Building A Tech Empire Anywhere w/ Hajj Flemings

to forget those behind bars. I mean, from my experience, I've been able to go to some visit individuals who are in prison and just sit down and talk with them, and I think one of the things that they really value is just being able to be heard and be recognized as human beings. I think you making an effort to show them that in technology that they deserve to have the chance to be colders and be a part of the tech industry is a is a statement in itself.

You um, you also have to make it like not easy, because it's not gonna be easy, but understand give them the path to know that they can do it. But you got you find some incredible women and men and it's locked up in prison. It's doing life without parole and and been through a lot of stuff that are

just bringing incredible ideas and humanity. So if they get a hold of and I did go to a prison where they are coding, and I actually met a guy named Charles who I sat in the sale with him one one month and then five months later he was out in prison, out of prison and coding for a company. So I think it's a it's um something that we should.

I think if we bring that to our juveniles that that are dealing with incarceration, and bring that to people who are incarcerated, we would give them a whole another hope, a hold another aspect of hope. So one of those questions that came earlier about what we could do socially, I think that would be a great idea from the tech industry is to make sure we go look out for those who are who are cast out, that are locked up and isn't and thrown away. We should really

take care of them. I'm will lucas this is black tech, bring money. I'm gonna introuce you to some of the biggest names, some of the brightest minds and brilliant ideas. If you're black and building or simply using tech to secure your back, this podcast is for you. How Flimmings is a leading brand strategist, speaker, and tech entrepreneur that travels nationally inspiring people and brands to build, lunch and

grow their ideas. As founder of re Brand Cities, he's on a mission to get ten thousand local small businesses online. Eyes Howes about Silicon Valley, namely about the idea that just about using sheer numbers in a bit of math, not all of us are gonna move to Silicon Valley, Miami or Atlanta, And if not, how do we build

strong tech ecosystems wherever we are? You know, I think historically, if you look at the DNA of black and black next people, right, we have always had the creative DNA and s. And typically we're in a situation where there are high barriers of entry, there's access issues, but we always seem to be able to figure out a way to do more with less, right and so and so, what I've always found is that I believe, and I used to trade as any example Detroit, I believe the

barriers of entry are lower here than any other market. So I can go to another market where they don't know me, and there's and everybody is scrapping for you know, trying to find their place, and they want to be the only black solution in the market. But why not be a big fish in a small pond and put my city on And that's the way I looked at it, the same way. You know what I'm You know, I know that you're from Toledo, right, and so you know

what I'm saying. So so we have you know, I don't know if it's a chip on our shoulder and we're like, you know, like there's great stuff that comes out of the Midwest or or where we're from. And I just looked at it as more of an opportunity versus saying I have to go travel someone I can learn from somewhere else. But why can't I bring that stuff back home and then try to do economic guarding

and stuff in my own community. So so if we do decide to stay in a place where technology isn't, actually let me take that back where where the idea we have of technology, Because technology is every industry, whether you're doing HR for a health care system, where you're doing law for an automotive. You're still working with technology every day, So how do we start to change our minds and the narrative that we're being taught um that you know, if you want to build an app, you

need to be somewhere else. How do we change that narrative in our local community so that we can start to perpetuate and get more of us doing this type of work. So I think some of it is a challenge, right because you know, so there are like real challenges that exist in our community. So so there is more BC funding in you know, in place like Silicon Valley

and Austin and Boston and stuff like that. So we do have to figure out, like what are those challenges and how can I, in the space that I'm in maximize that and so and so for me, like what I tried to do is say, okay, um, I wanted to look at what do I do well? What do I focus on? What are the things that I was created for? Sometimes we have this shiny object like mentality, and so we see something happening somewhere else, we see somebody doing something cool, and then we want to go replicated.

Like I'm sure as soon as people saw Afrotech and Blackty. Everybody's like, well, I can become the next Blab, I can come the next Africa without understanding all of the stuff that has been happening behind the scenes to get to this point. And so and so what I've done is like, let me just double down in the space that I'm in and try to be an expert and not just and not just jump and try to be

the next Will Lucas. Let me just be the best highs that I could be in my market and try to make an impact there and see where that leads me. And I think we get into this comparison thing because of social media and we're trying to become something that would you know what I'm saying that we were never called to be, and I think that tarts to take us places that we don't belong. And so I try to I try to really major majors and minor and minors and do what I do and be the best

at it in the space that I'm in. So let's talk about you talked about there's there's less venture capital funding in cities, I think the cities that we're from, and there's these certain economies, geography, geographies where those they do have that funding. Let's talk about how we make those these cities real then, Like what needs what needs to happen, What are the actual things that need to happen to build a bigger entrepreneurially friendly ecosystem in community?

