We have to learn to really identify our gems and our amazing people, and we all need to start working together. And then, I think that once we start doing that and start really sharing knowledge, looking at how we can move together and not really be competition with each other. If you believe we can change the narrative, if you believe we can change our communities, if you believe we can change the outcomes, then we can change the world. I'm Rob Richardson, welcome to disruption. Now. All right.
Welcome to disruption now I'm your host, a moderator, Rob Richardson. So with me is Lamar Wright is the, founder of, Black Wealth Events and is all about empowering, you know, black wealth and making sure that we are in the new wave of building in technology and also that we're building generational wealth. And that's what he's all about in Lamar. It's pleasure to have you on the on the broadcast, brother. Thank you for having me.
Excited to be able to have a conversation with you and the audience and seeing how we can continue to move things forward. All right. So tell me so black wealth events like what inspired you to create this, this platform and what is the purpose behind it? I would say, black Wealth event is really to aggregate the idea of economic competitiveness within black America. We use Martin Luther King's economic strategy as our cornerstone. And then we do overlays of the principles of circular economics.
All of this kind of come about from my pivot into the client relations aspect of what my company does. We are a lifestyle and branding firm that specializes in image consulting, creative direction and, client relations. So over the pandemic, we had to kind of pivot into the client relations aspect of what we did. And I was pulled into the family office space. And for our audience that probably doesn't know family office.
A family office is basically a private organization set up to manage the wealth, investments and personal, affairs of a wealthy family and basically, I always say they're so rich, they're their own bank, you know, trying, in that world, I saw that they don't not look at each other as competitive. Their colleagues, they share rings, they share deals, they commune together.
And I'm like, wow, you know, this is something that is a little different approach to a collaborative experience for my community. And so that is how Black Wealth Office was created. Now, it's fascinating because it's something that I've, both struggle with and work towards. Right. Because I've, worked to align and still do, with black folks as much as possible. Right. How are you breaking this down? Because there are barriers.
We know institutionally that, you know, we are we put in our brain that's been passed on like this, nobody else that's now we kind of carry this, I think, reservation or seeing each other as competition rather than collaborators. How are you really addressing that through your events or through your platform? So we focus on information, creating infrastructure and given access. And what I do know about our community is that if you want to be a, a voice, you have to demonstrate.
So what we've been doing through, our flagship, event series called The Wealth we get, we have, had, socials and conversations and discussions about certain topics, but after everything we have had call to actions and demonstrated what collective mindset, collective unison and partnerships really can, we really can create. So that's how I'm going at it as a demonstration of how it can be done. And I do it on a high level. Right? No, it makes sense.
I mean, you you you learn, you teach, and you connect by actually doing. Right. So you've worked. So I know you had the wealth weekend. You had one this year. So what was the biggest takeaways and what's the what's the hope for the future. Because I'm assuming we're going to do 1 in 2025. Well the wealth weekend is three part right. So this year we did two parts. We did the Wealth Week and Kentucky Derby. And we did well for weekend Juneteenth, NYC. So we did two two series this year and 2025.
They will be doing the whole three part series. I would say the take away this year, which is fantastic. We have created a public private partnership with to HBCUs. So the first HBCU, which is a private is, Simmons College and the next is Kentucky State University, which is a public university. And they're doing a joint venture to create a curriculum of, circular economics with our partner, the Circular Economy Alliance of Europe.
So that's one thing that was you talked about what is circular economics for people like, what is that? Yeah. Sometimes I have to break it down. Yes, I have to spend. Excuse me. I would say circular. How would I put it? Circular economics for the black community. I would say it's keeping wealth within the community. So whereas moneys earned by individuals, it's reinvested in black owned businesses and services. And we're creating a loop of economic empowerment.
So I'm looking at this is, how do we build resilient and sustainable communities and what we're doing, that is what's modernizing Martin Luther King's economic strategy for today. Now, that's, no, I think one of my favorite quotes by a doctor, Martin Luther King, which is never really talked about, is when he discusses love and power. He said he said power without love is reckless and abusive, but love without power is sentimental and anemic. Right? We need health.
