Grow By Developing Your Own Talent

by Jadakiss, Rick Ross. I am personally the music I listen to mostly like if it's hip hop, if it's rap music, I am listening to hustling music. So I care about rap music that makes me feel like I want to go get a bag and like, So that's like Nipsey Hustle, that's jay Z. Obviously it's Rick Ross and Rick Ross. I am already brushing up on my Rick Ross lyrics so that I am to turn it

out at afro Tech this year. And so I'm hopeful that you guys will join me in having the time of my life, having the time of your lives, having the time of our lives at afro Tech. This year it's going to be big. And every year I leave afro Tech wondering how we could ever top the year before the time we just had, How can we top it? And I am super excited for the work that the team has done because this stage is set to be incredible,

and so I hope to see you there. We've got talks like, if you're raising money, you should be there because there's a conversation happening around VC trends for twenty twenty four proactive strategies for fundraising. My guy Marlon Nichols is going to be on that panel. He's co founder and managing partner at mac Venture Capital. Henri Jacques, Henri Pierre Jacques, who's co founder and managing partner of Harlem Capital.

He will be there speaking on this subject in this conversations moderated by Aaron Samuels, who's one of the co founders of Blavity, which founded afro Tech, and he's also a founder and managing partner at Collide Capital. So if you are raising money or you will be, it's important to know how VC's a thinking and which verticals they're paying attention to and so you need to be in that conversation. Also, Robert Smith will be there, billionaire, black billionaire.

He's talking about creating a shared digital future, powering forward. So he is chairman and chief executive officer of Visa Equity Partners. He's the guy a couple of years ago paid off all the college debt for the guys at Morehouse and so he's going to be at AFRO Tech this year talking about what he sees opportunities for black innovators and how you can scare your ideas. One of the things that I love about here and Robert talk

is how he's always pushing a to think bigger. And sometimes we don't even realize we're not thinking big enough about the opportunities in front of us. But he issues that challenge and he starts to prode you on how you can think about your thing a hundred times bigger than you may be thinking about it today. So what if your journey is an entrepreneurial one and it's you know, and it's based on you. Whether it's a lifestyle brand and so sometimes we think lifestyle brands can't be big businesses.

We think lifestyle brands are just ones that we work personally day in and day out, and it might do six figures, it might do seven figures. But lifestyle brands can actually be pretty big. So we're gonna be talking about that. If you're going to be an afrotech and you're an entrepreneur, and maybe you're not trying to build the next Facebook, but maybe your brand is built around

you as an individual. So there's talks about that. Whether you're trying to get a board seat, there's conversations about that about people who sit on boards and who put people on boards. They will be on the stage at afro Tech. If you're managing remote teams, their talks there for you at afro Tech this year, and the big conversation of the day is AI. I'm sure in almost every conversation that we have at Afrotech this year, AI will come up because it's that disruptive to our norm.

So I guarantee there's something there for you. And one of the things I try to stress when I'm talking to anybody about afro Tech is sometimes people think because

they're not directly working in a technology related role. If you are using technology to perform your duties at work, you should be at afro Tech because whether you're working in healthcare, whether you're working in law, whether you are working in sports entertainment, you are utilizing technology to power your work, and so it's important that you're in the room where the conversations are being had that can in

many ways dictate the future of your role. So highly encourage you to be at afro Tech this year getting some new It is notoriously hard to get a true Kangnac and it has he made in a certain region in France, the Cognac region. So shout out to Faughn Weaver, founder of Uncle Nearest. So look, Hennessy is by far the biggest distiller of cognac and they account for like almost half of all cognac production. I think it's like

forty six percent. Then there's like Martel, there's Remy Martin and Covasier, which like are started in like eighteen o nine, so they've been around for two hundred plus years. Uncle Nears is now the young gun and according to a press release they sent to afro Tech Fawn Weaver, they just acquired domain Saint Martin in the state, which encompasses over one hundred acres with Charente River frontage and a unique island. Furthermore, it's fifty acres are dedicated to Grant

