An illegal alien from Guatemala charged with raping a child in Massachusetts. An MS thirteen gang member from Al Salvador accused of murdering a Texas man of Venezuelan charged with filming and selling child pornography in Michigan. These are just some of the heinous migrant criminals caught because of President Donald J.
Trump's leadership.
I'm Christy nom the United States Secretary of Homeland Security. Under President Trump, attempted illegal border crossings are at the lowest levels ever recorded, and over one hundred thousand illegal aliens have been arrested. If you are here illegally, your next you will be fined nearly one thousand dollars a day, imprisoned, and deported.
You will never return.
But if you register using our CBP home app and leave now, you could be allowed to return legally.
Do what's right. Leave now.
Under President Trump, America's laws, border and families will.
Be protected sponsored by the United States Department of Homeland Security.
So when you get the first product or the next thing is how do you market it?
Are you thinking that yourself? Do I need a break the mortar?
Or is it's like I'm a solely ecommerceance thing and get it in the right hand.
Yeah.
So in the beginning with Active Faith, there was two big Christian sports appeal I mean Christian retailers at the time, Family Christian LifeWay. I'm thinking, once I pitched them this idea, they picking me up, we launching were gone. They all told me they'd never heard of Christian sports appailal before, so they were like, this isn't gonna work. So I actually went the e commerce route by necessity, but it ended up being a blessing, you know what I mean.
I utilized my existing network.
The funny thing, the thing that actually put Active Faith on the map, that gave us our first big exposure was you.
Guys remember Lynn Sanity.
Yeah yeah, all right, So Jeremy's went a closer got of mind, yeah exactly, and he was wearing wristbands from my company. So I got these wristbands that said Active Faith. The tagline was in Jesus name I play instead of game, I pray to tag on JA my play. And so I was sending these wrist bands out to all the basketball players that I knew that would understand this concept of a faith based sports A Pearl.
Brand Jeremy was one of them.
He was in the D League at the time when I first got him the wrist bands, and the Rockets called him up. We met for lunch, gave him some wristbands. They cut him. The Knicks called him up. But he's at the end of the bench. Nobody, I mean nobody saw that coming. And it was it was two weeks after the Knicks had signed him. They came back in time to play the Rockets. We went to lunch again. I was like, yo, let me give you these orange wristbands to match the Knicks uniform. And it was probably
two weeks after that. I think Baron Davis got heard who whoever? The two point guards wherever in front of him got hurt and he was forced into this role and you know what happened when with insanity And so he's on the cover of Sports Illustrated Time magazine is everything you could think of, laying the ball up and you see active faith, and you see these wrist bands on his risks. I mean, you go look at it right now. Look up any picture, you're gonna see him
wearing these wristbands. And Man USA Today reached out to do a story on it. Next thing, I know, my website crashing because everybody in America was trying to get these wrist bands that he was wearing. And then we were getting all this traffic from China and Taiwan. So first year out the gate after Faith, we did three hundred thousand in revenue off wristbands. Yeah yeah, so man, that's how it got started.
Man.
And then you know, having that initial audience that saw the wristbands, when I introduced the apparel, it just kind of, you know, did his thing. We went from three hundred thousand to jumped from three hundred thousand to one point five million, to six million to eight and a half million, like it was something that was just moving at a speed that you know, to this day, it's hard to really put it into words what was happening. I mean, I had I had friends at my mom's house feeling orders,
you know, my mom's house. I turned her my mom's house into an order for filming facility, you know what I'm saying, And was feeding my friends pizza to helped have them come over and help me feel orders.
So yeah, that's that's how the first thing got off the ground.
So all right, so you get that going yep, you're taking that money and then starting with Actively.
Black Ause how that started? Man?
So so, like I said, so, Steph was my business partner also, and at the time, you remember he wasn't the guy that everybody sees now you know what I mean. The lot of people don't realize those ankle injuries and the surgeries that he had that second year in the league. You could be looking at a Grant Hill trajectory with Steph versus what he's on. So, man, the people wasn't checking for him like that, but he was rocking with me. He was rocking with the brand. Same thing with him.
He gets healthy, he wins multiple MVPs. To this day, he doesn't play a game without wearing his Active Faith Risbane and he still wears them every single game. But I was having some personal experiences that were challenging what I was doing with Active Faith, so I hid myself from people knowing who the founder of Active Faith was. In fact, my Instagram was private up until earners.
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An illegal alien from Guatemala charged with raping a child in Massachusetts. An MS thirteen gang member from Al Salvador accused of murdering a Texas man of Venezuelan charged with filming and selling child pornography in Michigan. These are just some of the heinous migrant criminals caught because of President Donald J.
