Are rappers good black business owners?

this is the office that pays the bills i need you to know hey what's good what's good hello and how are you doing it is the melonated air hour so for the next hour we're going to be filling your airways with nothing but melanin conversation from these muted beautiful melanomated women right here on the screen that you see with me my beautiful co-host of the melanie air hour i am lennae javette that's also my handle you can catch me on and all the queens and all the ladies on social media by going through our handles uh you guys find teddy at the real teddy talk she's tuning in from egypt are you back home i am back home yeah yeah yeah you back in egypt back in my settings we have madam president chiming in from atlanta hey madam president how are you hi and today hey b1 atlanta terry i see you what's up uh this is millionaire we do this every tuesday and thursday around two o'clock ish eastern today we're talking about entrepreneurship from the perspective of celebrities a lot of celebrities are going into business but now they want to teach you how to have a business but did they really start their business that's what we want to know like right as a celebrity you have a team you have fame you have no variety and then you decide to start a business and you're like look at me i'm a business owner i can tell you what to do but did you did you put in the time to energy the effort and the work that's what we want to talk about uh teddy actually brought this conversation to us so i'm gonna let her take the main stage and take us into this conversation hey y'all well i you know i've been thinking i really try to put time into these non-native air topics and think about what the people want to hear and i see i just look around after the super bowl fame and all that a lot of people are doing big things i saw wendy williams losing her show sherry shepard taking over the show a lot of people are going into various businesses snoop dogg bought death row i mean all these things are happening and i see us the black community rooting hard for a lot of people which i support 100 but my question was should we be following their lead when it comes to business entrepreneurship because when someone starts at a higher level than you with a lot more fandom and fame than you they may not be your blueprint to success so i asked my ladies should we be listening to them when it comes to business advice starting companies their white label products that most of the consumers don't know is white label they think they have been in the kitchen mixing their butters and fragrances getting their hair products together and they have it most of the time so who should we as a black community be using as our example when we want to become entrepreneurs should we look at the celebrities root form hard support them and say i'm a model my business after that or should he be looking at the home girl who started her business in her real kitchen with her real herbs and spices that's the problem the issue is people have more respect for the celebrity who has fame right so they're not thinking through or looking through the fact that the homegirl next door is the grassroots she's bumping her head she's bootstrapping she's trying to figure out how to make a dollar at a 15 cent as opposed to so she's getting business knowledge as opposed to the celebrity who to your point already has fame they already have an audience so when they produce something and they sell something people are already there ready willing to give their money not even knowing if it's a good product not even not knowing it's good not even knowing if it's going to work because like you said a lot of times those products are white label um sometimes you know people do go through and uh show you their process of producing but a lot of times i write label i think i just saw that lala has a new product out now like all the celebrities are going into entrepreneurship what are the entrepreneurs gonna do what are we gonna do if everybody if everybody if michelle obama has a podcast well damn what chance do i have and you know think about it like if people have one hour a day to consume um that type of stuff like podcasts digital books whatever it is if if i have a podcast and i have my hour show melania air and michelle obama has her podcast and she has her hours show then that kind of steals it because it's like well i want to hear what she has to say and i'm not saying shouldn't have been good to say but i think i have something good to say too and my experiences might better align with your experiences because we both are real people and now that she's not real but i'm just saying she doesn't have that celebrity so we are you know you know what you actually made a good point hold on and my master i hope i said your name right masilo masolo everybody has something to teach it doesn't matter who you are now i kind of think that michelle and obama are just a teeny tiny bit different only well nope nope nope nope nope because what i was about to say i just literally was going to contradict myself i was about to contradict myself because i was going to say yeah but they started out as regular people but celebrities did too celebrities started out as regular people who worked hard to get their fame and then they leveraged that fame to do whatever it is that they're doing i think um oh sorry luna go ahead go ahead no i'm just i'm i'm listening and i'm in agreement because i think you know we struggle a lot of times as entrepreneurs with real business you know a lot of times when we start talking about entrepreneurship we start talking about the proper way to have your tax business the proper way to are you a c-corp or are you a llc you know when to go incorporated those are things that people are still having trouble with right and so i had a few conversations because i have a small business but i was talking to my therapist and she was just saying you know small businesses sometimes have you know 25 employee well about 25 employees and can average you know seven eight million dollars a year you have some people that are just small and you have some people that are truly just just infant businesses you know where you are just micro you are literally at the very beginning of something and when you think about being in a just anything um you want to start in the beginning of something you know that people don't have real business in the context of you know a lot of times when you have an idea you don't even know the first step with a trademark or a copyright you don't even know how to truly do it and not to mention you don't even have the full funds to do it in the magnitude in which they know how these are people who can come up with a concept or come up with something and have access to all the resources to make that thing come to life rihanna has a beautiful um makeup um brand and lingerie but rihanna is not a chemist she does not spend time