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All right, guys, welcome back. E y L.
South Beach Edition. And you can't tell by the backdrop because he's going to do the other side. But we in Miami right now, the rain is outment. It's still better weather than New York.
We'll any day. We'll take that for sure.
So, you know, we try to do interviews when we're on the road, and we know sometimes we have it planned, sometimes just impromptu. So this is an impromptu. We met a superstar in the tech world and somebody that we really thought we would add value to the podcast. So kwame Uncle just a brilliant star in the tech world.
He was actually just found out. He was a start the co founder of Black Angel Tech Fund, which was the first tech fund in America that was focused on African American entrepreneurs, right, and now he's the CEO of Black Star Fund, which is a tech fund that looks for predominantly is where black people aretists are.
The start is top twenty five black venture venture capitalists to watch from pitch book.
That's right, man.
Yeah, and Stanford, Stanford alumni. So we're gonna talk about that because that's an interesting within itself.
Thank you.
But so yeah, yeah, and you're currently your firm is currently invested in nine companies.
Right, nine companies that's right all over the country. Yeah, you know, I mean humbly met you.
We were at an event and we walked over like, hey, guys, I'm a huge fan. I'm like, Okay, this is great, and then as we spoke more, I'm like, wait, this guy is a superstar.
I appreciate it.
Before we jump into I want to say, you know, you got fans all over the world.
I was just in Ghana, and.
I just want to say, as a fan myself, I'm so proud of you all of the work you're doing and the impact that you're having on the consciousness, the business consciousness, the mindset of our people, not only in the United States but all over the world.
No, I appreciate that. Thank you, and shout out to Ghana too. We're gonna talk about Africa a little later too, because I know your roots are from Ghana, right, your African American, first generation African America, your family, your parents have roots in their families from Ghana.
That's right, that's right. Yeah, return, we just passed. Yeah, we just stopped there for that.
Yeah, talking about Yeah, yeah, so I definitely want to talk about Ghana. But yeah, so, first and foremost, thank you for joining us.
Appreciate it.
It's my pleasure, of my honor.
Yeah.
So we're gonna jump right into the tech world because we haven't really covered tech that much and a lot of people have been asking us. So the first I want to start at Stanford because this is something not to graze over.
People don't understand how powerful that school is.
I think like thirty something billionaires in the tech world to have graduated from Stanford. Guys a lot of even so I think one particular professor still is a professor at Stanford, and a lot of guys take his class because he's a VC guy too, and he gives money to different the Airbnb through that today somebody, somebody did that. They Yeah, but I say that to say a lot of times people don't fully understand how networking is and network So coming out of such a prestigious claw off.
As far as going to Stanford as an African American, I'm assuming you was in a minority. How has how was that experience and how has that experience helped you now that you're in the VC world yourself.
Yeah, that's a great, great question. So lots of pieces, lots of parts there. You got to keep in mind that the times are very different. You know, I'm not sixty or seventy years I'm forty seven, so early nineties. Yeah, but the times were different. I meaning the first time
I saw the Internet, I was a senior in college. Right, So when we talk about networking today and the ability to get connected to people through these incredible social networks that we have and it's easy, that was not our reality. That was not our world at the time. So it's
much harder to get connected to people. And I'm fully transparent with you, I did not understand the power and prestige each of the Stanford name when I graduated as a minority student there there was a lot of the turmoil, and so when we graduated, we weren't thinking about, well, how can we start donating back to Stanford?
It was expensive. I mean a lot of people get closer than that. Like a lot of times the schools have boosters right there, alumni and all their boosters. Like where we come from, it's like once we graduate schools, like, how.
Can we pay it back?
That's the loans, that's not to the school, that's right.
And you don't understand that, like and part of the problem, I think again, it's a mindset.
Right, I'm twenty two.
I don't understand at that point in my life that I'm part of the elite country club, because in my mind, even though I was there, even though I have the diploma, I was not a part of the country club. I just didn't realize.
It didn't feel like that.
It didn't feel like it. So I didn't realize it, and it didn't feel like it. Now later in my professional life, I'm maturing. I'm understanding the power of networks. I'm understanding what I call success by association. I'm starting to understand those.
Principles success by association. Can you explain, I interres I've never heard that before, but I understand what it means. But you explain that.
I think we've got plenty of arguments about this.
Okay, Yeah, So it doesn't mean that you will be successful simply because I'm Rashad's friend. But what it means is that I'm accelerating my ability to get to that place of success, and I'm establishing this intense credibility that I might not have on my own, but because I'm with you. So when I was a kid, my mom my mom even though she's half going to aint half British, so she had a British accidents, so she'd always go, well, you know, kwame buds of a feather flown.
Together everybody in London?
I mean, like what does that mean?
But then you know, you get older, you figure out I was good.
The cats that you roll with speak to who you.
Are because I like what you said, because it's like a lot of times, how you look and how your word things is extremely important. So peer pressure is something that we hear a lot growing up, and we always look at it from a negative connotation, like, but it's positive peer pressure. We spoke about that the podcast before and which you said as far as six by association. All the time growing up we had guilty by association.
That happens all the time. You're guilty by association. You mean, like the people that you hang out with, you're going to be guilty just by hanging out with them. I never heard anybody say success by association. So it's like you got to change the way that we actually use words where we look at things, and it's like if we could be guilty by association, we could be successful.
Bad language is important, it's triven.
The thing is a lot of times it's math, right, what I guarantee you, you and your audience I already understand principles around the people you hang that. There's a phrase that we hear all the time and money, Right, your net worth is the average of the five people you spend the most time with. Right now, most people have heard that and know that what I'm saying, I'm
just adding those two concepts together. Well, wait a second, Like you said, if we always talk about guilt by association, but we also know that your your net worth is the average of the five people you spend the most time with, then that means if you're around successful people, you're going to be successful by association. How they think about money, how they think about life, how they live life, the decisions that they make. It becomes a part of your process because you're around them.
Right I'll give you an example.
I'm reading a book right now called The One Thing by Gary Keller, and it's this whole we've already heard about time management and prioritizing.
He makes it really simple.
He say, look, you know, every day when you wake up, there's one thing that you need to do that will help you.
To be to get the success faster. Focus on that.
That's it.
Focus on that thing, one thing at a time. Yeah, right right, So he said we got to do lists. He said, you need to start writing down success lists. What are the successful steps? And sometimes, like in my world, it's as easy as making one phone call. If you call this one person who you know loves you, supports you,
is extremely successful and extremely well connected. But you're doing five other things under the pretense, well, I got these other things I gotta do, but do this one first, so that at the end of the day, even if you haven't finished your to do list, the fact that you made that one call and got an appointment to go see that person is going to start.
To open up opportunities.
Right.
So that's that's that's that's what you said that you were part of the country club but you didn't feel like it.
Yeah, what what was that like? Because this is.
Cali in the early nineties. How did you fight to fight that that barrier?
How did how did I start to feel like I was part of the country club?
