March 4, 2025 • 39 mins
Ep. 205 Carolyn Rodz is a Latina entrepreneur and the co-founder and CEO of Hello Alice, an AI-powered platform that connects small business owners to capital, mentorship, and opportunities. With over 1 million entrepreneurs on the platform and partnerships with major corporations, Hello Alice is proving that diversity isn’t just good for business—it’s essential.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Speaks to the planet. I go by the name of
Charlamagne to God and guess what, I can't wait to
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(00:21):
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(00:41):
your tickets now at Black Effect dot Com Flash Podcast Festival.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
I'm Lucas and this is Black Tech, Green Money. Carolyn
Royns is a Latina entrepreneur and the co founder and
cey of Hello Alice and aipowered platform that connects small
business owners of capital, mentorship and opportunities, over one million
entrepreneurs on the platform, and partnerships with major corporations. Hello
Alice is proving that diversity isn't just good for business,
(01:07):
it's essential. We give a lot of attention to hyper
growth startups, technology companies, companies that you know are aiming
to be unicorns and things like that, while most people, however,
work for small businesses or want to own a small
businesses A small business and your work at Hello Alice
connects a lot of small businesses with resources and opportunities.
(01:30):
And I wonder what trends you're observing in the challenges
they might be facing compared to when you started this organization.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
Yeah, Unfortunately, I will say that the challenges are facing
haven't changed much. It's always, you know, since we've blocked
Hello alics, the top two needs of small businesses have
consistently been access to capital and building customer awareness. Ultimately,
what we hear for businesses is they're looking for ways
to put more money in their pocket, whether that's through
(02:01):
funding or whether that's through organic revenue growth. And that's
really where the focus of Hello Alice sits.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
Do you believe that, you know, I mean, you're saying
that not a lot has changed. How has the approach
potentially had to say, Okay, if this is not making
meaningful impact, not that it's not making mean but the
numbers you just you know, remain flat because more people
are entering the space, have you had to change how
you approach these challenges.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
Where we're seeing great headway is the understanding around small
business and we will launch Teloalis. Back in twenty seventeen,
we would talk about small businesses and nobody wanted to
hear about it was the reality. People were very focused
on the startup space. Everything was about tech.
Speaker 4 (02:44):
There were all these accelerators, incubators, and great happening.
Speaker 5 (02:48):
To the small business.
Speaker 4 (02:49):
The silver lining of the pandemic which impacted small businesses
and lots of really difficult ways.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
And challenge them in ways that we've never seen before.
It also brought great attention to small business and I
think it made everybody recognize how much we actually lean
on these businesses in our backyards, what a huge piece
of the economy they are. They're ninety nine percent of
businesses in the US are small. They're creating fifty five
percent of new jobs, and so when you put a
(03:18):
freeze on that, I think we all recognized there was
a lot of tension happening, certainly at the local level
in terms of how we individually dependent on these businesses,
but nationally, when we started to look at the economy,
we say, this is a huge impact in terms of
how our country operates. And so in that sense, I
think we've seen more attention. They're a better understanding, and
(03:40):
that understanding has opened up new products, new technology, more ability,
and I think more resourcing behind these businesses. And that's
allowing the companies that are fundamentally healthy.
Speaker 5 (03:56):
Businesses, it's allowing them to thrive.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
And now where we're starting to focuses, Okay, these ones
that have sort of a shaky foundation that certainly struggle
during the pandemic are.
Speaker 5 (04:04):
Continuing to struggle.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
Now, how do we build up those fundamentals to help
them understand these are the pieces they need to get
in place so that they can capitalize on this new
wealth of resources that's been created. So there's definitely a
need to meet in the middle between the ecosystem resources
that are available in the capital that's being created, and
the small businesses themselves and the work that they need
(04:27):
to do to be able to access those resources.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
Yeah, I wonder how you think about this? So in
business there is no stasis, like if you're making the
same amount of money you made last year, you're probably
going down because the market is changing, market is getting
more efficient, more richtel etc. And so I think about
how how do small business owners think about growth? Should
we be thinking about scale or should we be thinking
(04:53):
in the way that technology start off thinking about scale?
Or is there another way we should be thinking about
how we grow small all businesses.
Speaker 5 (05:02):
The lessons that are learned from the tech industry can
certainly be applied to small business in so many ways,
and I would say increasingly so.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
If you think about the amount of technology that a
business has available to them today, with AI, you can
have employees technology employees that are not paid employees for you,
agents that are working for your company. Right, you're opening
up the ability and capacity to work and operate so
much more efficiently. And so when you think about scale,
(05:32):
I think for small businesses now it's shifting the way
that they have to think about it. Right, there's still
the need in the early days build a great product
or service, find incredible traction with your market, find what
the lights your market, you've got to go above and
beyond and what goes beyond that line of satisfactory, and
then start to figure out how do you scale that,
(05:52):
how do you automate that, how do you make that
process more efficient? But tech company or main street small business,
the reality is the approach is the same. Find your
product market fit and then figure out how do you
use technology and how do you use you know, efficiencies
and systems and all of these great tools at business's
disposal to scale, to automate, and to optimize.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
When you say small business, your responsortion just made me
think about this. When you said small business, what do
you mean? Do you mean? Because I've been to like,
you know, small business can range from you know, hundreds
of thousands to twenty million dollars a year, and then
you've got micro businesses that are like kind of like
you know, one person you know shops, Like, how do
you think how do you define small businesses?
Speaker 3 (06:35):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (06:36):
I mean it's a boraa definition depending on who you
talk through. The definition toruls shift.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
According to the SBA, it's under five hundred employees. What
we are mostly looking at, I would say the majority
of those that fall into that ninety nine percent of
small businesses or under ten million in revenue. The majority
of businesses on Hello Wallis are actually under ten employees
and under a million in revenue. And so you can
certainly see like the biggest piece of the pie is
(07:02):
those micro businesses that are just trying to keep the
lights on. You know, they're just trying to make sure
that their employees are paid. They're just trying to make
sure they have enough money to you know, support themselves
and ideally their families. The needs are really you know,
week to week and or paycheck to paycheck versus you know,
(07:25):
thinking about these massively scalable companies.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
So when you when you're talking about it, let's just
take you know, let's make up a business. You know,
this business is doing four hundred you know, thousand, maybe
even less, let's say two hundred thousand. It's a one
or two person shop. And I'll let you pick the industry.
But what the how should they be thinking about product
market fit? Because I don't hear small business owners at
(07:50):
that level thinking product market fit. They just they have
either a skill and they are you know, kind of
a craftsman and they do the work and then hopefully
people buy the work from them, or you know, maybe
they own a print shop or a landscaping company, or
you know, how do they find product market fit?
Speaker 5 (08:09):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (08:09):
I find two really common paths that businesses go down.
The first is you have a founder or an owner
or a business owner who loves the product or service
that they provide, and they're so focused on refining and
optimizing and perfecting that product or service that they forget
about the sales side. The other type of a business
(08:32):
owner is one who is great at sales. They're super charismatic,
they're great at building a team, they're great at getting
energy behind something and making things happen. Not so great
at refining and optimizing that product. And so where you
see the sweet spot is when a business owner has
a balance between those two. That's when you establish product
market fit. So I think it's not often talked about
(08:53):
in the small business space in the same way.
Speaker 5 (08:55):
But the reality is that's what it is.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
Right, whatever product you're bring into market, how are you
putting your own stamp on that, How are you building
the right brand story around that? How are you presenting
it to your market in a way that is meaningful
and differentiated from everybody else who's out there, because the
reality is today you can buy most products on Amazon,
you could find most services you know within.
Speaker 5 (09:16):
Your look online. On some level, how do you start
to differentiate and make your stamp in the market.
Speaker 4 (09:23):
People want you your company and not from the company
down down the street.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
And ultimately, I think it boils down to how are
you finding that product or service and how are you
bringing to the market in a really unique way.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
Yeah, And one of the conversations I have with small
business owners is we tend to emphasize support for our businesses.
And one of the things that kind of I shouldn't say,
frustrates me. Maybe that's too strong a word, but like,
I don't shop at Target because I support Target. Like
I shop at Target because they have what I need
and I don't know enough about the business to support
(09:58):
it or not. And I wonder what your take is
on how we shift or maybe add on just providing
things people need versus relying on support, if that makes sense.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
Yeah, I mean I think it's the burden is on
the small businesses to make it easy for the customer. Right.
The reality is most of us love to shop small
we love to support.
Speaker 5 (10:21):
Our local communities.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
We want to go, you know, we'd rather buy the
product from a business that we know and a business
owner who we know and want to support, versus walking
into Target and buying some generic brand that everybody else has.