you know trying to figure out the proper palette of a color but for human skin she don't do that with her time he might she might do it on a level right but she's not a chemist just like you said she's not got the the vials and stuff and doing it i remember candy burris was talking about her first restaurant and how she had some contractor that was working on the restaurant and they end up like not stealing money from but they didn't fulfill their bargain and she lost like 50 grand or something so that was a lesson to learn she is a business owner you know she's she's celebrity but she learned a hard lesson but how many of us have fifty thousand dollars to lose to a bad contractor hello so we're following her lead and she's skipping all the steps you know because she has an accountant already and she has a lawyer and she has this and she can go after him for that money and all that you don't have that so when you're taking their lead and you run into the same bumps they run into you're not going to have the same outcome because you don't have the resources absolutely yeah i think that says a lot but especially as black entrepreneurs we're looking to people who have money to start a business right and so we think oh i have to go and get something done it's going to cost this much money and if you don't have that money then you'll skip over that step and then you end up being in a bad position or you don't end up having all the knowledge that you need when really you know we're looking at other entrepreneurs that are in the business people that have bootstrap people that have been have had what they call it ten toes down um in business and entrepreneurship who started out where you started out who understand bootstrapping who had to learn from the uh with the hard knock life of youtube videos and you the university of youtube like that is really who we should be following that's really who we should be learning from because those individuals are just a couple steps ahead of you one of my mentor i used to struggle with this my mentor was like because people used to always say um i want to be just like you and i would be like aim higher like i used to always say that and he was like stop saying that and i was like no i don't want them to just try to get wrong out like aim higher and he was like you don't realize that some people are just trying to get to where you are that's it they're trying to get to where you and then like you do have to go higher than that right so then so here i pose this question is celebrity a distraction is it um i said escapism when we were talking before the show a lot of people use it's like i'm rooting for everybody i remember everybody black i think issa ray said that um which is 100 but i think a lot of times when we see black celebrities be successful we're rooting so hard for them that maybe we feel like we don't have to do it because they've done it right they opened the restaurant they got the trap house museum they got the whatever it is so we're rooting for them because they we see the black faces up there doing the thing jay-z is a big one jay-z owns the super bowl or uh nfl and baseball and and we don't know the details of them deals we don't know that he owns a percent of a percent of a percent none of that right but we're rooting for them and then maybe we won't strive to own our own nfl team because he already got it you know so that's what i meant by escapism we're using them vicariously living through them so that we don't have to fulfill our own dreams you know that's a great point we do see a lot of times that we're we'll have people sit on this on the sidelines rooting for other people to be successful instead of putting that time and energy into ourselves to root for us to be successful or to invest in us to be successful or to follow our dream or to do whatever it is that we want to do hey sarah that's very true hey so in the audience how many of you guys are entrepreneurs or business owners or want to be entrepreneurs or business owners uh what are you struggling with in your business i know when i first got man so now nine years of the game next year is my 10-year anniversary i'm so excited um huh i said congratulations thank you i'm gonna um i'm doing a retreat next year um an entrepreneur's retreat i'm gonna take ten women we're gonna go to anguilla and i got these dope mountains and i'm gonna do this dope retreat like i'm so excited um it's gonna be fresh like we started looking already hey sarah so sarah says i am a life coach what's up sarah um what were some things you struggle with in your business early on sarah did you struggle with currently um and one of the reasons why we're having this conversation not not the only reason but one of the reasons um teddy is an exit strategist i am a business strategist and profit potential coach and madam president has her own business um but we do this one because black folks i personally believe that black people's economic empowerment is going to come through entrepreneurship like that is my belief right um but i also believe that we lack the proper knowledge to operate a business and that's a lot of that is because we just it's not what was taught when we were growing up it's not what we suggested around people having business conversations we didn't have um entrepreneurs and business professionals to model and so as we become entrepreneurs we have to learn it as we're doing it we have to bump our heads we're we're we're cheating and we're backsliding um just to be able to have a business right and so i don't often blame black entrepreneurs because we just didn't know you don't know what you don't know right but when you get into this space at this point at now in my life i've dedicated my time energy and efforts to helping black owned businesses upscale and get to the level where they need to be because again i believe that's where economic empowerment is going to come from hey melissa and so um in about two weeks i'm putting together the black powder business conference and i'm going to show you guys the page and get you guys some code and school stuff um to talk about it give me one second to show you boom okay boom um and so it's the black power business conference look at all my beautiful friends 20 black women that are coming together to talk about business so we're going to talk about funding your business um the conversations that day will be around business credit which i did not learn about until i was in business for like six or seven years and i wish i would have known it early on because that would have helped me put my business together uh we're gonna talk about crowd funding which i did do i raised ten thousand dollars in crowd funding and it's something that um black business owners are overlooking mostly because we don't know how to do it but crowdfunding helped me to jump start my business by raising ten thousand dollars and they're just going to talk about what it looks like to