EYL #45 Hustle & Motivate feat. John Henry

capital firm. And he's twenty six, twenty six, twenty six years old, twenty six years old, So that's a lot.

so I'm the youngest of four. So it's four kids plus two parents, six of us, you know, living just like pretty much everyone else in the Heights of New York in the nineties in a little one bedroom apartment and my pops put up a little fake wall to make everybody know that curtain. And so my sister had a full bed, my oldest brother had the top bunk, and I actually split the bottom bunk with my brother closest to me in age. So it's not even like we had a bunk bed. We split the bottom bunk.

It's not like a goal, which, like I guess these days sounds like, oh my god, you know, but it's just is what it is. And yeah, man, that was just a formative DNA. I think one big blessing that I had was grown up in a two parent household, despite you know, a lot of adverse New York in the nineties, just very crazy, a lot of shit popping off. I had an oldest brother whom was of age when when my parents moved to the States, so he was, you know, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, so you know, my parents.

I feel like, like Kendrick, like good kid, mad City, definitely mad City. But my mom's who was who was already like dealing with the effects of watching after my oldest siblings, like made sure that you know, we were busy or some ship you know, or stayed and we only you know, we could play just in the lobby, you know when we were and uh yeah. So anyway, so that was the early DNA man and then you know, I moved to We moved to Florida after nine to eleven.

Also one thing that I don't talk about that often, but there we we there was an arm burglary in our home. Complete mistake, you know, but some casts like broke into our crib and you know, there were eight guys that were all armed, tied us all up except for me because they didn't expect two people to be in the bottom bunk and I was. It was crazy kind of stuff. And just like that couple with nine eleven, my folks were like, yeah, we're not gonna do this.

So we moved to Florida, spent some time there. My mom worked as a custodian in an affluentighborhood. And so one of the perks that you get is that your kids can go to that school district, whether or not you live in that neighborhood. And so that was a very big blessing because it's like a children horse got to go to this schools, specifically high school where it's just a lot of affluent kids and for the first time we were like we were broke alone, Like I

was the only broke kid. It's one thing when everyone's broke is one. There's another thing when like your friends have enormous homes and getting whips at age of sixteen and all this kind of stuff. So that kind of put a chip on my shoulder in an interesting way. And I guess, just to speed it up, I actually fell in love with music. At that point in time. I was damn near rosta. I had grown out.

discovered blues and reggae, which I love. It's but it's very static as a music. It's boommmment and it sits in the pocket. And then I discovered blues, it progresses a little more, and then I discovered jazz. And at that point I cut my hair and I was like, I was playing eight hours a day every day. No, it was not like a casual thing. I was very committed to the music, and I actually moved back to the city to pursue music. I wanted scholarship. I came

here for that. And then you know, coming back to the city as a young adult and all the stimuli that you have and all the drive you could really apply towards anything. And so I got a job as a doorman and that kind of started off my whole business. Dren.

in the form of anything. For me, happened to come in the form of working the desk and just seeing I first at Dormant on Wall Street, seventy five Wall Street, which is a residential building, and like I got exposed to you know, trum, like the most affluent people in the country, but that never felt attainable to me because it was like, oh, white money. I then later got the chance to Dormant in Brooklyn, and who was there in that building A lot of different people with a

lot of different life paths. For instance, some folks that come to mind, notable people. The founders are rap genius, y genius, crazy, like few white boys, like oh what you know them pastor Carl Lentz, mega pastor of Hillsong, mega pastor now like globally known. There were directors. There was the founder of Voxy, this cool startup, Christina Ricci, this actress. I mean, there was this guy named Ivan Green, a professional rock climber, professional dating coaches, I mean, every

kind of career you can think of. Yeah, like some of us got paid thirty g's per client to show losers how to pick up girls. And so yeah, at some point, you know that kind of sustained proximity showed me that you can make a living doing exactly what.

a real big sports academy in Florida. And one of my biggest regrets is that when I was there, like literally it was so many people that was there, like John McEnroe's son, Maria Sharup over like all these different kids, and it's like every like a lot of these people came from very wealthy families or they they did extremely good things. And I was kind of like just in my vibe just you know, sheltered off just people. I

played basketball, but I wish that I would have. It was right in my fingertips, right, And it's like a lot of times people don't fully understand like you were in the building and you networked. You wasn't like their peers, but that didn't stop you from actually networking making relationships.

these people. Man. And it's crazy, because you're right, we weren't peers at that time, some you know, and allow a lot of us are peers for real, and it's just they still look at me and like, damn, that's crazy because the door for me.