And, yeah, I think it was mortgaged to bind us at this. Like, you know, black folks are obsessed with profit. Like, everything is, is a nonprofit and everything is about that versus how do you actually make money off of this, right. So like, we like reframing the mindset and not seeing it as a dirty thing or an evil thing. It is a necessary thing for you to be able to even have the, social impact you want to have. So I think some of it is like a reframing of our almost psychology.
I say like, right, right is right. So how do you talk about this with because I found this and you know, of when my own family and other folks as you, as you, as you, as you start to generate some wealth, you know, people are, their goal is just to hold on to that and not necessarily invest it because they think they're going to lose everything that they've gained and that fear, as you know, obviously prevents opportunity for growth.
How do you get past that first mindset, that one like in terms of that, like, do you have any type of specific advice when it comes to that? Well, I always consider it a lack mindset. Right. And I think due to the fact that I'm, spiritual, I kind of pull from those, universal principles, understanding that, we're not here for lack. We're here to live in abundance. Right.
And you have to have some type of strategy and and engagement and learn, like continuously learning to be able to take the money that you save, put it somewhere so that it grows and create some type of, some, some type of, investment for yourself. Like your money needs to work. Well. So the I tell people all the time like this is what they don't understand is that you save money and you just park it, you're actually losing money. You're losing money in all types of ways.
Like you're losing money for inflation, minimum 2%, you know. But lately it's been six, seven, 8%. But like minimum 2 or 3% a year that's you're so you're you're losing the value. That dollar becomes $0.98. Right. And then if you're not thinking ahead on this is when you start making any type of money, how are you making sure that you are keeping your in a legal way, your tax burden low because then you're also losing money. This is what people, what I've learned, very wealthy people.
And I hope to be there one day. They have a strategy to get that way. It's a strategy. It's not like, people think that there's luck involved. It's probably some luck involved if you get to $1 billion. But in terms of like in terms of getting to that level over time, but to get to the levels of, of most people's goal to get to millions, that's a strategy usually that people don't really think about. And it does say collaboration in the black community.
So if you had to say one takeaway, then I want to talk about I one most important thing, one should do to position themselves for general wealth. What's the one thing they should do that's the most important? If you had to say, I would say maybe the learn to teach yourself, because it is an educational process. We have to learn the different avenues. There's not one way to create wealth. And depending on your own personal need, is the route that you're going to need to take.
Even when you speak to asset management firms and and things of that nature, they have to sit down with you and create a plan specifically for you and your goals and what you have already. So, the more that you learn, I think you need to learn about insurance, like life insurance and, dividend and diversification of a portfolio and budget go budget. The these are all terms that I think that we try to over overlook, but we need to take the time to really, educate ourselves on them.
Yeah, I agree, I just felt like the most important thing I think that I've done in that area is just just create the habit of actually saying decide and investing in yourself and saving first and putting stuff away, like not thinking about it. That has been the most important thing. That's the most important way to start. And then you see it and you see it grow. It changes your mindset. You're like, yeah, okay. Yeah, I just had you look at it five years.
You're like, oh yeah, I said this five years earlier. But anyway, that's is what it is. Technology obviously is, is is playing a huge role within wealth creation and opportunity. Like how do you see I reshaping the opportunities for black wealth in the black community and, and how people will be thinking about that?
Well, I'm glad that you mentioned that, during our, Wealth Weekend Juneteenth NYC event, we, strategic speak about, tech, blacks and tech from the aspect of us not being involved into it, the the avenues and which is not mentioned or mainstream. I think that tech has an opportunity to really create new millionaires, new billionaires. I also think it's a way for our community to, gain some ground in the playing field. But it also has the ability to be weaponized against us.
And we need to create our own tech companies. We need to understand that equity is ownership. So we need to start developing these things ourselves. And just for a quick example is if you're looking at how tech is being used against that, facial recognition, it doesn't have enough of us, a part of it so that it cannot diversify and distinguish our, our features. And there's not really many black people that in the engineering aspect of it, they're saying, hey, you know, this isn't right.
