Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Hope Global Forms, the Dialogue where we bring
exclusive conversations with extraordinary leaders directly to you. I'm your
Hope Essence Scant and you can find me on Instagram
at the Essence of Underscore. This podcast is powered by
Hope Global Forms, an initiative of Operation Hope Designs to aspire,
educate and empower. You visit us at Hope Globalforms dot
(00:24):
org and follow us on social at Hope Global Form.
In today's episode, we have Charlamagne the God, Ti Keller,
Mike Tony, Wrestler Ambassador Andrew Young, and John Hope Bryant
on crafting a business plan for America at.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
L what's happening?
Speaker 3 (00:44):
Oh man, it's a pleasure to be here today with
all of these players, and you know, great individuals on
this stage. I don't act like mister Young got a player,
Come on now?
Speaker 2 (00:53):
All right?
Speaker 3 (00:54):
Og right there? So the question was black workers earn
thirty percent less than white workers. Closing that would put
two million black individuals into the middle class. How do
we even begin to change this? Who wants to start?
Speaker 4 (01:05):
I mean, I believe it starts with entrepreneurship. I think
we have to close that gap on our own. We
can't continue to look for corporations and for the government
to kind of supply us with our necessities. We got
to keep doing what we've been doing. I think one
point three trillion dollars is what black people spend in America.
(01:29):
So somewhere in there, you know what I'm saying. If
we can pull those resources together and we can direct
those funds to where we needed at, thirty percent can
get knocked out immediately.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Mister Renda, yep, this is my actual business partner, one
of my best friends. Actually a few people here have
been very dynamic in my life. The whole panel. I
after genuine friendships with and me and my friend in
starting a business and we you know, we make a
lot of money. Were singing dance, but you don't know
(02:02):
it's not wise then use your own money to build
your business. You're looking for capital, you're looking for partnerships,
you're looking for joint ventures of sorts. That's what That's
what my black man right here tells me all the
time about your money. And he really talks like a
gangster movie, Like when you talk to miss mister Rexwell,
He's like, what, Mike, what the fuck are you doing
(02:23):
That's a fact money. That's a fact. You guys should
you guys should be finding money. There's money out there.
People want to partner with you. Yeah, I'm learning more,
and I think like doctor King was saying in his
last two years of life, and I got a fact
checker here if I'm wrong, but he but he talked about,
(02:45):
you know, the government subsidized like they had done for
other immigrant groups had moved in here. So I think
there's a role in government and private partnerships because the
administrations that I grew up under Addie Young's administrations, Maynards
administrations did a great job of getting public into private
sect to the partner together. And as I talked to
John Hopbrien, as I talked to Tony Rexlar, I'm realizing
that Atlanta has a very unique way in doing that
(03:08):
that works very effectively at not only making sure that
business owners have an opportunity to run their business, that
they get strong partnerships between the two. And I think
that the way Atlanta's small business and medium business community
is growing, we could stand to do well with those partnerships.
I think if you look at a pinky and study Vegan,
I think if you look at a Big Day Cheese
Dak what they've been able to do. I think if
(03:29):
you look at John O'Brien what he was able to
do with rental properties. I think that a lot of
times we have amazing ideas and once corporate citizens desire
to truly be good corporate citizens, understand that that goes
beyond just philanthropy in terms of giving the five oh
one c threes, but actually helping neighborhoods grow entrepreneurship. You know,
we need eliminate stam mentality, and I think that we
(03:50):
have it, and I think that now corporations are starting
to understand that and pivot into us. And I think
that the more that that happens, the more that those
partnerships happens. I think that the more growth happens. And
like along with what Tip said, using that spending dollar
of circulating our communities more, I think that our community
becomes a strongle Yeah.
Speaker 5 (04:06):
So one of the reasons that I wanted Bishop TD Jakes,
and I'm gonna say now, mister Jakes, because of his enterprises,
to sit right in front of us, and so we
could see an example. He's right here standing up please
with the Jakes so we get to see an example
(04:26):
of somebody who's employing hundreds, who has auditive financials, who
has you know, runs a straight up development business that's
over here, and then a straight up record label and
a straight up online digital enterprise. These are all separate,
proper businesses with accounting standards, infrastructure administration, reporting out to investors.