Well both so, so like not feeling like it and being it and then actually becoming aware of it, and like how did that?
Yes?
Well, I mean the thing is is funny, man. It feels like ancient history. But like when we saw all the the barrage of those pain, painful videos of police brutality. Right a couple of years ago now Ferguson and the brother in Louisiana, and it was just like this, day after day after day when I was in school, is the first time we had a global viral video of police brutality.
R king, I'll never forget it. Actually happened on my birthday and like ninety one, that's right. I was like that crazy, I'll never forget it, And that's what I'm thinking at that time. This is the timate of California.
That's exactly right, right, So for us, it was this feeling of like, wait a second, this is the stuff that was supposed to be happening in the sixties and the seventies. I personally had experienced these issues with the police, being profiled, being in a very I had guns put in my head when I was in LA when I was in high school, I had gotten attacked by the police.
They thought I'd stolen stuff. So it really hit home and we and basically the feeling was if we're here at this most elite school where we have all this power, but we could be anywhere and be treated like a Rodney King. Something's gotta change, right, But we weren't connected to other campuses because again we didn't have the technology. So that was a lot of the thing of feeling like is this really for us? Do they let a couple of us in? Are we really a part of the thing?
So at what point do you get into tech then? Because I know so obviously tech wasn't your main focus going into college since it was just starting out things on nature. So at what point do you decide I want to be have a benure capital fund and invest money into tech entrepreneurs.
It's funny.
A friend of mine always says that the dots don't connect when you look in front of you. So when I look back, I actually got into tech when I was ten years old. I literally started to learn how to code when I was ten. I went to a computer coding camp when I was in fifth grade. This is like green screen, yeah you know what I mean.
And I was fascinated Star Wars. I was fascinated by technology, and I was fascinated by production and just you know, green screen and the whole creating of production through technology. So it was actually in me when I was when I was a younger person, and I believe it or not, the editing software popular editing software used today, Adobe Premiere. Right when I was in school, I was part of the beta testing team of Adobe Premiere at one point,
oh of college. Yeah, so the idea that you know, we can we can edit video using computers when I went into college, that didn't exist by the end I was testing that stuff. So technology had always been interesting to me. I was working with Prince is how I actually got into the tech world in a serious business way. And he was obviously an extraordinary artist, but as a businessman, he used to say, if you don't own your masters,
your masters own you. And when we see so many artists today like Jay Z and all these incredible artists who own their own stuff, they'll all say it was because they talk to Prince. And he was an evangelist for that for these younger artists. So he was in the tech, he was in the ownership. My father grew up in a village in Africa, in Ghana, no running water, no electricity, and came to the States, got scholarships, became a physician, and started buying land back home in Ghana
in the nineties. I know you guys do a lot of stuff on real estate in the nineties. What's going on now in twenty twenty. So my point is, as a child, when I was see my dad at work, it had his name, Vincent Aku md Inc on the door. I never heard my dad talk about a boss. He was the boss. My mother was the office manager and the business operations first.
So at dinner they were talking business at old times.
When I was ten, I learned how to balance the corporate checkbook on the computer and got paid. So I was on my parents' business payroll doing there at ten at ten years old. At this point, are they familiar with computers the way you know it? A lot of times kids know more about technology than parents. I'm so grateful they didn't know anything about computers except how important it was. Yeah, and they bought me my first computer when.
I was nine.
How Prince. People talk about Prince a lot, like you said, as far as being one of the greatest musicians of all time. But I'm a huge Nas fan. And I remember Nas was on another podcast s Frank Champs, and he was talking about when he first met Prince and years ago, like in ninety nine, and he asked Prince to do a record with him, and Prince told them. He was like, do you own your masters? And now I said, I own my masters, and he was like, when you own your masters? We could have a conversation
and he was like that really inspired. So it's like being around Prince. How was he as far as the business acumen the business side of things?
Extraordinary? Man.
I remember I had a conversation with him one time in his office, just the two of us. He said, look, let me tell you something. He said, I usually end the show playing purple rang, he said, within an hour. I don't care if I'm playing in front of two hundred people or if I got sold out at the stadium. I know how many T shirts were sold. I know how much merchandise were sold. I know how many Coca colas were bought.
We spoke about that when we were talking.
I think it's like a very first episode right when we talked about how innovative he was when he was packaging tickets, merchandise, all these things at the vendings, all packaged all together as one thing, and how now that's the standard. Twenty years later, people are just realizing, like what he set forth.
Exactly I mean you think about subscriptions now Netflix and everything else. He created the New Power Generation music club in the late nineties where you'd pay nine dollars a month or whatever it was, and then you get music and you get merch and everything else.
He created that.
It's crazy, so before streaming, before it was Apple for any of that.
So my point in terms of the tech stuff is that as a child, when you're raised with a parent who not only had a business, but more importantly came from nothing and created that, and then I got to work in it on the business side, and then as an adult, I'm working with Prince who's so adamant about ownership. So we were working with an organization that he and Van Jones found it called Yes Week Code, teaching African American kids in the hood how to code and become
technology people. I'm not working with Facebook, I'm working with Google. I'm working with the Obama White House Office of Science and Technology. And then we start to put two and two together.
We said, wait a second.
We went to school with the people who created Google, Yahoo, PayPal, LinkedIn, pallunteer, YouTube. We went to school with all these guys. They understood right like that let's not breeze over there. That's crazy. Literally, there's a cat that's in my class nineteen ninety four who's a co founder of WhatsApp.
Now owned by Facebook, which was.
Sold for nineteen billion dollars. Yeah right, Jerry Yred Yahoo was two years ahead of me in college in Stanford.
Yeah, thirty year reunions.
Yeah, oh, I'll see if we can get an invite to that.
Honorary brother Stanford alumni is crazy.
So all right.
So, so you build your relationships working with Prince and Van Jones, and you're on the tech side. So at what point do you to say, Okay, I want to start my own venture capital firm with other people. I think this is a good idea to do that.
Yeah.
So basically, we were having a Black alumni reunion and it was a summit. It was in twenty fifteen, and we were in Atlanta, and I was on a panel. The numbers had come out around how in Silicon Valley less than one percent of the tech employees at these massive, big tech companies is African American. The less than one
percent of venture capital going to African Americans. So I was on a panel and there was a conversation about that, and you know, you got some of the most successful black people in the country all sitting in that room, so there's a lot of anger. But then that turned to, well, what do we do. We need to put pressure on Google, we need to get them to hoid on black people.
I was like, hey, wait a second.
If we went to school with the people who created all this stuff, they had two very simple things. They had an idea and they had a little bit of Angel investment money two hundred three hundred five hundred thousand dollars.
And then they were up and running.
We need to be focusing on doing that for our black tech entrepreneurs.
So I didn't even say, hey, we need a fund.
I just kind of put that out there, and literally a group of us got together and by the next day it was like the light bulbs are going off.
And we said, hey, why.
Don't we pull money together and create a fund so that we can start to do these investments in these tech entrepreneurs. So that's literally, as literally how it started Atlanta in twenty fifteen.