The difficulty comes is that it's hard to find those
products or services. When you need a bottle of shampoo.
It's very easy to walk into Target and you know
you have every option there. How do you make it easy?
(10:45):
And that's where I think you look at online brands
and you look at people who've done it well, and
they're making it easy right. They're offering subscriptions, they're you know,
tailoring the experience to you. They're allowing you to customize
and pick what's the right, perfectly right product for your
hair type. Those small businesses that can do that, that
can refine what that experience is and why it's different
(11:07):
for one customer versus another customer, and why it's specialized
and why it's easier. Those are the businesses I think
that have a huge opportunity to capitalize on our innate
desire to go purchase from small businesses. But it takes time,
it takes technology, it takes refinement. It takes looking at
that whole customer journey from awareness to building a brand advocate.
(11:29):
And if you can do that, people are willing. They
want to spend their money with you. I would sell
business owners like the world is rooting for you. You
just have to know how do you capitalize on that willingness,
how do you capitalize on those resources? And how do
you spend your time of connecting those dots in the
most efficient ways.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
How have you had to manage the resources you provide
to underserved traditionally underserved communities, black people, Hispanic, Vida, etc.
How have you had to reconfigure the training, the lessons,
the resources to fit the nuance? Because I mean, if
we think about our counterparty, we didn't historically buy and large.
(12:07):
I'm creating a broad stroke here that we didn't necessarily
grow up talking about business at the dinner table, didn't
necessarily grow up talking about budgeting and investing in so
many factors of our communities. So when you think about
the bridge that has to be crossed for these populations
of people to get to business success, what is different
(12:29):
about your offering because you're speaking to these audiences, it's you.
Speaker 5 (12:36):
Know, I try to remind everybody.
Speaker 3 (12:37):
And like every business starts small, every business starts small,
we start with a different knowledge base. To your point,
we start with different resources at our disposal.
Speaker 5 (12:46):
You know, most businesses in.
Speaker 3 (12:47):
The United States are starting with under five thousand dollars
of startup capital.
Speaker 5 (12:53):
That's a really.
Speaker 3 (12:56):
Small amount of money at prinkly, you know, when you
think about being able to pull resources across. It's why
our grants programs on HOLLO ouls are so critical, because
that tiny bit of capital can be the start of
a business for somebody. Now we look at black owned
businesses and Latino owned businesses, it's often half of that
amount of capital, and so there's certainly at a disadvantage
when we look at the starting point, and so it's.
Speaker 5 (13:19):
Important to figure out one how do we bridge those gaps.
And that's where.
Speaker 3 (13:21):
Programs like grants programs, corporate support programs, a lot of
the NGOs that are out of there are doing great
and necessary work.
Speaker 5 (13:32):
The knowledge base, thankfully today, is available. You just have
to know to.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
Ask the right questions and you have to know how
to tap into the right networks. I think I mean
my experience, I grew up to immigrant parents in Spring Texas.
I went to public schools my whole life. I know
nothing when I started my first company and it failed.
And the reality is I didn't lean on the resources
even that I had at my disposal. I wasn't aware
of the local networks that were in my town.
Speaker 5 (13:59):
I wasn't aware of you know, who.
Speaker 3 (14:02):
I could lean on for mentors, and there were people
around me who were willing to help and who I
could have asked. I just didn't even know the right
questions to ask. And part of that means you've got
to be in the room. You've got to hear the conversations.
When I say the room, sometimes that's the digital room.
Get them in you know online forums, jump into you
know LinkedIn groups, show up at your local networking event
(14:24):
and just here and start to expose yourself to that.
And that's one of our goals at Hello Wallis is
how do we blast that knowledge as loud and far
and you know, as as you reach into these pockets
of communities that aren't having those conversations at the dinner table.
Because I certainly, I certainly did and I had the
advantage of you know, entrepreneurs in my family and still
(14:45):
didn't have those conversations at the dinner table. There was
still I'd never heard of venture capital, I'd never thought
about getting a loan from a bank.
Speaker 5 (14:52):
I never considered those things.
Speaker 3 (14:55):
But the reality is those conversations were being had in
areas that I had access to all around me. I
just didn't know they were there. And so that's our job,
I think as a community, and everybody listening to this
is how do we go out and reach into our
communities and go find those dinner tables where those conversations
aren't being had and start them and just say, hey,
check out this network, go look at this thing, meet
(15:17):
this person. It's so organic, but the knowledge is spread
so much further today than it was, certainly even ten
years ago.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
What do you find are some of the most pervasive
issues plaguing small businesses from black and Latino communities. I
think about, you know, knowing your numbers as one Like
I was talking to a friend of mine who was
building like a skincare company, and we were talking about
like the cost of one bottle, like how much does
(15:48):
it cost to make one bottle? And she had never
even thought to price it down, like to get the
cost down to how much is it the cost to
make one that unit metric and so they just price things,
you know, because oly that's exilely for twenty I'm like, well,
how much does it cost? But not knowing how to
get those formulas to figure out how much does one
bottle cost or one jar was like enlightening in a
(16:11):
way but also shocking. And so I think about, you know,
having paperwork in order, like what are some of the
things that are pervasively plaguing us?
Speaker 5 (16:21):
Sometimes I think we're our own worst enemy.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
What I look at, whether it's black and Latino communities,
whether it's you know, any pocket of people who who
don't sort of see themselves in the room of the
successful business owners.
Speaker 5 (16:37):
There's fear is a huge part of it.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
We're afraid to ask for help and to show that
we don't know what we don't know because we feel
like we should and we feel like everybody else might.
I think that's a huge piece of it. The second
piece is risk aversion. There is I think oftentimes because
we're not seeing the models out there, we're not saying,
(17:00):
you know, we see a lot of we hear a
lot of stories of failure. There's a risk aversion in
terms of being able to take that leap. And I
think if we flip the story and say, look, we're
all still here, standing, and we're all still we're all
still surviving in spite of those failures and in spite
of those obstacles and in spite of all those things
that have happened, we can do this. And I think
(17:22):
when you start to look at at the models of being, like, look,
what happened there doesn't necessarily have to happen here, And
how do we learn from those and how do we
figure out how to surpass those? And how do we
look at the models of success around us and say,
what are they doing?
Speaker 5 (17:37):
That's different.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
A lot of it boils down to the conversation when
you walk in and talk to your banker and you
walk into that appointment like you deserve that loan and
like you're going to be the best risk that they
can take on.
Speaker 5 (17:49):
It is a different sort of conversation. And so when
you see.
Speaker 3 (17:51):
Sort of a lot of the you know where we
see kind of equal stats in different outcomes.
Speaker 5 (17:58):
So part of it is how do.
Speaker 3 (17:59):
We present ourselves in the best line, And that is
knowing your numbers, it's walking in with confidence, it's owning
that space in the room. On the flip side, again,
there's a lot of work to be done on how
are we educating those giving the loans, how are we
educating those offering the venture capital, how are we helping
to model up the stories. It's again both sides, like
(18:20):
it's finding that middle ground or we can start to
jump over those those hurdles. But I think to the
degree that you can know your numbers, you can be
like the you know, the leader of your entity.
Speaker 5 (18:34):
You know that company better than anybody else.
Speaker 3 (18:35):
Does you know your market better than that banker does,
or better than that investor does. So remember that when
you walk in, present it with confidence. And you know,
I think so much of it is just you've got
to get buy in.
Speaker 5 (18:48):
You're selling. Your biggest jobs as an owner is to sell.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
Yeah, that's so good. I remember it was a couple
of years ago I had heard a banker say this
phrase I'm about to say, and it blew my mind.
I didn't think of it this way. And he said,
the bank needs you. And I had always grown up
thinking that, you know, we need the bank, but the
bank needs you like the bank's business is to sell money,
like they loan money. They sell money quote unquote because
(19:16):
they need it to be invested so that it can grow.
They need to put it in your pocket so you
can grow it and continue to all these things. So
but we either way, I grew up. At least I'll
speak for me, you know, like it's it's a little exposing,
it's it's it's there is a fear when you get
a bank or ask you for your documents. It's like
(19:36):
being interrogated by a police officer. You know, in a way.
It's like, you know, I don't I don't want that experience.
And so many that come from my community feel that way.
But when you have this shift of thinking that the
bank needs me to be successful, my question to you
is why do they need other than just they need,
you know, to grow their capital and their balance sheet.
(19:58):
What does the bank need? I know there's you know,
community efforts that they have to be holding to. Like
what why does the bank need us to be successful?
As small business owners?
Speaker 5 (20:08):
Yeah, banks have a lot off.
