Building Black economic power requires moving beyond employment (which makes one an 'economic babysitter') to becoming business owners, investors, and asset creators; this involves understanding demand-side economics (identifying customer needs and solving problems), supply-side economics (production, ownership, and capital investment), and developing resilience, discipline, and long-term commitment to bootstrap wealth creation rather than relying on external support or shortcuts.
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Why do they have so much wealth and we don't? - Dr Boyce Watkins
Added:And it's a great book uh all about the building of Hollywood and how a very small group of people who happen to be from the same community uh went off and just did something absolutely amazing, something truly extraordinary and uh and I can just tell you that if you want to be a builder and you want to create something in your own image and you want to create legacy and you want to have power, you have to plan for that. You got to design something around that, you got to make that your mission, right? I I just just imagine I just I dare I dare say let's imagine what the world would be like if black folks put as much energy into uh our families as we put into our jobs right or we put imagine if we put as much energy into our businesses as we put into other people's businesses because you know you get that job when you were a kid you were trained to act right on your job don't don't go coming to my job acting a fool don't be embarrassing me at my job and all this other stuff right so so it's like my job my job my job and uh and unfortunately um the the the ugly reality that I hate having to break break to folks is that unfortunately in a capitalist society um a job to some extent uh makes you a little bit like an economic babysitter right it doesn't mean you you don't have value uh but uh you're an economic babysitter and it's not because you're you're not doing something really important we need babysitters right I mean I know I know our babysitter really matters but there's a difference between being a babysitter and being a parent right? Uh the the babysitter uh gets uh gets access to the children as long as their parents allow it. Uh and but when you become a real parent, it's like a different experience if you know what I mean, right? So, shout out to all babysitters. No disrespect to the babysitters. We need you. You matter.
But uh really when you are the steward of someone else's economic power, that is not anywhere near the same as having power of your own. Do we understand that? Did I I I want to make sure I'm clear about that because I don't want to offend nobody and make you feel bad if you got a job or if you're a babysitter.
This is no offense to anyone any any of us who have jobs. No offense to any of us who are babysitters. Uh no babysitters were harmed in this explanation, but but really um if you process it in a certain way, like I was sitting there and I was looking at a Burger King one day and I was thinking about how I used to love those delicious burgers back in the day. They were so good. They're not good for you. You get over 50 and they're like, "No, don't eat that. you might you might die on your front porch. And so um so I uh but I was thinking about that. I was like, man, when I was 17, I would have been so proud to be like a manager at a Burger King. My mama would have been so proud of me. I would call my mama and tell her about every little thing I accomplished.
You know how I don't know if anybody else's mama was like that where she's like your number one cheerleader. God bless the mamas. Oh my god, mamas are so important. I can't talk about my mama too long because y'all know how I turn into a baby when I talk about my mama.
But but literally I remember thinking about how proud I would I was and would have been to be like mama. They made me the senior manager at the Burger King.
And I would have felt like that was a really important job cuz the Burger King it looks so nice. It was like, you know, it was it was uh um it was like um it was it was interesting because I was in a hood. I was driving through the hood in some city. I think I might have been in Detroit and I was in a Uber and I was in kind of like the hoodie part of Detroit and I saw this Burger King and it looks so nice and clean right in the middle of the hood. There's like an abandoned building on one side and so you know some projects on the other side and but there was this beautiful looking Burger King and I was like man these restaurants look so nice and clean and I and I don't know why my brain goes there but I imagine myself walking in and out of that Burger King every day and how good I would have felt having that job saving my money. And I was like, I wonder what I would do if I was working at Burger King trying to invest like like what would be my path to how would I get out, right? You know, I just thinking about, don't ask me why I have these thoughts. I'm being a little too right now. But anyway, this does have a point. And uh and so but here's the thing, right? I was thinking about how my perspective now is very different from what it would have been when I was 17. Right? When I was 17, I would have felt really important to have responsibility for this asset that was basically owned by somebody else. Like as the manager, I would be thinking about two things. I'd be thinking about my massive enormous responsibility that I have. That's an important job. I would feel quite validated. And I would think about my my paycheck. I'd be like, "Okay, instead of making, you know, back in my day, instead of making $5 an hour, I would have been making $11, $9 an hour, maybe 10, I don't know, right?" Which to me, $10 an hour. Anybody remember back in the day when $10 an hour was like big money? That was like dream money back then. And um and and I just thought about that and I was just thinking, isn't that interesting though because it it didn't even cross my consciousness to think about like the the people who owned the Burger King itself and then the people who own the corporation itself. I that wasn't even in my financial consciousness, right? I I could see my level as the manager and I could see everyone. I could see the assistant manager. I can see the employee. But when the owner comes in, it will be almost like somebody from another planet. It will be almost like this economic god like like don't nobody yo Mr. Wilson going to find out that you that you took two extra burgers, right?
So you kind of, you know, we you kind of we kind of have that reverence for the rich guy that comes in every now and then and you're just assuming he's living this life of luxury. He's on a yacht somewhere. His daughter is going to a private school and he lives in a neighborhood that you don't live in. And and your go your job is just to impress Mr. Wilson when he come anybody remember remember when when George Jefferson remember when George Jefferson um lived in that apartment and his and he had he owned the dry cleaners so he did have that business but he lived in this really expensive apartment you know like to sky deluxe apartment in the sky right and so they moved to this real nice apartment on the east side and remember who remember the important white man that used to walk that he would see him every now and then remember Mr. Whittenale. Anybody Anybody old enough to remember? I'm telling if you're young, you going to be like, "Oh my god, here he goes telling these old people stories." Anybody remember Mr. Whittenale? And whenever George would see Mr. Whittenale, Mr. Whittenale was so important. Remember, and he would be like, "Oh, MR. WHITTENALE'S HERE. I BETTER NOT." AND THEY WERE SO scared of being evicted by Mr. Whittenale because Mr. Whittenale owned the building, right? And and I I would just I was like, "Yeah, he better not make Mr. Whittenale mad, you know?" And um and I was just thinking about that and I and I think that what does happen is that we're not we don't really our kids don't even know where the Mr. Whittenales come from. We just know that when Mr. Whittenale comes in, you better be on your best behavior. You know what I'm talking about? Like like the just the the consciousness of ownership is not even something that's even even in the realm of like possibility. It's not even like it's not even something that's even real. I think about this. I mean, if you if I'm the manager, the senior manager of the Burger King, I mean, first of all, the district manager looks like a freaking god to me. He's not even an owner yet, but or the franchise owner is is like a guide. And then the shareholders, my Lord Jesus, they they live on Jupiter somewhere. They're they're not even human, right? And and and that's a consciousness thing. That's my point. That's a consciousness thing.
You're trained on what level of the game you're you're expected to play on. like basketball. If you show up and you're 5' three, you're not expected to play like uh like the big tall guy that plays for the Spurs, you know, to wimpy. You're not you're not you can't be wimpy when you're 5'3. So sometimes we are trained, let me just make wrap this point up so you understand why I'm saying this. I think economically speaking, you are trained in many contexts to be almost like a an economic version of a little person. You can't say [ __ ] no more. I heard midget's a bad word, but you're you're like you're trained to be Mugsy Bogs, Spud Webb, right? And and and you're not even thinking in the consciousness of the big man on the court because you're not trained and raised and and you're intellectually you're just not there. So, I would say to you that I think that one thing that we should do u since I'm into action, not just talking, is I think we should just make a commitment. Give me a yes in the chat if you think it's okay. I think we should just commit to make sure we don't train our children to be economic little people. Like we don't want our kids to even go in thinking like the littlest person in the room. I I want them to think like the biggest person in the room. I I don't want them to to look at a Mr. Whittenale like he's a mystery. Like no one knows where he comes from and how he got that rich. I want our kids to know exactly why he's rich. Oh, he owns the building and he he was able to raise capital. So he bought some assets. He probably got an inheritance from his family. Uh, which your children, your grandchildren are going to get an inheritance from you. Give me a yes. Please say yes.