bootstrap and what that budgeting looks like um we're going to talk about protecting your financial assets from a legal structure trademarking tax implications business banking things that we don't talk about in the entrepreneurial space as black people we're going to talk about mastering the art of sales what does that look like how to properly price yourself how to pitch your business how to close sales what the follow-up process looks like we're going to talk about building an unforgettable brand and marketing strategies um i'm going to do a keynote on white labeling products and securing the back because if a celebrity can do it guess what you can do it too you can do it too do it too we're going to talk about building a profitable team um creating a lifestyle changing side hustles because not everybody already has a business some people want to get their business started that's going to be hosted by melanie air we're going to talk about increasing your cash flow with multiple income streams how to start a speaking business how to start a store how to become an author um how to make products for uh how to make money from an online course and then we're going to have another keynote by vicki that she's going to do the spirit of our work um the reason why i'm sharing this and telling you guys this right now is because i got a 72 hour sale um when you can get 50 off so if you go to the site you can save some money but what's most important is that you're going to be learning from real entrepreneurs who have businesses who are in business who do this business thing every day and that is super important when you're talking about who you're going to learn from absolutely i'm going to throw this banner up for the rest of our conversation just so that you guys can see it while we keep having our our discussion right now um i'm going to go to the comments pam i said one comment someone said about getting clienteles hard for them not that maybe a area they struggle sarah cox she's getting clients because her forum is new and then i saw someone else saying they wanted to approach um importing they want to import goods from africa like tea and coffee they're wondering how do they approach buyers and going into coffee shops et cetera and that is why something like this conference is great and this is what something that um you know snoop dogg can't tell you about how you can approach people and the intimidation factor and all that right because you need real people you need real people that are trying to build their business and have done this without the celebrity and you know i think it's great to benchmark for celebrities like i love to get there but you you have to understand they're in a whole different realm how we don't even know how they really got there right i mean of course they work hard in the beginning but snoop still on stage y'all like he'd been a weed head for decades he he went through some things okay so i don't know how he'll go here but he's still here but i'm not gonna model my my life nor my business after that because i don't know what that is right i'm rooting for him you go but i'm but i'm not going to model after him i'm going to look at my girl in a japan say how you do now tell me about this white labeling again how do i do that you know because you you want people who've done it so for to your point if you were to go and talk to snoop about his business he doesn't do he shows up he has a team around him that negotiates the contracts that finds the the opportunities and then come and present it to him and he says yes or no he didn't have to go out into margaret uh below he didn't have to go out and think about automation he didn't have to go after the marketing strategy he didn't have to go out and come up with his pricing somebody does that as a team of people they do that so when we look at them and say hey how did now what he did do is grind make a name for himself he was consistent and persistent and he did strive for a goal so we wanted to talk about how did you become successful that's a different conversation but how do you operate a business how do you stay consistent how do you make it past the seventh year it's because 65 of businesses not black or white 65 of businesses fell in the first seven years that's true and snoop had dr dre let's not i mean i saw the movie right so he hadn't ran up against dr dre i don't know if snoop would have made it i don't know if he would have been who he is if you didn't have that mastermind behind them keys and help you spit them bars so it's all about the team too and who you surround yourself with right so rooting for people on social media may not be as good as getting up on the meetups and actually meeting with these people and talking and having conversations and networking and working together absolutely okay i'm sorry go ahead uh madam president i'm just going to say that a lot of times in our community you find a lot of people who want to be the rapper but you don't find a lot of people who want to be the engineer and there was this group i remember around a few years ago during the grammys period where this group they were like they played instruments they did all this sound and they were like beating beyonce and everybody nobody knew who they were well they were like these high-end engineers who also had made this album that was very popular globally and it probably didn't hit a lot of black folks but it just kind of goes to show you i heard a engineer say once you know a engineer a person like jay-z you know he's popular off the album but there's a lot of rappers who never reach his level of popularity but then you have engineers that work every time jay-z makes an album every time another artist makes an album and they have a lifetime of you know a good living for the for 40 and 50 years of their life oftentimes we remove that kind of um skill set right that is required when it comes to talent i think in basketball coaches say all the time i will take the person who who shows up every single time that may not have the exact same talent as a superstar but a person who shows up a person who's listening would go much further than a superstar who just has talent i know malleable somebody who wants to show up and grow yeah i don't know how true this is but to your point to reinforce your point i was watching something on social media i can't remember what it was um but they were saying to your point about engineers and writers and how important it is to have the people that do the work right people who do the work i'm not saying they're more important than celebrities but how important they are they were talking about lauren hill and they were like how many albums does lauren hill have they're like one and they were like because she lost her writers and she lost her engineering team so she hasn't been able to come back and put that magic together to put out another album however when you have the right team you can make money off of