Speaker 3 (20:10):
That's their business, right, it's deploy capital to get returns
on that capital. They need to put that money to work,
and so and particularly and certainly this landscape is shifting
on the daily currently. But they made great promises to
get capital into underserved communities and the reality is they're
(20:30):
they're not meeting those you know, those goals, and so
they have great objectives out there. They're trying to connect,
you know, they're working through CDFIs, they're working with community engagement.
They're trying to lift up the performance across different different areas.
They're being held accountable internally and externally to their customer base.
Speaker 5 (20:51):
And so it's our objective when I see.
Speaker 3 (20:52):
People are rooting for small business, I mean everybody is
rooting for small business. Your local community is rooting for
you to succeed because they want to see those businesses
stick around on Your banker is rooting for those small
businesses because they want to be able to give more loans.
They're being measured and judged on how many loans do
they deploy, what is the return rate on those loans,
and so your success is their success. I would say, hello, whiles,
(21:14):
we have this great sweet spot because we get to
be a mission driven company because the only thing that
everybody succeeds with is if small businesses succeed. Every enterprise
corporation that we work with succeeds when those small businesses succeed.
Our business succeeds when small businesses succeed, and the small
business owners succeed obviously when they succeed. And so everybody
(21:36):
needs it and everybody relies on it. It's how capital
is created at the end of the day. So more purchases,
more transactions, more loan volume, greater returns on investments, all
of that depends on the success of the.
Speaker 5 (21:51):
Small business owner.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
That's a great segue to this, you said, and I've
heard others repeat this phrase. I don't want your take on.
It's like d is good for business. It's not just
the right thing to do, but it's good for business.
And can you elaborate on how diversity creates, you know,
sort of a tangible return for business.
Speaker 3 (22:14):
Yeah, I mean it's listen, in anything, if you think
about your funnel, right, if you want to get the
very best businesses in, you've got to cast the widest funnel.
And we know we've seen this happen time and time again.
Information travels largely through through word of mouth, and whether
that is digitally or whether that is in person, information
is getting communicated to our communities that look quite similar
(22:38):
to us in any capacity.
Speaker 4 (22:40):
The more we can broaden after really wide net, the
best we're going to filter through. And so when we
talk about DEI, there's a great controversy today.
Speaker 5 (22:49):
You know, everything to your merit based, and I.
Speaker 3 (22:52):
Think everybody agrees on that the best should rise to
the top.
Speaker 5 (22:55):
I think everyone's aligned with that.
Speaker 3 (22:57):
The reality is we have to make sure the best
even get into the race, and so how do we
help the best get into the race?
Speaker 5 (23:04):
And that's the way that I look at.
Speaker 3 (23:06):
Deis we've got to make sure to your point, everybody's
having that conversation at the dinner table, everybody knows where
to show up to take advantage of an opportunity. Everybody
understands that they are meant to be in this conversation.
That's success with DEI if we do that, and we're
making sure everyone has access to the resources, everyone has
(23:26):
availability to these things. Again, technology is helping to close
a lot of those gaps as well, but we still
a long way to go. When you look at the
disparity between the black community and the white community, there
is a huge disparity there and we have to do
work to close that in and when we do it
the best are going to rise to the top, and
(23:49):
that might be a black person, it might be a
white person. It's very likely going to be a mix
of both, and it's going to be quite representative of
our country as a whole if we make sure that
everybody has the right knowledge and.
Speaker 5 (24:01):
Access to resources.
Speaker 2 (24:03):
So as it is if business, if DEI is great
for businesses, if diversity is great for business, and it's
been shown that to be a great economic competitive advantage,
why is that so hard to communicate to folks who
want to go the other way?
Speaker 5 (24:20):
I don't think. I don't know that it's.
Speaker 3 (24:25):
Hard, And because I've had a lot of conversations with
people on both sides of the table, and often what
I hear, I think is that it boils down to
what is what is fair? If somebody feels like they're
being passed over because of who they are on either side,
and I think on both ends of the conversation we're
(24:46):
hearing the same thing. Somebody feels like they're being passed
over for an opportunity because of who they are. And
I think that's where if we sit there and say, look,
let's figure out how do we how do we help
people start from the same place, how do we help
get people in the room. Instead of saying, should there
be you know, should there be quoted? Should there be
a firmaive action? Should there be the things? The reality is,
(25:07):
how do we just help everybody get in the room.
To me, that's the conversation that actually bridges this whole
argument and stops it from being you know, I didn't
get it because I'm white, or I didn't get it
because I'm black. The reality is, how do we help
everybody feel like they're getting a fair run at whatever
the opportunity is.
Speaker 2 (25:27):
You know, you've mentioned that, you know there's some challenge
in the early days, challenging efforts in finding your lane
in the small business ecosystem, And I wonder can you show,
I guess specific by turning point when you found this
is what we're supposed.
Speaker 5 (25:43):
To be doing.
Speaker 3 (25:45):
Yeah, we started well, I mean hello, EL started very
much from a mission standpoint. It was my own experience
I mentioned before, and I do very little about starting
a company, and my first business failed and I went
back to work, paid off debts, licked my wounds for
a bit, started a second company that I ultimately sold,
(26:06):
ran it very differently with the lessons that I learned
and feel very fortunate they got to start over again,
because many people don't have that opportunity. I was young
and single and could handle bumps and bruises enough at
the time, but it was that experience that helped that
really got me focused on how do I help others
from experiencing this because it was very difficult. I was
(26:27):
getting myself out of debt, I was sorting through a
lot of the financial troubles and difficulties, and so that
I would say that was sort of the focus always
from the start is how do we help you know?
Speaker 5 (26:38):
How do I help personally?
Speaker 3 (26:40):
It really started as me mentoring and supporting and connecting
resources in because when I sold that second company, the
world opened up to me.
Speaker 5 (26:46):
It was like all of a sudden, I had.
Speaker 3 (26:49):
Credibility and I was invited to the to the conferences,
and I was invited to the table. But the reality
is many people never get there and they never have
that experience, And so I just started saying off resources
to others and saying, you need to know about this,
you need to come here, you need to be here,
you need to be in this room, and little by
little that turned into a technology that could do that
much more efficiently. We started kind of boiling the ocean
(27:13):
and saying we're going to help the whole world, that
we're gonna help every entrepreneur and really honed in on
small business and on micro businesses because of the volume,
Because we said, if we can solve this, you know,
it's a small segment, it's a very narrow segment that
no one's paying attention to, and certainly nobody was back
in twenty seventeen, if we can solve it for this
(27:33):
narrow piece of the segment, it's the majority of small businesses,
and they don't look like the businesses that we often
think of when we think of entrepreneurs, when we think
of successful, you know.
Speaker 5 (27:44):
Business people.
Speaker 3 (27:46):
That's not what everybody was imagining, but the reality is
that that is what business in America is.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
You know, when we were talking about the conversations we
had growing up, or lack of conversations around budgeting and
financial litercy, seeing et cetera, you know, you kind of
touched on seeing representation of these things. And I often
think about my experiences. I didn't see black wealth in
black entrepreneurship until I moved to Atlanta some in my
(28:13):
early twenties because I'm from Tweed, Ohio, and I'm back
here now and I'm building businesses. But I saw success
on TV and I saw it on computers, but I'd
never seen it like that way with my naked eye
until I moved to Atlanta. So I wonder about how
you believe black people who have found some level of
(28:33):
success should show up in the world to be representative
of what it could look like for those coming behind them.
Speaker 5 (28:42):
Yeah, it's a great, a great question.
Speaker 3 (28:44):
I mean, I can only relate to my own experience,
which obviously not it's a black person, it's hard to
say what the right answer.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
Is, but I will say Latina or Latina or Lustia.
Speaker 3 (28:54):
I mean it's I think that the key piece is
how do you how do you help people believe that
they can do it? And I will say for myself,
I mean, I started off my career as an investment banker,
saw a lot of you know, white male success stories
and entrepreneurship, and nothing ever stopped me from thinking that
(29:16):
that could be me. I looked around and they didn't
look like me, but I always believed I think I was.
Speaker 4 (29:22):
And I was always told in my house that I
can do it, nobody ever stopping from doing it, and
so I always knew there was a pathway there. And
I think the one thing that I kept even when my.
Speaker 3 (29:32):
Business failed, and even I knew in my gut, I
knew that I could achieve whatever I was seeing around me.
So I think part of it is just the conversations
that we are having at home, regardless of what the
path is or whether our parents know you know how
to navigate through those paths or not, is just create
the belief in kids today that they can do it
(29:54):
and they can figure it out. In terms of those
that have who have succeeded and who have a it's
the same thing, right it's going and saying look, I
did it, you can do it, because it is easier
to identify, certainly with someone who looks like you and
somebody who had who has had a similar path. I
think we always hear, you know, those stories of people
who have overcome huge hurles in all capacities of their life,
(30:17):
and it gives you hope that they figured it out.
