It's time for the b a q a A, the b a q a A, the b a q eight with Man Day, the b a q eight with Tiffany, the b a q a.
We also have a guest from the studio today and then mine.
Today only contribute something to that song and it's the A at the end, and you just try to snatch it from me.
But so we have a guest in the step. But remember first and foremost when it comes to the b a q a. We are not your doctors. We're not your attorneys. We're not your your mom, your dad.
But we are smart brown girls and know a thing or two about business, about career. You know about about uh career what I say, career working, business, entrepreneurship. And you are gonna take our advice with the smallest wade of salt. You're gonna lean into the people that you pay for advice aka Suya granny, not us. All the lawyer people love, but we do this disclaimer. Oh my gosh, the people love to call me today's spam. All the rented, all the attorney people love the disclaimer. So in this
to today we have brandis Daniel. The crowd goes wild if you were here as you ought to have been for Wednesday's episode, you would know who Brandis is already.
But if you're not, that's okay. I'm going to introduce her briefly.
Brandis is not only a personal friend of mine, she is.
A forging strategic brand well.
With over fifteen years of invaluable experience, Brandis has forged strategic partnerships with Fortune five hundred companies. She has been this global catalyst for transformative change when it comes to introducing black and brown designers to the larger finance, the larger fashion world. So, for example, if you remember when the Lebron James decided to do a sneaker, a basketball sneaker for women, they came to Brandes's and hfr And and Brandis helped to connect him right with three black
women fashion designers. Yep, and those sneakers.
Just exploded so much about minutes, sold out.
In five minutes, and Brandi's shared, I don't know if this was off air on air, but shared that those sneakers had over seven billion impressions on social media. Yes, you know, And so Brandis makes that connection Brandon. So she founded Harlem Fashion Row, which started off at first as fashion shows, but now has expanded to be this connector of the industry. She also has Icons sixty, which is a five oh one c three nonprofit organization.
Brandis has her own podcast, Fashion.
In Color and this beautifully shot it's the podcast, but it's also this really beautifully shot show that like you have to go and watch.
We're worth it. Where can they watch that show?
Brand on YouTube?
On YouTube?
And so she's just honestly like there are she is a true Renns women. So it's funny that's Harlem because Harlem Harlem Renaissance. But when it comes to the fashion industry being inclusive of black and brown people, if you are not familiar with her book, Volume one, Fashion and Color, I mean it is absolutely beautiful. It's a to Z black is it also Latin X are just black?
I think there's black designers in this one right, And so the volumes.
Will include black and brown yers of color.
Your promise of Volume one, yes, yes, there will be more. And that's you having accountability. I can see I never should do that. That's on that there's going to be the one. Then there people are going to expect the two.
So let's go And so this is what Brandis does and so but also too so we know that the fashion side of Brandess, but for the b a QA purposes, Brandis is a amazing business woman and this is one of the ways that we connect. You know that we go on walks and talks and talk about business for hours. And so Brenda's also has a book when it comes to busin it's called what is that book called again?
Small Business Big Partnerships.
Small Business Big Partnerships.
And so Brandon's is going to answer, you know, a business question but also ask a business question. So we welcome Brandis Daniel to the podcast Ride Up A.
Plus, Thank you, thank you. You are passive here.
But honestly go back on y'all on Wednesday and listen to that interview. It was a plus plus. Okay, So we're going to write into a Brandess. Do you want to answer a question first? Or do you want to ask a question?
I have a burning question? Is that okay?
About X? Okay?
So, as I'm building, we're in the process of continuing to scale HFR and grow, and so we're trying to figure out or I am really trying to figure out, like what is that right mark for payroll. So how when you're thinking about your business, like what percentage of your gross revenue.
Do you pay in in payroll to a staff.
So this is a really good question, Manday, do you have any feedback?
Girl, I ain't got staff.
Go ahead.
Well, so this is how we figured out keeping it worth from my company. So there's two things you want to consider. One is what is gross revenue. You know, you're making a hundred thousand, making a million, one hundred million like, so that that is part of it, like how large is the company? And then the second thing that you want to consider is what type of business
are you in. So if you are in a business where you're producing physical things, you know, then the highest expense is really going to be probably production of that physical thing. If you are in a business like mine, which is largely a service business, my highest expense is likely going to be on payroll in people. So you have to be clear on the size of the company, but also how do we produce the thing?
