from one generation to the next. But another step up
from that is that I have found through my fans
(08:00):
that wealth can be transferred through business ownership, entrepreneurship. And
oftentimes we don't want to take over mom's beauty salon
or whatever small business may have been in there, because
we're like I don't want to work in the beauty shop.
You don't have to work in the beauty shop. That
beauty shop is an asset. You get someone else to
(08:21):
run it, and at the end of the year there's
cash and that's another stream of income. We really don't
talk about small business as a vehicle for wealth transfer
and closing the wealth gap.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
Wow. No, No, You're very interesting to talk to because
I thank you. Really, I said it, because I'm almost like, Okay,
why don't I hear from you more? Why are you
on this show today? I'm asking that just because you
seem like you should have your own podcast. I should
be seeing you in MSNBC because your answers make sense
and you're telling the truth. But it tends the people
(08:53):
on TVs tend to hype the truth, and because the
truth is really coming out of your mouth so cleanly.
Why do you know when I hear this on a
regular basis in the general public, because it was damn
sure help me out.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
I wish I knew the reason why. But I mean,
that's kind of why I wrote my book, Dark, Dirty, Dangerous,
because it was about telling the stories of manufacturing, but
set across the landscape of what my family went through.
It took my father, as a black man, being told
who because he was, like you, talented in mathematics. He
had to go over to the continent of Africa to
(09:29):
meet his first black engineer and then decided I'm going
to be an engineer because he hadn't seen that or
heard that that was a possibility, and so when he
came back, he did it. We believe in our family.
Now you have to see it to be it. That's
you know, we didn't make it up, but it's definitely
something we live. And the reason why we've learned a
lot of these lessons is because we've lived them, and
(09:51):
a lot of people don't see that. Schools teach us
that we need to do well in school, go to
a good college, and get that great corporate job. It's
a funnel for corporate America. It does not teach you
about wealth generation through business ownership and entrepreneurship. And it
doesn't mean, you know, we have a hard time as
black people starting businesses. There's no VC money, there's no
(10:13):
private equity money for us. We've seen the statistics. But
there's going to be a tremendous wealth generating opportunity for
us when our baby boomers retire, they're going to want
somebody to take over that business. And there are ways
to buy businesses without a tremendous outlay of cash. There's
ways that you can structure the deal where the business
(10:36):
owner will finance that so that you can use the
proceeds of the business to pay them off and they
can walk away and now you're a business owner. We
need to start having these conversations, and people like myself
are the ones that are willing to have them because
if we don't talk about it, it won't get talked about.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
So we should start following the old white people around
that got business. That's what you said, because they want
That's what I'm talking about, because that's what you're talking about.
That's called about scope in your future, putting a plan
in place, because you know, we sit around here and
try to start a business instead of looking at an
opportunity that is a business and then creating a relationship
(11:15):
with an individual saying it's just going to be up
for sale? What you're going to do with this? And
a lot of people don't think that way? Why don't you?
Why do you know? Is it because we are not trained?
I'm talking about when I say we am talking about minorities,
women of color? What is the problem? How can black
(11:35):
people catch up? Come on?
Speaker 2 (11:36):
Call it it's access. We don't wrote a.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
Book after we catch up? Come on now, you're getting
me mad over it, and not call it. Call the
white people around. I need to Hey, man, what tut
your bid? You're sixty seven years old. I know you
running that business. I buy from you. Yes, that's smart.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
Yes, there's websites, there's brokers that are selling businesses. There's
people in your community that are looking for ways to
sell their business, because if they don't sell it, what
are they going to do. They're going to turn the
lights off, roll the carpets up, and call it quits.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
Please don't go anywhere. We'll be right back with more
money Making Conversations Masterclass. Welcome back to the Money Making
Conversations Masterclass hosted by Rashaan McDonald. Money Making Conversations Masterclass
continues online at Moneymakingconversations dot com and follow money Making
(12:30):
Conversations Masterclass on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
Carla, I'm gonna say you're not telling the truth. This
is enlightenment on money Making Conversations massaclint. You said there
are websites out there you can go to. Well, people
are selling their business. You can you can look at
the I guess the receipts, how they're doing or what
period of time you do a location find all this stuff.
(12:55):
I never knew that. Yeah, where what do you go?
And how do you know that?