Speaker 5 (30:20):
If they figured it out, it's it's figure outable.
Speaker 3 (30:23):
Else someone else can do it, and we can replicate
and repeat that story.
Speaker 5 (30:27):
I mean, that's why I love the thing.
Speaker 3 (30:28):
Like what you're doing and telling the stories and bringing
bringing light to those things I think is so critical
because it just it's proof point after proof point after
proof point, and you never know which proof point's going
to stick with who and what's going to resonate with who.
But those stories matter, and they matter tremendously. But at
the end of the day, I think it's like, how
do you build up the confidence in somebody? And that
(30:49):
comes from little little wins along the way in life.
Speaker 6 (30:53):
I like that.
Speaker 2 (30:54):
Finally, I think there's this quote I've found from you
where you said, you know, banks adventure capital continue to
rely on incredibly limited data to make underwriting decisions, and
I thought, I thought that was striking, And I wonder
how you can help them bridge the gap because these
outdated practices in a lot of ways, And how can
(31:17):
small businesses better articulate those qualitative strengths scrappiness like leadership
ability and you know, how to when when funders typically
look at quantitative data.
Speaker 3 (31:30):
Yeah, I will say I was shocked, you know, in
the early days of how Whiles I dug a lot
into the underwriting model when I would talk to bankers
at major bulge bracket firms saying they were looking at
you know, word documents and Excel spreadsheets and questionnaires to
figure out should they get a loan or not when
all this data was available?
Speaker 5 (31:49):
Or we would you look around for data sources.
Speaker 3 (31:52):
And we're like, our data is this small, tiny, scrappy startup.
You know, in our early days, just a handful of
employees had more relevant and more recent data than the
Small Business Administration. It's eye opening about how little data
there is on small businesses and the ability to match it.
We still get calls constantly from government agencies, from Fortune
(32:16):
one hundred companies saying, hey, can you help us out
with data on this segment of businesses?
Speaker 5 (32:20):
Can you help us understand this piece? Can you figure
this out?
Speaker 3 (32:24):
And if they're leaning on you know us like there's
such an opportunity to start to piece together the stories
of not just you know, not just where is a
business owner today?
Speaker 5 (32:35):
But I think the really valuable piece and what we
work on a lot at Helloalys is how.
Speaker 3 (32:40):
Do we better understand the trajectory of a small business owner?
If you know, I start with one thousand dollars and
somebody else started with ten thousand dollars and we both,
you know, are at twenty thousand dollars. Who's on a
better path and who feels like a better risk?
Speaker 5 (32:56):
Right? It's and I think oftentimes.
Speaker 3 (32:58):
We're looking at you, well, you're twenty thousand dollars a
year of twenty thousand dollars, and you know, here's the
loan I'm going to give you.
Speaker 5 (33:04):
That's not the full story.
Speaker 3 (33:06):
We have to see what is where did they start
and where are they now to understand ultimately where they're going.
So and data ultimately provides that picture, right, But it's
also what have you faced along the way?
Speaker 5 (33:18):
What have you dealt with?
Speaker 3 (33:18):
What did your you know, what happened in your industry
in this time, what was your cohort of others in
your space doing?
Speaker 5 (33:25):
What was happening to other businesses in.
Speaker 3 (33:27):
You know, in Atlanta, if you know, an area was
struck by a natural disaster. There was a huge obstacle
being able to look at that data and say, Okay,
I've got to put this lens on how this company's
performing to better understand the real risk factor going forward.
Speaker 5 (33:45):
But we're a long way from that.
Speaker 3 (33:46):
I don't think banks are anywhere close to looking at
that sort of data. But it's my hope that if
we can gather it and we can understand it, we
can keep providing it and keep sharing the story.
Speaker 5 (33:56):
Little by little we start.
Speaker 3 (33:57):
Chipping away at innovative underwrit models, and there are great
I was in tests being done and there. It's going
to ultimately rely on the startup community in the fintech
community to.
Speaker 5 (34:09):
Say, look, we did it. We're getting better returns on
our on our investments, and you all can do it too.
Speaker 3 (34:17):
Yeah, the bolt rockets will follow, you know the proof points.
Speaker 2 (34:22):
I actually do have one more.
Speaker 3 (34:23):
So.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
There was a few years ago the SBA put out
this study that said eighty percent of the small businesses
built in minority communities Black Hispanic communities are in the
eighty percent of those businesses are in the bottom twenty
percent of categories for revenue. So we over index on barbershops,
(34:45):
landscaping companies, restaurants, you know, corner stores, and so my
I guess my question to you is one is how
do we see more for ourselves? So how do we
open up the aperture or the lens that there's a
bigger opportunity out there, Like I think about that, like
(35:06):
there's no black owned like Boicks or Supercuts. Like there's
there's individual barber shops, but we don't have like a
chain or franchise model, and like still like there's none
of that. And not just the black community, but how
do black people and minorities in general see bigger and
see like instead of just doing this once, I could
do this thirty times and find ways to create something
(35:29):
that's replicable.
Speaker 5 (35:31):
Yeah, that's that's always a tough one.
Speaker 3 (35:34):
It's hard for maybe I think my mind works that way,
probably to my detriment sometimes because I think every time
I see something, I'm like, this could be this, take
it to you know, the nth degree. It's it is mindset,
and that mindset I think is ingrained early on, and
it's really hard to break that mindset. I mean, I
think I've been in communities where you see a whole
(35:57):
community that just thinks very traditionally and they think very.
Speaker 4 (36:01):
Small scale, and they're operating well. They're brilliant at what
they do, and they're skilled craftsmen and knowledgeable about their
business and their industry.
Speaker 3 (36:12):
But the mindset to grow. Because I always get in
those conversations I'm like, well.
Speaker 5 (36:16):
Have you thought about this? Have you thought about how
you could do this? Have you thought of and.
Speaker 3 (36:18):
Sometimes you sort of get this look like there is
not a desire.
Speaker 5 (36:23):
So I think one is finance me where does the
desire live?
Speaker 3 (36:26):
Because that's a that's a huge piece, right, And I
think it can be built into any community. I think
everybody has the potential to have that, but it has
to be it has.
Speaker 5 (36:35):
To be taught and learned.
Speaker 3 (36:36):
And so when you're surrounded in communities where the thinking
is a certain way, it's really hard to break out
of that. A lot of you know, and you see
that sort of the use case of what made somebody
sort of jump out of this? What made somebody make
make the leap out of sort of the status quo
for whatever path they were on into something you know,
(37:00):
all of them to use the word greater, although some
would probably question is it you know, is it or not?
I don't know, but into a more kind of scalable
and efficient and effective and you know, more capitalist model
on some level, right, What creates that foundation? I think
that boils down to teachers, It boils down to mentorship,
It boils down to parents, It boils down to the
(37:23):
stories and access in our communities.
Speaker 5 (37:25):
And so when I think about tech ecosystems.
Speaker 3 (37:29):
And in a lot of these cities, one of the
greatest things they can do, I think is if they're
having a pitch date, invite invite kids in from your community,
Invite people in, Invite people to come to see and watch
and know that this exists. We operate in such bubbles
in all of these spaces. You know, if you run
a business, invite somebody in just to come see and understand,
(37:50):
even if it's for a day, open those doors to
start to just break the mold and at least plant
the seed for something that who knows where it's going
to come to life you know later on. But we
have to build in that exposure. And sometimes it's you know,
taking a story and telling it in a different context
or not just having conversations about small business and startups
(38:14):
and entrepreneurship in tech in that community. How do we
break out and go find the business on the.
Speaker 5 (38:22):
Corner of main street in a town and say here's
here's a model. Have you did you know this existed?
Have you thought about this? Do you know what this takes?
Do you know what it would require? Here's a couple
of pathways.
Speaker 3 (38:34):
Some are going to jump on it and summer now,
but over and over it starts to break the mold
of how we think.
Speaker 6 (38:40):
Black Tech Green Money is a production to Blavity, Afro Tech,
the Black Effect Podcast Network and I Hire Media and
it's produced by Morgan Debonne and me Well Lucas, with
the additional production support by Kate McDonald, SAG and Jada McGee.
Speaker 2 (38:53):
Special thank you to Michael.
Speaker 6 (38:54):
Davis and Love Beach.
Speaker 2 (38:56):
Learn more about my guess of the tech to show
that's an innovatives afrotech dot com.
Speaker 6 (39:00):
The video version of this episode will.
Speaker 2 (39:01):
Drop to Black Tech Green Money on YouTube, So tap in,
enjoy your Black Tech Green Money, Share this to somebody,
Go get your money. Peace and love,
Speaks to the planet. I go by the name of
Charlamagne to God and guess what, I can't wait to
see y'all at the third annual Black Effect Podcast Festival.