what fuck you doing? Bro? Like like you know, at that time, so I was making fourteen dollars an hour and I was in a suit and in an ac and like that in and of itself, you know, my my pops was paid forty cents a garment, you know, so like damn your sweatshot conditions and so like there was a notable step up. And it was enough for me to I may maybe nine hundred bucks every two weeks. So it's enough for me to help the family out. But like he just quickly let me know, man, you

don't got to set up for being a dormant. You could have your own dormant, you know. And he saw my earnestness, so he put me up to something. And there were actually a number of residents who were trying to put me onto different hustles. But eventually you got to find a vehicle that feels right for you. You know. Some lady tried to put me onto editing videos, making five hundred bucks of video. Like if that was in my DNA, I could have done that, right, But I

ended up resonating with this approach. Hugo, who had a franchise a dry cleaner. He has like maybe he had like at that time, you know, dozens of dry cleaners. And what I didn't know is that the facility is the most expensive part. And then most of the dry cleaners that you guys go to are actual their drop shops.

even have a business background. That's interesting as well. How do you know how to run a business and how do you like, how is that Profitablecause at one point you say he was making like a hundred like, well the revenue was one hundred thousand a month.

make a sale, you know what you know? And so Hugo showed me.

the facilities are typically expensive. However, most dry cleaners that people interface with are actual what they call drop shops. So this is a small retail facility, you know, like might be four five hundred square feet where customers go and it's typically in a residential neighborhood, and customers go and they drop off their garments. Like if you know, if I were to drop this off, this blazer would cost me like nine bucks and my parents and whatever.

And then what those retail shops do is they actually outsource them to the facility and then you typically pay on a per piece basis. So for me, Hugo gave me wholesale pricing without me having wholesale volume, i e. This blazer as a regular customer would cost maybe nine dollars to dry clean. Hugo was doing it for me for two bucks. That's a great margin.

So then, you know, I took the same suit that I was doormanning in and made some cheap business cards and some fucking flyers and I called the Giant Ree cleaners. It was not that original, you know, And I just went to I was walking around Harlem and just knocking on doors literally and getting to knownother doorman and saying, yo, I know you're the key to the building because I'm a doorman too, and like getting them to refer their residence to me anytime they had an issue or whatever,

and I would break them off on the low. And I remember when I got my first call from a lady, you know. And I actually had gone to AT and T and paid them two hundred bucks to get a two one two cell phone number, so they thought they were calling in a real shop. And I was having lunch with my parents and I stepped out. She was like, hi, yeah. I was like yes. She was like, I like to place an order. I was like all right, cool. Yeah.

She gave me her dress. I took the subway. I had no whip, but at the time took the subway.

three or four hours total to make seventeen dollars. But those seventeen dollars changed my life because it was seventeen dollars from my own system, and one dollar from your own system is worth a thousand dollars from another man's that's powerful.

the numbers you know you'll yield. You'll make some money as a result of connecting with people, in my opinion.

make good employees. At that point, they were hitting me with conflict of interests. You know, they were like, yo, he's trying to convert residence to customers. You know that wasn't true. But like you know, when they want to give you the can like they oh, they'll definitely find a way. So they found a way and they fired me in December. So I was really distraught. Man. I thought that my ship was over. And then I got a call from a seed that I've been planting for

a minute. It was you know, one of this resident introduced me to the film industry wardrobe supervisor for The Wolf of Wall Street, which did end up becoming the first movie I ever did.

most part, they're rented. And the cool thing about when they're rented is that they have to return the garments dry cleaned, and so they you know, at this point, the dry clean industry didn't have anyone that was willing to go and picture it up at three in the morning. And so when a multimillion dollar production has no choice but to go with an eighteen year old kid who dropped out of college and had no business experience, that tells you they have an actual need. Yeah, you know.

So we met and like, I didn't get the business right away. Months passed and then he called me. He was like, yo, you're in luck because I got no other option. You know. He's like, you want to come the ship and I was like yeah, And I actually went to pick up my first load of laundry. When you're in the laundry business and you see big sacks a laundry. You don't see sacks of clothes. You see giant money bags. Literally, like I'm just like, oh my god. There was like maybe five or six big ass bags,

and and I didn't have a whip man. And they were like, yo, you want to sell? They were like, yo, you want us to help you carry this ouse? Like no, no, no no. I got the band right around the corner, and I actually brought the sack one by one and left them around the corner. And then when I was sure they wasn't looking, I went and I lugged them up the a train to my put them on the train.

I put them on the train, all six. So so when you watch street, all them ships were dragged through the uptown train.