You know?
Is it a physical thing? Is it a service thing? And so my CFO what she did, she did a research to see size of company.
You know.
At the time, I think the budget MESA was like I don't know, maybe like making like two million dollars a year, plus the fact that we were largely a service based business, and you know, a quick search found that in general thirty percent was what was healthy. Try not to exceed thirty percent. And so that's going to
shift if we shift. So if the business becomes a five million dollar year company, it might be something else, like, for example, Literature Academy is a little bit different because that's a much larger company, and so we have and also too the BUDGETNISA doesn't spend any money on ads, we don't run as, but the Academy does, so the large chunk of change goes to marketing over there at the Literature Academy.
So you want to consider those things.
So for us, it's thirty percent, which you know, I think we probably a similar size brand as I didn't know you're you're largely I mean, although you have the books now, largely you're a service based company. So I could safely say, without knowing anything else, that like maybe that thirty percent range. And so what that means is is that once you kind of know your range, Like if I'm being fully candid, it was a really hard year this year, but I didn't want to reduce salaries.
We are currently up to fifty percent, which is way too high. But the reason why that's important is that I've had people on my team ask for raises because it's been a couple of years. But I know because
I see the number, there's no money for raises. And so instead of saying, ain't no money for no raiss, I believe because the way I run the company, and it's fairly small a Bunchets as a team of like five of us, is that we share our monthly, our numbers monthly, I share gross what we made, I share what we spent, and then what's left over net, you know, And that made it easy to say, I'm not saying no to a raise because you're not amazing. I'm saying
no because the numbers ain't numbering. So but it's like, so a solution to not being able to pay maybe as much as you'd like is that I am not integrating profit sharing into my company starting twenty twenty four, where here's your base salary, which I'd love to pay you more, but we are already over what's really healthy for a size of a company, you know, So that means we have to make more before I can consider raises, but that doesn't mean that we don't have some really
good quarters. And so what happens is now every quarter they get paid, like I get paid, I have a base salary that I receive, but I also get an owner's draw.
And that's when everything.
Is paid and taxes are taxed and saving is saved, there's money left over and I can draw money out of the company. Sometimes it's a lot, sometimes a little, sometimes it's nothing. But now every quarter they're going to get a percentage of my owner's draw. And for the size company that we are, now I've decided yeah, so it's a basically a bonus, but it really.
Is a profit share. Right. So now instead of asking me for a raise, because I was like, this is the raise.
Just so we're clear, that's what I told them, I said, now you don't have to ask me. Now you can look in your department that you're working in and say, are we ending too much in this capacity?
Can we reduce it?
Also, where can I put my energy that's going to generate a larger return on investment? Because I know when the quarter comes around, we spent less we've made more, maybe just an additional fifty thousand dollars. Let's just say one hundred for easy math, twenty percent of one hundred thousand dollars is twenty thousand dollars goes.
In the bonus pool.
And the way we split the bonus pool is that everybody's assigned a percentage based upon what they do and payroll and stuff like that. So now you can do the own math, like, ooh, of that bonus pool, six thousand is mine. So even though there's no raise for your base, and it never puts the company in additional danger because you only get paid that access when there is excess.
Now that's good, Tiffany. That's really when I tell you to figure out that solution. I was.
I was worried because I have really amazing team members and they can go someplace else and make more money.
But I know they really love and enjoy working here. But we're adults. I have to make money to.
Survive, and so I how do I say to a good person, I would love to pay you more, there's just not more money, and they understood that. But also how do I maintain them because they can take their goodness someplace else many knows I was stressed, right right, I was because I'm like but I was like, you know, so I'm like, I wanted to be able to pay more, but I also am looking at the budget, like, so if I overextend ourselves and then I crashed the company, that we're all out.
Of business next year and no one has a job.