one album for the rest of your life that chick has not put out a new album she's still touring on that album because of the right people who she had the first time around they were able to set her up to make money forever ever that's it but you know i that's a good story but i that was the craziest time of her life because those people sued her and it was the most difficult like time basically she said it was the most difficult time that she had in music and it really changed the trajectory of how she does music moving forward she didn't she doesn't even have the same i don't know it they it was theirs and she didn't pay them for it so because she didn't pay them for it properly royalty-wise back to doing business right um she can't use any of those beats any of those sounds she can still use the me the the the songs she's still singing the song but for a bit to lauren hill concert is not the beat it's not the music that you recognize like you're not gonna be in there explaining to this it's some different music or sound but her lyrics are still there so again you gotta do your business right you gotta do that it's not pretty you know business isn't pretty it's something you just gotta do like having an accountant having a lawyer having like a mentor those are not the sexy sides those people are like wait hold on what you doing and why'd you do it that way and maybe you should think about this but you need that to be successful you can't just be running with scissors like you need somebody to grab you say hold on a second look at it this way so that you can get it done right you can do the right thing and go the right way so sarah you said uh you're freelancing right now um getting claimed tail you're looking to get clientele right now because your form is new um okay cool you said my business is about health and wellness but black people really don't understand ooh so that's not a true statement black people do understand it one of the things i'm one of the biggest biggest biggest biggest issues that we have in the black community when it comes to entrepreneurship is understanding our target market and your statement when you say that black people don't understand health and wellness it's not true i just by reading that i'm going to say you might not know your target market because it can't be all black people so if you're if your product is health and wellness then your niche market are going to be black people who understand health and wellness and it's very important to them so you have to know your target market dollars in astwan egypt and it wasn't on things it wasn't on trinkets it wasn't on earrings and things it was on herbs and spices baby it was all about them herbs and them spices i have high blood pressure had it in my mid-20s it's very important me to handle it naturally so i'm all about them herbs and spices so i know it and there's a lot of people like us who really want to be healthy from the inside out and not you know doing something very superficial so that niche market will get you and you're not selling to the world you're selling to that one your persona lynnae has her persona what's her name kendra kendra she has cancer okay you know kendra she know how many kids she got what her age is what her aspirations are that is her target market that person and every time she talks every time she's running her business pitch she's talking to kendra only only kendra the woman version is kendra the male version is kin but we boozy so we spell it k-i-n so i'm going to show you guys this i'm going to go deeper but we are going to go deeper in with this once we in the conversation we're going to talk about target market but i will show you guys just a small snippet just a little bit okay so this is my her name is kendra boom and then this is these this is her i know how old she is what she does what her issues are how to talk to her because i've done a deep dive into understanding my target market my target audience um i highly advise that you do that sarah your other comment you said how old are you i don't want to be a mogul so first i'm how old am i look at black don't crack um 45 and you don't have to be a mogul i will tell you that i had to completely change my business brand and modeling because i had to realize that everybody doesn't want to be a mogul um i used to go by i still go by the mogul but i don't push that on other people so my previous brand was motivation and i wanted to teach everybody how to be a mobile and i realized like you said everybody doesn't want to be a mogul some folks just want to start a business some folks just want to go from one to two some people just want to go from two to three some people just want to be the first person in their generation to buy a house or to send their children to school and so i literally closed down my business that pushed being a mogul and changed my i closed down two businesses merged them into one business which is now upscale noir because at this point i realized that black people just want to upscale we just want to get to the next level everybody don't want to be a mogul i don't want to go from one to ten lenny i'm just trying to get the two can you write something and so i literally did away with both of my two two prior businesses and created upscale an award to really just to really just help black people scale to the level that they want to be on that's it that and that's why i'd like to say everybody's going to be a mogul and so last um episode we were talking with faye and she made the comment about generation what really goes into building generational wealth and it really it's like it's daunting right just like business ownership you have to set your goals and they have to be realistic i'm not saying you can't shoot for the moon but you need to have like graduated goals so you need to say this year i want to make you just start liking me my goal was to make 25 000 in sales my very first year starting on youtube and all this stuff hit the mark right so next year i can say i want to make a hundred thousand in sales and next year i can say three or five hundred thousand whatever it is but i'm not saying i want to be a millionaire today i want to be a millionaire tomorrow because it's not realistic and it's going to put too much pressure on you to do it and if you don't hit the mark you might quit because you put too much pressure on yourself you're probably stressed out you've got life going on and you just can't handle that so you have to have graduated realistic goals that match are in line with your business model whatever that may be absolutely wait i'm about to ask you a question go ahead go ahead lenny no no no i'm about to ask you a question go ahead oh i was just going to say that oftentimes we like yeah i want to make a million dollars and trust me i'm with you on that because i was going into you know all of my business ideas and my thoughts like yeah i want to make a million dollars and it was like you