Wow. We spoke about Angel Investing with John Henry a few months ago and he was talking about how it started.
Now he's a phenomenal, phenomenal young man.
How many how many people are with you when you start?
Yeah, So when we initially started with Black Angel Tech on us five of us and we literally, you know, we did We raised a couple million dollars. We did five deals in my fund now Blackstar Fund. I'm still in three of those deals.
OK.
So there's a.
Longevity there in terms of relationships with those founders. But yeah, it really and it wasn't people who had investing experience. That's one thing I think I love about your show is that this is not for people who already know all this stuff. It's for people who want to understand how it works. If you look at someone like Arlen Hamilton, Arln Hamilton does not come out of institutional investing. She doesn't have an economics study. Arlen Hamilton the founder of
Backstage Capital. So she African American woman. She has invested in over a hundred companies of diverse founders and women. She raised four million dollars four or five years ago. She was living out of her car. Well, she was in the music industry and promotions, and she got the Silicon Valley and again it's math. She's looking around, going there's billions of dollars here where the black people. There's a disconnect. We should do something about that. And she
got people to believe in her and her vision. Well, what if we were getting this money, same thing with we did with Black Angel Tech Fund into the folks. I love what she says. We talked about underrepresented minorities. She calls us underestimated. It's not underrepresented, right, it's underestimated. So my point is that people like Arlen Hamilton, she doesn't come out of investing Black Angel Tech Fund, None of the founders came out of investing. But we wanted
to respond to a need and an opportunity. It wasn't simply that the numbers were rescued so that black people were not getting the cash. But sat wait a second. From a business standpoint, that's an incredible opportunity. If Silicon Valley is not paying attention to our genius and we can get in early, we can support our genius, and we can profit from our genius being successful.
I think you gave a great analogy. You said you're like an A and R like in music just in tech. Right, you go out, you look for the talent, you say that's it.
Like, that's something that we're good at. Right.
We know good music when we hear it, and you know good ideas when you see them, right, Can you talk about that a little bit?
Yeah? You know.
It's like so when people say, you know, wikim, what's your secret? As an investor said, I'm like an old school an R person in the music industry. And for the young heads that that means artists and repertoire. That's when the cats who would go to the club, they go to the church, they go to the yeah, and they would hear the sound. Now, could a lot of us sing really well? Absolutely? Could a lot of us play? Absolutely?
But there's something called what the it factor? So when you think about back in the day with Motown, you got Diana Ross, Smokey Robinson, the Jackson Five, Stevie.
Wonder, Plantations.
Okay, they were all phenomenal singers, but they all had the it factor. There's something special about certain people that you just know that.
They were born to be leaders.
No, I say that all the time.
Is that we live in a world now like I have a son and everybody gets award to participate and everybody's like it's made just feel everybody's equal.
Now you're singing my song.
Now, everybody's not equal.
There's some people that's that's made to excel others, and that's okay because some people like Lebron James might not be the best piano player, right, but as far as basketball, he's he was built to excel. He still had to put the work in. But you could have worked just as hard as Lebron. You're not going to be Lebron. And it's the same thing with business people. It's like even on the podcast, like we've had people on the podcast before and be like, he's special or she's special.
Just has an it factor, right, and it's like you don't you can't really put your finger.
On it, but you know it.
The people know it. They resonate toward and they just they just have it.
And the person sitting here knows it too.
Like when they walk in and we talk as soon as like we have conversations after what they leave, it's like he was he's special, she's special.
You can feel it. That's the thing.
So then now let's look at it in the context of wait a second, if what we're all saying is true, how is it that you have less than one percent of the venture capital going to African Americans. Right, That's why I was saying that there's the opportunity. Greatest things I ever learned from one of my mentors, he said, a small mind focus is on the problem. Big mind focuses on the solution. A genius mind sees the opportunity that lies in the problem. Right, So that's how I functions. Wait, wait,
less than one percent. We know our genius, We know our talent when we see it. So you're telling me, I'll give you example. Mary spiel who's actually in town. She's got a virtual reality company and she's doing virtual reality content for the halftime show at the Super Bowl. So she has a company called seek Vr. Okay, so let me just give you the background. Here's an African
woman born New York, raised in Ghana. Dual degree, master's degree in from Georgia Tech and Electrical Engineering and Computer science. Seven year veteran of the United States Air Force, had a satellite communications. Oh and by the way, she invented the digital cinema system for Boeing, which bounces the movie signal off of satellite.
To the movie theater big time.
So you meet this woman who's got a VR company and you find out that she got a deal with Universe Soul Music and she beat out Oculus to get that deal. Does that sound you know what I mean? That's that's Dana Ross in the tech world exactly. Exactly in the tech world. That's who you invested, not just
the money, the time, the relationships, the business coaching. So we've got that level of talent and my belief, whether it's it's John Henry and Harlem Capital, Plexo Capital Precursor, Arlend with Backstage Capital, Blackstar Fund, that we are all going to be turning the industry on its head and in the next three to five years because we knew where the talent was that nobody else was paying attention to, and we invested early, and when as those companies grow
and have significant exits, everybody's going to come and look at us as geniuses. Look, weren't geniuses. We paid attention to the people you were not paying attention to. We invested in the people you were overlooking.
The same dudes. You gave nothing. I made something.
What I do?
That's it? So all right.
In the next in the next segment, we're going to go through the process as far as you know, he says, the part process and like your day to day and then some mindset opportunities that you that you coach people on as well. So yeah, we're gonna go into that next. All right, So you told us off camera that there's really three phases of your VC, and what you do with Black Star Fund is, you know, you raise money, you find find founders. You raise money, you find founders,
and you help them be successful. So the interesting thing for me is that you raise money before you find the founder the founders of the people that you're giving money to or you're investing money with. But you're raising money before you actually have the people in play, and then you're not only just giving them money, but you're
coaching them. Because I always look at it like it's like talent, right, we can't where I like to talk in sports and entertainment metaphors a lot because we understand that we as a culture, but world culture, we understand that, right. So it's like me, I used to play sports. So you see it's called the dominant rough Like you see somebody like they might be phenomenal player, basketball player, but they're not polished. They need work they need to coach,
they need a trainer, they need somebody. But they already have potential, they have raw potential, but they're gonna get demolage if they just go to the league. They have to, they have to. They gotta practice, right, they gotta they gotta refine. Same thing with business. Somebody could be the most talented entrepreneur and be the most elegant speaker and powerful networker and just have a presence, but that still might not make them ready for the big league.
Credit as you're saying that, the first thing that came out of mind were talking team was when Puff found it.
It was like this gritty dude off the corner becomes this guy who.
Knows where his besogy. He's an icon because of it. He found a dirt, he shined it up, and now he's an icon forever.