That's right, We're coming back to Atlanta, Georgia, Saturday, April
twenty six at Poeman Yards and it's hosted by none
other than Decisions, Decisions Man, d B and Weezy. Okay,
we got the R and B Money podcast with taking
Jay Valentine. We got the Women of All Podcasts with
(00:21):
Sarah Jake Roberts, we got Good Mom's Bad Choices. Carrie
Champion will be there with her next sports podcast and
the Trap Nerds podcast with more to be announced. And
of course it's bigger than podcasts. We're bringing the Black
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you don't want to miss this. Tap in and grab
(00:41):
your tickets now at Black Effect dot Com Flash Podcast Festival.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
I'm Lucas and this is Black Tech, Green Money. Carolyn
Royns is a Latina entrepreneur and the co founder and
cey of Hello Alice and aipowered platform that connects small
business owners of capital, mentorship and opportunities, over one million
entrepreneurs on the platform, and partnerships with major corporations. Hello
Alice is proving that diversity isn't just good for business,
(01:07):
it's essential. We give a lot of attention to hyper
growth startups, technology companies, companies that you know are aiming
to be unicorns and things like that, while most people, however,
work for small businesses or want to own a small
businesses A small business and your work at Hello Alice
connects a lot of small businesses with resources and opportunities.
(01:30):
And I wonder what trends you're observing in the challenges
they might be facing compared to when you started this organization.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
Yeah, Unfortunately, I will say that the challenges are facing
haven't changed much. It's always, you know, since we've blocked
Hello alics, the top two needs of small businesses have
consistently been access to capital and building customer awareness. Ultimately,
what we hear for businesses is they're looking for ways
to put more money in their pocket, whether that's through
(02:01):
funding or whether that's through organic revenue growth. And that's
really where the focus of Hello Alice sits.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
Do you believe that, you know, I mean, you're saying
that not a lot has changed. How has the approach
potentially had to say, Okay, if this is not making
meaningful impact, not that it's not making mean but the
numbers you just you know, remain flat because more people
are entering the space, have you had to change how
you approach these challenges.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
Where we're seeing great headway is the understanding around small
business and we will launch Teloalis. Back in twenty seventeen,
we would talk about small businesses and nobody wanted to
hear about it was the reality. People were very focused
on the startup space. Everything was about tech.
Speaker 4 (02:44):
There were all these accelerators, incubators, and great happening.
Speaker 5 (02:48):
To the small business.
Speaker 4 (02:49):
The silver lining of the pandemic which impacted small businesses
and lots of really difficult ways.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
And challenge them in ways that we've never seen before.
It also brought great attention to small business and I
think it made everybody recognize how much we actually lean
on these businesses in our backyards, what a huge piece
of the economy they are. They're ninety nine percent of
businesses in the US are small. They're creating fifty five
percent of new jobs, and so when you put a
(03:18):
freeze on that, I think we all recognized there was
a lot of tension happening, certainly at the local level
in terms of how we individually dependent on these businesses,
but nationally, when we started to look at the economy,
we say, this is a huge impact in terms of
how our country operates. And so in that sense, I
think we've seen more attention. They're a better understanding, and
(03:40):
that understanding has opened up new products, new technology, more ability,
and I think more resourcing behind these businesses. And that's
allowing the companies that are fundamentally healthy.
Speaker 5 (03:56):
Businesses, it's allowing them to thrive.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
And now where we're starting to focuses, Okay, these ones
that have sort of a shaky foundation that certainly struggle
during the pandemic are.
Speaker 5 (04:04):
Continuing to struggle.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
Now, how do we build up those fundamentals to help
them understand these are the pieces they need to get
in place so that they can capitalize on this new
wealth of resources that's been created. So there's definitely a
need to meet in the middle between the ecosystem resources
that are available in the capital that's being created, and
the small businesses themselves and the work that they need
(04:27):
to do to be able to access those resources.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
Yeah, I wonder how you think about this? So in
business there is no stasis, like if you're making the
same amount of money you made last year, you're probably
going down because the market is changing, market is getting
more efficient, more richtel etc. And so I think about
how how do small business owners think about growth? Should
we be thinking about scale or should we be thinking
(04:53):
in the way that technology start off thinking about scale?
Or is there another way we should be thinking about
how we grow small all businesses.
Speaker 5 (05:02):
The lessons that are learned from the tech industry can
certainly be applied to small business in so many ways,
and I would say increasingly so.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
If you think about the amount of technology that a
business has available to them today, with AI, you can
have employees technology employees that are not paid employees for you,
agents that are working for your company. Right, you're opening
up the ability and capacity to work and operate so
much more efficiently. And so when you think about scale,
(05:32):
I think for small businesses now it's shifting the way
that they have to think about it. Right, there's still
the need in the early days build a great product
or service, find incredible traction with your market, find what
the lights your market, you've got to go above and
beyond and what goes beyond that line of satisfactory, and
then start to figure out how do you scale that,
(05:52):
how do you automate that, how do you make that
process more efficient? But tech company or main street small business,
the reality is the approach is the same. Find your
product market fit and then figure out how do you
use technology and how do you use you know, efficiencies
and systems and all of these great tools at business's
disposal to scale, to automate, and to optimize.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
When you say small business, your responsortion just made me
think about this. When you said small business, what do
you mean? Do you mean? Because I've been to like,
you know, small business can range from you know, hundreds
of thousands to twenty million dollars a year, and then
you've got micro businesses that are like kind of like
you know, one person you know shops, Like, how do
you think how do you define small businesses?
Speaker 3 (06:35):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (06:36):
I mean it's a boraa definition depending on who you
talk through. The definition toruls shift.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
According to the SBA, it's under five hundred employees. What
we are mostly looking at, I would say the majority
of those that fall into that ninety nine percent of
small businesses or under ten million in revenue. The majority
of businesses on Hello Wallis are actually under ten employees
and under a million in revenue. And so you can
certainly see like the biggest piece of the pie is
(07:02):
those micro businesses that are just trying to keep the
lights on. You know, they're just trying to make sure
that their employees are paid. They're just trying to make
sure they have enough money to you know, support themselves
and ideally their families. The needs are really you know,
week to week and or paycheck to paycheck versus you know,
(07:25):
thinking about these massively scalable companies.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
So when you when you're talking about it, let's just
take you know, let's make up a business. You know,
this business is doing four hundred you know, thousand, maybe
even less, let's say two hundred thousand. It's a one
or two person shop. And I'll let you pick the industry.
But what the how should they be thinking about product
market fit? Because I don't hear small business owners at
(07:50):
that level thinking product market fit. They just they have
either a skill and they are you know, kind of
a craftsman and they do the work and then hopefully
people buy the work from them, or you know, maybe
they own a print shop or a landscaping company, or
you know, how do they find product market fit?
Speaker 5 (08:09):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (08:09):
I find two really common paths that businesses go down.
The first is you have a founder or an owner
or a business owner who loves the product or service
that they provide, and they're so focused on refining and
optimizing and perfecting that product or service that they forget
about the sales side. The other type of a business
(08:32):
owner is one who is great at sales. They're super charismatic,
they're great at building a team, they're great at getting
energy behind something and making things happen. Not so great
at refining and optimizing that product. And so where you
see the sweet spot is when a business owner has
a balance between those two. That's when you establish product
market fit. So I think it's not often talked about
(08:53):
in the small business space in the same way.
Speaker 5 (08:55):
But the reality is that's what it is.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
Right, whatever product you're bring into market, how are you
putting your own stamp on that, How are you building
the right brand story around that? How are you presenting
it to your market in a way that is meaningful
and differentiated from everybody else who's out there, because the
reality is today you can buy most products on Amazon,
you could find most services you know within.
Speaker 5 (09:16):
Your look online. On some level, how do you start
to differentiate and make your stamp in the market.
Speaker 4 (09:23):
People want you your company and not from the company
down down the street.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
And ultimately, I think it boils down to how are
you finding that product or service and how are you
bringing to the market in a really unique way.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
Yeah, And one of the conversations I have with small
business owners is we tend to emphasize support for our businesses.
And one of the things that kind of I shouldn't say,
frustrates me. Maybe that's too strong a word, but like,
I don't shop at Target because I support Target. Like
I shop at Target because they have what I need
and I don't know enough about the business to support
(09:58):
it or not. And I wonder what your take is
on how we shift or maybe add on just providing
things people need versus relying on support, if that makes sense.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
Yeah, I mean I think it's the burden is on
the small businesses to make it easy for the customer. Right.
The reality is most of us love to shop small
we love to support.