Like what do universities need to get involved? Do the big corporations lead? Like what needs to happen to make these cities better for entrepreneurs? So I think that all these cities there are anchors. So we have university anchors, we have organizational anchors. I think also too, we have

to hold cities and we have to hold big brands accountable. Right, So when I looked at uh Um George Floyd's death and so on, I saw all these black boxes posting online, and I was like, that as great that you support, that's great that you are with us. But what rain in my mind was, this is the time we have everybody's attention. How can we now focus on really trying to drive or or or really adjust what's happening from an economic standpoint, because it's not just a social issue.

You know, what they like to me and so and so and so. What I've tried to do is in my market, what can I do to try to get at the table? For many of us were really not

at the table. And so when these decisions are made, So when Chase brings a hundred million dollars into your community and you're not a part of that conversation, and by the time they get to you, when we have a five thollar grant, I'm not knocking the five dollar grant, but how do we get up highering the food chain so that when the real dollars are allocated, they go to the real organizations that are close to the problems, that understand and are empathetic towards that community. And it's

typically people to look like us. But by the time we get it, we should be happy for five And I'm not knocking to five grand, but if I can get a million, ten million, or you know, I'm that's where those are the spaces that I want to play. So let's go in on that, like what kind of person do I need to be to get at the table? Like what what do I need to do with even my personal brand or what kind of what is my

resume need to look like to get at the table? Yes, so so there's a narrative that says that you have to go to you know, Harvard or Stanford and so and so there's certain things that happened, right, there's pattern matching all of these things where the people who are making those decisions happened to be happened to look a certain way, and they kind of and they kind of green like certain projects. So I'm giving example. So when we started Rebrand Cities, we started out as Rebrand Detroit

and we're part of UM. So there was a call from or from from the Knife Foundation. It was the night of the Night City channel. There was seven thousand people that applied. We were one of thirty two winners, right, and so we had a better chance of hitting hitting like the actual lottery. But we took that idea and said, okay, how can we pilot this to figure out how we

can turn this into something even bigger. So, so we wanted to rebrand a neighborhood, a black neighborhood, the same way the city had already did our Midtown area, and so we and so we took that and then we started to look at what is a business model for us to be able to follow, right, So we looked online and we saw that you know what, saying that

there was twenty million small businesses had no website. We're cash only, all right, and so and so we started to do this accelerator in the neighborhood and we realized that nobody had a website, or almost almost nobody had a website. So we said, okay, we have we have to address this issue. Then we started looking at city So there's there's approximately nineteen thousand, four and nine five cities, towns,

and villages in the United States. And then we paired it down and we found out that there's three and ten cities that have a hundred that have a population of a hundred thousand or more. And so we said, let's focus on those cities and addressing a problem that every single city has. So we looked at a problem, we found an addressable market and um, and then we

figured out who do we need to talk to? So, okay, so we need to talk to people who are in economic development, we need to talk to mayors, we need to talk to people who who have the bag right, and so we had an issue that we know all of them were concerned with. We knew that if they addressed that issue, it was going to be able to impact their cities, and so we knew that we were onto something, but some of that happened by trial and error. Right. The other part is having the opportunity to be on

a platform like this. Many of us don't have media connections, right, and so you contacting me and giving me this opportunit unity is a lifeline for me. It's I mean, it means everything. Not because I love what you guys do, but I know that you have a why, you have a huge community that's going to support and so those are a couple of things that we thought about in terms of kind of how we want to focus on it.

So you, let's talk about you. What you noticed as an issue is a lot of these small businesses didn't have websites. They weren't technologically solving. Let's start with just the website. Why is it important for that small mom and pop who might do you know dry cleaning or might have you know a restaurant? Why is it important that they be online and with an actual website? Why

is that important in first place? So ninety the center people who make a buying decision go online first, right and then and so when you're going to set the stuff. I'm going to Google Maps if you're not in Google Maps, or or if the information is wrong, if it says that you're open to five o'clock and you closed at three o'clock, and then you know and so and and now I'm going somewhere else. I'm going I'm spending money somewhere else. And so we become invisible in the digital economy.

So then COVID hits right. And then now people who weren't online, you're I mean, you were really in a tough situation because now people couldn't buy your project, you couldn't buy your services. And then even when you got online, you then had to then take another step of pos you had to have you had to operationalize the business, right and so those are the things where now we're putting all Now we're stacking all these problems on top of an access to UM capital, on all these other things.