That isn't here to the left. And then you're getting, marked as someone else, which is which, by the way, it's not, it's not it's not a theoretical thing. This is already happened. Right. There's there's a case in Louisiana where that happened, where it identified, a black man wrongly. And he was in jail, a misidentified black woman. These things are not, like, theoretical.
They are actually happening. And, you know, and this is why I tell people, if you want to really be involved in social impact, in civil rights, the best, the best place to do that is with the technology now, and to become a builder and to become intentional and to challenge the status quo. That way. I'm not against protesting. I'm not anti that. I just think there is a limit to that.
I mean, it's, you know, I'm not going to go to political, but if you look and see what happened this last election, that was, that was now that was algorithms versus old school. I just tell people, would you want to? We are all interconnected. So when you want to, tackle a project or problem, you have to take a holistic approach. So there's not one way to do something. Yep. So it's going to take multiple avenues.
You know, I don't think that what we're doing with black wealth advance in the wealth of weekend is going to solve every problem. No, but I'm hoping that what it does is bring leaders together and create some type of, pathway for us to move. One of the things that really shook me to my core was when you look at what, black America contributes to the, GDP, we are basically hope, close to 1%.
So we have 3.2 million businesses or some something like that, and we're only contributing basically a point to the national GDP. The best, ethnic group, I would say that's out there, which is the Asian, as far as that, they're only doing 4%, but 1% is what we were doing when we're out of slavery. So there is something missing in and what I am hoping to do is be the intermediary between, act well and focus and purpose. Yeah. All right. What's the best case?
I say, what's the worst case scenario for black wealth inequality? Without some intervention, what's the worst case? And what's the best case? And how do we make the best case happen? So the best case of the worst case? Both. So what's the worst case? Right. The worst case is let's continue with the best case. And how do we try to envision that, happening. Well, to me the worst case scenario is us doing what we've been doing because, you see, it hasn't moved the needle.
I would say the best case scenario is that we really understand that we have all of these affinity groups, and and black America has, We've been there, we've done things. We've been part of, you know, we've been part of all aspects of business and health care and industry and finance. We have to learn to really identify our gems and our amazing people. And we all need to start working together.
And then, I think that once we start doing that and start really sharing knowledge, looking at how we can move together and not really be competition with each other, I think that we'll start seeing a lot more movement and then really like loving on ourselves, like our businesses, our talent, our thought process. Yeah, I do understand that. That's the American export. Our culture is Americans export.
So we need to understand that we are a value, but we need to understand that the value is together and to monetize. And we need to really support each other and protect each other because they'll come in and say, I'll give you this amount of money so you can give me what y'all doing. And then they do it. And then now we don't have any ownership. Look at we can just look at hip hop. We can, you know, maybe get a hip hop.
And then if you take how good algorithms are getting and, you know, the biggest debate is who owns the data. That's a whole nother question that we can get into. But we, you know, needs it. That's exciting now. And things that I tell you, it's, I mean, algorithms pull from information and, you know, it's like you we have to be, like, involved in this process to in order in order to make sure that we might have ties and we have to move quickly. So what are some final takeaways?
I guess, like, that you would want to give people like what? When it comes to black wealth events, how can people get involved? What do they need to do in order to, in order to learn more? Well, I would say a black wealth event. There's black wealth events.com. It actually, is a place where you can go, you can register. We'll be sending out information. We'll be creating, seminars.
We'll be engaging different podcasts, like your own, newsletters and things where we'll be sending out information and we'll be bringing on experts in their field. We'll be having white papers done for cities and economic development groups. And we'll be actually creating opportunities for black American businesses and founders to actually source capital. So now we are looking just to be a resource for the community, a safe place for allies and supporters to come. Because the this black America.
But we do understand that we have others that actually can support and be allies of us. That's where collaboration and partnership comes. So black wealth events.com and, black wealth events on Instagram and Facebook and LinkedIn. Yeah. Lamar it's a it's a pleasure. Let us know how we can help you. We appreciate you being a disruptor and coming on the show. Thank you Rob I appreciate you having me. And let's continue to define absolutely.