But you know in theory that if you can hit that, then you can hit it again, and so like that was a point with which like I kind of broke. I mean, really, the seventeen dollars order was what let me know, Okay, it's the measure of your effort, but that one let me know, all right, there's some real money to be made. And then long story short, we did a great job with that. I did not bring that one to Hugo, respectfully. I actually brought it to my father, whom I mentioned was a presser growing up.

And that's how you put us through. And it makes me cry sometimes when I think about it, man, because you know, I was embarrassed about my father's profession growing up, and that is the same thing that ended up. I was able to bring it. And my father's actually a master presser. He's not like an like, he's a master presser. Highly saw it out and he pressed these garments very beautifully. I brought him back and then David Davenport, he gave me what's called the rap, which is the final order

of the entire movie, when they clean every garment. And he said, Yo, bring a truck. And I went upstate and I brought an suv and he was like, John, bring a truck. And I came back with a truck and he opened up the fucking enormous garage door and there was sacks of laundry maybe fifteen or twenty feet high, literally every garment in the entire production. And when I was looking at that, all I saw again it was

just giant money rags. Yeah, and that order, I think we made twelve to fifteen thousand, and that was enough for me to buy my first whip and just kind of keep the motion going because after that he was like, Yo, there's a new account town. If you get them, you're gonna be okay. For a long time. That was Borwalk, and then after that Law and Order, A Person Adventures, White Collar, Made a Spider Man two, Ninja Turtle, Spike Lee, Mike Tyson, Barclay Center.

You know, you can have a little small business kind of on that you've set up and you have you deploy a manager. But that was not the way that my business was set up. My business was very high touch, specifically with the film industry, very high touch clientele. It is not a hands off like it's a job we need you at three like it's incredibly intense and the only person who would deal with that shit is the owner.

I sold that shit. Man. I sold it because it was a headache and frankly, the macro environment was not one that I wanted to I didn't want to be in this business anymore because I saw a very bleak future for the business. Because that was twenty fourteen, which is when I sold the December third, twenty fourteen. That was the time when it was not clear if it would be Uber or lyft. I don't know if you guys remember those days, but it was all about the

Uber for everything. It was Uber for this Uber for that funding funding fun and I was like, damn, I'm just looking at the picture and I was already going toe to toe with these people and I'm like, damn, I just don't see this fair and well like it just it's clear to me that people are subsidizing their operations with ridiculous amounts of venture capital. At that point, I didn't have confidence in my ability to raise venture capital. And you know, I was like, dude, I got some

decent that I built. Someone's willing to pay for it. Let me just sell the shit million dollars. And I could. That was a gross that was not the net ticket price. But that was like to me, the power of narrative and the power of confidence, and like, I started something

in my own mind. I started this shit at the desk with my own mind, put some brand behind it, bells and whistles, whatever the fuck you want to call it, grew it, and a more experienced competitor and businessman whom I mean, this guy was really one of the smartest guys I know, a Mexican guy math. He was a mathematician by trade, and he saw value in it, and I sold it man, and at twenty one, at twenty one, yes, sir.

he went to Duke. He used to work in Silicon Valley, so he's Silicon Valley and we know. So yeah, he told us about the whole VC process and all that. But like I said, one of the good things about Ernie Lisia is that it's kind of turned into like a college course in sorts where it's like, you know, a lot of these things you hear about, but nobody really knows the inner workings of it. And from his perspective, he told us to the outside end, but you actually

have a VC firm. Yes, so this is we're just getting the apple sauce from the apple orchard. Yes, So this is dope. So all right, how did all right, so we gotta tell a story on this.

but it turned into incubator of sorts. I convinced a developer to g me space for free. By the way, this is a thing you can I learned. I learned a lot to co Found Harlem because it was a non for profit that focused on economic development, so improve in the area. And so that that got me to interface with politics.

in the area. I discovered longer term than politicians because politics are just like looking for the quick election. Yeah, these members are here forty fifty years. And so I pitched a developer to give me free space. And you know, it was a very bold thing, and it was like why would I do that. I was like, well, because I'm gonna incubate businesses and the only thing I'm going to ask for them is that they stay in Harlem. Yeah.

an incubator. It's a non for profit incubator. I'm raising money through grants and fund you know, and sponsors and shit like that. And I inadvertently got into running kind of an event's business. We had a little bit of an event. That's when I really started dipping my toe into content and building a community type business. And then eventually one of my biggest don owners who I didn't know. His name is David Rose. He's a very prolific angel investor.