They're going to get at least some a life insurance policy. You going to give them a head start. They're running the race. You You're going to make sure we going to make sure they're in the race, right? Yes. Yes. Give me a yes. If you ain't done it yet, that's okay. We There's life insurance people all over the place. Get that stuff in place. And then And then you're going to give them some skill. You're going to give them some real economic love and prepare them to play the game from the top. All right. So, so, uh, yeah. So, that's my Burger King story. I used I wanted to work at Burger King. They wouldn't hire me. I don't I wanted to work at McDonald's and Burger King cuz those I like those, but I I end up working at Wendy's and Wendy's was a crazy place to work as a 16-year-old boy. Oh my goodness. Those those ladies would come in there. They all had super tight outfits and I was the only guy on the freaking staff and it was like, "Oh, Lord Jesus." So, it was it was it was wild. It was a wild a wild time. And I worked at Taco Bell and that's where I did get my first girlfriend and she got pregnant. So don't stay away from tacos.
Just tacos will tacos are bad. Tacos will get you pregnant. Um and uh and then I worked at this other place called the Hungry Pelican. So those are my three uh those are my three restaurant jobs in high school. And all right, so now let's let's jump in. And first thing I want to remind you is don't forget the All Black National Convention is coming up soon. Uh and it's going to be in October, the weekend of October 16th. So go ahead and get ready and get your stuff together and you you come down there. This is where we all get together physically. I guarantee you you're going to have the best time of your life.
We're going to meet in New Jersey, the Hide on the Hudson. It's very very nice.
And we're going to spend 3 days of Black Excellence and and just all kinds of panels and speakers and breakouts and networking and fun and food and and learning and growing and connecting and all the things that you need to be successful. The All Black National Convention is a little economy. That means that if you are there to uh build your economy by connecting with the right people, we got you. If you're there to learn, we got you. If you're there to have fun, we got you. If you're there to uh if you're there to uh market your business, we got you. We got you.
There are people there that will see if your product's good and it's not raggedy, then and you you get a uh a booth or you uh sponsor, you will see your business grow. I know how to build economies. We've built an economy there.
It works really well. And actually, when I went to uh Detroit for Deal Noir this week, I was I'm really excited about Deal Noir events. I've gone to two of them now, and these are like super bougie black people, high level, multi-millionaire types, and they're all very pro black. They're down with the Black Business School, and we're going to get some of the Deal Noir folks coming to the convention as well. So, so, so, as if you weren't already mingling with some millionaires, we're bringing more millionaires into the fold. I I want every type of person. I don't care if you came from the hood. I don't care if you live if you go to the Hamptons and and whatever. Uh what's that place? That bougie place that Martha's Vineyard. I can't talk to him because I just got invited. I'm going to be out there on the beach. You can do all of that and still be black. Don't never let anybody take away your black card just cuz you don't want to live in the struggle. I don't think blackness should mean you should be in the struggle. Blackness should mean you should be out of the struggle because you're special. You have you have black privilege. Why would you be in the struggle? We're not we're not staying there for too long. We're going to wash that struggle off. All right. Now, let's jump into um by the way, so the website for the convention tickets, by the way, is all blacknational convention.com.
That's allblacknconvention.com.
So, feel free to go to allblack nationalconvention.com if you want to see what's going on there this year. All right. Now, here's what I want to show you. I'm going to show you I'm literally going to show you one slide and then after I show you that one slide, we're going to do the training on this one slide because it's literally See, Tat Tashi says she's at Martha's Vineyard right now. See, look at you. Think you're better than everybody else. Why you got to be out here bragging, Tashi?
You think you think you you ain't you ain't really black. You're supposed to be in the projects. What's wrong with you? That's where black people belong.
Well, congratulations to you, Tashi.
Aren't you special, ma'am? All right, so here um All right, so here is the slide.
Uh let me see here. Let's let's look at this is we're going to look at this slide and then what I'm going to do is I'm going to break some of this down.
There's a lot here. Um, so if you know that Hollywood was created by a small group of uh, Jewish people that were from the same region of the world and a lot of what they built was driven by a lack of access. Uh, they could they didn't have the established economy that was welcoming them. So they had to kind of figure out how to bootstrap and build things on their own. And so um so if you read I'm going to read this slide to you, but then I'm also going to go through with some notes that I made so you can really get the economic lesson here because we're going to talk about demand side economics and understanding what that really means. See, entrepreneurs have a certain way of thinking. Entrepreneurs can see demand and when they see demand, they see money. An entrepreneur is a person that can manifest their own reality because they don't need money to know that there's wealth in the room. they can walk in the room and they look and figure out what people want and you find out what people want. You give them what they need, right? So I and I don't care if you are uh you know if you are if you are a landlord or a prostitute like if you know what people want and you understand the customer then you will never be broke and and so I don't want anybody to be out here being a prostitute though. That's that's bad.
Let's not even put that on the table.
But still though demand side thinking is what drives wealth. So, uh, it says here, I'm going to read it to you, then we're going to kind of, uh, go deeper into this. East Coast manufacturers, they built better cameras at the time.
Uh, the mogul built a better understanding of who would pay a nickel to see their film. So, they didn't have the best cameras. They didn't have the best equipment. They didn't have the best technology. They had, uh, access to the customer. They understood what the customers wanted. So, direct contact with these customers. Talking to the customer is what produced data. There's that word data. Data's always been important. And then so there's no patent, no technology that could allow them to uh or or that that that could override that, right? So basically uh here the transaction layer that's the listening post. So when you talk to the customer uh you get an understanding of what they want. You know, I I talked to my son a lot about sales and I told him, you know, he's he's like I was that my big problem was I you know, I did a lot of stuff where we couldn't, you know, we we struggled for a little while because I I felt like gosh, I don't really want to be salesy. I don't want to be selling people stuff. That just seems weird and people kind of think I'm just in this for the money. But we needed money. To build an institution, you need money. To build a business, you need money. The only other only way you can build an institution without money is if you go get money from the government, you know, get that DEI money that Trump's going to take away, you know, as soon as he gets mad at you or whatever, right? But but somebody has to pay the bills. And and if you're getting the bills paid by people who are aligned with your interest, then you are able to survive longer than if you're say dependent on the government or dependent on a corporation or or a boss, right? So we had to raise money. I had people on my team that were working really hard for me and I was like, we just don't have the money to pay you. But there are people in the audience that have money.
I know that there were people in the audience that loved what we did and they were spending money every day in other places. You know what? This is one of my this is one of the reasons why I've always said that it was a disservice to the black community to have um you know to have so many of our civil rights movement linked directly to Marxism and communism and extreme leftist ideology.
It's not because those ideologies are bad there. There's a lot of wisdom there uh legitimate protest. But the problem is that if you vilify money, if you think somehow that there's purity and poverty, then you're not going to get anywhere. you're never going to have any real power. Like you can't tell somebody like, "Hey, if you care about the black community," Anybody ever heard that?