Speaker 5 (10:21):
Our local communities.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
We want to go, you know, we'd rather buy the
product from a business that we know and a business
owner who we know and want to support, versus walking
into Target and buying some generic brand that everybody else has.
The difficulty comes is that it's hard to find those
products or services. When you need a bottle of shampoo.
It's very easy to walk into Target and you know
you have every option there. How do you make it easy?
(10:45):
And that's where I think you look at online brands
and you look at people who've done it well, and
they're making it easy right. They're offering subscriptions, they're you know,
tailoring the experience to you. They're allowing you to customize
and pick what's the right, perfectly right product for your
hair type. Those small businesses that can do that, that
can refine what that experience is and why it's different
(11:07):
for one customer versus another customer, and why it's specialized
and why it's easier. Those are the businesses I think
that have a huge opportunity to capitalize on our innate
desire to go purchase from small businesses. But it takes time,
it takes technology, it takes refinement. It takes looking at
that whole customer journey from awareness to building a brand advocate.
(11:29):
And if you can do that, people are willing. They
want to spend their money with you. I would sell
business owners like the world is rooting for you. You
just have to know how do you capitalize on that willingness,
how do you capitalize on those resources? And how do
you spend your time of connecting those dots in the
most efficient ways.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
How have you had to manage the resources you provide
to underserved traditionally underserved communities, black people, Hispanic, Vida, etc.
How have you had to reconfigure the training, the lessons,
the resources to fit the nuance? Because I mean, if
we think about our counterparty, we didn't historically buy and large.
(12:07):
I'm creating a broad stroke here that we didn't necessarily
grow up talking about business at the dinner table, didn't
necessarily grow up talking about budgeting and investing in so
many factors of our communities. So when you think about
the bridge that has to be crossed for these populations
of people to get to business success, what is different
(12:29):
about your offering because you're speaking to these audiences, it's you.
Speaker 5 (12:36):
Know, I try to remind everybody.
Speaker 3 (12:37):
And like every business starts small, every business starts small,
we start with a different knowledge base. To your point,
we start with different resources at our disposal.
Speaker 5 (12:46):
You know, most businesses in.
Speaker 3 (12:47):
The United States are starting with under five thousand dollars
of startup capital.
Speaker 5 (12:53):
That's a really.
Speaker 3 (12:56):
Small amount of money at prinkly, you know, when you
think about being able to pull resources across. It's why
our grants programs on HOLLO ouls are so critical, because
that tiny bit of capital can be the start of
a business for somebody. Now we look at black owned
businesses and Latino owned businesses, it's often half of that
amount of capital, and so there's certainly at a disadvantage
when we look at the starting point, and so it's.
Speaker 5 (13:19):
Important to figure out one how do we bridge those gaps.
And that's where.
Speaker 3 (13:21):
Programs like grants programs, corporate support programs, a lot of
the NGOs that are out of there are doing great
and necessary work.
Speaker 5 (13:32):
The knowledge base, thankfully today, is available. You just have
to know to.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
Ask the right questions and you have to know how
to tap into the right networks. I think I mean
my experience, I grew up to immigrant parents in Spring Texas.
I went to public schools my whole life. I know
nothing when I started my first company and it failed.
And the reality is I didn't lean on the resources
even that I had at my disposal. I wasn't aware
of the local networks that were in my town.
Speaker 5 (13:59):
I wasn't aware of you know, who.
Speaker 3 (14:02):
I could lean on for mentors, and there were people
around me who were willing to help and who I
could have asked. I just didn't even know the right
questions to ask. And part of that means you've got
to be in the room. You've got to hear the conversations.
When I say the room, sometimes that's the digital room.
Get them in you know online forums, jump into you
know LinkedIn groups, show up at your local networking event
(14:24):
and just here and start to expose yourself to that.
And that's one of our goals at Hello Wallis is
how do we blast that knowledge as loud and far
and you know, as as you reach into these pockets
of communities that aren't having those conversations at the dinner table.
Because I certainly, I certainly did and I had the
advantage of you know, entrepreneurs in my family and still
(14:45):
didn't have those conversations at the dinner table. There was
still I'd never heard of venture capital, I'd never thought
about getting a loan from a bank.
Speaker 5 (14:52):
I never considered those things.
Speaker 3 (14:55):
But the reality is those conversations were being had in
areas that I had access to all around me. I
just didn't know they were there. And so that's our job,
I think as a community, and everybody listening to this
is how do we go out and reach into our
communities and go find those dinner tables where those conversations
aren't being had and start them and just say, hey,
check out this network, go look at this thing, meet
(15:17):
this person. It's so organic, but the knowledge is spread
so much further today than it was, certainly even ten
years ago.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
What do you find are some of the most pervasive
issues plaguing small businesses from black and Latino communities. I
think about, you know, knowing your numbers as one Like
I was talking to a friend of mine who was
building like a skincare company, and we were talking about
like the cost of one bottle, like how much does
(15:48):
it cost to make one bottle? And she had never
even thought to price it down, like to get the
cost down to how much is it the cost to
make one that unit metric and so they just price things,
you know, because oly that's exilely for twenty I'm like, well,
how much does it cost? But not knowing how to
get those formulas to figure out how much does one
bottle cost or one jar was like enlightening in a
(16:11):
way but also shocking. And so I think about, you know,
having paperwork in order, like what are some of the
things that are pervasively plaguing us?
Speaker 5 (16:21):
Sometimes I think we're our own worst enemy.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
What I look at, whether it's black and Latino communities,
whether it's you know, any pocket of people who who
don't sort of see themselves in the room of the
successful business owners.
Speaker 5 (16:37):
There's fear is a huge part of it.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
We're afraid to ask for help and to show that
we don't know what we don't know because we feel
like we should and we feel like everybody else might.
I think that's a huge piece of it. The second
piece is risk aversion. There is I think oftentimes because
we're not seeing the models out there, we're not saying,
(17:00):
you know, we see a lot of we hear a
lot of stories of failure. There's a risk aversion in
terms of being able to take that leap. And I
think if we flip the story and say, look, we're
all still here, standing, and we're all still we're all
still surviving in spite of those failures and in spite
of those obstacles and in spite of all those things
that have happened, we can do this. And I think
(17:22):
when you start to look at at the models of being, like, look,
what happened there doesn't necessarily have to happen here, And
how do we learn from those and how do we
figure out how to surpass those? And how do we
look at the models of success around us and say,
what are they doing?
Speaker 5 (17:37):
That's different.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
A lot of it boils down to the conversation when
you walk in and talk to your banker and you
walk into that appointment like you deserve that loan and
like you're going to be the best risk that they
can take on.
Speaker 5 (17:49):
It is a different sort of conversation. And so when
you see.
Speaker 3 (17:51):
Sort of a lot of the you know where we
see kind of equal stats in different outcomes.
Speaker 5 (17:58):
So part of it is how do.
Speaker 3 (17:59):
We present ourselves in the best line, And that is
knowing your numbers, it's walking in with confidence, it's owning
that space in the room. On the flip side, again,
there's a lot of work to be done on how
are we educating those giving the loans, how are we
educating those offering the venture capital, how are we helping
to model up the stories. It's again both sides, like
(18:20):
it's finding that middle ground or we can start to
jump over those those hurdles. But I think to the
degree that you can know your numbers, you can be
like the you know, the leader of your entity.
Speaker 5 (18:34):
You know that company better than anybody else.
Speaker 3 (18:35):
Does you know your market better than that banker does,
or better than that investor does. So remember that when
you walk in, present it with confidence. And you know,
I think so much of it is just you've got
to get buy in.
Speaker 5 (18:48):
You're selling. Your biggest jobs as an owner is to sell.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
Yeah, that's so good. I remember it was a couple
of years ago I had heard a banker say this
phrase I'm about to say, and it blew my mind.
I didn't think of it this way. And he said,
the bank needs you. And I had always grown up
thinking that, you know, we need the bank, but the
bank needs you like the bank's business is to sell money,
like they loan money. They sell money quote unquote because
(19:16):
they need it to be invested so that it can grow.
They need to put it in your pocket so you
can grow it and continue to all these things. So
but we either way, I grew up. At least I'll
speak for me, you know, like it's it's a little exposing,
it's it's it's there is a fear when you get
a bank or ask you for your documents. It's like
(19:36):
being interrogated by a police officer. You know, in a way.
It's like, you know, I don't I don't want that experience.
And so many that come from my community feel that way.
But when you have this shift of thinking that the
bank needs me to be successful, my question to you
is why do they need other than just they need,
you know, to grow their capital and their balance sheet.
(19:58):
What does the bank need? I know there's you know,
community efforts that they have to be holding to. Like
what why does the bank need us to be successful?
As small business owners?
Speaker 5 (20:08):
Yeah, banks have a lot off.