know you just start with making five grand right hello and when she's kind of start making that five great consistently you're not like okay go ahead so you can get 15 000 out of this 25 000. and then you figure out how to make a million dollars and a lot of times you know one of the things we do in business too is we're not communicating with enough people who are smarter than us and have stronger skill sets than where we lack so if i'm not a tech if i'm not a tech guru and i know that i need some tech experience to get some things completed i need to connect with people that can do that there's no way that i'm going to have a successful business completely removing this part out of removing this part out of it when i need it you know so i think we have to keep that in mind we have some people that are stronger communicators if you got good ideas and you do not have the vocal ability to articulate you need to get your good friend that talk well helping you articulate these concepts you know because it can happen i feel like one of the things about our community is and i've always felt like this it's too many of us was trying to get to the same place alone i'd never forget i was reading and i i've even had this conversation with my own peers here we go we went to college and you know we all graduated trying to figure out what to do next with our life you know none of us are you know ex you know pouring out of ingenious to the point where you know we don't have to work obviously so then it's like when you ask them hey let's come together any thoughts ideas and concepts that you have that maybe i have the skill set that can help you take what you want from your life out of the next level people act laws they act slow they like you know they don't know what exactly to do but it really made me think because i used to follow i used to be heavy and i want to go into marketing and i didn't understand or didn't have an idea about marketing until probably after college it was kind of like oh those things that those commercials people make those you don't have to just like watch it when you're watching tv you can create concepts and commercials yourself right so i was kind of interested in advertising so i started doing research and advertising i started research and i had found out that bbdo was this big advertising company and they were the ones that were creating these commercials of sports and stuff that i like so then i was like oh snap they they had a program where you know um you could an internship so i was like all in and i kind of just went through this funnel of research and i found out that these not everybody who created this company was in advertising they were like four college friends they had all took out like a collegiate loan and they basically took out whatever it was they had about maybe twelve fifteen thousand dollars per person and they literally started a business together and um one person was the person that was in marketing the other the others just knew that i want a business i want to be a part of a business i'm going to have to work for somebody anyway why not do it together and i feel like the more you connect with those people that has that mindset i guarantee you all of our businesses just begin to flourish all of them now i wonder so i wonder if it's the trust issue within our community right we don't trust each other and maybe that goes back to the celebrity it's so much easier to buy beyonce's um screen printed clothes than it is to buy your home girl keisha screen printed clothes because you don't you don't want keisha to get the bag you don't want he should have more money than you you don't want to be paying her or whatever the deal is but beyonce is so far out of reach so far out of touch you'd rather give your money to her because then you can't see what she's going to do with it i don't know what that is but i would like to know what this is i think it's the value add i think it's that people put more value on the celebrities product than they do their friend keisha's product um so some of it is you're close to keisha and you kiss you're going to use my mind to do this some of it is that i do i do think something with that but i think a lot i think it's more that there's value in what they think people think that there's more value it's going to be a better quality it's going to be you know and it's beyonce beyonce made it so it's going to be you know the thing opposed to what keisha is going to do he should where they say your little business he's just a little bit less there were two comments over here i wanted to hit up one of them was uh uh kiki hey kiki girl she says hi ladies i'm just coming in you all look great hey thank you question i know that being an entrepreneur is about pleasing your customers but to what extent if people feel your prices are too high should you compromise and change your prices in advance entrepreneur in the making can i say something you know the thing is i'm gonna be honest with you um if you're if what's happening is it's not that your prices could be too high it's just that you're not selling to the people who have the money to purchase your product when you're selling to the right people you're there the prices aren't too high now when you are selling a similar product you it's your responsibility to provide the value of your product it's not people to see it's not people's responsibility for them to look at your product and see that it's valuable damn i sound like i'm running a good business over here i'm liking that and that's why people got to learn from entrepreneurs you have to make money and you know and you know your costs like you set your price accordingly right you know whatever it costs to make it or do that thing how much time and effort you put into it what your competitors are charging if you have all those those factors then maybe the people who think that is too high is not your target audience but if they're not your target audience you can't be selling to them okay you have to go outside of that group and sell to someone who's going to pay the price um but yeah i would not discount your item just to make people happy because they're still not going to be happy they probably still won't buy it so that's just my advice like if they want it they're going to get them coins together and figure out how they're gonna get it just like they do anything else in the world right after they do it for a purse they do it for hair they do it for vacation the thing that i tell my clients is don't compete on price if you compete on price you're going to be in the mucky muck and you're not going to run a business that's going to make you feel good you have to decide if you want to be the low cost option or the high quality option because you never see low cost and high quality together they just didn't go so either you're going to compete in price or you're going to compete in your product and if you compete in your product you