He's one of the most active in New York City. He pretty much was like, Yo, I come from a big real estate family. You might not know that, but I want you to do what you did for Ko found Harlem for us and learn the investment side.

we know real estate. You bring your energy. So anyway, fast forward a year, we learned, you know, we made some good investments and like I sourced the deals on my own, like I did everything on my own because they were too busy to really give me guidance. But the most important thing I learned had nothing to do with the job itself. It had to do with like the family had generational wealth, like they controlled thou dozens of thousands of units in New York City. I mean

truly a legacy family, man. I mean when you go to you know, Dizzey's Club, that's that's the Rose. You know the Rose Hall. If you go to the American Museum of Natural History, that's the Rose Planetarium. Like they're embedded in what it means to be New York. Mister Rose, as David's father, large and part funded Martin Luther King Junior's original Millenmire in March in nineteen sixty three. I mean, we're talking about a legacy family. And so at that point, man,

I really caught the bug. I was like, yo, I gotta go do this for us. So I went back uptown. I met, I met the fellas whom are now my partners at ACP. They had their own background. They come from a more academic background, and they were fortunate to be exposed to finance early. You know, I learned this shit through being an entrepreneur. They learned this through like there are pathways and programs in place. There's one called

SEO and there's one called MLT. These are placement programs specifically for people of color to break into investment banking. That's only in New York or this is nationwide, I want to say. And and yeah, these brothers actually all you know, they the group was bigger back then. They all met in these placement programs, all working for banks, Goldman Bank of America, shit like that, and they decided, like, yo,

let's put our bread to work. So that you know, they started doing that, and they kept hearing about me, because that's one thing. If you are top of mind at whatever you do, you're going to get more opportunities. And so you know, eventually they came on my radar. We met, and we started investing together. And one thing to clarify, and this is really important because you know, people want to get into VC, like they think, if you don't have a million dollars, you can't do it.

But in reality, our first few checks were like ten or fifteen K by the way, split between like five guys, So it's like it was like literally two or three k each.

dental practice is looking for money. Boom, you know, because you start communicating y'all'm looking for businesses to invest in. You do get deal flow back. You put it out and you start getting deal flow back. We caught word of a venture company, and so we invested in a couple of different a few different assets.

You name that shit whatever you want. And yeah, so it ends up being what we call an SPV, which is a special purpose vehicle, which is pretty much fancy talk for saying like, hey, anytime we invest in said company, it's gonna come through this entity, right, And the LLC is a fascinating legal entity because it's a flow through entity.

So it's like you become members in that and like you on the company, Let's say we invest in you know, the cafe on that company's docs, on the formation documents for that company, they're going to see Harlem Capital Partners LLC on there. But then you know, if we make a profit or a loss, the profits and or losses from that entity flows through to each of the individual partners. So it's really just like a like a shield. It's

like a step step away, it's removed. So anyway you make an LLC, you invite whomever for anyone listening who wants to create a little syndicate, that's what you call it, an angel syndicate. You invite homies that you think are serious, you join the LLC, you brand it, come up with a cool name, and then you start communicating it to the world at large that you're looking to invest.

eighteen sixty five. Brilliantly Boring since eighteen sixty five is a service mark of the PNC Financial Service Group, Inc. P and C Bank National Association member FDIC ernests What's Up? You ever walk into a small business and everything just works like the checkout is fast, the receipts are digital, tipping is a breeze, and you're out the door before the line even builds odds are they're using Square. We love supporting businesses that run on Square because it just

feels seamless. Whether it's a local coffee shop, a vendor at a pop up market, or even one of our merch partners. Square makes it easy for them to take payments, manage inventory, and run their business with confidence, all from one simple system. If you're a business owner or even just thinking about launching something soon, Square is hands down one of the best tools out there to help you start, run,

and grow. It's not just about payments, it's about giving you time back so you can focus on what matters most ready. To see how Square can transform your business, visit Square dot com, backslash go, backslash eyl to learn more that Square dot com, backslash go backslash eyl, don't wait, don't hesitate, let's square handle the back end so you can keep pushing your vision forward.

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.

the cafe closed down. You know, we've seen some distributions from the dental practice, but not really a lot of stuff doesn't work out according to plan. But the most important thing is being on the ride. Like I don't listen to anyone in business who hasn't lost more money than me. Like, you gotta get skin in the game. I can't take you serious if you don't have skin in the game. Like like you guys got cameras, you got mics.

you invest in it. I thought I loved investing in small business, and then I discovered I really don't like this shit because when I was meeting with the business owners, we were talking about napkins and forks, and I'm like, dude, you know I want to talk about scale, and you know, like this just wasn't wasn't for me. I discovered that I like real estate a lot. I love real estate. I wouldn't have known that unless I jumped in. So

I'm a really big fan of jumping in. And if you can't jump in a big scale, you jumping in a small scale. Just jump in. So how does that work.