And so your job as a leader is to balance the good of the company versus the good of you know, the individual people working there, including yourself. And so I am willing to give up a chunk of what I would take home to make sure everybody is good and everybody can eat, you know. But so now that alleviates some of this like feeling. So now they know that
we're at fifty percent. So I said, we can't even consider raises until payroll is under thirty percent, because once you get to twenty twenty five percent, that means you're underpaid or you don't have enough PEP go on staff.
Now we can consider razs Oh, we are twenty percent. We had an amazing year.
Now we can consider increasing your base because the numbers dictate. So just in business, when you're navigating, and this is why I started my mentortivity dot Com to have these kinds of conversations with black women, especially right, is that just like understand when you're navigating that, like you know, like everyone is always going to want more and that is a natural human thing.
You know.
I'm not upset about people wanting more because we're adults and you know, we want to be able to take care of ourselves. But it's like, how do I navigate so we can sustain that? Is that is the role with you as a leader. Now, everyone doesn't have to open the books up like I do. I just believe in doing so that they get to see, you know, because you can't do that with every team. If you know you have a team that everyone is not really pulling their weight, and they can use that against you.
But I have already curated the best of the best, you know, so I know I can share the full numbers and say this is what we're working with. If you want more, here's some things. Bring me some ideas what can we do? And when I tell you they were working hard before, but the way they're working smart and more strategic is amazing to see. I mean it's
mind blowing. Like the way people are like you know what we should do that would have never happened before if I was just mom, Tiffany, I'm the mom of the business.
We are all now CEOs. Everybody gets paid like I get paid.
We all get a base, we all get an owner's draw, we all get to see the numbers, and so like, yeah, that's a and I know that's a long answer to the question, but I wanted to give you greater context that you know, as you are considering paying people to consider size of company. Consider are you product or service base? You know, do your research on this size of company and product and service base. Where should I be not only with payroll, but where should I be with marketing spend?
What's help and safety there? You should really be where should be with operational expenses? And you shouldn't know what your percentages are because I check on them every two weeks to see are we flexing too high or too low? Because too low is bad too. At one point, I was underpaying That's why I gave everybody like a twenty thousand dollars raise that year because we were at like fifteen percent.
That means I'm underpaying you or we need more more staff.
So that's gonna help guide you, you know, not not your emotions, not how you feel about people, you know, but about like how how business is best.
Run in the most optimal setting. So I hope that's help.
That's incredibly helpful. Thank you so much for that.
No problem.
Well, actually, you know what, We're gonna pause for commercial break and we'll be right back and black and I have a question for brands, and we're back in black and brown. So brand, that's my question for you in business, is you have gotten like you like you are literally known for your ability to partner with brands in a way that I've never seen before. I mean, I get brand partnerships, but like, even during rough times, brands still seek you out to partner with you, Like what do
you think that, like, what is that? What is that it factor that you're presenting that attracts brands even when like this was a rough year for influencers in general, I've seen a lot of influencers go back to work because they're no longer attracting brands. And that has not been you know, maybe money has reduced or it's slowed a little bit, but you very much are still connected with the brand. So why what's the IT factor that you're bringing to the table that like we can all learn from.
So there's a few things that we've done that I think has been really helpful.
Number One, we from day.
One we had press, and people don't realize how important press is. And because we took the time to really build relationships with editors, a lot of times when we get featured in something, the editors will also mention the brand that we're partnering with. Well, the brand can't do that. You know that that is something that is very unique to partnership with with HFR. Most brands know that if they do something really dope with HFR is going to get covered.
It's going to get picked up.
So I highly recommend people who want to get brand partnerships hire a publicist. You know, if you don't know what a publicist is, a publicist is someone who helps to get whatever you're doing covered impress and media. And it's so important to brand partnerships because it's another way that they kind of track value, right, they're tracking value
through through press. The other thing is like we try to keep relationships outside of just when we want to do a brand partnership, and so our goal is like, let's host dinners and breakfasts, like sometimes I'll host things that are my home for our brand partners, whether they're partnering with us or not, to really build this relationship where we're having constant communication. And when I talk to them, I'm not asking brands like Okay, can you go and partner with me?
I used to have this whole pitch.
That I used to do. I don't have a pitch anymore. Now.
When I get on with a brand, I'm really interested and hearing what they're up to, what their goals are, how.