Yeah, I mean that happens. But there's a bunch of people that just you know, everybody needs some level of coaching. Whether it's like nah said, large professor told him not to pop his p's and the poof like you don't think about that, but it's like little stuff like that. It's like you you you actually have talent, but you
still need to be refined. So can you talk about that as far as the process, your process being the CEO of a VC fund and actually working with the entrepreneurs, not just like one hundred miles away, just do your own thing.
There's the money, go ahead.
Yeah, So let me say this first of all, there's a debate actually within our investment community where people even within African American investors around spending a lot of time with the entrepreneurs, and some people's philosophy is, but if we decided to make a deal with you, we're giving you the capital and you figure it out. We'll make some phone calls for you, but we're not here to
hold your hand through the process. The way that VC normally works, the philosophy is you invest in ten companies, seven of them will fail, two of them will do okay, and one of them will be a unicorn and make everybody all the money. So what they do is they wait to see who pulls ahead, and then the bottom seven they kind of abandon most of the time.
Could we afford to do that with African American tech founders? Absolutely not? Okay, absolutely that what are we talking about? Right? That just makes no sense. We can't do that ten percent to talk about ten companies exactly.
So when you talk about you know, we're looking for the krem de la creme de la creme, the top of the top of the top, and so a lot of times you know even how we got connected.
You had one of our companies on EUYL the Win Win company. It stands on.
Phenomenal guy, the true talented tech developer. True he was a two time All American at Duke with a full ride and made it to the NFL. The work ethic of an individual like that, you put that person in tech and business, you're dealing with it a force you can't even imagine, you see what I mean? So that, but everybody has reshards to your point, everybody has areas that they need help with. Some of it might be
to be polished and refined in business. But what I find that I think the most value that I bring, and this is something I think that could help all of your listeners, is that I say, the wider and deeper your relationships are, the easier your life is. And it translates to business, The wider and deeper your relationships are the easier your businesses. So when I invest in a company and I can leverage my relationships to help them grow. It makes a huge difference we invest in.
I'll give you an example. We invest in a company. One of my investors made one phone call. That company was able to get their product into the top grocery store in northern California.
Just from the resources.
That's you Okay, you see what I mean.
It wasn't heavy lifting, but because I had that relationship and I could leverage that relationship for my founder that I invested in, she was able to have a breakthrough in.
The California market. You see what I mean.
So it's not just the coaching, like we're helping you with mindset and we'll get into some of that hopefully too, but it's how can I act as almost your VP of business development? How can I get you in rooms and how can I connect you with people to help you to grow your business? And then sometimes you know, we do what I call CEO coaching. It's the behind closed door. Its tough conversations where we got to look
in the mirror, We got to do an assessment. Where are your blocks, how are you getting in your own way? What story are you telling yourself? That's not serving you or your company. You see what I mean?
So what is some CEO coaching that you do or that you know, because, like I said, a lot of times people you start a business, there's no roadmap to be successful, and coaching is extremely important, right, Like even Lebron reportedly spends a million dollars on his body where he has like massage therapists and trainers and things of that nature. And it's like business, this is important too, business podcast is that top level business people spend money
on coaches. That's right, because they want to improve, whether it's a variety of different things that they can improve and become more efficient, things of that nature. And so as far as like CEO coaching, what is that? What does that look like from your standpoint?
That's a great, great question. So there's not for me, there's not a cookie cutter formula. It's like you got to assess the person in front of you. Where are their strengths, where are their weaknesses? And you hear me use this word, where are their blocks? And a block is a mental idea that you have in your head that's preventing you from moving forward, and oftentimes it's subconscious. So how do you find out where those blocks are.
It's based on output. I'm looking at what the entrepreneur is doing, and I'm looking at the output, and in certain areas I'm not seeing good results.
And then I'm asking them, what is it that you want? I want this?
It's okay, Well, I'm looking at six months of activity. I'm not seeing a lot of the thing that you say that you want. So we have to go into why is that now? Some of it is because they haven't designed a plan to be able to get there well, but a lot of times there's a block, and it's almost like be honestly, it's almost like being a psychologist where you got to go in and start to figure out what is preventing you from doing what you need to do, and then you forty seven. So I've seen
a lot. I've had some great successes. I've had some painful failures.
That's exactly where I was going because I'm thinking, like, this sounds very well organized, very well planned. In order to coach, sometimes you had to have made some mistakes that you know that play doesn't work, that's the thing.
So what are some of the mistakes that you've made along the way. So I'll give an example. I see this a lot.
Actually, when you're building a team as a leader, there's a mistake that people make where they build a team based on people who look up to them and who want to follow them. And part of it is an ego thing. Right, So I'm the CEO and founder. You're working for me. Maybe you haven't had this level of success that I've had, and you just want to be down. I'm bringing you on same thing. So what these guys do a lot of times they'll build a team of people who are kind of not at their level and
look up to them and kind of idolize them. Huge mistake. I made that mistake. When you're in business, you want to build a team. And I tell peoples all the time, when you look on the table your management team, you should be in awe of the people on your team. You should literally be in awe of them. Get this, howe how is it possible that you're sitting at the table actually building this company. See, that's a mindset shift, and again sometimes it's ego. Sometimes people don't know better.
The problem with the first way is that that team is always looking for you to make all the decisions and they and they're not really solving problems. Okay, so you need people who are better than you to do the things that you need to do to build your business. Steve Jobs was a genius at that and you probably have seen that meme. He said, you know, we hire people who are smarter than us to tell us what to do, right, not the other way around.
Right.
So that's that's a problem that I see. If you want to get in the nitty gritty in terms of cash flow management. One of the folks, one of the one of the things I think are our folks have a challenge with is that when money comes in, they'll operate the business kind of how they operate it on their life, okay, without having a budget, without having strict controls of that money.
And so what I do with the entrepreneur is, look, we have to have the budget set with the X amount. I go over that with them.
On some of the companies, I'm on the board, so it's a little easier because I can do board approvals of the budget. But we make sure that the cash is accounted for every week. If something comes up and we need to make a shift, we need to have a board decision to make a shift in the expenditures. But we've got spreadsheets to see where everything is. I've seen so many companies that are raised five hundred thousand dollars a million dollars. Ten months later, money's gone and
the company is gone. Was it because their burn rate was so high? No, because they didn't have good financial systems in place, or they were saying, well, we don't need a CFO, we can't afford a CFO.
Well, you don't need to hire a CFO.
You need to have a fractional CFO, somebody that you can hire ten hours a month that will help to make sure all the financial.
Things are in place.
A fractional CFO.
Yeah, so this is a new thing to be helpful your listener. Yes, I've heard of it.
We call it fractional c suite. So we're starting off. We can't hire necessarily a chief marketing officer CMO, a chief financial officer CFO.
We don't have to.
There's now people who have positioned themselves to be fractional C level managers. I'll give you ten hours a month to be your chief marketing officer, right because you're just getting started, and so that's a great bit earners.
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Just for people to be in because they can work for five sixty seven companies and get paid for those companies doing fractional work in the week.
It's great.
It's great, right, and it's great for the company because you're getting high level professional services but you're not paying out the nose to be able to get that.