Speaker 2 (13:00):
You can look up business brokers. So I've bought two
companies I've bought. I did an acquisition for my family
business and I bought my family business from my family,
And so I do.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
Know that businesses and the whole process because I want
to educate people, because you know, when people come on
my show, I would tell people I'm not an expert, okay,
but when people tell me something I've never heard before,
then I go, wow, I need to really invest more
information there. So there are broken websites that people can
(13:34):
go to to buy businesses.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
Yes to at least see the listings, and then you
can go to the next step, which is a letter
of intent and go through the process of seeing if
that's the business for you. Absolutely, But for me, so
I started a business. I had an online e commerce
site for eight and a half years. Starting a business
from scratch is extremely difficult. So when I was working
(13:58):
with my family deciding to take over, I said, you
know what, there's businesses that are available. I think we
should look at acquisition. Acquisition is allows you to have
jumps in your top line revenue. I thought we needed
more jumps in that top line revenue. I asked my suppliers.
I asked our customers, do you have any vendors? Do
you know any company that does what we do nearby
(14:21):
where the owner is trying to exit? They said sure,
They made the introductions, we had a conversation, they liked us.
We decided we would love to buy your company. Now,
sometimes it's not as you think. Okay, they want a
million dollars for the company. Let's say you don't have
to write a check for a million dollars to buy
a company. Everything is negotiable. This company. When I was
(14:43):
going through their documentation with my accountant, I realized we
were losing a lot of money, and if we had
taken this company on, we would take out all of
the redundancies. And once we because we didn't need the building,
he wasn't going to be working for us anymore. We didn't.
We had a different way of buying in bulk because
of our relationships, that we could actually save money. And
I did a calculation and found out how much money
(15:06):
we would make on an annual basis conservatively year one,
two three, and decided that what we were going to
do is instead of writing him a check for this
that it was going to be a debt deal. I
wanted I would take over this man's debt and negotiate
it with his the people that he owed money to,
and he could walk away without being in debt. As
(15:28):
an older person, he wanted to retire free and clear.
And really it cost me nothing outside of the paperwork
to buy this build this business from this gentleman. And
I needed a lot of the write offs anyway for
the profits that I had made with my own company,
and a lot of the debt we were able to
write or get rid of because it was an asset
(15:50):
purchase plan. So I wasn't buying XYZ Corp. I was
buying the assets of the corp which involved the people,
and didn't buy the people that invited them to continue
to work and their book of business. And we talked
to all of the people that they were doing business
with and said, we do the same thing, we'd like
to do the same thing for you. Would you be
willing to allow us to transfer that. Everyone was on board.
(16:13):
So then by the end of that year, after we
had written off all of the debt, we were making
more money. I didn't cost us anything per se out
of pocket, and we were able to absorb that company
and now have a larger top line revenue number.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
Okay, have you started a club or like a Facebook page?
Call up? I have not, you know, because use less
when I hear you know I here. Well, you know,
we in this little investment group, you know, like ten
of us get together and we like chop up our
money and we go buy office building or we buy
some land and stuff like that. So this is just
a party of one out there.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
Yeah. I mean I do have great, amazing entrepreneur friends.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
Un listen. It's a bad thing, but you are impressive
now because you're so calm. You're so calm, you know,
ra Seane. You know I go through here. I looked
at the books. And the reason I like that because
see I always talk about business plans on this show
when people start business, and when you're going over somebody's books,
you really establishing a business plan. And that's something that
(17:22):
so many young people are young entrepreneurs make a mistake
on they don't have it. And by going through the
process of seeing a business and the mistakes they may
be doing or the or the things they may be doing. Right,
you're establishing a model of success one year, two year,
three years. So that alone, to me, is a reason
I would tell people this is a route to go
(17:44):
if you're talking about getting into an entrepreneur state, because
it's going to force you to create a business plan,
because you have to look at the company that you
want to buy or invest in.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
Correct, that's right.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
Absolutely, And so with that being said, Okay, call her, yes,
let me just tell her. But I'm talking to because
they can track you down. She's the president CEA of Electrosoft.
What we found about her is that she's an independent genius.
She's out there by a company. Next see five years,
ten years from now, you gonna read about calls. You'll
be on the cover essence, you know, Black Enterprise, they
(18:18):
still around, if aministry, if it gonna be in her face,
this little smile and face right here, y'all can't steal
it because it's podcast. Because you figure out something that
I've never heard before. Now, how do we tell other
people about this and get them excited? Because I'm excited
because my staff they always take notes of great interviews.
This is a great interview.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
Well, thank you. I appreciate that. Well. I do have
a book that was released in September, Dark, Dirty, Dangerous,
and it's about manufacturing. It's the you know a little
bit about manufacturing, but it really it was me leaving
a lot of breadcrumbs for others who want to either
go into high burier to entry industries like manufacturing. But
also it tells you what I did to buy my
(18:57):
family business, the conversations. I had brothers, but I'm the
only owner. So you've learned about that. You learn about
family business transitions, succession, planning, the things we did wrong,
the things we did right. Because we want there's no
need to reinvent the wheel. I'll tell you what we did.