Speaker 3 (20:10):
That's their business, right, it's deploy capital to get returns
on that capital. They need to put that money to work,
and so and particularly and certainly this landscape is shifting
on the daily currently. But they made great promises to
get capital into underserved communities and the reality is they're
(20:30):
they're not meeting those you know, those goals, and so
they have great objectives out there. They're trying to connect,
you know, they're working through CDFIs, they're working with community engagement.
They're trying to lift up the performance across different different areas.
They're being held accountable internally and externally to their customer base.
Speaker 5 (20:51):
And so it's our objective when I see.
Speaker 3 (20:52):
People are rooting for small business, I mean everybody is
rooting for small business. Your local community is rooting for
you to succeed because they want to see those businesses
stick around on Your banker is rooting for those small
businesses because they want to be able to give more loans.
They're being measured and judged on how many loans do
they deploy, what is the return rate on those loans,
and so your success is their success. I would say, hello, whiles,
(21:14):
we have this great sweet spot because we get to
be a mission driven company because the only thing that
everybody succeeds with is if small businesses succeed. Every enterprise
corporation that we work with succeeds when those small businesses succeed.
Our business succeeds when small businesses succeed, and the small
business owners succeed obviously when they succeed. And so everybody
(21:36):
needs it and everybody relies on it. It's how capital
is created at the end of the day. So more purchases,
more transactions, more loan volume, greater returns on investments, all
of that depends on the success of the.
Speaker 5 (21:51):
Small business owner.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
That's a great segue to this, you said, and I've
heard others repeat this phrase. I don't want your take on.
It's like d is good for business. It's not just
the right thing to do, but it's good for business.
And can you elaborate on how diversity creates, you know,
sort of a tangible return for business.
Speaker 3 (22:14):
Yeah, I mean it's listen, in anything, if you think
about your funnel, right, if you want to get the
very best businesses in, you've got to cast the widest funnel.
And we know we've seen this happen time and time again.
Information travels largely through through word of mouth, and whether
that is digitally or whether that is in person, information
is getting communicated to our communities that look quite similar
(22:38):
to us in any capacity.
Speaker 4 (22:40):
The more we can broaden after really wide net, the
best we're going to filter through. And so when we
talk about DEI, there's a great controversy today.
Speaker 5 (22:49):
You know, everything to your merit based, and I.
Speaker 3 (22:52):
Think everybody agrees on that the best should rise to
the top.
Speaker 5 (22:55):
I think everyone's aligned with that.
Speaker 3 (22:57):
The reality is we have to make sure the best
even get into the race, and so how do we
help the best get into the race?
Speaker 5 (23:04):
And that's the way that I look at.
Speaker 3 (23:06):
Deis we've got to make sure to your point, everybody's
having that conversation at the dinner table, everybody knows where
to show up to take advantage of an opportunity. Everybody
understands that they are meant to be in this conversation.
That's success with DEI if we do that, and we're
making sure everyone has access to the resources, everyone has
(23:26):
availability to these things. Again, technology is helping to close
a lot of those gaps as well, but we still
a long way to go. When you look at the
disparity between the black community and the white community, there
is a huge disparity there and we have to do
work to close that in and when we do it
the best are going to rise to the top, and
(23:49):
that might be a black person, it might be a
white person. It's very likely going to be a mix
of both, and it's going to be quite representative of
our country as a whole if we make sure that
everybody has the right knowledge and.
Speaker 5 (24:01):
Access to resources.
Speaker 2 (24:03):
So as it is if business, if DEI is great
for businesses, if diversity is great for business, and it's
been shown that to be a great economic competitive advantage,
why is that so hard to communicate to folks who
want to go the other way?
Speaker 5 (24:20):
I don't think. I don't know that it's.
Speaker 3 (24:25):
Hard, And because I've had a lot of conversations with
people on both sides of the table, and often what
I hear, I think is that it boils down to
what is what is fair? If somebody feels like they're
being passed over because of who they are on either side,
and I think on both ends of the conversation we're
(24:46):
hearing the same thing. Somebody feels like they're being passed
over for an opportunity because of who they are. And
I think that's where if we sit there and say, look,
let's figure out how do we how do we help
people start from the same place, how do we help
get people in the room. Instead of saying, should there
be you know, should there be quoted? Should there be
a firmaive action? Should there be the things? The reality is,
(25:07):
how do we just help everybody get in the room.
To me, that's the conversation that actually bridges this whole
argument and stops it from being you know, I didn't
get it because I'm white, or I didn't get it
because I'm black. The reality is, how do we help
everybody feel like they're getting a fair run at whatever
the opportunity is.
Speaker 2 (25:27):
You know, you've mentioned that, you know there's some challenge
in the early days, challenging efforts in finding your lane
in the small business ecosystem, And I wonder can you show,
I guess specific by turning point when you found this
is what we're supposed.
Speaker 5 (25:43):
To be doing.
Speaker 3 (25:45):
Yeah, we started well, I mean hello, EL started very
much from a mission standpoint. It was my own experience
I mentioned before, and I do very little about starting
a company, and my first business failed and I went
back to work, paid off debts, licked my wounds for
a bit, started a second company that I ultimately sold,
(26:06):
ran it very differently with the lessons that I learned
and feel very fortunate they got to start over again,
because many people don't have that opportunity. I was young
and single and could handle bumps and bruises enough at
the time, but it was that experience that helped that
really got me focused on how do I help others
from experiencing this because it was very difficult. I was
(26:27):
getting myself out of debt, I was sorting through a
lot of the financial troubles and difficulties, and so that
I would say that was sort of the focus always
from the start is how do we help you know?
Speaker 5 (26:38):
How do I help personally?
Speaker 3 (26:40):
It really started as me mentoring and supporting and connecting
resources in because when I sold that second company, the
world opened up to me.
Speaker 5 (26:46):
It was like all of a sudden, I had.
Speaker 3 (26:49):
Credibility and I was invited to the to the conferences,
and I was invited to the table. But the reality
is many people never get there and they never have
that experience, And so I just started saying off resources
to others and saying, you need to know about this,
you need to come here, you need to be here,
you need to be in this room, and little by
little that turned into a technology that could do that
much more efficiently. We started kind of boiling the ocean
(27:13):
and saying we're going to help the whole world, that
we're gonna help every entrepreneur and really honed in on
small business and on micro businesses because of the volume,
Because we said, if we can solve this, you know,
it's a small segment, it's a very narrow segment that
no one's paying attention to, and certainly nobody was back
in twenty seventeen, if we can solve it for this
(27:33):
narrow piece of the segment, it's the majority of small businesses,
and they don't look like the businesses that we often
think of when we think of entrepreneurs, when we think
of successful, you know.
Speaker 5 (27:44):
Business people.
Speaker 3 (27:46):
That's not what everybody was imagining, but the reality is
that that is what business in America is.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
You know, when we were talking about the conversations we
had growing up, or lack of conversations around budgeting and
financial litercy, seeing et cetera, you know, you kind of
touched on seeing representation of these things. And I often
think about my experiences. I didn't see black wealth in
black entrepreneurship until I moved to Atlanta some in my
(28:13):
early twenties because I'm from Tweed, Ohio, and I'm back
here now and I'm building businesses. But I saw success
on TV and I saw it on computers, but I'd
never seen it like that way with my naked eye
until I moved to Atlanta. So I wonder about how
you believe black people who have found some level of
(28:33):
success should show up in the world to be representative
of what it could look like for those coming behind them.
Speaker 5 (28:42):
Yeah, it's a great, a great question.
Speaker 3 (28:44):
I mean, I can only relate to my own experience,
which obviously not it's a black person, it's hard to
say what the right answer.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
Is, but I will say Latina or Latina or Lustia.
Speaker 3 (28:54):
I mean it's I think that the key piece is
how do you how do you help people believe that
they can do it? And I will say for myself,
I mean, I started off my career as an investment banker,
saw a lot of you know, white male success stories
and entrepreneurship, and nothing ever stopped me from thinking that
(29:16):
that could be me. I looked around and they didn't
look like me, but I always believed I think I was.
Speaker 4 (29:22):
And I was always told in my house that I
can do it, nobody ever stopping from doing it, and
so I always knew there was a pathway there. And
I think the one thing that I kept even when my.
Speaker 3 (29:32):
Business failed, and even I knew in my gut, I
knew that I could achieve whatever I was seeing around me.
So I think part of it is just the conversations
that we are having at home, regardless of what the
path is or whether our parents know you know how
to navigate through those paths or not, is just create
the belief in kids today that they can do it
(29:54):
and they can figure it out. In terms of those
that have who have succeeded and who have a it's
the same thing, right it's going and saying look, I
did it, you can do it, because it is easier
to identify, certainly with someone who looks like you and
somebody who had who has had a similar path. I
think we always hear, you know, those stories of people
who have overcome huge hurles in all capacities of their life,
(30:17):
and it gives you hope that they figured it out.