Anybody ever seen that where they think that if you care about the black community, then you'll do everything for free. Anybody ever seen that? Like, you know, they they literally think that any black person that has a business that charges two nickels is is a scammer, a criminal, or whatever. Like, you know, and I I've got I I got that. I just ignore it. I don't pay attention to it.
I'm like, "No, that the scammer was the university that you went to. You gave them $100,000. They gave you a degree that you don't even value. We give real value, right? Give me a yes. If we give real value, give me a guess if your life has improved because you're connected to the Black Business School, right? So, we give real value. So, so if we're giving real value, then it's like, yes, it's reciprocity. That's how you build an economic system. you you say, "Hey, we're giving you real value, and I know you got that $20 you about to go drop down at the liquor store, but well, on your way to liquor store, could you just break us off something so that we can make sure that we keep this value going so that we can make sure everybody gets paid. We can make sure everybody's okay." Because here was the problem, and I'm and I'm I'm going to I'm going to go at the sacred cow a little bit on this.
I love the Black Panthers. I love what they stood for. I love what they represented. I didn't like the I I didn't understand How about this? I didn't understand the communist perspective. like why is everybody suddenly a comrade and why are we suddenly talking about revolution in the in the same way that you know uh that they talked about revolution in Russia a 100 years ago right it's like wait this seems a little this doesn't feel authentic as authentically black as we might have thought it was and and so what they what what happens is then they say okay let's create a free lunch program and um and I get it right some people can't afford lunch fine give it to them for free but I it was always offensive to I always said, "Well, you need money to grow your organization.
You you have a movement. You're you're you a white man white man ain't going to pay your bills after you finish telling them off like that. So So how you going to eat? How your children going to have anything if you don't have a fundraising mechanism?" Well, we we collect donations. Okay. But you do know that that's a very difficult way to build an institution. Doesn't mean it doesn't ma it doesn't mean it can't work at all. I mean, sometimes it can work, but it's hard. It's really hard. And uh and so I said, why not have like, you know, the 10- cent lunch program or why not have a lunch program that says pay what you can afford. Look, the cost of lunch is 50 cents. If you got 50 cents, like if you about to if you're about to take our free lunch and then go down to, you know, go down to the shoe store and spend $20, that's not appropriate behavior. You you should fund part of economic maturity. And I write about this in my book, The Ten Commandments of Black Economic Power. A big chunk of economic maturity is funding the institutions that you want to see come to life. If you want if you want a grocery store, then support the damn grocery store. Don't just ask for it to be built and then walk away like it's not your responsibility. No, it is your respon if you want to manifest that thing. You want to see schools for the kids. Well, then raise the money and build the dang talk about it. Don't just say, "Well, I wish I wish white folks would come and build a school in our neighborhood." No community talks like that. Economically powerful communities don't think that way. Economically powerful communities are communities where they want something done and they go to the community and they say, "How are we going to fund this?" That's what economic grown-ups do. And uh and and so so when you're when you're living um off charity and you're expecting others, especially your enemies, to come through and build the things you need, then why would you expect to be anything other than a slave? Like why would you expect to be why why freedom is not free? Freedom costs money. So, so ultimately the the ability to spot demand.
Um, you know, when I talked to my son about selling, I say, well, what made me feel better about it was if you have something that people want because you care enough about them and you listen to them enough to know what their needs are, then you don't have to make a sale.
People will want to give you money to solve a problem. But entrepreneurs have a unique ability to identify the problem and then say, "Oh, I've got a solution and here's how much it costs. what do you think? Can we make a deal? And then someone says, "Oh my god, thank you so much." I I spend money all the time. I I I I I've put millions of dollars into the hands of other black people in institutions and everything. We a lot of the stuff I I forget to even mention it because it's just there's so much constantly happening. But I can tell you with complete certainty that we have put millions of dollars into the community over the years, starting with Dr. Claude Anderson and the Harvest Institute. Um, I did not understand how so many people could love Power Nomics and not understand the importance of supporting Poweromics. I did what they and what I realized was I said, "I get it. We're trained to sit on the sidelines and cheer for the things that we like." We say, "Go black man, go. That's so great." Instead of jumping into the fight, if you see the if you see the battle going on, you want to jump in and help. I had a um Did I ever tell you about the time I got mad at my best friend? He happened to be Jewish, but this is not not against Jewish people, but he happened to be. And he when I was a kid, he this is what So he was we were 16.
And it's funny. I just came from Detroit cuz there was this guy named Detroit from Detroit. I'm not going to say his name though cuz it cuz word gets out.
And and he was like kind of a bully.
Like some of y'all from Detroit are kind of mean. Not all of you, but Detroit is a different place. I was from Kentucky.
We didn't understand Detroit people that well. I like them now. I understand them now. I get it. I know eight I know what it means to be below 8 mile and all that but back then I 14 I didn't know nothing about that and this guy was a particularly rough brand in Detroit you know what I'm talking about like just imagine that right so his him and his family moved down to Kentucky and they were just different you know like they were um I'll just summarize it by saying that uh one of the kids in the house was there was ladies in the neighborhood that kept getting raped and and and and all the the rapes three of them happened and they happened at the house across the street from them. One happened on the h at the house on the left of them.
Another one happened at the house on the right of them. And eventually people said, "You're in the middle of all these rapes." And it turned out that it was the 16-year-old brother that was doing all the This is the kind of people, you know, but I love Detroit though. You mentioned New Era Detroit. I gave money to New Era Detroit. So I have much respect for New Detroit, but this is, you know, this is this is just what it is, right? It took a while, but now I speak Detroit. I I I get it. And uh so anyway, so this guy, his older brother was my age and he was he was just a bully, you know. So, and he would he would he didn't really punk me because I I I kind of know how to deal with bullies cuz my dad was one, but he would punk my friend who was a white boy. And so we played basketball and every time he would go to take a shot, he would just push him. Like he wouldn't try to block the shot, he would just push him.
Like so you imagine that, right? And I was like, why do you keep pushing him?
That that's kind of messed up. So I'm So here's the thing, though. The problem is that he was big and strong and I was kind of intimidated cuz he he was big and strong and he talked a lot of smack and I was like man if I fight him I'm going to get beat up. So here's what my plan my big plan was. What happened was I said think if we both fight together we can take him right so I jump out there to help my friend and I'm ready to fight this guy and I'm trying to fight this guy and do you know what this sucker did? He took his basketball and sat down and watched us fight. literally jumping in to save you in your fight and you're sitting on the sideline just watching like a little punk. I'm still I'm mad at him to this day. It's 40 years later. I'm still angry because because the both of us together, we could HAVE TOOK HIM. ME, I'M IN THERE FIGHTING FOR MY LIFE CUZ THIS fool done sat on the sideline to watch because he didn't see himself as an asset to the struggle. He He just thought that I was supposed to save him with his little punk ass and HE DIDN'T EVEN HELP. LIKE DUDE, YOU GET HIM FROM THE BACK, YOU WIMP. AND SO, SO MY POINT IS TO say that I think this is what happens sometimes when we see a black person that is stepping out there saying, "I'm going to fight the good fight." We sit back and we start clapping. We're like, "Yay, brother. That's good. I'm I'm cheering for you." No, you got to help.
You help.
You jump in and you help or any small group of people. You jump in and you help. You're not, you know, Michael Jordan in with the 1989 Chicago Bulls who would just sit and watch him score all the points. You get in there and you help. You find out where you can contribute. You you box out. You get a rebound. You play some defense. You dive you dive for loose balls. You do something. Right? So my point is to say that this is true in economics as well.