We need to tell more stories about it so we
can share information and we can all grow our wealth together.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
So what's the career? What's next step for you? Say
you have two businesses? Okay? First of all, you work
full time?
Speaker 2 (19:25):
Correct I do?
Speaker 1 (19:27):
Okay, so let's see that's super smart, right there, still working,
getting that check, health benefit somebody else, paying for a vacation.
Somebody can know that. Then you got how many more
businesses do you have? Cost?
Speaker 2 (19:39):
So my work is my family business?
Speaker 1 (19:42):
Okay? So electoral lecturefice. That's the business you bought.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
Yes, I bought from my parents, my parents. In twenty twenty,
I absorbed the one company that we purchased into this company.
I'm looking at additional acquisitions right now to continue to
grow the business.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
You know, whenever I hear the word acquisition, I'm me
just tell you, I always think about you know, major
corporations like Google. I think about I be because those
are words. It's so they're just not normal words that
you hear in the small business world or the entrepreneurial
space that I roll in. But acquisition is something that
(20:23):
is a term that you should not put in a
certain financial structure. That's how you just do business.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
That's yeah, if you're buying a business, that's all.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
Now you're a minority woman of a color, how does
the industry treat you?
Speaker 2 (20:37):
Look? I learned a long time ago that you know,
I saw the way my family build a business. Nobody
was could think that black people could build technical have
a technical company, and so we learned how to just
kind of forge forward and act like you've been somewhere,
know that you know what you're doing, and you build
a reputation. So we definitely I do rest my laurels
(21:00):
on the fact that I'm blessed that we have a
reputation in this industry, and so I'm also unique in that.
So that allows me the opportunity to speak more about
what I do. It gives me a bigger platform than
a lot of my competition, and it allows me to
build authority. So people treat me fine now, but I
(21:22):
still have a lot of the same issues that business
owners have.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
Shoat me fine, now, Okay, how are they treating you?
Because obviously you are gnawed, Obviously you felt okay, you're
tripping that. Yeah, you know you would treat a man
like this, you would treat a person of a different
color like this. How will you and how did you
manage to rise above of that? When that's the rise
above of that? Because you know, I always tell people
I don't care how successful am when I walk in
(21:47):
the room. By the color of my skin, you know
who I am exact. I cannot hide that, And so
that means whether it's a hindrance of whether there's an advantage,
I don't know. But that's that's the hand that I'm
with and I'm proud of it. I'll tay writing that call.
I'm proud of it. Yeah, So will you tell me
there's been frustration in your life? Yes, disappointment in your life.
(22:09):
I'm talking of the business world, which absolutely How did
you overcome it?
Speaker 2 (22:14):
Well, I'll give you an example. When I went to
buy my family's business, I needed to take out a very,
very large loan. It's not one of those things where
I gave my dad a dollar as a symbol and
he gave me the company. It's a major tax transaction.
What happened was that I had to go to a bank,
and I went to about eight different banks, and they
(22:36):
all wanted me to do SBA lending. There is nothing
wrong with SBA lending. I think if I was starting out,
it would definitely make sense. But because I wanted to
move quickly, I just wanted a regular loan, like a
conventional loan, which we I knew I qualified for. I
had excellent credit, The business has excellent credit. We had
been in business for over thirty years. My father had
(22:57):
a lot of great money. We have over a million
and a half dollars in equipment alone. I have other assets,
so there was no reason for me to have to
go down SBA. It should have just been a quick transaction.
I just wanted a quick seven year loan period, and
(23:18):
no one would give me one hundred percent of what
I asked for as a conventional loan, even though I
had my father guaranteeing the money, like he said, I'll
guarantee the money, like if she can't pay it, I'll
give it back to you so that you're made whole.
And we still could not get the amount that we need.
So it doesn't even matter how much money you have.
(23:39):
Sometimes the issues that come up, there's always a reason
for people to say no. And so we were like,
you know what, We're still going to get the loan.