And then now for us, like we did a project locally called UM it was called Digitality Trade and in that project we work with the City, UM and the Rocket Community Fund to work with a hundred businesses. We had to do all of this virtually. One of the challenges we had is that we had to have the criteria. People needed to have some kind of device because we're

doing this stuff remotely. Everything was remote, and so that we had people who didn't know how to screen share, and digital literacy became a major issue, and so those things stacked the deck against us, and so it just creates this another challenge, you know, that we had to

overcome basics. So, if I'm hearing you correctly, there are instead of always trying to build the next Snapchat, instead of always trying to build the next Instagram or whatever, they are real core issues that these smaller cities and not necessarily always smaller, but you know, not unless than the all Silicon Valley. There are real issues that create opportunity for entrepreneurs. Is that correct? Yeah, yeah, yeah, and so and so, you know, so we don't have to

solve the biggest problem in the world. I know, if you're getting BC funding, you know what I'm saying, they want ten x plus return, right, um, and that's not going. But everybody is not venture Everybody doesn't have a venture backable idea. But the idea that you have can be

something that can scale. It can be an idea that can also allow you to be able to create a nice lifestyle and to be able to generate the kind of return so that you can do this full time and so and so I think just trying to figure out what that is because also too, I would much rather work with somebody who has a passion for what they're doing and they love what they're doing and their whole goal is I'm not creating this because I'm trying to get an exit. I'm not knocking that strategy because

there are people getting great returns. But but I mean, by how many of those unicorns do we have? How many people like Delane Parnell, Like do we have Who's gonna raise a hundred and seven million? And that's gonna happen for that's my guy. I'm happy for him. But that's not gonna be everybody. But that's okay, and we have to be okay with the fact that we can do something that could be that could be transformational for

our community. There was a young lady during the pandemic who was braiding hair, who who um and all the barbershops and salons were closed down. She started teaching people how to braid hair on Zoom and she was charging people how to braid hair, and and it began to expand her community and her reach. That's innovation to me, that's innovation. I want to talk about, you know, just the actual direct rebranding of a geography, rebranding a city, you know, branding as you know, I know, it's what

other people say about you, not what you say about yourself. Right, how do you change the narrative about a community? Um? And what are the tactical things you need to do to make other people say something different about that space? Yeah? So, so I think you have to have an inclusive lens, but you need to have people who are in a decision making position. People who are in i mean, public policy drive so much of what happens in our cities.

And I know we love to, you know, vote for the presidential election and that's great, but what happens in the local community and so and so trying to get buy in from from that kind of leadership becomes critically important.

And what we've tried to communicate to the cities that we work with, because we're doing stuff in nine cities and in two different countries, is that is that we try to have the conversation to say Look, what if people could navigate your city based upon small business owners.

What if in Detroit, if they needed to go to a coffee shop and and we could say, okay, you can go to Narrowey Cafe, which is a black owned coffee shop on the Liberois Avenue of Fashion, and you can now explore that looking at looking through a small business, supporting that small business. It's a different lens, right, And so a lot of the stories that I see, even in my city, I've seen stuff where they talk about

small business. Oh, we love being in the city of Detroit. Yes, But if you came from the suburbs and you went to an Ivy League school and you were already set up with all this stuff, of course it's amazing for you,

Like there's no question it's amazing. It would be amazing for me too if those things were all in place, right and so and so, what we've tried to do, and we're working on a project right now, and it's called Rebrand Black and so we have an accelerator where we're working with um twelve small business that are all

black owned. And what we've tried to do with the stakeholders and the people that we're working with is let's focus on making sure that we are including businesses that don't get the same coverage, right, And so I think when cities are looking, they have to they have to take the blinders off and look at how do we create a city for all people and not just for homogeneous community of people that are going to be okay

regardless of what you know. And so those are things that we've really tried to hammer and and for us, it's been it's been, um, it's been uh, it's been a labor of love. Love. You know, I'm you bring up. You talked a lot about you know, these small businesses and historically having been you know, online not very sophisticated in the age that we live in, and I think

specifically about the Midwest. You know, we come from a place where manufacturing drove the day, and you know, so a lot of these folks you're talking about, maybe first generation entrepreneurs, mom and pop shops and et cetera. How do you, at the same time of helping them, you know, be more sophisticated with their technology, also help them along the way where they don't perpetuate some of the stereotypes

about working with black owned companies. You know, like you talked about it says you opened the fire type but you left at three. You know, you didn't say hello to me when I walked in the door, or all all these things. How do we because these folks don't have you know, like you and I like lineage of entrepreneurship. We gotta learning stuff on the fly. How how do

we get those business principles as well for your programming? Yeah, yes, I think like part of it is is that we have to be willing to give each other a chance. We think everybody's the isis coder and so somebody would do something wrong and and it will be okay. Or if somebody goes to the club and somebody steps on your shoe, you still go back next week or whatever. But if one thing goes wrong with supporting a black

owned business, then that's the end of the world. And we just wanted to throw our hands up, right, And so we understand that we have a tremendous we have tremendous economic buying power. What if we took some of that and we began to support each other. And so that's part of what we do, like through our community, is that all right, how do we support to people who are in this course the business that we're working with.