We've talked about how economics is a team sport. Wealth is a team sport. So, so when you have a teammate who says, "I'm going to go out here and I'm going to take one for the team. I'm really going to fight for the team." Then you say, "Okay, how do I jump in and help?"
Like, I'm not me telling you that I like what you're doing is not enough. So, when I met Dr. Claude Anderson, I I didn't want to just say, "Well, oh my god, Poweromics, I love Poweromics. Oh my god, your book was so you're just my hero." No, I was like, "Oh, boys, what are you going to do to help? You talk talk with your resources. Talk with your actions." So, I said, "Okay, what do you need? Is there something that you need?
Like, what can Well, we you know, we we need to raise money." So, he he met with all these celebrities, Diddy and all these other people. They all would just clap about how great Power Nomics is and do nothing. Kanye West would talk about how they love Power Nomics and do nothing. Kanye by himself could have wrote one check that he forgot about that would have changed that organization forever. That would have stabilized them for the next hundred years. But but it didn't even cross his mind because we are used to thinking about economics as a spectator sport.
Well, we'll sit our ass on the sidelines like my friend with the basketball and watch other people commit commit the fight and then when they lose, we say, "See, that's what that's what happens.
Every time we try to do something, they just they just they just burn every time we build Black Wall Street, they just burn it down. That's what they do. They just they just they just always come in and they taking our stuff and they just they just always like every time we try to do something they they they kill the person, right? Stop that. Like that's not what you do. What you do is you say, "Okay, what can I do? How can I help? I I I can't win this thing by myself. I I can't do as much as you, but I can do something. Where where can I where can I help out?" Right? So So really, you know, generally, let's go back to this topic here in terms of of thinking like like a builder, like an entrepreneur.
So, so circling back on the slides, let me pull the slides back up so we don't get too far uh distracted from this. All right, so basically here, um the transaction layer in terms of knowing what the customer wants is incredibly important information. There's something called information asymmetry, which means you have information that others don't have. That gives you a huge advantage in in in economics. So when you're dealing with a customer and you spent time learning the customer and what they want, you have an advantage that your competitors don't have. And so the transaction layer, that's that would be like a listening post. So that's where when you start your business, talk to your customers, get to know what they want, how they feel, what they need, what they like and don't like. If you notice, whenever we do anything in the black business school, I ask you all to fill out a survey like tell tell us, you know, tell us about yourself, tell us who you are, what what matters to you, what did you like, what did you not like, uh what can we do for you next, right? And that that deepens the relationship that builds reciprocity.
And so there's a guy named Von Hipple who talks about lead user innovation and demand side learning curves. And all that pretty much means is that if you learn what uh your customers want, what they need, that's more important than what you build. A lot of people will do this. They they believe that if you build it, they will come. Or if I got the best technology, everybody's going to want it. Or if I got the best product, everybody's going to come get it. And then they end up disappointed.
Rivian, for example, Rivian uh is a company that that won um a car award.
They they created the best car in America. And Rivian's almost going out of business. they they they're not profitable because they haven't translated that high quality car into something that the customer can understand a value and actually want to pay for. So uh so ultimately uh when when you when you stand at the counter before you build the factory you you get data you get to listen to the customer and understand the audience and also so the the the advantage that the uh that the the Jewish that segment of the Jewish community had when it came to inventing Hollywood is that they were they were the audience. You know they they were the individuals that were going to pay a nickel to watch these new moving pictures or whatever. So they really understood what what the audience wanted and I and I actually remember learning that from Jeff Bezos. Um Jeff Bezos talks about when he started Amazon and he said the first thing he did was he wanted a company that was customer obsessed. They they want to be customer obsessed like what you know how do how do the customers what do they want? How can we help them? Right? Because in the beginning he was selling books and then he started just asking them like what else can I sell you like you're here. So he built customer relationships and that's what allowed him to become a billionaire. So this is why circle back to the kids and grandkids. This is what we're creating on in terms of generational legacy.
Relationship building and management is just as important as financial management. Teaching kids how to identify healthy relationships, how to build them, how to invest in those relationships, how to maintain and repair those relationships is is essential for wealth building. If if you're good at building relationships, then you'll always be able to get what you need. And so, uh, the Sturdy model, the one that we teach the kids in in the Black Millionaires of Tomorrow program, Sturdy, it stands for systems, technology, um, entrepreneurship, relationships, and delegation for the youth. Str.
Systems, technology, entrepreneurship, relationships, and delegation for the youth. And I'm going to focus on the R, the R for relationships. uh you know and my wife is a relationship therapist and uh and and I and after seeing what she does and how she works with clients, I said, you know, I think anybody who forms a group that is productive in their life and meaningful in their life should get a therapist to help them manage and maintain their relationships and learn the rules of the road, how to engage, how to repair and and and how to avoid calamities because broken relationships will cost you lots of money. Good relationships can make you rich, right? like a woman who knows how to uh form healthy relationships with men, identify the right men and make them happy. Women like that end up marrying wealthy and they end up with these millionaire husbands that'll do anything for them. Uh individuals who know how to go out and and be helpful to others and form healthy relationships with the right people and establish reciprocity and trust, they tend to do very well because people trust them enough to invest in their projects and anything they do, they want to be a part of that. Do you understand? uh when you have uh my relationship with my baby brother that I invested in accidentally became my multi-million dollar asset. My brother uh when I my mother made me and him me change his diapers when I was a baby. This happened by accident. She wasn't thinking about these things. She she wasn't thinking 20 20 years down the line. But literally the fact that I changed his diapers as a baby and we formed a super tight bond translated to when he was 23 leaving college, he wanted to go be next to his his older brother. And I and I said, "Okay, well, come down and, you know, let's work together. Let's see what we can do." And my brother became my number one asset in terms of having a person that would stick by me no matter what, who would work long hours into the night with me, who would never leave my side, especially as I started to can gain a little bit more visibility. And you start running into people who will run as soon as the money runs dry, right? Or who will run as soon as things get hard, who will run as soon as there's a little bit of controversy. My brother never did that. So, so having that and then to this day I just spent I went to Detroit with my where my brother was and he's introducing me to people running companies that make a hund00 million a year. Right? So, so what I want you to understand is that all these things part of the reason what let's go back to this what remember what does the word poor stand for? What does poor stand for? Put it in the chat. Y'all know what it means. And I and I and I drill you on this. I I repeat myself a lot because that's how you get good at things. You repeat yourself. You do it 10,000 times.
Hoor stands for what? Passing over opportunities repeatedly. Passing over opportunities repeatedly. So, there's a lot there are a lot of poor people in the world who are poor because they don't see the wealth that they have.
Think about it. Listen to how people talk about children. I can't afford to have children. Children are a burden.
Children get in my way. No, children are an asset. You just don't see it as an asset. You see that whack ass job as an asset. Your boss don't care about you.
You die at your desk. He going he gonna scrape your dead body off the desk and replace you in a week and you have nothing. You can't pass that job down to your kids. I'm not making fun of anybody's job. I'm not doing that.