We did the seventy five percent of what I needed
and figured out how to make up the other twenty
five percent. But that also is a testament to the
fact that I don't allow people just to still like
(24:00):
decide my future because they say no. It allows me
to push even harder, and it only almost like makes
me want to be even more successful in spite of
the fact that there's so many systemic issues that really
want to try to keep us from moving forward.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
Wow, she's incredible. Her name is Cola Troupman. She's the
president's CEO of Electrosoft Incorporated. Right outside the affiliate area, right, yes, sir, Okay, Wow,
you impressive, my friend. Thanks, very very impressive. I want
to invite you back on the show.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
I would love to come back on your show.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
You know. And but most important that I want to
because in the end, you know, when we talk about
racial wealth gap, we talk about women and minorities and
different career paths. And you know, I was talking to
this financial expert out of New York and he would saying, Rashane,
you just simplify life when you're talking to people, and
that's all I try to do. You know. Yes, I
have a math agree, yes, my mind is is in sociology.
(24:58):
But in the end, I just want to talk regular
I just want everybody to get a shot at it
and not think that that information that's being distributed you
can't participate in. And I feel that you have opened
a big door today on my show about how to
look at entrepreneur opportunities and they are available to you
just know where to look. Absolutely absolutely thank you for
(25:22):
coming on Money Making Conversation Masterclass. I appreciate you.
Speaker 2 (25:25):
I appreciate you. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
This has been another edition of Money Making Conversation Masterclass
posted by me Rushaun McDonald. Thank you to our guests
on the show today and thank you o listening to
audience now. If you want to listen to any episode
I want to be a guest on the show, visit
Moneymakingconversations dot com. Our social media handle is money Making Conversation.
Join us next week and remember to always leave with
(25:48):
your gifts. Keep winning.
Hi. I am Rashan McDonald, a host the weekly Money
Making Conversation Masterclass show. The interviews and information that this
show provides are for everyone. It's time to stop reading
other people's success stories and start living your own. If
you want to be a guest on my show, please
visit our website, Moneymaking Conversations dot com and click the
be a Guest button. Press submit and information will come
(00:23):
directly to me. Now let's get this show started. My
next guest is the president and CEO of Electrosoft Incorporated
and electronics manufacturing and engineering firm and the United States.
She's on the show to discuss many topics including breaking
down barriers for women and minority business owners, and manufacturing.
Please work with the Money Making Conversations Masterclass caller Tropman.
(00:45):
How are you doing, miss Tropman?
Speaker 2 (00:47):
I'm doing well.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
How are you pretty good? When you say the word manufacturing,
you know what does that mean?
Speaker 2 (00:53):
So? I think people oftentimes think manufacturing is where you're
going to a dark industrial building, come out with soot
on your face and it's really loud, and it's not
that way. Manufacturing is actually whenever you take something from
its most simple form and then you do something additive
to it and create it into something else. So, if
(01:13):
you think about it, a baker is a manufacturer, a
cabinet maker is a manufacturer. Even if you assemble office furniture,
you are considered a manufacturer.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
I know when I do hear the word manufacturing, I
think of a hard hat. They are told boots. I
think of blue collar, you know, type manual work. Am
I the am I in the right direction or when
I'm talking to I'm just wondering about a stereotyping what
manufacturing the whole scope of what it really.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
Is definitely stereotyping. I'm yeah, Yeah, we're my company. It's
very clean. Uh. I think the loudest thing we have
is compressed air. Because we manufacture, we actually assemble electronic assemblies, components,
do cables, wiring harnesses, box building closures, printed circuit board assemblies.
(02:08):
It's very different. It's no hard hats.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
Well, you know the amazing thing about the word by manufacturing,
because there's also your word that's using politics a lot
manufacturing manufacturing, And they're always talking about policies, and whenever
you have a new person who goes into office of
presidency of the United States, they always talk about policies
and talk about support domestic manufacturing pipelines and things like that.
(02:32):
Nature you in the game, when you hear statements like
new policies or policies that will support support the domestic
increase of manufacturing state side, what are your comments call them?
Speaker 2 (02:44):
It's not as simple as they make it seem. Right,
you'd say, Okay, we're going to put tariffs on anything
that comes from this particular region, and it's going to
cause everyone to turn internally to state side for manufacturing. Well,
we've since outsourced mostly manufacturing overseas. A lot of the
parts that we have are overseas. Manufacturing is primarily in
(03:05):
a lot of people's minds overseas, especially for high volume.