Shan Paying Vineyards make it Kanyacs Citi's crown jewels. So Kanyac City is a place in France where kannac is made. They're made Kanyak is made from a much more delicate, like seasonal raw material grapes, so and that distillation period is like super duper short, so like they got five months every year to make kanyac. It's hard to make and therefore it's like expensive, and so it is a status symbol, you know, because it's priced in the way

that it's you know, ability to be made dictates. It's really hard to do and kanyak makes up like less than one percent of the world's spirits by volume. And so the fact that there's now a black owned kanyak coming to market is very, very exciting. So shout out to farn Weaver and the work her and her team at Uncle Near's are doing. Sony Group wants to put

money into African entertainment startups. A lot of people who listen to this podcast are on the content, so shout out to you, especially if you are building something in the gaming, music, film content distribution space, Sony Innovation Fund wants to fund you, and they're putting ten million dollars of capital in that fund to deploy two startups, particularly

ones in South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, and Ghana. Last year, according to Partech Africa, the venture capital that was spent or deployed into African entertainment startups equaled about zero point nine percent of the continent's total venture capital investments. And Jen Toshikawa, who's CEO of Sony Ventures, believes that there is an untapped potential for African creators, entrepreneurs and teams and that there's a growing adoption of technology that is

developed on the content. So if you are in that space, or or if you have an idea to get into that space, now is a good time to get your wheels going because the set date for distribution of that ten million dollars into African entertainment startups is pending. But you know, if you stay ready, you ain't got to get ready. This conversation about Africa and so many African companies and things from the African culture, whether that be afrobeats or otherwise, they are now starting to come to

mainstream here domestically in the United States. And it's so interesting to me because what that says to me about what's happening back on the continent is that there's more opportunity for people to be able to do things that can be exported to the world then historically. And what that causes is more people, younger people particularly to find more career opportunities that are available to them now than

historically might have been available to them. And so when I think about that in my experience, and so I have a couple of companies in one particular that makes sense to talk about in this scenario, it's Creatio. So Creatio we are a full service video production, website development, communication, strategy, design, and more. And we focus on companies that want to reach and engage multicultural and diverse audiences. And so what's been important to me is, you know, when I started

this business, I was doing all of the work. I was teaching myself how to develop websites because I didn't have the capital to pay somebody else to build a website or to even the website for Creatio, our own individual website. I didn't have the money to ship that out to somebody else to build a website for Creatio, or whether I was installing a system at one of our client locations. I had to learn how to install

those systems at a client location. And we started venturing into other offerings service wise, whether that be in video production or photography, I had to learn how to do it. And so what's been important to me about our entire arc of you know, so far in our art I should say, is you know, having this scrappy mentality of a desire personally to be really good at the things that we are going to be providing to our clients.

And so this does not necessarily mean that whatever you're doing, you should be spending the time to learn, you know, if especially if you're gonna, you know, do something that scales really really fast. This company wasn't designed to scale really really fast. When I started the company, I didn't really understand, you know, about scale. And so it is a lifestyle company. It's a successful one, but it is

a lifestyle company. We have employees and et cetera. But it was not designed to take off like a unicorn. And so this particular conversation I want to have is for people who you know are building lifestyle companies, and it is about the idea of how do you grow talent and should you grow talent. Often in particularly black owned businesses, lifestyle businesses that are not funded by outside parties,

you do not have outside investors. You are at a disadvantage when you're trying to attract high caliber talent because you may not have the resources to pay high caliber talent what they can get in the marketplace. And so what do you do. You could, you know, throw your hands up and say, you know what, I can't afford the people that it's going to take for me to be able to run this business successfully. And you give up.

You've given up even before you started, right, And so that is not a mentality that was going to work for me. And so I was like, look, I'm first of all going to become the high caliber talent that I wish I could hire, and then I am going to replace myself in each of those particular roles. So one of the first things, fortunately I got an opportunity to stop doing which I actually do enjoy it personally,

but I stopped doing video production and photography. While I did enjoy doing it, it's time consuming, and what I could not afford to do was keep doing it just because I enjoy doing it. If I am in in front of a computer editing video and I'm out at shoots, you know, taking pictures, who is out building the business for everybody else to continue to have other projects to work on. Because producing video, taking pictures, that is two

jobs right there. It could be three even because some people can just be videographers, some people can be editors, some people could just be photographers. That could be two to three jobs right there. So if I'm doing two to three jobs just based on the capturing of content, who is out finding you know, business for the next round after this particular project is done. Now, it's a

different thing. If we're talking about you know, being there because the client wants to see you and you're their representative and et cetera, and you're making making sure everything is going well, that's a different conversation. But the conversation I'm having is about, you know, if I am actively doing the work, if the product, the asset doesn't get created, if I don't create it myself with my hands, with my eye, with my skill and my ability to perform

the work, then we can only grow so far. So I also don't have the capital to go higher. You know, a photographer or a videographer at the beginning of this business at the rate that they can afford to get either freelance or with an agency that's more established. So what do you do? You have this business, you want to get off the ground in your early stages, whether that be a couple of months old or you're a couple of years old. In so many cases, because you

can still be in the early days. If you haven't caught traction yet, you're in the early days. You don't necessarily have the capital to go hire people who are very well versed in that work, in producing that work, because they can get more money from a freelance perspective or with an agency firm company that is more established, has deeper pockets than you. What do you do? What I did was I started knocking on the door of