Yeah, it's like a consultant or MVP most viable product. When we say a lot on the podcast, it's like you have to work with the resources that's available to you. So you might not have one hundred and fifty thousand dollars to pay somebody full time, but you might have twenty thousand that you can break. And like you said, it's kind of a win win because it's like you're still getting some level of help and that person might
get twenty thousand from ten different people. Now that's two hundred thousand as opposed to just the one fifty that they were going to get. But they got to focus all of their time just on one company.
That's right, absolutely. And there's one other thing I want to say quickly about some of the coaching. It's life style. One of our companies you've invested in a great friend of mine, Don Dixon, and she has a company called Popcom and it's an incredible you know, AI interactive vending
machine software system that she's created. And you know, she always talks about, especially to younger entrepreneurs in the early twenties, this idea that you're grinding, you know, ninety one hundred hours a week and that somehow we romanticize that that's how you're supposed to be successful. That is a way to have an imbalanced life, and that is a way to burn out. And so I really work with my founders in terms of their life balance. Me personally, I
don't work on Sundays. I will not work on Sundays. I only started doing that in twenty nineteen, you see what I mean. So I don't want to see my founders like as an investor, I don't want to hear oh yeah, kwami.
Man. We grind it out.
Man.
We put a one hundred hour week. I had three nights with no sleep.
I don't want to hear that. I want to know. Like Mike Brown, I'll just throw his stuff out.
I'll talk. I'll call Mike, I say hey, can we do a meeting. It's like can my son in taekwondo? I don't say, well, can you step outside? Because I've taken my son when he was five to taekwondo? Right, And it's so important that as a founder, as an investor with the founder, I'm expecting you to work hard. I'm not expecting you to burn yourself out. I'm not expecting you to have your life out of balance because I care about you as a human being first and foremost.
But second, it's painfully inefficient. It's not sustainable. It's not sustainable. I need you to be here for the long haul, and I need you to bring.
To the best of your abilities, the best of you, and then also to play devil's advocate. I think there's different systems for different people because, like we talked about sports, there's the Belichick way right, Patriots way, but it's really Belichick's way and he's a much different coach than Phil Jackson. He's a much different coach than Andy Reid. Right with Belichick, it's no alternative. He's about t trying to get rid of Tom Brady. You don't care.
This is my way.
And people say they hate playing for the everybody that's played for the Patriots city that's not on the Patriots anymore. So they hated it, but they win. They win, right, It's like sometimes the win and it's it's hard for people to fully understand that too, because it's like it's it's it's kind of disy. I think businesses like sports where it's like sometimes you go to extra mind and every everybody, everybody's not balanced.
So let me let me expound on that, because, believe it or not, I agree with you one hundred percent, and I'm glad you said that because I need to qualify what I said because it goes to your point about it. It's not sustainable. I want to see it being seasons. Okay, there's a season to go in the overdrive and then there's a season to pull back, and
the Bible says it's time to place for everything. So what I'm not saying as a startup founder, you should comfortably just do for hours a week, clock out at five o'clock on Friday. I don't think about working all weekend. I've got yoga tonight. No, no, right, But this idea that like I'm not doing, I'm not a good founder of a startup if I'm not working ninety hours a week,
never take a break, always grind and always reading. That mindset. See, that's different than the athlete that is doing waking up at four in the morning every day. It's even that athlete still takes their family on vacation, you see what I mean? Even that athlete reads books instead of playing. Right. So there's grind season, there's recovery season, there's we're going to pull out all the stops, and then this we're
gonna reflect. Steve Jobs one of the most innovative entrepreneurs on the planet earth, Bill Gates, the minor standing I just start documenting on him.
He still does it.
They read for over an hour a day. Now, how in the world would you be Bill Gates with networth of thirty plus billion dollars, with all the global responsibilities he has, and he reads an hour day. Steve Jobs would walk for an hour a day, not take phone calls.
Now you have steve jobs, rest and soul. Why do you do that? He said?
Because that's where I can think, and that's where I come up with ideas.
You know what I mean?
You have to allocate this time. Oh, you definitely will burn out. That's like Shoy's coming from the Bisweld educational I see it all the time. Like I have teachers that are thirty and forty and they're like, I can't do this anymore.
Well, I'm like, well, what are you gonna do? I don't know.
I'm like, well, then you're gonna be doing this right. Like it's like most teachers think that they're gonna work till the retirement age fifty five fifty sevens for something, and they're like, all right, it's great, But I'm like, you're thirty now, you're twenty seven years away.
What are you gonna do if you burnt out now?
And it's like they haven't allocated the time or the resources to look at anything else.
That's so powerful.
Yeah, So as far as raising money, right, what's the process as far as that is concerned for you personally? Like you guys, now, do you tap into your network that you've built up over the years. There's alumni association, it's just random people that you come in contact with. Do you have email marketing?
Like?
How do you we calling this stand for the lum How do you raise money for you for these businesses that you're giving money to.
Yeah, so there's two sides of it.
Let's talk about on the fund side and then also talk about how I help some of the companies to raise money themselves right on the fun side. It goes back to what I said, the wider and deeper the relationships you have our the easier your life is easier your businesses. And remember I said success by association. So let's say I've got a good relationship with somebody's business guy. It knows me, trusts me, likes me, admires my work. Talk to him, he says, calling out, man, I.
Want to invest.
I don't just say hey, thank you so much for that. I really appreciate it, and then try to find other people. Then we sit down, who else in your network do you think would be interested in this?
Right?
So, now when we go and meet with that person, these are people he's done deals with, These are people she's done deals with. So they know them, they like them, they trust them, and a lot of times they've made money together. So now it's not just what, hey, here's this guy you don't know.
Do you want to do this?
It's hey, man, I just get in this deal. You gotta see this, you gotta meet this guy. I'm in and I want to bring you in with me. So so much of the deal is done before the meeting simply because again it's success by association. So that's really my strategy on the fundraise. And the cool thing about that too, is that you meet extraordinary people doing amazing things. Like I'm in town to help my two companies. Those events were Thursday and tomorrow. I planned my trip to
leave on Tuesday. Why because I knew I was going to be meeting people, and I got some business partners down here that I said, I'm coming for a week. Ta Kama will get you some meetings so we can help you to raise some money down here.
You see what I mean, And you never know what can happen, like I I was just saying earlier, like somebody who was asked me, like you lest, I'm not leaving leave Miami until I'm supposed to leave because already I know it's in New York.
I'm in New York all year.
I might just randomly walk outside and meet a random person that could change my life, like you know what I mean. And I think people don't fully understand that either. It's like it's important to travel and it's important and like we just met you two days ago. Who knows where this relationship can go. But a lot of times we just so can find average person only leaves for like two weeks a year, and their day to day
is exactly the same. And that's why it said, like even take a different route to work, because it's like you kind of just get programmed to wake up, walk your dog, take your kid to school, pick a kid up from school. And then like you're you're only interacting with ten people every day for your whole entire year.