When we buy something, let's post something online, let's share so when you know someone pandemic started last year, we took an entire week and we just we're just supporting black businesses and we posted, we tagged online, we showed the product. Part of that was to encourage other people to say, hey, look, if you're gonna buy something, let's share that you're actually doing that. There's a great platform

it's called Spendified. Spendified in the platform m um has ran by Antoine Davis, and it is a list of black owned businesses, right and so and so and so we try to partner or try to share these kind of opportunities because people will say, well I don't know where to go, and I find that like disheartening, right, But so we tried to demonstrate from example and then share what other people are doing. For sure. We got a question that I came in on stable um. It says,

what should you do first? A business plan or product development? All right, So, so I remember doing a business playing years ago. I had this this big stack of paper. It was like, I don't know a hundred pages after I developed it. I couldn't even tell you how many times I looked at the business plan after I developed it. What I think is more efficient is now getting and

looking at UM creating UM your business model. Everybody has heard of the business model campus, right, and so I think developing a canvas, which is the sheet it goes through, revenue streams, customer segmentation, um UM, the uh, you know, the you know what, like the problem that you're focused on. I would say developed that that is something, but that's a living document. Is something that you can continue to update.

That will be something that as you're pitching or sharing, it will allow you to be able to pull the information. And I think that's most important right in terms of you understanding the business. At the end of the day, though, you have to have a product or service that people want, right, So and people talk about, oh, I want to go viral. Yeah, we'll create something that people want, right, That's the That's

the first thing. If it's not something that people want, it doesn't matter about You can go hire all the marketing companies and you can do crazy stuff. But at the end of the day, create something that people want. And I would say, and again, I know all the NBA programs are gonna be like, Hi, don't say this, but the canvas to me is gonna be more value than this. Um, you know the big business plan that you're never going to update because the canvas is a

living document. So I would start there. And then we always talked about in design thinking serviles, that getting in front of the customer, taking an idea and getting in front. Well, I remember when you were doing podcasting prior to getting on this, right, you started something and you just started just doing your thing, and look at what you're doing now, right, that's right, that's right, because I'm a testament. I'm a

testament to do the work and do the work. Um. There's another question that came in which I think I may have to rephrase it because I'm not sure I understand it, But it says, should you bother with physical goods or must it be software or be a software as well? When scaling? And what I think they're trying to say is, when you're trying to scale a business, is it better to do it with physical goods or build a software? So I think they're trying to say, yeah,

so you know what I'm saying. So I'm forty nine years old. So I remember when you could buy software. You could get buy illustrator. I get the disk, I pop it in, and I would have Illustrator, you know what I'm saying, like forever until you know, to a point where I was forced to go change. Now you can't do it anymore. They created sass products. I mean, all of this stuff to where now you have to get this membership. So I think that there's an opportunity to be able to how do you how do you

become a tech enabled company? Right? And so if you're not, I mean if the if the product or the or the thing that you're working on isn't a technology only play trying to put a round peg into a square hole.

I don't think that's the thing. But I think figuring out what you want to create and then making it easy for people to be able to connect to that idea, and if there is a way to be able to have people continue to pay for this product or you know what I'm saying, whether it's a membership box or things like that, I think those things are great, But I don't think you should try to create something and just try to be like the sass thing when that's not really what you are, right, And so I think

I think being very clear on that and testing it out and figuring out what all entrepreneurs understand is that the thing that you start with is never gonna be the thing that you're in with. So you start doing something and the customer will let you know, Okay, all right, I see it like this, or what if you offered it this way or if you packa did that way and um, And I think those where the natural pivots will allow you to be able to reach these unaddressable markets.

You know, it's so interesting, you know, talking to you because you know, having known you for goodness has been a while. Now you're like you, You've been really good at your personal brand. And I do think that small business today is very personality driven in a lot of ways, Like how do you advise folks? How do they how do you build a personal brand? I guess it's the question. Yeah,

so you know what I'm saying. So I look at brands and I've seen people who would who will be authentic, and then I see stuff that's not authentic, but but they've developed something that people want to connect you. So for me personally, especially being black, I think it's super important for me. I want to be authent because my word is my bond. So if I say I'm gonna do something, I have to deliver, even if even if I need to take an ail on certain on certain projects.