Speaker 5 (30:20):
If they figured it out, it's it's figure outable.
Speaker 3 (30:23):
Else someone else can do it, and we can replicate
and repeat that story.
Speaker 5 (30:27):
I mean, that's why I love the thing.
Speaker 3 (30:28):
Like what you're doing and telling the stories and bringing
bringing light to those things I think is so critical
because it just it's proof point after proof point after
proof point, and you never know which proof point's going
to stick with who and what's going to resonate with who.
But those stories matter, and they matter tremendously. But at
the end of the day, I think it's like, how
do you build up the confidence in somebody? And that
(30:49):
comes from little little wins along the way in life.
Speaker 6 (30:53):
I like that.
Speaker 2 (30:54):
Finally, I think there's this quote I've found from you
where you said, you know, banks adventure capital continue to
rely on incredibly limited data to make underwriting decisions, and
I thought, I thought that was striking, And I wonder
how you can help them bridge the gap because these
outdated practices in a lot of ways, And how can
(31:17):
small businesses better articulate those qualitative strengths scrappiness like leadership
ability and you know, how to when when funders typically
look at quantitative data.
Speaker 3 (31:30):
Yeah, I will say I was shocked, you know, in
the early days of how Whiles I dug a lot
into the underwriting model when I would talk to bankers
at major bulge bracket firms saying they were looking at
you know, word documents and Excel spreadsheets and questionnaires to
figure out should they get a loan or not when
all this data was available?
Speaker 5 (31:49):
Or we would you look around for data sources.
Speaker 3 (31:52):
And we're like, our data is this small, tiny, scrappy startup.
You know, in our early days, just a handful of
employees had more relevant and more recent data than the
Small Business Administration. It's eye opening about how little data
there is on small businesses and the ability to match it.
We still get calls constantly from government agencies, from Fortune
(32:16):
one hundred companies saying, hey, can you help us out
with data on this segment of businesses?
Speaker 5 (32:20):
Can you help us understand this piece? Can you figure
this out?
Speaker 3 (32:24):
And if they're leaning on you know us like there's
such an opportunity to start to piece together the stories
of not just you know, not just where is a
business owner today?
Speaker 5 (32:35):
But I think the really valuable piece and what we
work on a lot at Helloalys is how.
Speaker 3 (32:40):
Do we better understand the trajectory of a small business owner?
If you know, I start with one thousand dollars and
somebody else started with ten thousand dollars and we both,
you know, are at twenty thousand dollars. Who's on a
better path and who feels like a better risk?
Speaker 5 (32:56):
Right? It's and I think oftentimes.
Speaker 3 (32:58):
We're looking at you, well, you're twenty thousand dollars a
year of twenty thousand dollars, and you know, here's the
loan I'm going to give you.
Speaker 5 (33:04):
That's not the full story.
Speaker 3 (33:06):
We have to see what is where did they start
and where are they now to understand ultimately where they're going.
So and data ultimately provides that picture, right, But it's
also what have you faced along the way?
Speaker 5 (33:18):
What have you dealt with?
Speaker 3 (33:18):
What did your you know, what happened in your industry
in this time, what was your cohort of others in
your space doing?
Speaker 5 (33:25):
What was happening to other businesses in.
Speaker 3 (33:27):
You know, in Atlanta, if you know, an area was
struck by a natural disaster. There was a huge obstacle
being able to look at that data and say, Okay,
I've got to put this lens on how this company's
performing to better understand the real risk factor going forward.
Speaker 5 (33:45):
But we're a long way from that.
Speaker 3 (33:46):
I don't think banks are anywhere close to looking at
that sort of data. But it's my hope that if
we can gather it and we can understand it, we
can keep providing it and keep sharing the story.
Speaker 5 (33:56):
Little by little we start.
Speaker 3 (33:57):
Chipping away at innovative underwrit models, and there are great
I was in tests being done and there. It's going
to ultimately rely on the startup community in the fintech
community to.
Speaker 5 (34:09):
Say, look, we did it. We're getting better returns on
our on our investments, and you all can do it too.
Speaker 3 (34:17):
Yeah, the bolt rockets will follow, you know the proof points.
Speaker 2 (34:22):
I actually do have one more.
Speaker 3 (34:23):
So.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
There was a few years ago the SBA put out
this study that said eighty percent of the small businesses
built in minority communities Black Hispanic communities are in the
eighty percent of those businesses are in the bottom twenty
percent of categories for revenue. So we over index on barbershops,
(34:45):
landscaping companies, restaurants, you know, corner stores, and so my
I guess my question to you is one is how
do we see more for ourselves? So how do we
open up the aperture or the lens that there's a
bigger opportunity out there, Like I think about that, like
(35:06):
there's no black owned like Boicks or Supercuts. Like there's
there's individual barber shops, but we don't have like a
chain or franchise model, and like still like there's none
of that. And not just the black community, but how
do black people and minorities in general see bigger and
see like instead of just doing this once, I could
do this thirty times and find ways to create something
(35:29):
that's replicable.
Speaker 5 (35:31):
Yeah, that's that's always a tough one.
Speaker 3 (35:34):
It's hard for maybe I think my mind works that way,
probably to my detriment sometimes because I think every time
I see something, I'm like, this could be this, take
it to you know, the nth degree. It's it is mindset,
and that mindset I think is ingrained early on, and
it's really hard to break that mindset. I mean, I
think I've been in communities where you see a whole
(35:57):
community that just thinks very traditionally and they think very.
Speaker 4 (36:01):
Small scale, and they're operating well. They're brilliant at what
they do, and they're skilled craftsmen and knowledgeable about their
business and their industry.
Speaker 3 (36:12):
But the mindset to grow. Because I always get in
those conversations I'm like, well.
Speaker 5 (36:16):
Have you thought about this? Have you thought about how
you could do this? Have you thought of and.
Speaker 3 (36:18):
Sometimes you sort of get this look like there is
not a desire.
Speaker 5 (36:23):
So I think one is finance me where does the
desire live?
Speaker 3 (36:26):
Because that's a that's a huge piece, right, And I
think it can be built into any community. I think
everybody has the potential to have that, but it has
to be it has.
Speaker 5 (36:35):
To be taught and learned.
Speaker 3 (36:36):
And so when you're surrounded in communities where the thinking
is a certain way, it's really hard to break out
of that. A lot of you know, and you see
that sort of the use case of what made somebody
sort of jump out of this? What made somebody make
make the leap out of sort of the status quo
for whatever path they were on into something you know,
(37:00):
all of them to use the word greater, although some
would probably question is it you know, is it or not?
I don't know, but into a more kind of scalable
and efficient and effective and you know, more capitalist model
on some level, right, What creates that foundation? I think
that boils down to teachers, It boils down to mentorship,
It boils down to parents, It boils down to the
(37:23):
stories and access in our communities.
Speaker 5 (37:25):
And so when I think about tech ecosystems.
Speaker 3 (37:29):
And in a lot of these cities, one of the
greatest things they can do, I think is if they're
having a pitch date, invite invite kids in from your community,
Invite people in, Invite people to come to see and watch
and know that this exists. We operate in such bubbles
in all of these spaces. You know, if you run
a business, invite somebody in just to come see and understand,
(37:50):
even if it's for a day, open those doors to
start to just break the mold and at least plant
the seed for something that who knows where it's going
to come to life you know later on. But we
have to build in that exposure. And sometimes it's you know,
taking a story and telling it in a different context
or not just having conversations about small business and startups
(38:14):
and entrepreneurship in tech in that community. How do we
break out and go find the business on the.
Speaker 5 (38:22):
Corner of main street in a town and say here's
here's a model. Have you did you know this existed?
Have you thought about this? Do you know what this takes?
Do you know what it would require? Here's a couple
of pathways.
Speaker 3 (38:34):
Some are going to jump on it and summer now,
but over and over it starts to break the mold
of how we think.
Speaker 6 (38:40):
Black Tech Green Money is a production to Blavity, Afro Tech,
the Black Effect Podcast Network and I Hire Media and
it's produced by Morgan Debonne and me Well Lucas, with
the additional production support by Kate McDonald, SAG and Jada McGee.
Speaker 2 (38:53):
Special thank you to Michael.
Speaker 6 (38:54):
Davis and Love Beach.
Speaker 2 (38:56):
Learn more about my guess of the tech to show
that's an innovatives afrotech dot com.
Speaker 6 (39:00):
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Speaker 2 (39:01):
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Host
Will Lucas
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