How are you going to change your life? Of course, your life is going to be the same.
You're only talking to ten people, That's right, that's the allocation part. It was like most people who work in corporate worlds, they'll tell you you got two weeks of vacation for the year, so choose it wisely. You know what I'm saying. So it's like it's tough because it's like we're trying to figure out, this is how much time we have, and oh, I got to put it with my friends and my family because this is the only time I have. It's like if you get sick, good luck, you know what I mean.
It's it's true, but I think that this goes back to the shifting mindset. Right, if we're working a job and we only have two weeks allocated for vacation, that's kind of what the rules are. But the reality is we also got fifty two weekends, right, And if you'd make a decision every other month, I'm going somewhere. Does that mean that you got to spend two grand to
go out of the country or go to Mexico? Not necessarily, But if you live in New York, you got a friend in DC, you take that train down to DC and you stay with them, and it's exactly what you're saying. You're in you're at a different party, you're at someone else's house for dinner, and it's natural things.
So what is it that you do right?
And then having a consent where you go to school, and then once you start making those common links, hey, do you know so and so?
No, Man, I got to.
Introduce you to a friend of mine, right, that's we got to be in that mindset totally. How do you put yourself in places and spaces where you're meeting new people, having new conversations and then having new realities for you.
You know what's crazy too, is like we're so programmed, and it's like the people start looking at you crazy. Like when you start traveling a lot, you start doing things, they start looking at you crazy, like why are you traveling so much?
Yeah?
You know you need to travel slow down a little bit?
Why not?
Like there was literally people.
Will and then it's like even for you guys, not for me, but it's even relationships with people, like you know, you never know. It's like why are you traveling again? Or you're traveling again? Or and people it's like, yeah, why not travel?
Oh yeah, if I can, I'll get like, hey, you gotta slow down. You need to slow down, man, you're moving around too much. And I'm like, na, man, we're trying to change the world here, like what I'm doing in education, like I don't go to work tomorrow. In school, somebody eventually will be the new teacher there, but like nobody's doing, we're doing, so I gotta advocate. I gotta allocate time for this because this is super important.
You know, it's so it's so true, man.
But that goes back to what we talked about success by association, right, is that there's a painful reality.
And I learned this.
I'll be honest with you, man. I remember being in Baltimore. It was a tough time in my life and I was in I was in.
A motel and I had audio recording of one of Tony Robbins's programs and he said, write down.
The most.
Write down how you would describe success in business and health in relationships, and basically through one to five of where you are, and then you do the average of that. I was like at one point two of everything.
Wow.
And one of the things that he was talking about, and this isn't just you know, we say, like we said earlier, that your net worth is the average of five people that you spend most time with. But the deeper level of that concept is your net consciousness is the average of the five people you spend the most time with.
Okay, so what that means is.
One of my favorite rappers of Chuck D Public Enemy right from Public Enemy, and Chuck D said, if I can't change the people around me, I changed people around me. I'm in a situation where I can't change the people around me. I change the people around me. And when you hear things, no diside of your friends and people that love you. But when you hear things like you need to slow down, you're traveling too much, and you're not hearing the choruses telling you, Man, I'm so proud of you.
Man, do it.
Man.
Every time I see a picture of you somewhere else, I get excited for you. What's the next thing you're doing. You're doing great now, but what's the next level you're trying to go to. If you don't have that courus around you, it's time to shift the team. It's time to shift the team. I learned this early in my career.
Man. Remember one of my mentors, SA Kwami.
The team that gets you from A to B, it's not the same team that's gonna get you from B two C or C D or D two E. And you as a leader, you have to be prepared. Doesn't mean there's not some people gonna go all the way with you. But for the most part, the whole team's not coming.
Everybody might not gonna make it.
That everybody's not gonna make it. It's not gonna happen.
It's okay, right, we're only laughing because we say that all the time. Everybody's not come make so clearly, man, I say, I hit a nerve that is that is a that's a mantra that we.
Are kind of kind of live back. You gotta get some of the the teacher. Everybody ain't coming.
It'll be only it'll be only that's gonna be the shirt. It'll be only be only bus stops here, right, you're getting off. You get no transfers, no transfers.
So from your perspective, as far as mindset, is mindset more more important than the information that people receive. But does it go hand in hand to make the information useful for people.
Yeah, it's hard to quantify.
But just to make the point, I mean, in my life experience, I always say in life, love and business, I would say ninety is mindset and ten percent is the info. Because if you don't have the right mindset, then you don't know how to digest the info.
And we were kids.
Memember of parents used to said, man, it's in one air. I tell you the same thing over and over. It's in one ear and out the other. Okay, you're getting the info, you're not retaining it, you're not digesting it, you're not processing it, and most importantly, you're not using it for the transformation. So the mindset, you know great. Wayne Dyer said, when you change the way you see things, the things that you see change. That had a profound
impact on my life. So when you change whey you see things, the things that you see change.
That is mindset.
If I can think about this in a different way, then I can have a different result. There's another reason why you've got to have different people around you, because if you fall in the trap of commiserating, oh man, things are really tough right now, and you get a bunch of people that are supporting that song, you go deeper down that hole. You have some people say, man, stop complaining. Okay, that is that really helpful? You really need There's people who said, let me help you to
see this thing differently. What you think is the problem could be an incredible opportunity. And because your mindset changes, then you look at the thing differently, You deal with the thing differently, and then you get different results.
Yeah, I remember to end it on that.
No, I was years ago. I was working at this play this company, and this guy he was like one of the top people, big time producer, and he was in the bathroom and another person came in the bathroom and started complaining about like the manager and was saying like, hey, you know what I mean. Like he's like, don't stop. I can't process any negative information. Can't process it.
He stopped him, like aptitudes like Nope, not doing that.
It's not it's not gonna be beneficial and it's only going to be negative and it's gonna lower my frequency and I can't.
I can't do it.
And when it was so profound because he didn't give him apology here and he just and for him to be at that level and just let me know, like, you know, everything that you put in your brain is important, and it's a lot of times we put so much negativity in our brain without even fully understanding what we're doing, and then we're wondering while we're not getting the positive results.
That's that's right, that's right. Yeah.
I think I did a social media post recently, and I was saying, you know, in order to kind of have a new reality, you have to have a new song in your head. Right, what's the story you're telling yourself. What's the song that you're singing. I've literally lost friendships and relationships saying similar things where people I was hearing a lot of gossip. I can't hear that right now. Nope, a matter of fact, I can't ever hear it.
No, that's powerful.
So all right, in the last segment, we're gonna close it out. We're gonna go to Mother Africa home. Yeah, the return for sure, awesome. All right, So in the last segment, we're gonna close it out and we're gonna go into national And this is something that I really I really like enjoying having these conversations because I always said, like the vision of we can never limit ourselves, we can never limit ourselves as far as like geographically or
culturally or anything like the world is our oyster. I think it's important for people to understand that, and that's something that we really proud ourselves on. As far as your leisure, it's not just in America. We're in you know, we're blessed me and some of the top charts all over the world act and one continent specifically that we have reached the top charts in a lot of countries, it's Africa. So shout out to everybody in Africa, all countries,
all over all countries in Africa. We definitely have to come to Africa soon.