So now if we say we want it all state side, well,
we don't have the people who are trained to do
the work. We don't have the components stateside being created
here for us to even build here. So it's not
as simple as just creating policy of tariffs. We need
(03:29):
to have a whole re education of people in the
trades to be able to handle manufacturing here in the US.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
Well, when I hear you talk like that, that means
you're talking about years from now, how do you've set
in place you right there in manufacturing game, how do
you fix it or can it be fixed to be
the creative workforce for a job demand that might come
about that we can't even supply the workforce for.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
Well, there's been a lot of state side initiatives actually
on a state level to create more manufacturing jobs. Apprenticeships
have started up again. There's a lot of the trade
schools right now are just bursting at the seams. They
just can't they're turning down students because there's so much
of an interest in doing it. And even here at
(04:13):
my company, we've created our own pipeline where we train
people within ninety days to go from knowing nothing about
electronics to being able to do simple electronics assemblies based
off of blueprint. So we've had to go internal to
fix our own problems within the industry.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
So, okay, how do they find out about that? Because
I'm an old school I used to go to knock
on the office door and then I sat down. I've
turned to my application. Now they tell you go online
and they'll let you know. When they let you know.
It's so impersonal now and it can be frustrating be
able to introduce yourself to a new opportunity. How does
one find about I'm just saying using your company as
(04:53):
an example, you saying you're training your workforce, which means
that your company that has the infrastructure to uplift and deliver.
How do we know about a company like yours when
the system is so impersonal nowadays.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
Yeah, we've done a terrible job at just even marketing
manufacturing positions. But I know here in Pennsylvania, in the
Philadelphia region, we have really great industry partnerships and training
programs that we've been marketing to attract more people into
our industry and just doing a better job at marketing.
(05:28):
We've been opening our doors doing open houses. We have
Manufacturing Day that's held in October. I believe it's the
first Friday of every October where we're letting folks know
what's going on in manufacturing. This is how many people
were hiring. It's very much a high and demand career
within our state because we recognize the importance of manufacturing
(05:52):
to the state of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. So right
now you will start hearing a lot of programs such
as they build Submarines campaign that's because there's not enough
manufacturers to even help build up the submarine industrial base
that we have.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
Wow their jobs out there, We're just not prepared to
do the jobs because we don't have the training, the
proper training correct and so along the line because of
the fact that the jobs were just shipped out.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
Cool, Now I'm talking to call a trot Munchie the
presidency of Electrosoft, which is an electronics manufacturing engineering firm
in the United States. You know, when I think about
the different jobs that we have out there, you know,
you talk about the minorities, and minoritists can be white women,
minorities can be Asian. Minoritists don't because whenever they use
to worry minority, they always throw the word black on it,
(06:47):
like black people are minority. And we know that term
has changed over the years tremendously. Yeah, but we always
seem to be the victim when they try to start
talking about minorities. But then how do we as minority
or these start to trim down that racial wealth gap
that sits out there. That can that actually happen? Carl?
(07:08):
Is that just some really great term that they talk
about on TV. You read about in the books. Can
the racial wealth gap really be closed?
Speaker 2 (07:16):
I think there's things that we can do as a
community to really close it. I mean, think about the
fact that we are a generation of people that do
go fundme funerals because we don't think to take out
even a insurance policy to bury ourselves, which is very inexpensive.
We have siblings fighting over the family homestead because there's
(07:37):
no clear title or there's no will done. That costs
a couple hundred bucks to make sure that it doesn't
get caught up in court trying to figure out how
do we liquidate this and split the assets. We don't
do the very bare minimum that allows wealth to pass
from one generation to the next. But another step up
from that is that I have found through my fans
(08:00):
that wealth can be transferred through business ownership, entrepreneurship. And
oftentimes we don't want to take over mom's beauty salon
or whatever small business may have been in there, because
we're like I don't want to work in the beauty shop.
You don't have to work in the beauty shop. That
beauty shop is an asset. You get someone else to
(08:21):
run it, and at the end of the year there's
cash and that's another stream of income. We really don't
talk about small business as a vehicle for wealth transfer
and closing the wealth gap.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
Wow. No, No, You're very interesting to talk to because
I thank you. Really, I said it, because I'm almost like, Okay,
why don't I hear from you more? Why are you
on this show today? I'm asking that just because you
seem like you should have your own podcast. I should
be seeing you in MSNBC because your answers make sense
and you're telling the truth. But it tends the people
(08:53):
on TVs tend to hype the truth, and because the
truth is really coming out of your mouth so cleanly.
Why do you know when I hear this on a
regular basis in the general public, because it was damn
sure help me out.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
I wish I knew the reason why. But I mean,
that's kind of why I wrote my book, Dark, Dirty, Dangerous,
because it was about telling the stories of manufacturing, but
set across the landscape of what my family went through.
It took my father, as a black man, being told
who because he was, like you, talented in mathematics. He
had to go over to the continent of Africa to
(09:29):
meet his first black engineer and then decided I'm going
to be an engineer because he hadn't seen that or
heard that that was a possibility, and so when he
came back, he did it. We believe in our family.