(04:49):
And then completely separate from that, he has his Faith Enterprises,
which has a completely separate firewall up. Basically, you got
to do it the right way. We can't just before
on business. You gotta be focused on business. And I
wanted him to be there. So we had somebody that
we could actually see and point to as a real
role model. If somebody's been able to do it right.
(05:10):
Pay we all, by the way, everybody up here paying
our taxes. Where I just know that we're married, we
have you know, there's children here, there's families, there's there's
there's there's Yeah, it's cool, it's sexy, but we we
these folks have made smart sexy. We have got to
no one ever. It's not that we're dumb and we're stupid.
It's when we don't know that we don't know because
(05:33):
the Freedman's Bank was had had under it was undermined
in the eighteen hundreds. That was one of the teachers
about how capitalism works. So we're just winging it and
we've confused making money with building wealth. You make money
during the day, you build wealth in your sleep. We
gotta stop being talking about all make this money. I
want to get this dollar. I want to get paid
as it's far overrated because money has frequency, it's gonna
(05:57):
come and go. I want you know what sexy is
is building wealth in your sleep.
Speaker 6 (06:03):
When you look at who's here, I mean Chars, Ti, Mike, Andrew, Young, John,
the influence you guys have, and I just think you
should be so much more aggressive. I'm going to use
a quote and I am Bishop Jakes. If you don't mind,
you mentioned inspiration versus transformation. Now I'm just going to
use an NBA story, but I don't mean I might
(06:27):
use some bad words, but that's.
Speaker 5 (06:29):
Fine, okay, if you think about it.
Speaker 6 (06:32):
People spend so much time trying to figure out Often
the debate on whether there should be more African American
basketball coaches in the NBA. There's thirty damn teams and
by the way, the more African American coaches, the better.
But with the influence of the NBA, the influence on
this stage, the focus shouldn't be on whether we have
twelve or sixteen or eighteen African American coaches. That's inspiration, listen,
(06:57):
having an even playing field with financial literacy, access to capital, mentorship.
All right, when we change that, when we make that
all more available, which is the private sector and the
public sector. You know, we keep talking about whether it
should be the public sector or the private sector. You know,
at a certain point, you get to a certain age
(07:18):
you got to look in the mirror and say, hey,
I'm part of the solution or I'm part of the problem.
Speaker 4 (07:23):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
Well, but that says, you know, Black entrepreneurs pay more
for capital and they face some more difficult approval process.
Do we need to start developing our own financial systems
or better mastered the existing ones?
Speaker 2 (07:37):
Both?
Speaker 7 (07:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
I just as a as one of the profounders of Greenwood,
I didn't know much about money getting into it. And
I remember when Andy hit me and he says, we
have banking deserts. And I remember Chase Bank having pulled
out of the West Side. Now, if you guys don't
know about Greenwood, Please google it. It's an amazing bank.
Just rate forty five, forty five million. It's a banking platform.
(07:59):
I think, help, but there's it's no, it's not the
final spear in the ward. What really taught me a
valuable lesson in that was when John called me one
day and said, look, I know you were of Chase
Bank as your large bank. I know you deal with
citizens trust in terms, you've been with them since a kid.
But you need a relationship with regional banks, with people
who see you, with people see you moving. And he
(08:19):
had he had me do a call. When I did
the call, waft, he cursed me out about being late.
When I did the call, I understood how important that
one on one relationship was because eight months later I
had bought a building in Each Point and I remember
buying that building, and I remember my bank saying, hey,
(08:41):
you got to give us a million dollars of your money.
We're gonna get buns with it, and then we're gonna
lend you your money back at a great interest rate.