You know, it's also respect for your partners, because your partner might find a good deal and you know, might have gotten in a good rapport with that founder and then two months in it's time to invest, and like, you know, I want to support the fact that my partner is excited about this deal and I'm gonna put I'm not gonna step up big. I might put up a thousand and be like yo, all right, cool, you know,

put that in the deal. Conversely, when it's a hot deal, when it's by the way, hot deals, you're not they're not pitching you, you're pitching them to get in. Hot deals are oversubscribed, meaning a company typically will raise a finite amount of capital that's what we call around at a fixed evaluation. Okay, so they'll say, hey, I'm raising one point five million dollars at an eight million dollar valuation, i e. They're giving away twenty percent of the company.

And then if it's a hot deal, you get good funds in investing and so like a fund you know, is like for anyone maybe doesn't know, is like you know, entrepreneurs who go out there and raise money from the market, you know, in institutions and Dowmons shit like that, and you know they have a great brand name. And over time,

especially from Silicon Valley, you've had prestige funds emerge. These are funds that have proven track record that they know how to spot winners Sequoia, Benchmark, Kleiner Perkins whenever you see them on the cap table. The cap table is short for capitalization table, which is the page on your company's documents that shows who owns what. And so the cap table, you'll see a list and it'll say NAS

invested fifty k owns two. Yeah, and so he also invests an angel, you know, such and such invested this, So the cap table. So we have this thing in VC. You want to be on cap tables. You know, like a lot of motherfuckers talking shit, But I never see you on the cap table. You know, you might be at the club table, but I se you at the cat table.

gonna lie. But when you can get a good amount of exposure into that deal, you know those deals that end up doing ten twenty x.

But like I quickly found out, like it's funny because you know I'm making you know, we're making deals and every time we make a deal. We announced that deal, and so my social was blowing up, Yo, your angel invest I'm like yeah, yeah, you know, and then I'm like, fuck, I'm not seeing any money, Like it just literally feels like you're just like your money's just disappearing because it goes to work. And then what happens for anyone who

doesn't know how you make money adventure? You only make money adventure on a liquidation event, which is the company is sold. You do not, contrary to small business investing, if you invest in an ice cream shop, barbershop, restaurant, whatever, you're yielding profits, so you have a profit split.

So the trick is jumping in and getting in early at a nice valuation. On average, we invest in businesses along the businesses that are coming from the Midwest are on average valued between four to six million inventure, and businesses along the coast are valued between eight to ten million. So now eighty percent of m and A, which is mergers and acquisitions, are happening right now between the one hundred and fifty to two hundred million dollars price point.

Like Gimblet Media got acquired for two hundred million by Spotify or whatever. If I would have gotten into give them media when there were worth ten million, you do the math on that. You get in at ten, they get sold that two hundred whoop. You know you got a twenty x. So what money did you put into that deal? You know, if you put in one hundred, that'll tell you what you net at the back end. So anyway, I'm just clarifying how you actually make money

and venture. You get in into the sweet spot and then that business grows and if you're fortunate, it gets acquired and then you net.

they're reasonably priced. In fact, they say this is a nugget. Vcs say that the actual valuation, the true valuation of a business is the Midwest valuation, and then when you go out to the coast, you get inflated because when you're in Silicon Valley, those motherfuckers will pay any price for any business. And so we actually rarely invested. We haven't invested in a single business from the valley because by the time they come to us, they're like, oh, yeah,

we're worth twenty million dollars. I'm like, show me a revenue. They got one hundred k revenue. I ain't paying twenty million for one hundred k and revenue, So like there's one thing to know as well is like there's actual different investment climates among the coasts. The West coast is very like, Yo, we're looking at scale by any means, and the East coast is a little bit more like conservative, We're looking for revenue and a little bit more modest growth, but revenue.

diverse founders, like we invest in women and minorities. But that doesn't have to be your thesis. Your thesis could be around sports. Your thesis could be around music. Yo, I want to create a fund that invests in you know, music companies, sports companies, sewage, you name it, and the the true test of whether you can raise a fund or not is if you can convince enough people to believe in your ship. And what I found out raising money is there's a lot of motherfuckers with money for wealth.

then a billion. You know, we're you know, we're thinking pretty big.