Right. I have a job. I'm going to Morehouse. So, so, so I'm not but seriously, you know, people will will get people will invest more in their job than they'll invest in their own bloodline, right? But no, children are an asset. But, but you just don't see that that it's an asset because you're not investing in it. So then when it becomes a liability, you say, "See, I told you kids were a liability." Well, of course it was a liability. You didn't invest in it, right? Anything that you don't invest in is going to die and become a nuisance for you. It's not going to benefit you. But if you're conscious consciousness and and and you and you are intentional about investing in that thing, then that thing can become a great asset. So like if my brother, if I'd ignored him and neglected him and said, "Ah, he's getting in my way. I'm trying to go do my thing and he's he's a nuisance and then he doesn't have any guidance in life and he grows up and becomes a prison inmate that comes and steals my money or he gets hooked on crack and I say that see that my little brother he ain't nothing but a liability. Well, maybe he's a liability because I made him one. Maybe he's a liability because I chose not to make him an asset. Maybe maybe your room is dirty because you didn't clean it up and you peed on the floor, right? Maybe that's why it's dirty. It didn't get dirty just cuz rooms are naturally dirty. They're dirty because you left it dirty. You didn't take the time to clean the damn thing up. You invested nothing in it. So, of course, it's going to be dirty. DO YOU UNDERSTAND? THAT WHICH you invest in when investing is breathing life into something. And I'm not talking about money. When you invest in something, you are breathing life into that thing.
Walmart would be nothing if Sam Walton and his family had not been breathing life into this thing to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars by now.
They invest in that thing. They Walmart has investors that are committed to to to making this thing come to life.
Walmart did nobody know what a Walmart was 60 years ago. If you say Walmart, people like what is that? That's that sounds weird. What's a Walmart? What? I know what a wall is. I know what a Mart is. What's a Walmart?
They had to breathe life into this thing. They had to take something that did not exist and believe in it and pour into it to the point where it became real. The NFL wasn't didn't exist 120 years ago. That was it was and then it when it did exist all the teams you can buy the teams for 50 bucks cuz it didn't mean anything to anybody. It meant nothing. But somebody breathed life into that thing. They committed to that thing. They believed in that thing. They focused on that thing. They fed the thing. Right? So, so part of the reason you don't see the manifestation of the wealth and the power and the businesses in our community is because we don't breathe life into the things that we manifest. We think that the stuff that master created is so important. My job at Google is so important. My job at IBM is so important. UPS really matters. But when you come up with an idea or you and your family want to invest in your family name or your family legacy or create something real, it seems like it's not that important because you don't believe in yourself because you just don't believe you don't think you really you I'm talking about you. You don't inherently you you were probably not raised to believe that things that you create as a black person are as important as something that some white man created 50 years ago. You don't see it. It doesn't seem real. And then you get all these other people around you like, "Oh, how's your how's your little business doing? You got that little business. You got that little business cuz don't nobody want to hire you. Don't nobody want to give you no job. That's why you got that little business." And that's hard. That's really That really kind of sucks, right? This This is um uh I wrote about this in my book. Uh it's the Ten Commandments of Black Economic Power. It's what I call toxic economic soil. Uh it's hard to grow anything in toxic soil. So, if you do get the courage to try to manifest and create something, you're taking a big risk. 80% of all black businesses fail. So, it's hard to just break through that wall.
That alone is already pretty epic. So, you're trying your best to do what you can to uh elevate and do something different. It's really hard to elevate because um it's hard to be something other than what you already are, right?
I can't It's hard for me to elevate beyond boys because I'm so good at being boys, right? So, when I try to say, "Well, I don't want to be boys. I want to be like that guy. I want to be this other person. It's hard. It's really really hard. And it sucks even worse when you're surrounded by people who also don't believe in you either. And so where do you what do you cling on to?
And this to me is where um where spirituality really matters, right? I I think I think God is kind of the ultimate power, right? God is I'm nipping. God can do anything. So you maybe you latch on to that and use that as your as your your the thing that propels you to the next level because sometimes the people around you can't do it for you. And it's not because they're trying to be evil or negative. They just don't understand. Their self-esteem is broken, too. They were hypnotized by the white man also to believe that he that everything he built is all powerful and all important and everything you build is is is kind of a joke. Like, you know, do do you know how many times I have people I had to deal with people that thought that I was like almost like comical for even thinking that I as a black man could start a university. Like they really thought like that's not realistic or normal. Like what do you mean you got a university? That's a joke. That ain't no real That you ain't got no real school. Why the hell can't I have a real school? your ass went to Iowa State and there's thousands of other schools created by highly mediocre individuals who were who didn't have the credentials I have. So why can't I do the same thing? What makes you think that what we create here is not real, but your degree from Southern Maine University is somehow worth something even though you didn't learn a damn thing that actually improved your life.
How dare you talk to me like that? No.
How dare you even try to approach me as if I don't have the same right and ability to be as great as I choose to be.
You You are as great as you choose to be. The world will respond to you by the way you respond to yourself. And it ain't and it ain't really just their fault. It ain't it ain't it's on them.
Sure, part of it is, but but really it's it's ultimately on you. If you do the work internally, then the external will take care of itself. I promise you, right? But what tends to happen is that uh I don't think we I don't think we really see ourselves as being free and controlling our own destiny. I I don't I I get I have people that get deeply offended when I say, "Why can't black people build our own?
Why can't we go? We can He did it. Why can't we do it? Why can't we run the school? Why can't we run the business?
Why why can't your family name be the most important asset that you ever have?
Why can't your family become an empire?
Why why not? Okay, I get it. maybe you didn't learn how. So, so maybe there's some skills we got to learn. Um, but I think a lot of it starts with the confidence. You, you don't have the audacity to walk around and to say like, I really think that my family is going to have a name that's going to be remembered for the next two or 30 hundred years, but it's very easy for you to acknowledge the Rockefeller name or the Carnegie name or the Rothschild name.
But the raw child name started because because the father said,"I want everybody on earth to know the name raw child and and I want my sons to understand one important thing which is there's nothing more important in your life that you'll ever do than to be a Rothschild." So he sent his four sons to different corners of Europe to get into the banking industry and here we are 3 400 years later and when you say the name Rothschild, people shaking their boots. They have like they have like mysterious levels of power, right? the Rothschild name is the subject of numerous conspiracy theories because their power is is so ubiquitous. So I I would almost say to you that that that confidence and and self-belief and self-worth is critical because what that does is that translates into resilience when things get hard. Like if you know whatever you believe to be your fate, whatever you believe to be your destiny, you're going to be drawn toward that.
Anything that you see is going to be what they call a huristic bias, which is going to push you in the direction of your destiny. So if you believe your destiny is to be a lowly, pathetic, broken negro, then you'll find your way back to brokenness no matter what the universe gives you. But if you convince yourself like, "No, my destiny is that we about to raise up out of here. We about to do something real special. This is going to be remembered for hundreds of years. Can't stop, won't stop, all that stuff." If if that's your mindset, then I guarantee you the law of attraction, thank you, Douglas, I I agree with you, is going to pull you in that direction. You're going to things will go wrong and you won't see that as confirmation that you're doing the wrong thing. You'll see that as the exception to the rule because clearly the rule is that you're supposed to win. It's just part of the journey, right? Do you understand? So that resilience piece, I would encourage you to make sure that not only you give that to yourself, but give that to the kids because a lot of us are trying to work back from a deficiency. A lot of us are working back from a deficiency of the in terms of how we were raised and what we were taught and what we saw and what we believed.
And so we're having to reconstruct that.
And so one of the reasons that in the black business school, for example, we believe black people should educate our own children, create our own jobs, and support blackowned businesses. We believe that because I don't want other people screwing our children up because they they don't just screw them up, but what happens also is they distract them.
They say, "Well, why would you go work with your daddy in his raggedy ass business when you can come work with me and my big shiny white business?" That's what happens. That's why why do you think so many blackowned businesses die?