Now you have to see it to be it. That's
you know, we didn't make it up, but it's definitely
something we live. And the reason why we've learned a
lot of these lessons is because we've lived them, and
(09:51):
a lot of people don't see that. Schools teach us
that we need to do well in school, go to
a good college, and get that great corporate job. It's
a funnel for corporate America. It does not teach you
about wealth generation through business ownership and entrepreneurship. And it
doesn't mean, you know, we have a hard time as
black people starting businesses. There's no VC money, there's no
(10:13):
private equity money for us. We've seen the statistics. But
there's going to be a tremendous wealth generating opportunity for
us when our baby boomers retire, they're going to want
somebody to take over that business. And there are ways
to buy businesses without a tremendous outlay of cash. There's
ways that you can structure the deal where the business
(10:36):
owner will finance that so that you can use the
proceeds of the business to pay them off and they
can walk away and now you're a business owner. We
need to start having these conversations, and people like myself
are the ones that are willing to have them because
if we don't talk about it, it won't get talked about.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
So we should start following the old white people around
that got business. That's what you said, because they want
That's what I'm talking about, because that's what you're talking about.
That's called about scope in your future, putting a plan
in place, because you know, we sit around here and
try to start a business instead of looking at an
opportunity that is a business and then creating a relationship
(11:15):
with an individual saying it's just going to be up
for sale? What you're going to do with this? And
a lot of people don't think that way? Why don't you?
Why do you know? Is it because we are not trained?
I'm talking about when I say we am talking about minorities,
women of color? What is the problem? How can black
(11:35):
people catch up? Come on?
Speaker 2 (11:36):
Call it it's access. We don't wrote a.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
Book after we catch up? Come on now, you're getting
me mad over it, and not call it. Call the
white people around. I need to Hey, man, what tut
your bid? You're sixty seven years old. I know you
running that business. I buy from you. Yes, that's smart.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
Yes, there's websites, there's brokers that are selling businesses. There's
people in your community that are looking for ways to
sell their business, because if they don't sell it, what
are they going to do. They're going to turn the
lights off, roll the carpets up, and call it quits.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
Please don't go anywhere. We'll be right back with more
money Making Conversations Masterclass. Welcome back to the Money Making
Conversations Masterclass hosted by Rashaan McDonald. Money Making Conversations Masterclass
continues online at Moneymakingconversations dot com and follow money Making
(12:30):
Conversations Masterclass on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
Carla, I'm gonna say you're not telling the truth. This
is enlightenment on money Making Conversations massaclint. You said there
are websites out there you can go to. Well, people
are selling their business. You can you can look at
the I guess the receipts, how they're doing or what
period of time you do a location find all this stuff.
(12:55):
I never knew that. Yeah, where what do you go?
And how do you know that?
Speaker 2 (13:00):
You can look up business brokers. So I've bought two
companies I've bought. I did an acquisition for my family
business and I bought my family business from my family,
And so I do.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
Know that businesses and the whole process because I want
to educate people, because you know, when people come on
my show, I would tell people I'm not an expert, okay,
but when people tell me something I've never heard before,
then I go, wow, I need to really invest more
information there. So there are broken websites that people can
(13:34):
go to to buy businesses.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
Yes to at least see the listings, and then you
can go to the next step, which is a letter
of intent and go through the process of seeing if
that's the business for you. Absolutely, But for me, so
I started a business. I had an online e commerce
site for eight and a half years. Starting a business
from scratch is extremely difficult. So when I was working
(13:58):
with my family deciding to take over, I said, you
know what, there's businesses that are available. I think we
should look at acquisition. Acquisition is allows you to have
jumps in your top line revenue. I thought we needed
more jumps in that top line revenue. I asked my suppliers.
I asked our customers, do you have any vendors? Do
you know any company that does what we do nearby
(14:21):
where the owner is trying to exit? They said sure,
They made the introductions, we had a conversation, they liked us.
We decided we would love to buy your company. Now,
sometimes it's not as you think. Okay, they want a
million dollars for the company. Let's say you don't have
to write a check for a million dollars to buy
a company. Everything is negotiable. This company. When I was
(14:43):
going through their documentation with my accountant, I realized we
were losing a lot of money, and if we had
taken this company on, we would take out all of
the redundancies. And once we because we didn't need the building,
he wasn't going to be working for us anymore. We didn't.