your fee. So on a twenty five million dollar fund, two percent of that is five hundred grand. So you get five hundred grand every year to pay for a salary, office, travel, everything. Now, if you know, with a team of four in office and stuff like that, like you know, you might make one hundred g's on salary. Like that's nice, but you're not gonna get rich off of that. You're not meant to get rich off of that. The LP, there's two

kinds of partners in the fund. There's the GP, the general partner, which is the partner's putting in the work, and then there's the LP's a limited partner, this person who's investing. So your LPs do not want you to get rich off the fees because then you would never work. You get rich on the other side. I remember I said it's two and twenty to is a management fee. The twenty is what we call the carry, and the

carry is your share of the profits. So now because we can, because we can get into a little detail, I'll just explain this. Typically, you as the GP, if you set out to go raise a fund, your commitment to the fund, you put up one percent of the total fund. Okay, So if my partners and I are set out to raise as an example, twenty million. One percent of that is two hundred thousand, so we have to come up with two hundred g's across you know, the four of us. Okay, beat now, But here's a

mind blowing shit. Remember I said the twenty is that refers to your share of the profits, which is twenty percent. So we're making twenty percent of the profits on twenty million. So it's just like, you know, I guess it might be complicated. It's like ingrained to me now, so it's not the complicated to me now, but like in a nutshell, you're if you can put together two hundred g's, it's buying you a ticket to get the profits on twenty million.

the phone with that founder. Then that partner reports back with about a page of notes to the rest of the team. Yo. Cool. And then if there's interest, then another partner will jump in as many partners as are interested. Then we jump in with the full with the full team, we try and get a fuller team situation, and we

learn more. We have interns, so then our interns might go and do market research and analyze what we can expect to make, and then interest grows and usually you have every partner leads their own deal at the fund. So it's all about like, yo, all right, what deals? What deals am I getting versus Brandon versus Jerry versus a reed. We're all looking for our own deals. And to your question about voting, we have a we have a conviction over consensus philosophy. Like it's not like all

of us have to agree. It's like if someone really worked up about this deal, and can you get people excited? You're judging off the passion of one of your partners for sure, and their ability to defend the deal. And we'll test you. We'll heat check each other and grill each other, like, yo, I don't know if this deal is gonna make it. Like like I try to get a media deal through and I couldn't get it through.

It got shut down because my partners were like, yo, you know, the media climate is really hairy right now. You know Vice and BuzzFeed and Refinery twenty nine. You know they're not doing too well and they're the big dogs, so how the small dogs and you just it's a mental game, and if you can get people excited, then we close the deal and we say, all right, bet we're gonna invest X amount and then we just wire them the money and then we prayers up.

unique opportunity that we have specific to this generation. And like at the essence of having a show and all this other stuff, like and even earn your leisure, Like, at the essence of it is like people are picking out what you're putting down, like the funck with what you're saying and what your guests saying and all this

other stuff. And that's really the most important part, man, And and once you're able to over time, if you stay consistent, if you look at my earliest videos, man, really bad, you know, cheesy, stiff, and like, you know, some I have people that reach out to me that are trying to get into video now, but they're comparing their day one shit to like my stuff now. It's

like it's not going to be the same. But if you're willing to deal with the discomfort of being new at this for enough period of time and you get through some of the kinks and you learn to express yourself on this specific medium, whatever that is. It could be writing like my Boy Julian Mitchell Rester Forbes and Beats, it could be podcasting, it could be video, whichever the medium. Once you have gone through the reps, and get good

at expressing yourself in that medium. Then what happens is you start building a community and audience of people who fuck with you, you know. And then once you have that, which is like messenger, message and audience, and that virtuous

cycle opens up the door for a lot. And so the first big media project that I was invited to do was a podcast that I hosted for eBay that was produced by a company called Gimlet Media, and that like that project, Like I got paid like fifty g's to do that, and like, I didn't even know that you could get paid to do some shit that I would do for free. So something eBay was like, yo, we have millions of sellers, and Gimblet's like yo, we have millions of listeners. And you know, they so they'd

cut a deal between themselves. eBay was looking at produce a podcast gimblin that's their business producing podcasts. Boom that's a branded podcast, meaning it's brought to you by eBay. And then what happens is they look for hosts, and so, you know, because I was already out there doing my thing, my name came up in the conversation. And that's why I really believe if you're not out there doing your thing with the fucking phone, then you're never gonna get

to a bigger screen. So start with whatever screen you got. And so I was fortunate to come with conversation. I met with the lady. She really liked me, and yeah, and and I got Boom. I got the opportunity to host my first bigger scale, branded production. And that was a you know, Gimlet is very special the way they do their podcast. Like, we had four producers, we had a creative director. I mean, it was like a big production. I was traveling, yeah, so it wasn't like a regular thing.