Cuz the kids don't want it. Cuz they see their family business as inferior. And where did they get that piece of like worthless information? Well, the world gave that to them. You you're handing your kid over to these other people to raise them. It's going going to affect their thinking. They're going to come back and see what you got going on. You ain't making no money. This ain't really nowhere. This a but then someone else comes along with something that's shiny and nice and bright. They're going to want to be a part of that. So, so you have to intervene early to make sure they understand that there's nothing more important happening in this world than what's happening in this family and and you're going to respect that and we're going to all protect that, right?
So, let me let me go through and um I want to give you a couple more notes on this topic and uh one thing I want to mention by the way uh we me you talked about it in class is uh Dr. Alicia is doing a money wounds class starting Monday with Raquel Wilson. And Raquel is this super smart young lady who went to Ohio State. And uh let me just tell you, they uh these these two ladies, oh my goodness, they they're they're both really good at the therapeutic side of money. What a lot of us don't realize is that we have these psychological wounds that came from money, this financial trauma. And this is the page you'll see when when you go there. And they're going to spend six weeks going through little things like why traditional budgeting advice cannot heal every financial struggle, how family patterns, systemic inequality, and religious messaging can influence your money decisions. Ways to separate financial shame from your personal identity. Uh how spiritual practices can can support healthier, more empowered financial choices and also the first steps toward creating a new money story rooted in agency, alignment, and generational healing. So, uh there's my lovely wife.
There's Raquel. She's she's about 28 29 years old and just super smart. She's a certified financial therapist and a certified financial education instructor. So, I'm really happy. She's actually our first official faculty member uh in the our black financial therapy department because we concluded that half of us are crazy because of what we've gone through and we really need the financial therapy. So, they're going to talk about like how what is your Black Wall Street? Uh where where your financial trauma comes from, the real cost of religious financial harm, your money story, etc. So, they're they're going to cover all this over the course of six weeks. And it looks like on their page, uh the fee for the class is $2.99, but I'll share a link with you guys where you can actually sign up for 59 bucks and you get lifetime access to everything. So, everything's here and uh and if you don't see the link for whatever reason, uh just text the word love to the number 87948. And that's uh Dr. Alicia's uh text list. So, text love to 87948. So, let me go ahead and put the link in here. Uh, so you guys can take a look at the money wounds class if you want to sign up. Um, I and I really think that this this this matters because uh if you don't heal whatever is broken inside of you, uh, then then it's going to be really hard to kind of elevate and start thinking differently because the world is hard. You know, the world is is uh full of sadness and and and difficult situations which we all have to overcome. And I found I have found therapy to be a wonderful tool in terms of helping me with my self-awareness and my emotional intelligence so I can know the difference between who I am and what I want to be. So the link's right there in the chat. All right. Now, here's what I want to uh go through really quick um on this topic that we're discussing today.
And uh let me see. I made some notes.
Let me see if I can grab the notes here.
Yeah. So one of the things about uh that slide is that number one uh don't forget this uh demand matters more than the tech that you have. So a lot of people will invent new technology and they think the technology alone is going to drive sales and grow the business. It's really the demand. So it's really not about what you built, it's what people want and can you convince them that they that this is is what they want. Uh so for an example would be like Kodak invented uh the digital photography but Apple was the one who actually sold digital photography. Kodak did not make money from digital photography. So, you don't want to fall in love with the product. You want to fall in love with the problem. Okay?
It's not about the product, it's about the problem. It's not about your hammer or your nails. It's about the house you're building with the hammer and the nails. So, those are tools. So, your product is a tool to solve someone's problem. Find out what people's problems are, help them solve them, and they will be happy to, you know, to compensate you for that. Next, information is a valuable economic asset. And so that means whatever business you go into, understand your customer. Make sure you spend time learning, you know, what they eat for breakfast, how they think, uh what they want, what matters for them. Uh and the more you can empathize and connect with that, the the stronger your business will be. Uh they call that information asymmetry. uh which creates these competitive advantages from sort of having access to knowledge that other people don't have.
So every conversation is market research and uh and and the interesting thing is that Amazon makes their money not because they sell products. They make money because they know what people want to buy. Um third uh every transaction is an opportunity to learn something about uh the customer. Okay. You said please repost. Okay. What about the link to the uh the money class? It's right down there. Did you do you all see it? Um Christopher, is that what you're asking about? The money wounds class. There's the link again. Uh tell me if you see it, Christopher. Did you see it? Did y'all y'all saw it? Y'all saw it, right?
Tell me if you see it. It's right there.
I just put it in there. I don't know how to how to pin it. And I'll text it out also to the list. Um if you text morning to 87948, I'll text it out there, too.
Did y'all see the Do you see the link? I I put it in the in the chat. You do see it. Candace sees it. Okay. William sees it. Okay. Yeah. And if somebody could help uh Christopher cuz y'all know how I get my ADHD will kick in if I if I'm distracted. So So if someone could grab it and maybe repost it for someone who says they don't see it. So if you're looking for and you don't see it, just say something and someone will take care of you for that. U all right. So ultimately uh when you make a transaction that's an opportunity again to learn about the customer like who buys who doesn't buy why do they buy how often do they buy uh if you have good customers and you serve them well then they'll just keep coming back you don't have to find new people right um and and so like so for example in the black business school we have a a 100% money back guarantee mainly because I don't want anybody to do anything with us if you're not happy if you don't feel like you got more value than what you invested then that doesn't work in terms of a balanced relationship and and also we would like for you to let us know when or if you're not feeling that like you got what you were looking for and uh we could like to help you. Now uh is the link working? The link I think it's working. I'm clicking on it. It looks like it's it looks like it's working. Um tell me is the link working for you? Did it work? If somebody could click on it, it says cannot access link not clickable. Okay. Yeah, I'll text it out.
I don't know why. Was anybody able to click on the link? Coming up as a comment, not a link. I see it as a link and I just clicked on it. So, I don't know. Candace can click. Okay, I'll just text it out to you. I'll text and and get you can get on Alicia's list as well. Um uh it's uh love. Text the word love to 87948 and you can get stuff from Dr. Alicia. Um if you want to get wired into that. Yeah, I'm sorry. I don't know why it's not working. I apologize for that. Um all right. I mean, it's working. It's working for me and it's working for some of you, but some of you it's not. I don't know why, but let me get let me get back because y'all know I'm I'm going to get all over the place.
All right, so uh basically, um Warren Buffett, one thing that he looks for when he invests in a company is he looks for companies that have recurring customers, customers that that are repeat because that shows sustainability because it shows that people are happy with the product. Uh and so, uh ultimately, your first customers really are your teachers about your product and about the ecosystem that you're operating in. Uh second or fourth you want to think about demand versus supply side thinking. So a lot of entrepreneurs are thinking about what they can make and what they can create and but a good entrepreneur actually ask like what do people want? What are they desperate to buy and uh market orientation is better than product orientation. So Henry Ford um he once said that customers wanted faster horses and Steve Jobs uh he didn't just build computers, he built products that people emotionally connected to. So uh you start with psychology and then you build your products around that psychology. So this this is a this is something that it it's helpful if you learn these things when you're young and then that way um you're not just sort of looking for a job. You know your your child is is knowing how to go out and and create money, how to make money, right? uh because a lot of us make money by getting a job. That's not a great way to make money because sometimes the job will not give you the money that uh that you deserve or your boss gets to decide how much you're going to get. Uh and then uh the last thing is uh understanding the ownership of customer relationships. And so um you know one thing that happened with Amazon, this was pretty crazy. This is almost like ruthless gangster. Um so Amazon went to Toys R Us. Toys R Us was uh they they didn't have like a digital infrastructure. So they Amazon went to Toys R Us and they said, "Oh, you know, you guys are confused about this internet thing. We have it mastered.