I can help support them through HFRS.
So I had a call yesterday with a huge brand, probably one of the top five brands in the world, and I.
Was going to pitch them sponsoring some events.
But before I did that, I said, well, why don't you tell me kind of like what have you done this year that's worked and how are you guys moving forward? And she said to me, brand is we need more
things that provide us a real ROI. So I started talking to her about our Fashion and Color show, which is I'm claiming the number one fashion podcast in the world, claiming it now, and I started talking to her about that, and she was like, that's something that I can actually measure, you know what, let me know what it looks like to sponsor your second season the all sixteen episodes. Yes, but it's because I sat back and instead of pushing.
My event that I wanted them to sponsor.
I asked the question that gave me the answer to know what to tell her, you know, something that could actually maybe provide a solution for her. So I'm always looking at like, how do how do we serve our brand partners through our platform? And I think that has been like so valuable. The way that we approach brand partnerships is very service base versus I'm just gonna pitch you and see if.
You're going to come on board.
And we do things for brands for free all the time. We just hold they were brand for free. I didn't charge them anything because it's a relationship and I don't want the relationship to always be transactional. And so I saw this thing. I saw the brand. I could tell they were struggling to get the word out to the designers, and I said, do you know what, do you want us to host a meeting for you with designers? And they were like, yeah, and so we got like fifty
design on a zoom. You know that they may not have been able to reach, but for us, that's the way that I can serve them.
They've been a partner.
For ours for five years, so I don't have to charge them for everything we do for them. So it's like, how do you how do you serve? That is the best way to approach brand partnerships.
That's really good.
The outreach has to be massive, Like a lot of times people reach out to like two brands or three brands and then they're like, oh, nobody partnered with me, Like we reach out to hundreds of brands, Like we our effort is massive on our outreach, so that we at the end of the day, sometimes we have options. Sometimes we have to decide, Okay, we can't actually do that brand in that brand, so let's go with this one. So your outreach needs to be massive in order to make sure.
That I just read read a book over subscribe.
Tiffany, which Mandy, you would love that book too, And so how do you stay over subscribed? Which basically you have more demand than you even have. You know, you have more demand than supply. You need, you need to have your sponsorship deck ready, and you need to know what value you have to offer.
To a brand that is really really important.
And so when I went through the exercise with Tiffany and her team, one of the things that we did was we went through, like, what is all the value that the Budjanista has to offer?
And they, I mean.
Tiffany, I think we came up with a list of like thirty to thirty things. So once you know that, that also informs who you reach out to, because then you can say, all right, well, my value is that I have a trusted community. My value is that people trust me to give them financial advice or in your case, Mandy, I know that you're a coach around careers and so people trust me to give them like career advice. Right, So then who are the brands who want to partner
with you around that? So I don't know, maybe it's Staples, maybe it's a bank, maybe it's a company that is focused on entrepreneurship. So then that kind of like once you know your value, the next step is now you know what types of brands to reach out to, because you can match your value with the brands.
And then when you reach out to brands, which we cold.
People think that like we've got all these relationships, and we do. We have a lot of relationships, but there are so many new brands we reach out to all the time. Like my team just reached out to a brand, and I was like, how is that partnership gonna work? But they people email us back. So we go on LinkedIn, we find their contact information, we shoot them an email.
Once we send them that email.
You know, we follow up even if they don't hit us back, like, we keep following up.
And sometimes you have to do something that nobody else will do.
I always say, like, honestly, if you want to get anybody's attention, just do something other than email.
Most everybody email. So at the beginning of.
HFR, I would send people cakes to their office. One time, our first brand partner, I sent a cake to their office because I.
Knew people were going to go whose birthday is it? Oh, it's nobody's birthday.
Well who's at the cake?
Harlem?
And I said, everyone have to say my name all day long, Harlem's fashion, and you know, And so I've always done like I'll send breakfast, I'll send cupcakes. I used to have an account with Melissa's Cupcakes because I used to send so many cupcakes. Sometimes I'll send a Starbucks card, like, that's a great way for you to get the attention of a brand partner. Send an email, Starbucks card and say coffee on me today. I hope we get a chance to connect. I mean very few people, is good.