my local university. What I did was I started to hire people who were earlier in their career and just wanted a shot. Maybe they were learning videography or maybe they were learning photography, but they may not necessarily have the skills to go be successful from a freelance perspective, which means they can't go sell themselves. And so I was, you know, in many ways, their representative. I could have been their manager, except they were coming into the fold

of my enterprise. That's how I built this company. I built this company by leveraging ambition, by leveraging initiative of other people who otherwise wouldn't have been given a shot at a company or a firm that's more established. But I wanted to give them a shot because they were taking a shot on me. I could sell. I also knew how to do the work, so I was able to be able to vet people who were while they

were early in their journey. I could see that they had something, and so my ability to both sell and to bring the best out of somebody even though they're newer, was where I found success. Now, if you're trying to go and encourage somebody who's early in their career to come alongside you and you can't bring the best out

of them, they will not stay with you long. These are ambitious people, and ambitious people want to be challenged, and so your ability to both a sell so that you can pay them and be coach them bring the best out of them, create an environment that they that they enjoy working in. That's your job, and so we

were able to find success in that way. Some of the first people who ever worked for Creatio I got directly out of college or before they graduated, and they were producing work under the umbrella of Creatio that put us on the map. But it wasn't just about the money for them. They enjoyed the money, but they also

enjoyed working on something that meant something. They got a chance to build something alongside somebody who took a shot on them, because they recognized that they were early, and they also recognized that they weren't going to be able to go and demand a lot from an agency that's been around for a long period of time and had

very senior people there. They knew that probably in that firm they were going to be bringing somebody's coffee, and so here in this newly formed company, they were going to get an opportunity to be a part of building something and creating a culture that valued ambition and ambition and people trying to figure it out together. That's a special place to be in So I've always valued people who want to take a shot on themselves because I took shots on myself, and so we're taking shots on

ourselves together. We abandoned brothers and sistors, and so alongside that, it's important also to think about why do the norms that exist in traditional enterprises, traditional companies? Why do they have to why do they have to exist here? So my team knows I only care about I care about three things. Some companies you go to have a long list of things that they care about. I care about three things. That the work is done on time, that is fire, and that you guys work well together. You

figure out a way to work well together. That's what I care about. And so there is no list of Hey, you know, office hours are from eight to five when we expect you to be here, and there's two weeks off a year, and you know those sorts of things. It didn't work for us. I didn't even try to make it work for us because I didn't want to

work in a place that operated that way. So why would I institute some policies and ways of doing things that I didn't appreciate Being both a creative and a businessman, so I got to design the company I wanted to work for. And so many of you listening to this are in a position to design the kind of company that you would want to work for, if you just recognize that you have that opportunity to do that. Why am I telling and demanding a creative somebody who's editing video, Hey,

you need to be here at nine am? Why what if they work best at noon. I used to have a guy who shout out to nick. I used to have a guy he's in La now doing movies, and he used to come into the office at eleven pm

and he would be there till three in the morning. Now, obviously when we got a shoot, he would show up for the shoot and on time and be professional, etc. But when there's a deadline for computer work, when there's like things that he needed to do at his desk that didn't require interfacing with a client, why do I care if he's there at you know, nine am, eight am? For what reason? And so the important thing for me to do and every again, it's another thing that everybody

on my teams knows. My job today is not to produce videos. My job is to make sure you have what you need to produce videos. So if you come to me and you say, hey, will you know my my you know, my iMac is a little slow. You know. My job is to figure out why is it slow? Is the memory running low? Is it old and you need a new computer, you know? Or is it you need is you need to clear some hard dry space off so you can, you know, more freely move around. That's my job, and my job is to make sure

you have what you need. So if you need to work in order for you to work best, if you need flexibility in your schedule, as long as that is not disrupting to the business. Why do I care? Why do I care if your hair is a natural color. He came in that same guy, he came in with yellow hair one day. What impact did that have on his work? Zero? And So these things that some of us, you know, think matter because those are the way we were raised in business, and there were these rules and

guardrails that restricted creativity and self expression. Those don't have to exist anymore, and so sometimes we just need somebody to free us, you know, to the possibility that working can be fun and you can build again the type of company you would want to work for. You can build a culture, you know, and an environment that is actually a good place to be, a fun place to be, where I want to come to work to, where I

know I've got projects on my plate. Hey man, I can't wait to get to the office tomorrow because you notice nobody looking over your shoulder. Now, it comes with a lot of trust, and that trust is earned. But again, everybody knows there's the three things I care about. I only care about those three things, and if I'm consistent on those three things, they will trust me also, and so we won't let each other down. So going to

my local university was very helpful to me. There was a website it's called Handshake that many universities across the country use. I know my local ones use it. But it's a website where you can go and you can post opportunities, jobs and internships, co ops and etc. For students, and it's like a big student job board for colleges and universities. They use it. So if you post a job to a place like Handshake, you get to say, you know here the particular universities that i'd like this

job to be promoted to. And then those universities on the back end, you know, will vet the role and you know, either accept or deny your job posting and so again you can do internships on there. You can do co op opportunities on their actual job opportunities on there. And that's what I did. I posted the positions I had to handshake, and I even reached out to a lot of professors directly on a lot of websites. You know, you can find you know, the email addresses of the professors.