Just pay us uh or just just use our infrastructure. You can your customers can um buy through our platform and we'll just take a cut and it'll be fine." And uh what um Toys R Us didn't understand was that Amazon was collecting data on the customers that that were coming through, right? So the customers were commenting. So they had an agreement that said uh that that Amazon could not let any other company sell toys on the platform. Toys R Us was the exclusive toy provider on Amazon.
Amazon blatantly violated that rule.
They blatantly violated it by letting other people sell toys on the platform.
They even started selling their own toys. So Toys R Us sues and takes like six years to get everything through court. And in the meantime, what Amazon basically did was they were gutting the customer relationship. They literally were like, "Well, we don't need you anymore cuz we have all your customers."
Right? So, what I would say, and so then that was terrible. That was a terrible example of that principle. So, what I would say to you is that as you're building your business, just know that your customer relationships become a very important part of the business and you want to protect that. um you know and it's um uh and it's it's it's it sucks that people will exploit that but that's how the world kind of works unfortunately and so uh customer proximity what it does is it reduces something called information cost and what they call switching costs so customers that get comfortable with your company with your product they don't really want to switch you know it's like if you're in a relationship and it's and it's not the the best relationship most exciting relationship you could be in but it works then you'll mistake out of, you know, convenience, but, you know, because it's okay. It's like, okay, it's great. It's a it's a nine. It's an 8.5 out of 10. I could have a 9.5, but I don't want to I don't want to go through the process of starting over again. So, you stick with it. But you get to the point where it becomes like a five or four, then people will pay the switching cost to go find something else. So, ultimately, that customer relationship is something that should be should be preserved and protected. Uh and so Costco, for example, Costco makes a ton of money, not from selling uh the products at the store, they make money from their memberships. They have all these members that come to that want to come to Costco and buy discount products. Apple has an ecosystem. They have all these subscribers to Apple products. Amazon, they have customer accounts. And so businesses that have customer relationships tend to do better. So, what I would encourage you to do, especially if you're building a business, is don't fall for the trap of building your whole business on Instagram or something because Instagram will steal your customer relationship.
They will just straight jack it out from underneath you. I have seen people build big Facebook pages. I I we've lost we've lost we have lost almost 2 million followers on Facebook because Facebook just decided to glitch and take our page or let our page go. One time a scammer took it and they couldn't give our page back pages back. I thought that's the craziest thing. And another time they just suspended the page. Didn't tell us why. Nobody in customer service answered the phone. And then I had 440,000 followers on Instagram and I went down to zero overnight. Down to zero. Now I'm back up. I have about 360,000 now or something. Took me like four or five years to get back to that. Right now, how did I maintain during that time?
Like how did how did we survive? How did we keep going? Well, because we never ever depended on one way to reach our customer to begin with, you know. Now, sure, there's probably a few million people who are like, I haven't seen you, Dr. Boyce, since 2021. I'm like, well, I've been here every day, but they, you know, maybe I'm not in the algorithm or whatever. And that's fine, but but we have a million different ways to reach different people because we know the world's not fair, right? So do not do not do not I I'm telling you when you create your business or as you're creating don't just depend on like one or two social media platforms. I have seen people have millions of followers on one platform and just lose it all overnight. Um and so you want to find different ways to kind of maintain that relationship and you want to preserve it and respect it. In fact, one of our rules is always when people come in and they work with us, I just tell them if you don't respect the students in the Black Business School, you can't be here. that's not appropriate beh so so that's just you know my my perspective on this um and uh over time you know whatever it is that you're doing um you know I I I would love to support you um advertising is a big deal and we hope that maybe you'll advertise with us at the convention and stuff there's lots of people there that want to support you they want to see you succeed so if you are um interested in doing something like that excuse me you can go to all blacknconvention.com that's all nationalconvention.com. I'm losing my voice, so I should probably stop talking soon.
So, um, let's see here. Wall Street Trapper is struggling with posting on IG now. He's shadowbanned. Yeah, they they do that all the time. They do my I think my YouTube channels are are shadowbanned, right? But, but you just you kind of have, you know, diversification in your structure and you have to be sort of consistent and relentless about what you're doing. And, uh, that's what that's what preserved us. Um we've had many scenarios where things happen and or someone tries to wipe something out and it's really hard to do. You want to make it hard, right?
So um but this was something I thought about very deeply back in 2006. Even when I started working with my brother and I wanted to be like more of a public scholar. I said people I don't think the world's ready for someone like me that has the ideas that I have, they're not really going to help me. So I got to figure out a way around this. So I I I I remember I used to look up to I still do. Uh Cornell West, Michael Eric Dyson, and Julian Melville. Those are the three that I really thought were just amazing.
And um and I said, I want to do what they do, but I have to do it different.
So they they go on TV and radio to do their thing. I said, we got to find our own way to reach to reach people because I don't know if people like me are always going to be on TV. the the minute a black person says something too radical like like I don't like I don't know like black people should like support black businesses or whatever um you know then they'll they'll take away your platform your TV show whatever your radio show um because they'll call you a racist uh and I said they publish books but we should have our own book publisher uh vertical integration and then I I said they they give speeches but we we can't go through the white speakers bureaus we have to create our own that'll increase the probability that if we can find a way to be successful We we'll never drop ourselves from the speakers barrel. We'll never um you know, but it was hard. It's harder to do it that way though because you have to build it from the ground up. But like the rapper E40 used to say, he said um I'mma always have a record deal because I'll never not sign myself. And he used to say this 30 years ago. And you see E40 has been relevant for 30 years. Maybe he isn't national all the time. Maybe he's not as mainstream as like Jay-Z, but he's respected because he's kind of been there. He's just persistently just kind of been around, you know, with making up words and stuff like, you know, how he does. And and it's something to be that you pay attention to because it's very different from somebody who depends on uh someone else's infrastructure to provide their supply chain. Uh another white person who does this very well actually is Elon Musk. Elon Musk, he knows how crazy he is. He knows how controversial he is. I mean, if you think he's a racist, he probably could be. I mean, he's an Africconer, so he, you know, he's he's a he's a he's a character, but I don't care. I watch everybody and and but SpaceX is powerful for one key reason.
They're vertically integrated. They don't, you know, he doesn't he doesn't send rockets to space so he can deliver somebody else's payload. He sends rockets to space to deliver his own payload. And then when he delivers his own payload, his own satellites, he doesn't ask someone else like, "Well, what do you want to broadcast with the satellites?" you know, he he creates Starlink where he's got his own subscribers that are receiving Wi-Fi from the satellites that he launched with his rockets that are running on his technology that came from his AI data centers from his chip fab where he's made the model that goes onto the chips that are processing in the data center that are sending the rockets to space and that are running the satellites that are sending the Starlink down to the subscribers. So now that's a crappy stock. SpaceX is not a great stock to buy. Maybe it'll be good once it gets to about $80 or something, but that's to me that's that's powerful because it's very difficult to disrupt the process. I know where somebody took the time to build from the ground up. One of our challenges is that we are often too tempted to take the shortcuts that are provided. You'll see somebody that'll be famous overnight because they'll sign a slave deal and and some company will own them and next thing you know the minute they get out of line they get dropped.