Trump's leadership. I'm Christy Noman, the.
United States Secretary of Homeland Security. Under President Trump, attempted illegal border crossings are at the lowest levels ever recorded, and over one hundred thousand illegal aliens have been arrested. If you are here illegally, your next you will be fine nearly one thousand dollars a day, imprisoned and.
Deported, you will never return.
But if you register using our CBP home app and leave now, you could be allowed to return legally.
Do what's right. Leave now.
Under President Trump America's laws, border and families will be protected.
Sponsored by the United States Department of Homeland Security.
I launched Actively Black my personal instagram over sixty percent of my customer base for Active Faith of Evangelical Christians, which in this country could be synonymous with racist. I didn't want them to know that it was this black man who was behind the brand, and.
So you couldn't find my name on the website. I wasn't on the.
Social media, none of that, and that started to bother me internally, you know what I mean. My mother and my father raised me to be proud of my blackness. That's something that was taught to me at a very early age. And here it is. I. You know, I bounced back from an injury that ended my NBA career, built a multi million dollar business out of my mom's house, and I'm afraid to even show that this is me,
you know what I'm saying. And I had instances where customers will call you know, entreprene or in the beginning, you're wearing all the hats I'm doing customer service. A customer is like, you sound like you black, and I was like I am. They immediately asked for a refund. I had experiences where there were people wanting to invest in Active Faith and.
Would write in go back and forth over email.
We were set up in person meeting, and I'll never forget like walking into that room and seeing the looks on their faces like, oh damn, he's black.
You know what I'm saying, Like I saw.
It in their faces, and all of a sudden, those conversations about investing in the brand completely went quiet, you know what I mean. And so I was I was already having this internal struggle with who I am as a black man and how I was hiding myself from this brand. So I started having this idea, if I could build this brand for this faith based community, can I do the.
Same thing for my people, for black people?
And you know, to this day, I get I get emails from Active Faith customers who were going through chemotherapy and they were saying, I felt like giving up, but I wore my Active Faith risk band. I wore my Active Faith hoodie to chemo today. And they gave me the strength to keep fighting. That let me know that what I was building was bigger than just another apparel brand, Like this meant something to somebody intrinsically, this was having an effect on somebody's life, and so I wanted to
do that same thing for black people. And really the catalyst to me finally deciding to do it. Twenty eighteen, the movie Black Panther comes out, and I remember walking out of the theater for the first time, and I just remember that feeling that I felt.
Man, it was unbelievable to see like the diaspora come together. You know what I'm saying. You saw African black jamake it.
Whatever you were, if you were black, you felt something the first time you saw that film. And I was like, you know what, I'm gonna create that brand and I want people to have the feeling that I had walking out of the theater watching Black Panther for the first time. I want them to had that feeling when they when they interact with this brand.
Active faith kept me plenty busy.
I moved out to LA six months before the pandemic shut the whole city down, and so I told myself, I'm not gonna let this time pass without burthening something new. And you know, we all witnessed the murder George Floyd and the aftermath and everything that happened after that, and so I started to see all these brands. I saw Nike, you know, indeed, it's everybody make these declarations about what they were going to do for the black community after the murder of George Floyd, And to me, it.
Felt very performative.
It felt like this was just part of their new marketing strategy because outside of the pandemic, the stuff that's been happening and black people has been happening for centuries, for decades, and none of these brands had ever said anything.
So why a y'all saying something now?
And finally that's when I decided I wasn't gonna put this idea on the shelf anymore. Ink Magazine called me to do a story on Active Faith for Juneteenth. They were looking for a black founder to do a juneteen story on, and I said, I'll do the story, but I want to talk about this new thing that I'm going to launch, And so I announced it in that article that Ink Magazine article on Juneteenth, and on Black Friday twenty twenty I've launched actingly black.
An illegal alien from Guatemala charged with raping a child in Massachusetts. An MS thirteen gang member from Al Salvador accused of murdering a Texas man of Venezuelan charged with filming and selling child pornography in Michigan. These are just some of the heinous migrant criminals caught because of President Donald J.
Trump's leadership.
I'm Christy Noman, the United States Secretary of Homeland Security. Under President Trump, attempted illegal border crossings are at the lowest levels ever recorded, and over one hundred thousand illegal aliens have been arrested. If you are here illegally, your next you will be fine nearly one thousand dollars a day, imprisoned and deported, you will never return. But if you register using our CBP home app and leave now, you could be allowed to return legally.
Do what's right. Leave now.
Under President Trump, America's laws, border and families will be protected.
Sponsored by the United States Department of Homeland Security,