We had a different way of buying in bulk because
of our relationships, that we could actually save money. And
I did a calculation and found out how much money
(15:06):
we would make on an annual basis conservatively year one,
two three, and decided that what we were going to
do is instead of writing him a check for this
that it was going to be a debt deal. I
wanted I would take over this man's debt and negotiate
it with his the people that he owed money to,
and he could walk away without being in debt. As
(15:28):
an older person, he wanted to retire free and clear.
And really it cost me nothing outside of the paperwork
to buy this build this business from this gentleman. And
I needed a lot of the write offs anyway for
the profits that I had made with my own company,
and a lot of the debt we were able to
write or get rid of because it was an asset
(15:50):
purchase plan. So I wasn't buying XYZ Corp. I was
buying the assets of the corp which involved the people,
and didn't buy the people that invited them to continue
to work and their book of business. And we talked
to all of the people that they were doing business
with and said, we do the same thing, we'd like
to do the same thing for you. Would you be
willing to allow us to transfer that. Everyone was on board.
(16:13):
So then by the end of that year, after we
had written off all of the debt, we were making
more money. I didn't cost us anything per se out
of pocket, and we were able to absorb that company
and now have a larger top line revenue number.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
Okay, have you started a club or like a Facebook page?
Call up? I have not, you know, because use less
when I hear you know I here. Well, you know,
we in this little investment group, you know, like ten
of us get together and we like chop up our
money and we go buy office building or we buy
some land and stuff like that. So this is just
a party of one out there.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
Yeah. I mean I do have great, amazing entrepreneur friends.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
Un listen. It's a bad thing, but you are impressive
now because you're so calm. You're so calm, you know,
ra Seane. You know I go through here. I looked
at the books. And the reason I like that because
see I always talk about business plans on this show
when people start business, and when you're going over somebody's books,
you really establishing a business plan. And that's something that
(17:22):
so many young people are young entrepreneurs make a mistake
on they don't have it. And by going through the
process of seeing a business and the mistakes they may
be doing or the or the things they may be doing. Right,
you're establishing a model of success one year, two year,
three years. So that alone, to me, is a reason
I would tell people this is a route to go
(17:44):
if you're talking about getting into an entrepreneur state, because
it's going to force you to create a business plan,
because you have to look at the company that you
want to buy or invest in.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
Correct, that's right.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
Absolutely, And so with that being said, Okay, call her, yes,
let me just tell her. But I'm talking to because
they can track you down. She's the president CEA of Electrosoft.
What we found about her is that she's an independent genius.
She's out there by a company. Next see five years,
ten years from now, you gonna read about calls. You'll
be on the cover essence, you know, Black Enterprise, they
(18:18):
still around, if aministry, if it gonna be in her face,
this little smile and face right here, y'all can't steal
it because it's podcast. Because you figure out something that
I've never heard before. Now, how do we tell other
people about this and get them excited? Because I'm excited
because my staff they always take notes of great interviews.
This is a great interview.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
Well, thank you. I appreciate that. Well. I do have
a book that was released in September, Dark, Dirty, Dangerous,
and it's about manufacturing. It's the you know a little
bit about manufacturing, but it really it was me leaving
a lot of breadcrumbs for others who want to either
go into high burier to entry industries like manufacturing. But
also it tells you what I did to buy my
(18:57):
family business, the conversations. I had brothers, but I'm the
only owner. So you've learned about that. You learn about
family business transitions, succession, planning, the things we did wrong,
the things we did right. Because we want there's no
need to reinvent the wheel. I'll tell you what we did.
We need to tell more stories about it so we
can share information and we can all grow our wealth together.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
So what's the career? What's next step for you? Say
you have two businesses? Okay? First of all, you work
full time?
Speaker 2 (19:25):
Correct I do?
Speaker 1 (19:27):
Okay, so let's see that's super smart, right there, still working,
getting that check, health benefit somebody else, paying for a vacation.
Somebody can know that. Then you got how many more
businesses do you have? Cost?
Speaker 2 (19:39):
So my work is my family business?
Speaker 1 (19:42):
Okay? So electoral lecturefice. That's the business you bought.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
Yes, I bought from my parents, my parents. In twenty twenty,
I absorbed the one company that we purchased into this company.
I'm looking at additional acquisitions right now to continue to
grow the business.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
You know, whenever I hear the word acquisition, I'm me
just tell you, I always think about you know, major
corporations like Google. I think about I be because those
are words. It's so they're just not normal words that
you hear in the small business world or the entrepreneurial
space that I roll in. But acquisition is something that
(20:23):
is a term that you should not put in a
certain financial structure. That's how you just do business.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
That's yeah, if you're buying a business, that's all.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
Now you're a minority woman of a color, how does
the industry treat you?