It's over, right? Or we will get comfortable with the little job because you instantly have access to the bling and the fancy cars and you know the big paycheck, but you're not asking yourself, well, what happens if they take this job away from me? Right? or you have organizations in your community that will suddenly be the biggest thing in the world because somebody came along and wrote them a check and then when that organiz when that when the real power disappears and they stop writing those checks those organizations can't function anymore right whereas the real strength will come from the builders it'll come from people who say we're going to create something from the ground up and we're going to bootstrap our way to strength and success this is what happened in Hollywood they bootstrapped everything they said look we don't have all the financing we but we're not going to take money from everybody because we need to maintain control of this thing. And so they would just reinvest the money that they make and as they reinvest the money they make, they would grow and grow and grow.
Yeah. Uh Calvin mentions Afro. Calvin's a very smart man. He knows he knows that. I wasn't going to mention Afroch, but now that you mention it, when when Trump comes in and he decides DEI is evil, the next thing you know, Afro conference suddenly shrinks to almost nothing. Well, that's because you got that overnight success because somebody was writing you big fat checks to sort of give you the proximity or the appearance of power. But the question is, did you truly have power? A lot of our H.B.CU struggle from the same thing.
I have to be very respectful. Of course, I will be because I'm going to go to Morehouse. But imagine, I want you to just process this. What if uh the government and benefactors stopped writing checks to HB.CU? A lot of them would shut down. A lot of them are shut down because in in and in in my view again my two cents we don't quite put as much energy as we need to into creating a culture around the kind of patience, resilience, investment, and delayed gratification required to build something from the ground up. We want some [ __ ] that's going to be popping in a year and a half as opposed to doing the leg work required to build real true power, a true power base that might take 15 or 20 years to get there, right? Where I'm sorry I it's it's it's not me being critical, but I see it happen all the time. Somebody somebody has some in a in a year it's like the biggest thing ever, but you're operating completely on debt or you're operating on government money or you're operating on donor money cuz some white guy wrote a big check for you. Suddenly you're like the biggest thing in the community and all this stuff. But that's not that's not real power. Proximity to power is not the same as power. To have power in a capitalist society is driven by having a capital base. Typically capital bases have to be built. And in many cases it's very hard to build a capital base without the an ingredient called time.
But also during that time it's it's hard because that during that time you're making sacrifices, right? you you because it's ma mathematically speaking this is this is what I do u mathematically speaking what has what happens with companies that build um that that bootstrap their way to true power where where they're worth hundred billion dollars and and one person owns 80% of that is that you have a very high what you call plowback ratio plowback means when I get when I make a million dollars I'm not going to go buy a a Gucci watch and a lam 10 Lamborghinis and and a bunch of jewelry I'm going to put 80% of that money right back into the company, right? I'm I'm reinvesting over and over and over again. Humbly, it's it looks raggedy. It don't it ain't fly, you know? Everybody so many of our people want to be fly, you know, like it's like like looking cool is more important than actually having substance like flash, man. And I and I blame the Diddies of the That's why I couldn't I couldn't stand I I haven't like I I didn't like Diddy 25 years ago. I was like, all these flashy, fasttalking negroes, they're not sturdy humans. Sturdy people have substance.
They they they they'll put in the work.
They'll do the the grunt work, the dirty work, the in the dark, in the quiet. You know, you got some of these guys like divas, you know, like I just want to be loud and and popping on Instagram and looking good and all this other stuff. I don't that's not that's not what built empires.
That's not what power ends up being made of. power means you're grinding hard in the dark, reinvesting, and you're doing the things that involve long-term consistent sacrifices over a long period of time that allows you to bootstrap your way to true substantive power. Um, I can I can say that after 20 years of work, we got to the point where our annual budget, like with the black business schools, two, three, a couple million dollars. And I can honestly say that when we got there, there was nobody pulling the strings. There was nobody there that had to cosign on anything that we chose to do.
you know, we we we could walk in a room and say, you know, say or do whatever the hell we wanted, and there was no daddy we had to bow to. And I was very proud of that cuz I I think the black man and black woman in America has to um be able to stand toe-to-toe against the world that wants to oppress us. You know, there are people that don't I think there are just people that don't respect us. They just see us as weak and pathetic and and and I think I think that there are those of you who don't who are also offended by this. And I and I would just like to see us raise some children that are really ready to fight, you know, and humble enough to just say, "Okay, I'll do the dirty work.
Let's get it done. Let's make it happen.
Let's sit down and grind. Let's be consistent. Let's let's, you know, do the the same thing 10,000 times in a row until we figure out how to get over the hump." That's that's really what drives a strong community in my opinion. And that's what creates legacy. That's what builds the empires that exist in this world. So, um that's my two cents. Thank you for listening. And if I said anything wrong, forgive me. All right.
So, let's finish up for today. Um by the way, don't forget you uh I don't know if you guys uh took a look at B1 Village, but uh that's kind of um it's a curated private space for those who are into the wealth building thing. If you want to meet others who are wealthbuilders, uh the website is b1village.com.
And uh when you get in there uh also um you'll have free access to uh Thursday we're going to meet for um stock options class. So there's a link in there that invites you into the class as well as some other stuff. I think I put some uh other things in there that you can grab on to and also you can go in here into B1 Village and you can look for others uh in your community uh that look that live close to you. Like when you first log in, you'll see the community feed and this is where uh we we put put just different ideas and things that you can take a look at. And there's a dashboard and there's a connection map. So if you want to you can put your picture in there. You don't have to, but uh you can see a lot of the folks that are that are on in the community now. And uh also there's like this interactive map that's kind of cool where you can find other when you connect with people, you can find out where they are on the map so you can see how many people live near you. Uh you can also form economic elevation circles. So I have one circle um you know for those who are in the winter circle mastermind but you can create circles. Uh so remember we talk about family investment meetings that you should be having. Well you can find your family here and then invite them into your circle and you know set up a zoom or whatever it is you want to do and talk to each other. Uh there's courses there's a free course here on generational wealth that you can take uh and go through it and then that you can set up your profile and there's a lot of other things there. So, feel free to go to b1village.com and uh the annual fee uh to be a member is $1.99 a year. Um but if you use the code word morning, it'll drop to $99 a year for the first hundred people. So, feel free to uh go to b1village.com. be the number onevillage.com. And uh also, if you want to join us for stock options class, it's drprime.com. drprime.com.
All right, so have a good day everybody.
And uh let's go ahead and finish up for today. I hope you gained something from today. Hey, I hope this was beneficial and uh you know me, I go off the ranch a little bit, but I hope that this makes sense. Uh what I'm what I'm really finding about economics is that these sort of things that are between the lines, the stuff that you're not going to find in a textbook or a classroom, those are the things that really get you over the hump. Uh you know, that that commitment, discipline, confidence, uh that so important, that resilience, so important. uh that in fact those are na those are ingredients that you must have if you're trying to try to be a wealth builder or or a business owner all these things the resilience isn't something they're going to teach you in a book but it's important because what it does is it makes you keep trying over and over and over again right so if you you know and and that's literally the difference between the millionaires and non-millionaires is millionaires are just regular people who didn't give up and so how do you spell it you spell it B1 village be the number one bvvillage.com Uh, can I have the replay from this past weekend? Uh, yeah, Judith, if you um if you can't find it, just email supporttheblack businesschool.com and Ammani can take care of you. She's our head of support. Uh, that's supporttheblackschool.com.
All right, guys. So, take care. Have a great day. It's great to see you and I'll see you alluh tomorrow. Take.
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