I'd love to be your host.
Yeah, looking forward to that. A lot of people have been hitting us up asking to come to Africa. And as I said, you're African American, you have roots in Ghana, That's where your family is from, and I know you go back there pretty regularly, right.
I do. Yeah, I'm there usually two or three times a year. It was it was a big event this this December.
It was the year return in Africa and Ghana specifically, and you were holding a text onment you were speaking there.
Right, I was, Yeah.
I'm the US ambassador for the on A Tech Summit. The co founders Einstein and Christine and Tim have created this incredible vision of tech summits all over the continent. And this was the second annual Ghana Tech Summit that happened just last month.
So can we talk about all right, can we talk about that as far as what's going on in Africa right now. And I think it's important to have these conversations because it's like for us being an African American and then from the continent people that's of African descent. On the continent, it's only a body of water that separates us, but a lot of times it seems like it's much further, but it's really not. We're not that separated. So it's important I want to bridge this gap for
people in America and for people in Africa. What's going on in Ghana specifically as far as the tech boom that's happening there and the entrepreneur and what did you see when you go out there and you know, being out there giving a ted talk and things of that nature.
Sure, so I'm so excited to have a chance to share and really making an open invitation. But piggyback and O's what you said is that twenty nineteen was the year of Return. And it was the President of Ghana who said, look, this is it's the four hundred year mark of the first African Africans who were brought to the United States or to North America as slaves. And so we're going to put our flag in the ground and say hey, we're marking this and we want you to come home.
That's what he said.
Come make cultural connection, Come learn how to invest, come to reconnect with the motherland.
Post that.
Now that we're going in twenty twenty, it's now called the Year of the Birthright, and we're taking it even further and saying the Decade of the Birthright. That means that you, as descendants of Mother Africa, your birthright is there waiting for you, so you got to come back and connect with it and build. What's happening in Ghana. First of all, it's the fastest growing economy on the continent of Africa. Okay, so on any given year it's
doing six to eight percent growth. Billions of dollars are coming from all over the world building infrastructure, building gorgeous buildings and hotels, our family businesses, building affordable housing units and neighborhoods.
You know, there's so much in any sector.
It could be gold, it could be technology, it could be textiles, it could be five G anything. It's all in the early stages for people to get in and to build. And it's a beautiful country. And now granted I'm biased because my family is from there, But what I found is a year of return because we had thousands of African Americans coming that the mines were blown. But more importantly, what I knew was going to happen,
and I watched it happen. There's a feeling when you get your feedback on that soil that you didn't know that you had the capacity to feel.
Yeah, yeah, I mean just thinking visually, like every time, especially when we were growing up, there was just one image of what people thought Africa was.
Right.
It was like donated dollar to a child, right, or it was like you were in a safari And like when we saw the images coming back, especially like on social media, and I think that's the beauty of it, it was just like, wait, why are we not there?
You know what I mean?
And I'm sure that when people got there, like you saw that firsthand, right.
I didn't. But it was literal, man.
I mean there was people I had so many friends that literally canceled their return flights to stay another week or indefinitely. I watched people who have full time jobs writing emails and proposals to their bosses with ideas of how they could be working in Africa for three months.
Out of the year.
I watched it happen, So in the feeling, I was there with my buddy too, Shaka Sangor, incredible author, New York Times bestseller One Man Show All over the World, amazing friend of mine, and we did a film with him. So he came back to for the first time and we shot a docu film of him being over there, and he said something really deep he said when he said, what the feeling I thought I was going to have when I got back is that I'm home.
He to to be honest with you, I didn't actually feel that. He said.
What I felt was that I belonged here, And I think that is the thing for African Americans when they go. It's the sense that you belong there. You don't have to move, but that feeling. The reality is most Black Americans have never felt that their whole life. Very true, so that I think that's the massive opportunities in every sector.
I'm obviously on the tech space, but whatever you're into, you will find a place, you will find the feeling of belonging, and you're going to want to be doing business and building this next civilization in Africa.
So what is the opportunities as far as for foreigners, Because I've heard Akon say, like, anybody that's doing business in America, you got to come to Africa and do business, and I guarantee like your business like boom like, you'll be way more successful doing anything, whether it's doing insurance, whether it's real estate, whether it's writing, whatever, doing in Africa.
He said that before.
So what are the opportunities and how welcoming is it for foreigners, specifically Americans that may be in business to come to Africa because obviously you don't know that the dynamics of it. You got to like partner up and meet people out there.
Yeah, so two parts of that I always tell people. There's there's the what, the why and the how, So the what is other opportunities The answer is absolutely yes, But then we get into the why. It is easy I want to reconnect with Africa and be part of creating the change that we want to see. The how
is about who do you know? Who do you know over there that can help you to be able to navigate through It's difficult to do business in Ghana and quite frankly on the continent when you don't know people because you don't have access and you don't know how to navigate through there.
But it's it's the same here. I mean, if I you know, I've never been in New York and I'm trying.
To do business and or stop, I know a whole lot of people well connected business, finance, city Hall. I'm gonna get some subst out quickly.
Yeah.
So it's really important to connect with people.
And Joe, when you mentioned about seeing the social media, if you have friends that you saw over there with social media, I guarantee you they were making relationships and friendships over there, you need to get in touch with them and say, hey, I'm interested in doing business.
Who do you know over there? Now?
You know, I'll do a little bit of promotion because I want people to be connected to me as well. But then we can help to get you connected to folks that can help you based on the things that you're interested in.
Oh, your company does that?
So I work with folks. I've got partners over there. Ok.
Yeah, so we you know, we've got a consulting company too, so we help people that are interested in doing business in Africa, specifically in Ghana.
You bridged that gain absolutely what's the name of the company.
Yeah, so my partner with there is black Band. Black Band Terry Opong, He's the CEO and founder of black Band.
What are some industries that they definitely need like right away? That's the opportunities for entrepreneurs.
Oh, well, you'll be happy. I think the real estate and obviously our family is in the real estate business. But the real estate opportunities in Ghana are extraordinary. It's just extraordinary. You got to need right now for a million people for affordable housing.
That's a Cilian Presidentirey.
Yeah, yeah, development, real estate development.
Real estate development is huge. But I mean, honest with you, the thing is so wide that it's what are you what are you passionate about? People interested in fashion, the textile industry, fashion explosive. The other area we need to
really start thinking about is the cocoa industry. Coco Ghana producers three percent of the global supply excuse me, seventy percent of the global supply of coco, but we're only participating in three percent of the supply chain benefit of that seventy seventy percent, and between Ghana and Ivory Coast, it's ninety percent of the entire planet's coco comes from those two places, but we're participating in a minuscule part of the profit because we're not processing.
It there correctly.