But but so that was my first like thing. Okay boom. We did two seasons of that, and then you know, my speaking started taking off because it's all a virtuous csychic, all feeds each other. Once you have a lot of listeners, you're being requested in all places. So then I started doing speaking first for free, and then I found out you get paid for it. So the very next time someone said, yo, you want to speak, I said, instead of just saying yes, I said, what's your budget? You

know an important question these days. I don't ask for the budget. I just say my price. But those days, I was like, what's your budget and she was like a thousand bucks. I was like, cool, I'll take it. So like I got paid a G and then I tried to go for G again, but you don't always get it. So then I got two hundred bucks four hundred three fifty five seven fifty thousand, two gs back

to one. You know, just like the reps, the motions like okay, cool, And you know, when you're first doing something, whether it's vc, whether it's media, whether it's real estate, you want to prioritize in the beginning for reps. So I'm doing whatever it is for free to start. It doesn't matter to me. I just want to get the reps in. And I started getting better and better, and so speaking started picking up. I got signed by an agent.

To anyone listening, yes there is a profession that exists where it's like a salesperson whose sole job is to sell you and you don't pay them anything. They just make a commission the catches. They only take people on that they feel like they can sell. And so I found an agent who was like, yo, you know you got a lot of stuff going for you. Let me

represent them. I had a literary agent was like, yo, you know you should do a book deal, and then I asked her if she knew any speaking agents introduced me and the first time I signed to an agent, my rate for speaking got up to like thirty five hundred. I was like, all right, bet you know it was higher than my one thousand I was charging. But they take twenty percent percent of thirty five hundred. It's like seven hundred bucks, so I was not in like twenty

eight hundred. All right, cool, I could do and it was just whatever they brought me, so it was really net net. So anyway, so here I have, this podcast is being listened to by people, is feeding my speaking business. And every time I went and spoke, I noticed people weren't recording their shit. I'm on, dude, you're leaving out the main value recorded so you can turn it into small business content, so you can feed it to social so you can get requested in more places. And it

just all feeds each other. So that's what I was really doing. I had the chance to do another podcast for the Washington Post, similar sized deal, and so just over time, this all feeding each other. I'm speaking a lot, I'm capturing it. A lot of cats don't want it capture their shit because they don't want to pay for a video guy to travel with them. I'll take it. I'll take a haircut all day. Yeah, I'll pay my video guy whatever I got to pay him, and the

flight and the lodge. These days, my agent knows that I always travel with video, so now that shit gets covered for me, and I just pay my my guy for the craft. But so as you can see, as you grow in the game, you get efficiencies dialed in, but when you start, you gotta come out out of pocket. So I'm eating into my own profits, sometimes not making any money, sometimes costing me money to pay for the

video guy. But the video and capturing is essential to the craft because that is what allows that particular engagement to live beyond that engagement. And there are some companies throwing massive conferences with no fucking no one capturing anything. It did happen. And so anyway, so I'm capturing these talks, communicating it. I'm one of the only kind of younger

cats like doing it this way. And so then that picks up and next thing you know, man, the phone turned into a vlog, turned into the podcast turned into someone hit me up and saying, hey, you want to do a TV show? You know, and then it happened, So the TV show Mark Samuelson, Marcus Samson Ye, yeah, Top Chef Harlem, tizz too. Yep.

And right now, number one in Harlem is Marcus Hammerson, So you got to go and build with him. It's crazy to think years later he's executive produced by show and now we're making money together. But at that point in time, I was like, fuck, all right, I gotta get to Marcus, and I was emailing him stuff like that, and eventually the restaurant, yup, well that's the restaurant. Eventually he invited me by. We had coffee. He liked me

a lot, and I interviewed him similar to this. You know, I like using interviews as a way to build relationship. For sure. For sure, now you guys know all the players and then yeah, man, And so then I had someone approach me about doing the show. And the cool thing about packaging the show is that there's junior talent and their senior talent. You usually will have the junior talent kind of be on camera, which is what I was in this production, and then you find bigger names

and attach them to the product, to the project. In this case, it was Marcus Sammerson. Marcus who signed to WM that's Alicia's same agency. We lobbed it up there, We're like, yes, she might be interested. She was interested, came onto the project, and now it's four of us, Marcus, Alicia, me and then Beth, the original creator of the show. And you know, then we had two likes to stand on and what you do is you develop was called the Sizzle Reel, which is like a two minute preview

of the show. Where people go wrong in TV is they spend way too much money on the pilot. They'll drop like ten, fifteen, twenty g's I don't care how much money you spend on the pilot. Your pilot's gonna be fucking terrible your first go round cause you don't even know what you're making. And so my producer the EP of the show, she actually was like, she's a very seasoned TV executive. She made Pimp my ride, and she told me she's like John, that show bought me