But I say, it's my fucking money. Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry,
you're lending me my money. I don't remember, you know,
but by I said it's the first step. It was
easy enough. But when I doubled back around by the
next two building, by the third of the block, I
(09:01):
was like, I'm going to take what Tony said. I'm
going to take what John O'Brien said, and I'm going
to leverage this relationship. I called a smaller bank, had
a conversation with them. The money came at an even
better rate, at an even faster time. I now have
a thirty thousand square foot space that we're developing now
in each point for something really cool. But I only
(09:21):
knew that because I was mentored in that. I only
knew that because someone asked me, what the fuck is
wrong with you? So I had to start looking at
things differently. And I am lucky in that I learned
this lesson. Now, imagine if like Tony's passion is, if
we're teaching this lesson K through twelve.
Speaker 4 (09:39):
Mike and I share experience. We are are partners in
a business called bank hiads seafood yep okay, and we
bought the business and the building and found out that
we had to do renovations to the building in order
to reopen the business and in order to do that.
We had had an architect to come in and show
us what all our structures needed to be reinforced on,
(10:00):
and so forth. Long story short, two point one million
dollar construction right, and and so we had to go
out and we had to find funding for that. And
when we went out to find funding, do you know
that all of the banks that we bank at, I
have millions.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
Of dollars and Chase right on.
Speaker 6 (10:19):
You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
I go to Chase, they slam the door in my face.
Speaker 4 (10:24):
Mike has millions of dollars in his bank, slam.
Speaker 5 (10:27):
The door in I faig.
Speaker 8 (10:28):
Do you know how we got our loan by leveraging
my fully owned studio, him leveraging his fully owned real.
Speaker 4 (10:38):
Estate, his buildings as collateral. And then we got someone
to say, okay, well, if you leverage a building that
you own, free and clear, we will give you the
money you need to build this building. And that is
why it costs more black people, black entrepreneurs, more money.
Speaker 7 (10:58):
Yeah, that process is why if we do one thing
out of this conference, and that is see everything we've
been talking about as an opportunity rather than the problem. Yes, sir, yes,
And if it was easy to do. Everybody would have
done it, and you all were smart enough to come here,
(11:20):
and you learned a lot here. I've been listening in
the back. This has been a very good conference. But
who was it that you used to talk about an
attitude adjustment? Attitude adjustment, an attitude adjustment? That was a
(11:42):
rap song, a rock blues song somewhere back in my day.
I'm older than y'all, so I remember, way back.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
You s it.
Speaker 3 (11:50):
You seized, mister young, you know old you sees it.
Speaker 7 (11:53):
Okay, but we need to adjust our added to toward
our situation. We're in the best place in the whole planet,
right here in this room. This wasn't here when I
moved to Atlanta. Martin Luther King had his last board
(12:17):
meeting in this hotel before he left for Memphis. And
we're here now. So almost sixty years later, things have changed.
They've changed everywhere. But I see everybody that used to
(12:38):
be out in my neighborhood. I forgot even the name
of the the mall Greenbrier, greenbri is now out. I
mean I went to Lennox Swear, I hadn't been in
a long time, and I thought it was a new
Black ball and and and and they were coming out
(13:04):
with big bags and stuff. You know, I mean, it's
there's money here and you have access to it. And
what this conference was about was that we adjust our
attitudes so that instead of complaining about where we are,
(13:26):
we decide we're gonna get together, or if we not
get together, we're gonna do it on our own. We're
gonna find some way to do one thing. We're not
gonna curse the darkness. We're gonna light a little candle.
Speaker 6 (13:42):
Yeah right.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
That's why mentor SIP is so important. Love and the
beauty about John and Tony and mister Young, they're willing
to share the information Man as well as Mike and
as well as tip Man. Thank y'all very much, Thank everyone.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
I have a great day.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
Thanks for listening to Hope Global Forms the dialogue We
hope today's episode has inspired you. Keep the conversation going
by visiting hopeglobalforms dot org and follow us on social
at Hope Global Forum. You can find me essence Scan
on Instagram at the Essence of Underscore. Join us next
time for more insights from leaders who are shaping a
(14:20):
better world.