We're just we're just growing the coco, sending it to out there's no infrastructure to properly.
It's like the diamonds in South Africa, and then they send it to Israel to actually get cut and all of that.
That's that's exactly like when we spoke about spoke about Elco Dangote when he was when he changed his country's export to import policy, right, like they were putting out so much oil. He built the infrastructures so now they're able to export it to countries and make money. It completely changes the income for the entire country.
Yeah, Nigeria is one of the they have one of the largest oil reserves in the world, but they don't produce a lot of oil. Now they're starting to change that, but because the refineries just wasn't enough to cove and they couldn't actually produce it well, efficiently, well and efficiently.
That's exactly right. So yeah, so look, whether it's oil, whether.
It's solar, agriculture, real estate tech, which is my world, our developers over there are coders over there. There's so many incredible opportunities. So when you think about the United States, the people really made money back in the day build the railroads and everything else. Those families and the oil families. We can be those families in Ghana right now in twenty twenty.
And media opportunities are there, Media opportunities and god, oh.
Absolutely, media infrastructures.
And I think that's one of the things that trips people out, man, when they get the gun and they flip on the television and everything. It's like everything here, your sports center, your news, But it's us. It's hosting, that's producing, that's running those stations and those networks.
I think it's exciting for content creators.
No, I think creators and I see you firsthand as far as we're earn your leisures because like I see, it's a need for what we do in different parts of the world, Like people can't wait for us to come to Toronto, Canada. Same thing with London, England, Africa. And it's like we're highlighting entrepreneurs and we're explaining different business ventures in a way that people can understand it. And it's just like music, right, like you might be a huge jay Z fan, but you're from London and
he's from Brooklyn. It's just a little different as far as the dialect, the things that he's rapping about is not the same. But you genuinely you got to love for the music and I feel like that the podcast is the same thing like people. It might not be specific as far as the stuff that we're talking about. A lot of this stuff is just is geared towards America. We're working on getting more international content, but they just
sty're encouraged by us by our delivery. And so our goal with Earn Lisia is is to take this all over the world and to have Summits platforms, podcast shows in different countries and highlight entrepreneurs. Don't We're not going to do the chrystical Columbus thing and just come with people from America and shove all way of thinking on
other countries. We want to actually invite people that's doing their thing in their countries and break it down because a lot of times people business owners, they don't have a platform and the people don't have a way to get the information from those people. So it's a disconnecting Yeah.
There's people doing amazing things. Like you said, the woman you spoke about earlier, who is the Oprah Winfrey in the text space that was unfamiliar to us. You know what I'm saying, there's no platform for her to be. It's not exploited, but displayed her greatness.
You know what I mean.
I think it's so important at what we're doing here, and to do it internationally will be even more incredible.
Well, I tell you, I was really moved by what you both just said, and I'm going to make a commitment to you. One of the reasons why a lot of people want to be on your show is because you give them a platform and you give them exposure. I want to be able to make a commitment to you all and to help on the international scene. I've got great friends and great relationships with entrepreneurs in Toronto, in London, and in Ghana. Okay, so I'm going to
help you breaking news alert, breaking news. I'm going to help you to put those events together in Toronto, in London, but in Ghana.
I'm gonna host you guys.
Oh we'll tell you haven't oh man, I'm hosting you and our family are gonna host you and bring you all out so you can experience the country the way it was supposed to be experienced.
And will get you connected. And then but your job is to just do what you do.
That's it. We're going to do it big en after.
A big.
World. Why for real?
Oh Man Kwalme.
I appreciate you, and like I said, this is all it's all about relationships, and it's like we just met.
You were actually, you know.
An advocate for the podcast before we met you, which is really dope because you're on the whole different coast and it's all you know, a couple of degrees of separation.
You know.
We interviewed Mike Brown, which you're invested in his company, and we met you at his event and you spoke and kicked it off and then shout out to Mike Brown also because even when you spoke, we still have tie the dots on that and he's like, yo, yeah, should have called me on the podcast. I'm like, all right, let's do it, and so yeah, shout out to Mike for actually quarterback.
And on top of that, one of your students tell us really quickly, I have a.
Couple of mentees.
I'm on the board of a university called North Central University in Minneapolis, and a couple of students, young couple. They're my mentees. So I was in town having dinner with them, and they had invested in Mike's company. So I'm having dinner with.
Them and I said, oh, man, I'm so excited. You guys invested in.
Win Win and which which one of my social media posts influenced you to make a decision? And they call me uncle Kwame, Uncle Kame, what do you mean? I was like, didn't you invest because of me working with them?
You work with him?
I was like, how did you find out about when Win? And he Michael. It's a couple of Michael and Grace. They just got engaged. Michael brings out his phone and shows me the screenshot that a friend of his had sent him of the EYL episode, and all she said was you need to invest in this right now.
That's crazy.
We watched the episode. We love those guys, and we invested. So I'm very grateful to.
You for what you told us the story. I was just like, WHOA, yeah, No, your reach is incredible.
That's probably I was saying with Toronto man literally had a friend of mine was talking to and to recommend podcasts.
And she's like, the number one was Eyl.
She from Toronto. Shout out in Toronto, the first one. So now a shout to Toronto.
Man, thank you.
But yeah, so how can people contact your information on you on your your business, different business ventures and uh yeah, any information that you want to give the public?
Sure, man, very very easy. First thing on the business side, get connected with me on LinkedIn. So it's just quime k w A m E. Last name a n k u ku. You definitely connect with me on LinkedIn. That's the best platform for business networking in my opinion. Instagram, you know, we'll post this, my link will be there. And then the website is Blackstar that fund? Black Star that fund.
And what about the what's the company that you connect people with in Africa?
Yeah, black band dot co. Black black Band dot Co.
Terry Apong phenomenal, phenomenal business leader and entrepreneur over there on the ground making stuff happen.
I appreciate that, Troy shout out to everybody on Patreon dot com.
Y'all know that it is our proud to pay program.
It has grown over the months.
Man.
We are so happy that everybody's come along the ride with us. As you know, we have switched it up a little bit giving you more content, so be on the lookout for that. And I want to just give a quick shout out to Havana. Uh we got Jessica and Justin are new members. Man, y'all are Tier four Tier five members, so you obviously know you have access to Early Legion University. That is our online school where we have webinars three times a week, real estate on Monday.
We have a guest webinar every Wednesday, and shouty myself. We always do a business related one on Thursdays. And ey Spno is out there, so be on the lookout and thank you for supporting. Everybody's supporting the merchan only leisure dot com new merch is on the way all our earning. Be sure to cop the new merge. It's specifically made for you by us, so thank you.
Please report.
Yeah, everybody asks you about the track suit, so episode comes out. Hopefully the tracksuit will be on the website EYL University. Yes, make sure you stay in tune with that. And the book tip of this week recommended by our guests. The one thing, the one thing correct that's it. Yes, so yes, Thank you guys for rocking with us. We'll see you next week.
Peace, Peace, Peace.
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