don't have to compromise i heard something the other day um actually i'm listening to ivan orgy's book how i got bamboozled by jesus to have the life of my dream and she was and she said um she said when people can't afford your price it's not that your price is too high it's that they're too short i was like okay i got it okay so you need to get you around some tall people some people who got tall dreams tall aspirations and understand the tall product because everybody it's the same thing we talk about in real life everybody's not going to come with you everybody's not sure everybody in business it's the same in business i see dennis bragg is in the comments talking about he made something about startup costs and um organizational costs the first year that is something live businesses don't talk about and that's another reason you may not want to make a million dollars your first year because the tax man is coming for you all right and if you got that money and you started spending it before the end of that year then that tax bill come around you're gonna be hurting i know plenty of people who've been playing a lotto got that big payday spin it up went gambling spin it up then they get that 10.99 like hold on a minute whatever it is like you owe the tax man so and that's returning to the best gradually that's why taxes are gonna be at the conference because black people in taxes we people black folks and irs black folks and taxes like we need to have some legit conversations like not h r tax bloc you know tax tax cut conversations but newer conversations about your taxes and that's why i wanted to have um that segment on taxes i want to have people come in and talk about trademark our stuff's not in protected as soon as i came up with black power her p-o-w-h-e-r i call my lawyer who will be at the conference and i was like hey i need to get black power and trademark we did the paperwork um and black people need to understand the difference between a tm trademark and a registered or a trademark like there's just so much stuff that we don't know um the one thing i wanted there's two points i wanted to make that i wrote down one is strategy and as entrepreneurs we often do a to-do list we often say i want to make a million dollars or 50 or 5 000 like madam presidents say but we don't put a strategy in place i sit with too many entrepreneurs that have businesses and they do not have a strategy they do not know where they're going they do not know what they're doing they do not know how they're going to get there they have a to-do list but not a strategy for how they're going to execute it and so one of the reasons why i'm putting this conference on and i and i brought all my girlfriends about my entrepreneur colleagues and friends together is because i go to conferences i will drop 500 800 1500 to go to a conference and when i go to these places i am one of three to five to six a handful of black people so i'm investing in myself i'm investing in my knowledge i'm investing in my school i'm getting this information i'm applying it to my business and i'm the only person that gets to to see success from it and so my strategy in my belief that economic empowerment is going to come through black entrepreneurs for black people is to offer a conference where i can bring multiple people and expertise together to put out a product at a price that people can afford so to i forget the young lady's name to kiki's point i'm not compromising on price right i'm putting a product out that is affordable where people are going to so it's affordable but it's high quality so my strategy is also in tune with my vision of for black people to have profitable upscale nice businesses that other black people want to come in and support yeah definitely so you have to have a strategy for how you're going to execute what is that you want to do and also i just want to let the entrepreneurs know that you know this isn't and it's kind of like when you say i want to make a million dollars it's so easy to say it's easy to say that just use your words and your ability to do that but the actual strategy all of that tick tock [ __ ] all of that is hard work you know i know you look at people and they make all of this seem so appealing and exciting i even look at the people who like show themselves making their bed it's like i'm like trying to get up and get all this [ __ ] together you think i got time to prop this camera up and show it i did like this is what we've come to so i just want to let entrepreneurs know that you know as you go through all your different strategies and it is taxing don't give up on the you know on this idea because it's not easy and you're not coming from generational wealth you're not coming from you know kim kardashian with her sex tape that's sold for a million dollars that you know places her in positions that you will never get to you know you're coming from a different place in time and you just kind of got to be committed to the process and i feel like people are committed to like having that business idea because they feel independent but guess what it is not completely easy you know so just be encouraged in the world and i would say to madam president at this point and to dennis bragga's point it's not making it look easy it's having the knowledge having the knowledge having the knowledge is what makes it look easy people who don't take the time to invest in their business are the ones that are like oh my god and stressed out and money's not right and i don't know what i'm doing that's why it looks hard because they don't have the knowledge when you get the knowledge i'm not saying you don't have bad days yeah i don't still be over here up in the corner crawled up like oh my god what am i gonna do but it's it's at a different level i'm not crying over fifty dollars you know i'm saying i'm crying over five thousand dollars or ten thousand dollars your cry changes as as but it's knowledge go ahead uh teddy i'm sorry i was just saying when i was thinking about like this topic and stuff and there's that expression that people say you shouldn't share your dreams because not because you don't want people to know but because it releases a hormone that you've got so if you tell people you have your great idea to have a great idea and you like you vomit it out and then you've released this hormone like an orgasm right you've released it and then all the excitement that you have built up about that idea kind of wanes and then it's harder for you to go after the idea and i think i don't necessarily believe you shouldn't tell people your dreams but you shouldn't tell people that are going to help you do something with it and in our i just think that that is the expectation you need to be around people that are helping you do something with your ideas literally they are helping you build your idea grow your idea work with you on your idea mentor you through your idea fund your idea whatever it is and if you're not