my first house. So she made a real hit show. And so as a result, she knew, hey, let's not spend any money on the Sizzle reel. Let's actually just rip existing footage splice it together. What we did was she camped out outside of Alicia's trailer one day after outside of an event, and she got Alicia's voiceover on

the Sizzle. So that gave us enough credibility. And with that two minute sizzle with Alicia's vo on a voiceover, we were able to go to market and like one thing about selling a TV show is not enough to know the companies. You got to know the specific buyers within that companies, because there's buying departments whose sole job is to look for things to put on their cable roster, on their lineup. And so we you know, we went BT was interested. Netflix, we had some interest, Oxygen, we

had some interest, but Vice emerged as very interesting. They called us in like it was very clear from the beginning that they were very very interested. And what they did was what happens with a series, is they bought the pilot, so they actually funded instead of us shooting our own pilot. This is what I said, hold off, use a sizzle reel, use that as a selling mechanism. Then the network will buy the pilot. They'll fund the pilot.

So now your pilot is coming from the specifications of the network and they're telling you how they want to see it. And the cool thing about this deal is after you shoot the pilot, they have four months to pick it up. If they pick it up, great, you're you know, you got picked up. You're going to season one. If they don't pick it up, you get the show back, and then you get to sell it with a pilot.

That was made on someone else's dime. No one knows that shit, Like I mean, like experience TV execs know that. But I was blessed because Beth gave me the insight and and I told her. I was like, hey, look, I'm gonna be I guess, on camera talent, but like you know, I'm a fucking businessman, and you know, like I want to do this only if you'll lift the curtains and give me a real honest look at like what this whole process is, budgeting, developing, the concept, creative producing,

you know. And you know, she was like, all right, let's do it if we're fortunate to get on a ride because point zero one percent of all pilots get picked up. And we defied the odds. We got picked up and it was a razy ride.

you quoted out. The network agrees, and then the production company typically keeps like ten percent of the budget is their fee, and then they get to make whatever this, you know, whatever money they don't spend. So like if if it's one hundred thousand dollars per episode, but they made it for seventy, they keep thirty plus their fee. So anyway, that's how the actual mechanics work. But just like you're gonna find a common theme here, you're not really gonna make a lot of money in your first

real estate deal. You're not really gonna make a lot of money your first angel deal or your first speaking gig or season one. You use season one as a way to get it going. Now, Beth, who sold the show device could now turn around to another network and sell another concept a lot easier, and then we can get picked up season two and so forth.

the case. TV has so much leverage because they know that once you're on air, you're gonna make a lot of money, and so you actually get paid very little to be on unscripted i e. Reality television because they know that you're gonna make money on the exposure, like love hip hop, like lost of the characters. Yeah, well people not even they are characters. Yeah, we know some of them. So so that's how it works. So anyone looking to make you know, a gatin TV, Well, let me.

and that was for a reason. Messenger message audience. It could be on the phone, it could be on the vlog, podcast writing, TV doesn't matter. But the reality is that these days brands are looking for new and elevated ways to reach audiences, and the way they're doing that is via smaller content creators like us and if you could position yourself the right way, you can position yourself to extract some of those dollars. Because those budgets are flowing around.

I'm fortunate to see them. They're flowing around. Brands are spending quarter million dollars for one event one night, quarter million dollar for an event, you know, five hundred thousand on a podcast literally a podcast season, a few million on a show. You know. These these brands have budgets. Now here's the thing. I don't know how much longer this is gonna last. I'm looking around like, yo, what fuck?

Like there's money and everything these days. Yo. The other day I got a I got uh, you know, product from a company called Poopery, which is like you spray this spray in a toilet before you take shit, And like when I got paid to take a shit, I was like, yo, you there is literally nothing that you can't get paid for. So so right, So with that in mind, I'm like, all right. One thing I know is that there's a lot of budget flowing around for creators.

Another thing I know is that nothing lasts forever. So the third thing I know is I'm gonna try and make as much of this bread while it's around get to the back. This is a market reality that's specific to our generation. There are companies spending you know, incredible amounts of bread to create content, to build communities, to reach people. So with that being said, are you gonna

put in the effort to build the community? And if you do and you become top five, you will get hit up for opportunities to get paid to do what you love.

think we're living in some special times, bro. Like we're living in the same way Dizzy and Bird knew each other when they were playing jazz, in the same way Nas and Hove like knew each other coming up. Like, I really think entrepreneurship or whatever is the new zeitgeist. And I'm just, you know, honored to be part of this whole space.

wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed and listeners of this show, we'll get a seventy five dollars sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at indeed dot com slash p o d k A t z thirteen. Just go to indeed dot com slash p O d k A t z thirteen right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need