Speaker 2 (20:37):
Look? I learned a long time ago that you know,
I saw the way my family build a business. Nobody
was could think that black people could build technical have
a technical company, and so we learned how to just
kind of forge forward and act like you've been somewhere,
know that you know what you're doing, and you build
a reputation. So we definitely I do rest my laurels
(21:00):
on the fact that I'm blessed that we have a
reputation in this industry, and so I'm also unique in that.
So that allows me the opportunity to speak more about
what I do. It gives me a bigger platform than
a lot of my competition, and it allows me to
build authority. So people treat me fine now, but I
(21:22):
still have a lot of the same issues that business
owners have.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
Shoat me fine, now, Okay, how are they treating you?
Because obviously you are gnawed, Obviously you felt okay, you're
tripping that. Yeah, you know you would treat a man
like this, you would treat a person of a different
color like this. How will you and how did you
manage to rise above of that? When that's the rise
above of that? Because you know, I always tell people
I don't care how successful am when I walk in
(21:47):
the room. By the color of my skin, you know
who I am exact. I cannot hide that, And so
that means whether it's a hindrance of whether there's an advantage,
I don't know. But that's that's the hand that I'm
with and I'm proud of it. I'll tay writing that call.
I'm proud of it. Yeah, So will you tell me
there's been frustration in your life? Yes, disappointment in your life.
(22:09):
I'm talking of the business world, which absolutely How did
you overcome it?
Speaker 2 (22:14):
Well, I'll give you an example. When I went to
buy my family's business, I needed to take out a very,
very large loan. It's not one of those things where
I gave my dad a dollar as a symbol and
he gave me the company. It's a major tax transaction.
What happened was that I had to go to a bank,
and I went to about eight different banks, and they
(22:36):
all wanted me to do SBA lending. There is nothing
wrong with SBA lending. I think if I was starting out,
it would definitely make sense. But because I wanted to
move quickly, I just wanted a regular loan, like a
conventional loan, which we I knew I qualified for. I
had excellent credit, The business has excellent credit. We had
been in business for over thirty years. My father had
(22:57):
a lot of great money. We have over a million
and a half dollars in equipment alone. I have other assets,
so there was no reason for me to have to
go down SBA. It should have just been a quick transaction.
I just wanted a quick seven year loan period, and
(23:18):
no one would give me one hundred percent of what
I asked for as a conventional loan, even though I
had my father guaranteeing the money, like he said, I'll
guarantee the money, like if she can't pay it, I'll
give it back to you so that you're made whole.
And we still could not get the amount that we need.
So it doesn't even matter how much money you have.
(23:39):
Sometimes the issues that come up, there's always a reason
for people to say no. And so we were like,
you know what, We're still going to get the loan.
We did the seventy five percent of what I needed
and figured out how to make up the other twenty
five percent. But that also is a testament to the
fact that I don't allow people just to still like
(24:00):
decide my future because they say no. It allows me
to push even harder, and it only almost like makes
me want to be even more successful in spite of
the fact that there's so many systemic issues that really
want to try to keep us from moving forward.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
Wow, she's incredible. Her name is Cola Troupman. She's the
president's CEO of Electrosoft Incorporated. Right outside the affiliate area, right, yes, sir, Okay, Wow,
you impressive, my friend. Thanks, very very impressive. I want
to invite you back on the show.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
I would love to come back on your show.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
You know. And but most important that I want to
because in the end, you know, when we talk about
racial wealth gap, we talk about women and minorities and
different career paths. And you know, I was talking to
this financial expert out of New York and he would saying, Rashane,
you just simplify life when you're talking to people, and
that's all I try to do. You know. Yes, I
have a math agree, yes, my mind is is in sociology.
(24:58):
But in the end, I just want to talk regular
I just want everybody to get a shot at it
and not think that that information that's being distributed you
can't participate in. And I feel that you have opened
a big door today on my show about how to
look at entrepreneur opportunities and they are available to you
just know where to look. Absolutely absolutely thank you for
(25:22):
coming on Money Making Conversation Masterclass. I appreciate you.
Speaker 2 (25:25):
I appreciate you. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
This has been another edition of Money Making Conversation Masterclass
posted by me Rushaun McDonald. Thank you to our guests
on the show today and thank you o listening to
audience now. If you want to listen to any episode
I want to be a guest on the show, visit
Moneymakingconversations dot com. Our social media handle is money Making Conversation.
Join us next week and remember to always leave with
(25:48):
your gifts. Keep winning.
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