around those people you need to find those people to be around because that is what some other communities have that we don't is that support not just the knowledge but someone's saying hey here's this here's this this seed that i can plant in you to watch it grow and i think our expectation is we would like why would someone help me start a business because they love you they care about you they believe in you that's why they would help you and so many other cultures and communities are doing that so that is their expectation so we have to get on board with that and if you're not around those people you need to find them because that is how we don't have to like manifest and set it perfectly we're all trying to get to the same place alone we should not be doing it alone and if we are doing it alone get you some new friends for real man go ahead i was just saying family as well you know i never i will never forget you know how i looked at my own family and saw that we were millionaires we were just all giving the money to other people and other corporations you know looking at my grandparents all of us living in a house growing up one one apartment three bedrooms four kids grandkids and you mean to tell me that you all y'all leaving out of the house going to work for somebody else coming back and still ain't got no money at least i own the apartment did y'all own the apartment this sounds crazy that's crazy yeah you see that kind of stuff out loud but a lot of folks can relate because you lived it you lived through it the experience so we have to stop and just really see how crazy this stuff is and really come together and say enough is enough enough yes so i want to show you guys something um just because we're having the conversation on a million dollars and i can't make it bigger but a lot of times when you're talking about a million dollars it seems like it's so hard to make and i'm not saying it's not hard i just want to show you that it can be easy right so you're thinking about what what kind of business you're going to start what you're going to offer if a million dollars your end goal if you sell a 200 product you only have to sell it to 5000 people if you sell a 500 product you only have to sell it to 2000 people if you sell a thousand dollar product you only have to sell it to a thousand now the funny thing is some of you guys are going to tune me out when i say sell a 2 000 product to 500 people because you're automatically your brain brain will be like i don't have a two thousand dollar product yeah you do yeah you do still a four thousand dollar product of 250 people yeah you got that you got that too or if you want to take the lower end and the math if people want to go you know what i'd rather do something a little simpler if you sell a 17 a month product for to 5 000 people you can make it a million or you can just watch the subscription concept that is the best one yes 42 to 2 000 people 83 a month to a thousand people 167 dollars a month to 500 people so it's not hard to scale it's having the ability is having the knowledge the know-how the right community and that's what we want to offer you guys at the at the black power business conference i want to show you what i wrote right here and it just says you are invited if you are ready to dominate in your business industry but need some business knowledge to fill in the gaps you you are invited if you want to master the art of selling and pitching your product or service at full price you are invited if you want to learn how to secure funding for your business you're invited if you need to know how to legally protect and cover your business assets you're invited if you know it's time to implement a brand and marketing strategy that is unforgettable and profitable you are you are invited if you are ready to diversify your business offerings increase your revenue streams and get cash flow positive and or if you have been in business for zero to seven years so this conference is really for individuals that have been in business for zero to seven years and when people hear what's going on in this conference they're like that has to be like a two thousand dollar conference and really it is like if i was going to another community it would definitely be a 2000 conference but what i wrote here was if i would if we were to try our two thousand dollars does that help it doesn't help people that really need to be in the room and so since this conference is for you all the price point is decent right right now i'm doing a 50 off for the next two day for the next 48 hours um where the the general admission is 99 the vip experience is 149. after these two days is up it's going to go to 199 and 299 so if you really are committed to investing in your business this year and beyond go register for the black power business conference um it is virtual it will be online you get access to the replay it's next saturday march 5th and sunday march 6 from 10 a.m to 3 p.m eastern but again if you can't make it live you do get access to the replay um uh for somebody who asked where is it at hey dino coming the link is dropped it's right there but what i will do i will stop the banner hold on one second i'll just put it up by itself boom there you go www.blackpowerconference.com

and i'll just leave it there for a second and if you want to huddle in your living room with your girlfriends and maybe y'all should do that yeah yeah you know i created a the black power business circle because because of everything that you guys are talking about right so all the registrants and attendees will be able to join the black power business circle so that you can be around other people black women who are having these conversations who want to learn who want to grow who want to share um because you don't have to go by yourself like we you should be surrounded by other peers and colleagues who are talking the same talk who get it i had a strategy call with a young man the other day who's starting this super dope business i ca and i and i i can't talk about his business but super dope and one of the things he said to me i'm 45 he was probably like 32 maybe and one of the things that he said to me he was like the name i feel like i'm by myself because nobody else understands what i'm doing he was like my friends they went they want me to come out and hang out and i can't because i'm working on this and so i'm losing friends i'm feeling like a loner um my girl is about to leave me i don't know what to do and i was like what of these things can you replace can you start this business over again at any point in life he was like no i was like can you go back and get your friends he was like yeah i was like can you get a new friend he's like yeah i was like can you get a new girl he was like yeah i was like well then you got to see this thing through um and sometimes you have to take this road by yourself but sometimes you don't and i introduced him to meet up and some other things