And this might not be something or a tactic that a lot of people employed, because, at least in my experience, you know, professors seem to be very willing to make introductions or to show you, you know, the proper steps to getting in touch with their students. I got a lot of response, more than you might imagine, you know, when you send code emails, you know, I guess, depending on who you're emailing, you really don't expect the response rate to be super high. But the response rate in

my experience to this was very high. The professors were in many ways, you know, excited to give their students the opportunities to work on real things. A lot of colleges and universities, particularly in creative works, have their students work on make believe projects, like projects that are not going to be used in the wild, and so to have them work on things that might actually be seen in the world. You know, for many that's encouraging to them.

It's inspiring for them to introduce their students to those opportunities. And you got to be smart when you do this, Like you're probably not going to go to the largest college or university in the state. You know, many times the technical institutions, the technical colleges is you know those ones that are more community colleges that have programs where you know, technical skills can be learned, creative skills can be learned, you know, whether that be photography, videography, coding.

In many ways, a lot of those professors are very reachable. They're very reachable, and they have students that are excited about doing things. So it's been you know, kind of a method of operation that has worked for me. And so I highly encourage you when you're trying to build a company and you're in your early stages and the work that you're providing the world is like a technical

service or offering grow your talent. You're not going to have the capital in many instances to go hire the best people, but you know, what you want to put into the world. You know the level of care that you would take. And so if you can sell somebody to coming alongside the journey with you, that says a lot about your ability to have success at all. These are people who are ambitious. You know, they're taking it

on themselves to learn these skills. They may not just have the ability to go and sell it so that they can make an income and make a living on it. But if you have that ability, go to the people. Find ambitious people, often young sometimes you know, maybe they are adults who are re educating themselves. But if they're willing to come alongside somebody who and they get to build something with you, that could be really interesting to

a lot of them. Imagine the people out there who are actually paying to go to technical classes and pay to get certificateds to learn these skills. And you're offering people who are ambitious the opportunity to be paid to learn, to be paid to actually exercise something that they may not be an expert at, but they're pretty good. You can build a really successful lifestyle company with pretty good talent.

You don't need the best talent, the expensive talent. You can build it with pretty good talent that you are willing to invest in from a professional development perspective, and put them in an environment that leans into the way that they work. They're gonna want to know that they're going to get constructive feedback that helps them continue to get better and at the same time doesn't put unnecessary arbitrary guardrails and rules around them. So not having the

talent to grow your company. To grow your business is not an excuse. There are creative ways to find people who know how to do the thing, and the enemy of finding success in this way is wishing you had and waiting for the day where you can hire experts.

What you want is hungry, scrappy, ambitious people who know how to do it and they're pretty good, and grow them into experts, demand the best out of them by inspiring them to be the best and to bring their best and to lean in on their ambition to learn on their own. I love when I walk in the office and I see somebody on my team watching a YouTube video about lighting or a different way to position a camera to get the best angle. That shows me

that they're invested in their own growth and development. That's the kind of person I want. That's the kind of person I can grow with. Be the kind of person they want to work with. Be so committed to their growth and development that you know, it's an exciting conversation when you guys come together and you have one on ones and you figure out ways to challenge each other because you want to bring the best out of one another.

Be that kind of person. Be a leader who sees the potential in you know this rough around the edges. You know, person who is already committed to their own personal growth and development, but you as a person who is leading the organization. They recognize that you're invested in their growth and development and their ability to produce great work. Product is in both your interests them because they just want to be better and they want to produce great

work and in doing so, more opportunities are created. Appreciate you guys hanging out with me today taking a stab at a new format for the podcast. We'll do this more often, but I look forward to seeing you at afro Tech twenty twenty three or to experience that afrotech dot com to learn more. If you got anything out

of this podcast, please share it with somebody. Would mean the most to me, I really appreciate you guys who are constantly sharing episode that you find value with your friends, group, with your coworkers, you know, with people who that you just want to you know, inspire to continue down a road that might not be easy. So a share is the highest form of compliment you can give me, So I would really appreciate that