There are very few people who will not email you back.
After you've sent them a ten dollars Starbucks card, you know, and so.
Those if you do anything other.
Than email, it will get people's attention because most people are only going to email.
That's the other thing. Yes, yes, most.
People are going to send a DM via linked In.
They're going to shoot you an email, but they're not going to do like the extra step. And so if you're someone who is willing to do the extra step, you will get the meeting.
But no, but I'm just thinking about if someone would have reached out to me in that way, you know, I'd be more likely to be like, oh, because it's called the law of reciprocity that someone does something for you, and you have this sense that you're just like, you know what I have to like, you know, like I have to do something reciprocal to say I can spend ten minutes on the phone because this was a really
nice gesture. You know, I think we don't really that when we're asking of something of someone that to you, you see yourself as a singular ass to to them, you're a sea of hands out.
So I tell this to my mentees.
I'm like, imagine I'm standing on stage and everyone's hand is out, and if one of those hands there's a gift, which one do you think I notice? I don't care how small the gift is. I'm like, oh, there's a gift in that one hand. Let me explore that one versus everyone is always asking like everyone swears they're asking.
Is so unique, Tiffany, I'd love to spend just fifteen minutes of your time.
I don't have.
My girl.
Literally times I'll be taking meet and you know, damn near in the shower.
Say I get the kkn you go have coffee with me?
And I'm like, do you know what it will take for me to come meet you and have coffee with you?
That person? I know that people don't realize that, like and of course I one's asking like from a rude place, but I don't think they understand.
Fully like what they're asking and how they're asking. How ineffective that is.
Yeah that unless you ask in a way that you know, like those who are really getting, they'll ask in a way where I can instantly see the value. I remember, this is woman who reached out to me. She was struggling with something. But then she casually dropped you know, I run a nonprofit that manages over fifty million dollars worth of da da dada.
I was like, oh, girl, what time.
I walk every evening?
If you don't mind the cars in the background, we could walk and talk and we did and it's been an awesome connection.
But that was smart because she just said, hey, I have a question. But she knew to dropped that.
Jewel because I was like, well, I can see there could possibly be an exchange here.
Yeah, and so like, yeah.
The same thing.
We do the same thing with brands all the time. I'm like, I'm dropping the jewels.
I know every event, big event that we do gets a billion press impressions.
That is not normal. I know that that is like an extraordinary thing. So I dropped that.
I also do no pressure for brands. I try I you know, my thing is like.
For us is for us, and so we're always like, we're here. Oh this you think this price is too much? Well you know what, you know we're here.
We but what we the reason the price is what it is is because we provide excellence. So if you want excellence, and I know that you do as a brand, you know we're here and we're happy to provide you with excellence service from start to finish.
Right.
But we try not to adjust our prices because I've.
Got people to pay and somebody and sometimes people will think, oh, because you guys are doing good work, it's supposed to come you know, at something that should cost three hundred thousand.
They think it's supposed to come in a one hundred thousand and I'm like no.
But so brand is if the people want to stay connected, if they want to get your books, where can they do that?
Yeah, they can follow me at Brand's Daniel on Instagram. My website is Brandisdaniel dot com. You can get the business the book on Partnership Small Business, Big partner Ships.
It's a little black book to a.
Tract secure and maintain partnerships with big brands. You can go to Harlem's Fashion room and get the fashion and color book if you're interested in that. But I'm going to be giving more business chips on my Instagram, so make sure you check me out there.
Yes, please do. We thank you for coming on. You've just been excellent. If you didn't listen to a Wednesday's episode, listen to it because we got deep into our business. And if you really like this episode, we really encourage you. We're always trying to grow. To share with your bestie, your work mom, you know your your sneaky link girl, We don't care.
Just shred recently. Somebody just told me what that is.
So listen to something but with your sneaky link, right, so so so we encourage you to share, share, share with someone that you know that's going to find value.
And honestly, I take a note from this, so if listen to it again and take notes and so you know what, actually we should have said this in the in the Wednesday episode, but we're going to put Brandis's links in the show notes, so just make sure you look out for them there if you can't remember the links she shared, well, we thank you Brandi's for coming, thank you for having me