so that he can collaborate but it's super super important that you surround yourself with other people that are on this journey because people who aren't on it who don't have that same vision who don't understand entrepreneurship who don't understand the grind and the stress and the struggle they won't get it and you'll feel by yourself um and it's difficult to grind and hustle and be positive and feel empowered when it feels like everything around your world is not doing well and not just by yourself you might get pushback because people like oh you can't do that or you shouldn't do that or you can't you can't open that store you can't sell that thing you can't you can't you can't so when you have people out of love out of misgiving love tell you what you can't do you can only fight through it so much when there's so much negativity being spewed out you so i mean you definitely have to have that around you and i just i want i wish for us as a community as a people at me myself that i'm a business owner my kids will be business owners and then their kids will be business owners so it won't even be unusual that'll be all they know so be more unusual if they choose not to do it than if they choose to do it so that they have that support kind of built in i want them to see it as they're growing up so it's not unusual and they get the support they need and they have the knowledge that they need right there at home also too i just want to say that sometimes you all got to be a little crazy about this business i got a friend she says you know sometimes i don't like even telling people that i'm a director because i've only directed small stuff i haven't directed anything big and i said well i get your sentiment i said but 40 you know i said just 35 years ago tyler perry was probably telling somebody he was going to be a multi-millionaire and people thought that he was crazy believing you're crazy okay you're crazy it's folks out here that are literally selling drugs to folks they are doing the most unethical thing in becoming richer than rich believe in your ethical thing like folks believe in their unethical thing it's so crazy that when you are eating something good and you're about something good and you got something life-changing you just let all these negative thoughts and all this negativity ride you back to the point where you can't even produce believe in your crazy folks what you are even they haven't even started yet believing that crazy enough for 15 years from now or 10 years from now five years from now was like you know i was telling people that i had this business before i even had it llc'd and look yeah believe me you're crazy y'all absolutely yes yes and yes let me see if there's any other comments that i missed um let's see let's see let's see let's see let's see agreed agreed agreed we already hit that one on your land startup costs um organization costs first we don't share info enough sometimes we actually we did this conversation on help not too long ago and one of the things that we said is there's a lot of information out there unfortunately people don't always take it um people don't take people don't take the advice that's given they don't take the information they don't take the opportunities that are presented to them um my goal for this conference is 500 i want 500 black entrepreneurs to show up to this event and receive right i've put the price point at a place where i feel like entrepreneurs and years zero through seven can show up um and they can be blessed they can learn about funding they can learn about marketing they can learn there's so much to this business game and if you're not in a room to learn it you're going to get left behind so the information is out there people just have to want it and apply it um let's see what else what else this is a specific measurable achievable relevant and time-bound goals i think you're talking about smart goals um let's see kiki i was looking for kiki there she goes do you have a youtube channel we do we're actually on youtube right now we're on eight different platforms um but you can definitely go and follow and like us at melanatedair we're on youtube at melanatedair plus i believe teddy has her own youtube as well teddy what's your youtube teddy ewing teddy ring on youtube i'm on there so you also can follow teddy and uh teddy ewing i have my own personal youtube which is linnae javette um and then you guys can also follow melanie air we are there also let's see let's see let's see y'all make this look easy we talked about that drop the link the link is right there and adrian said we need to learn to keep grandma's house instead of renting that's the truth my mom just bought this new house um she had it built she built from the ground up and we call it the legacy house so my mom is 65 16. no she's not 65 i'm 45. she's 62. um and she bought this house let's say 3500 square foot house brand new built from the ground pool all that kind of good stuff and me her and my three sisters put all of our love and energy and effort into this house because she's like this is the house that i'm gonna leave you guys um so she calls it the legacy house because it's our house she bought it she council one of her insurance policies and she's like this is look we'll put this into the house and then she let us buy into it she was like so this is your guys's house you guys will split it equally but if anybody wants more then you can put in on the down payment you can put in on monthly monthly stuff you can put it on the um pool if you want a bigger percentage but if not everybody gets it three three ways but that's super important when we start thinking about um grandma's house owning it instead of renting it we can we can buy it we can buy the house we can buy the house that grandma listen we can buy the house that we live in and have everybody split the cost for that business can be done legacies can be created so many different ways yeah i just want to say too that my grandfather um i talked about how we've rented my whole life well guess what we've been having this public conversation of you know home ownership in the black community that even my grandfather heard about it and we started talking more and more so a couple years ago my grandfather bought a property now mind you my grandfather also um is a veteran and all of that so he got great benefits um he doesn't have to pay taxes um whatever kind of accolades you get for being a veteran he was able to utilize all of that but him being 70 over 75 over 77 decided to buy a house for his children as well and the crazy part is i thought that was pretty dope that it's like we put age on things we think oh you're supposed to get a house at 35 are you supposed to get a house at 20. you can get a house whenever the hell you want to my grandfather is in lanay's mother is such an inspiration to the testament of we spent so much

2022-03-02 02:55

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