The other thing is being consistent online. And so I grew up and I remember when we used to so we call it captain growing up, so you know, whether it's Captain joning, it's the dozens or whatever. So online I can't say what I really really want to say because we grew up and we were going for the juggler all the time. So what I realized that online, Um, I mean, I just I mean, I'm playing with kid gloves in terms of stuff that I say because I

can't say everything that I want to say. But I think being on message, being consistent so that when people see you all right, they can they can vouch for, they can validate what you're doing, or they want to connect with you. I think that's super important. And I think we we just start jumping to compare to other people, and we keep switching and the other things that I

think work against the versus working for us. If I'm a small business owner, talk about some of the technologies I should have in place that helped me at least compete, Like the actual technology that I should have to help me compete with people who have scaled before I was able to, whether that be you know, a digital POS system, like what what kind of things that probably generally across the board, these are some things that should have at

core to help me build their sustainable, longal term business. Yeah, you know what I say. So you don't have email, you don't have email like database. It's great to have all the followers online, but you have a million people are following you, and I g that's great. How do you now connect directly to that customer? So having their direct information so that you can communicate with them becomes

critically important. How do we automate tass? So you know, we grow up and we're like, I gotta hustle, I gotta work harder, and we understand that we have to work hard. But there are certain things that we can automate. We can use platforms like safe here, and you can and you can put things in place that will allow you to focus on what you need to focus on. What I try to spend my time on. Is I need to be out there raising money and generating revenue.

So these tasks that are repeatable, I need to be at to outsource those or have other people do that, because I need to focus on bringing in the money. And those are certain things that I think that we that become a lost art. And we can go on and on and on if we have more time, but I'll probably stop with those two points because those are really really big things that people need to think about.

I'm gonna blend these two questions because they're somewhat similar and I want to make sure we get to an adequate closes. The first one says, can you get funding on a business plan, prospectives or doesn't have to be an operation? And the second question is where do we it funding? No strings attached like grants. Okay, so there are people, um, they might not all all look like us, and they can go in there and they can go pitch something with flip flops on and uh, you know,

and no slide deck and they gonna get money. So everybody can't do that, right, and so your history all the other kind oftuff that does playing through so people it has happened. Um, I don't know how repeatable that is for all of us, but it has happened. I would not I would not lean upon that right um. So now um in the air of COVID and all things that are going in, there are a lot of programs.

There are a lot of things, whether it's the Entrepreneur of Color Fund, there's all kind of things out towards. There is grant money also p p P. A lot of us didn't apply hold on so a lot of us and that was my daughter, So a lot of us did not apply for p p P. That was free money. So you can still up why it was extended to the end of May. And if you put all the paperwork in and you follow the guidelines, that's free money as well too. And we can't lose out

or miss out on that. And and lastly, UM, I love to ask this question of people like you and this how important is this moment for us in business when you think about, you know, coming off of our social unrest over the last year, sixteen months or whatever, the pandemic, so many corporations and organizations paying attention to what black people need and who have historically probably overlooked or didn't believe we were going through what we were

going through now and actually seeing that it's real. How important is this moment in our history that may not be here a year from now that we take advantage of what's happening right now. I am so glad you asked that question. So so right now we have everybody's attention, right and so now what are we doing in this moment so that we can now capture that. Part of what I think becomes important is how can we hold the brands and other organizations that have benefited from Black culture.

So when we did our rebrand Black Um Peace, we reached out to Cadillac and Thriving and in the conversations we had were, Okay, what can we do to put money back into our community? And they were there to be able to to work with us hand in hand.

But we had to be bold enough to ask the question and to reach out to these brands because there's a lot of brands that have benefited from us for up to four hundred years and now this is a time where I don't know whether they feel guilty or whatever it is that I'm not talking about cat like, I'm just saying, this is a moment where let's take this moment because it's not coming back again, folks, because

we're all gonna be outside traveling and doing stuff. The only reason that this was a real opportunity was because everybody was at home. Black Tech Green Money is a production to Black of the Afro Tech, Black Effect Podcast Network and I Heart Media, and it's produced by Morgan Dabon and me Well Lucas, with additional production support by Love Beach and Raven near Port. Special thank you to Michael Davis and Sakarsa von Jan you know like the Wine.

Yes that's his real name. Learn more about my guests and other tech dis represent innovators at afro tech dot com. The video version of this episode will drop the Black Tech Green Money on YouTube next week, So tap in enjoying Black Tech Green Money. Leave us a five star already on iTunes, Go get your money. Peace of Love,