Zewiditu Jewel & Derrick Faulcon on Cloudy Donut Co.'s Impact, Resilience, Partnership, + More
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
What's up?
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Its way up with Angela Yee on our Wealth Wednesday.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
So Stacy Tisday is here.
Speaker 3 (00:08):
Happy Wealth Wednesdays everybody, and we are hungry today.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
We're gonna feed you today.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
We're gonna feed your bellies. We're gonna feed your soul
with donuts.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Nothing better than that and Cloudy Donuts. And we have
the partners from Cloudy Donuts here, Derek Falcon and the
amazing Zodi too Jewel. Thank you for joining us, Thank
you for having it.
Speaker 4 (00:27):
Thank you guys for having us. I appreciate it. So
excited to be excited.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
You know, I was talking to Zode because it's Women's
History months, so we were talking about things that we
could do in collaboration. You know, once you guys opened
the shop in Brooklyn, I was like, there's definitely gonna
be some synergy here for us to absolutely make some
amazing things happen. But I also saw you guys both
at Earn Your Leisure when they had their book launch
and Derek and I did the panel together. Derek, so
(00:54):
thank you so much for joining us. I feel like
I see you doing everything else. I'm like, when are
we gonna have our sit down?
Speaker 4 (00:58):
Awesome yeah, I appreciate it. I'm excited to be here.
As you know, we meant about three years ago and
you were one of the first people to try our product.
Not knowing me, you gave us a shot. You tried
to donut backstage and we reposted it that went viral.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
That was at King's Theater.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
Yah.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Yeah, yeah, I don't remember that, so.
Speaker 4 (01:17):
I wanted to thank you for that, and I'm appreciative
of the platform and everything that you built. So I'm
excited to be here.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Well, I'm appreciative because these are vegan donuts, and sometimes
people think vegan is nasty incredible, but it's incredible. I
always tell people, once you start trying things like this,
you won't want artificial flavorings or anything like that because
when things are fresh like this, it just tastes better, honestly.
Speaker 4 (01:40):
And that's why in our community can be a little
bit of a table to approach veganism, right because like,
even as black people in general, most of us grew
up in a scratch kitchen. What we grew up with
big products that were made by our big mamas, our moms,
and it had all of those fresh ingredients. So like
when we got into the world. For black people in general,
it's how I expectation when it comes to desserts and
(02:01):
bake goods. So we are happy that we have a
vegan product that's an alternative when it comes to certain
dairy allergies or people not having people having exposure to
eggs and things like that. So it's how can you
give them something in a traditional form but with a
non traditional approach.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Absolutely, and I think with the danges of what we're
putting in our body right now and people being a
lot more aware of that.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
You know, we're seeing certain things getting banned.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
We see when we go to other countries they don't
even use certain products.
Speaker 5 (02:29):
It's incredible that yeah, and we're taking people back to
our roots already. We know for people of color, whether
you're from the Caribbean, we already are people that have
practiced plant based diets. So we're doing it in a
really sweet way where people are like, Okay, this is
something that I can ease myself into. So it's really
great to be able to provide, like Derek said, people
(02:51):
that have dairy a versions, people that are not free,
but also people that just want to enjoy the lifestyle
in a luxury way. You know, it's for all people.
You don't have to be vegan to have Cloudy Donut.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Well, let's talk about how we got here, because this
was not your first business. For Derek, I know everybody
knows you from Cloudys Donuts right now, but they don't
know the grind that happened before that because you had
another restaurant.
Speaker 4 (03:15):
Yeah. So I had a restaurant in Baltimore called Homemade,
And really, like I always tell people, I'm the black
Man's possibility, right, how can the ordinary man do extraordinary
things and building an architect of life from scratching what
you are able to accomplish or able to do on
a routine basis, whether you're a mechanic or whether you're
Amazon driver. It's about just really taking something that you
(03:37):
do really well and scaling your life with it. So
I started with a restaurant, and a lot of times
when you start with something, we are told that we
have to go up to something that we're passionate about.
But to be honest with you, I wasn't really passionate
about the restaurant. I made great quality product, but I
was passionate about ownership. So I spent eleven years across.
I readed two years I spent in solid turk confinement.
(03:59):
And when I was a sild Targe confinement, it was like,
all right, you really don't got access to anything. So
all I had access to was the newspaper, right, the
Sunday paper, really thick, It got the funnies in there,
the comedy section and things like that. And I would
read the financial section, and it said that most people
who became wealthy didn't do it all, didn't do it
off for one thing. They had a lot of little things,
a lot of little things that they made money off of,
(04:21):
so different streams. So the average man in that had
seven streams of income. And when I came home, I said,
I'm going after it. That's kind of how it started.
So I started with one restaurant, which led to another restaurant,
which led to a food truck, which led to buying
the building of my previous restaurant, which led to the
food truck, which led to four more Donna shops. So
(04:42):
it's really about the seven streams. How could I, as
a black man, come home and architect of life knowing
that I couldn't run fast, I couldn't jump really high,
and I wasn't a rapper, but I still had personal
aspirations that were similar to those gentlemen, and it was
really like, Okay, I'm gonna start with a restaurant. I'm
gonna figure this out, and I'm gonna build a life
from it.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
I want to say that's an anomaly in itself, though,
because the restaurant business is not being one of the
most difficult businesses to get into as far as being
able to maintain that, to maintain the quality, to maintain management,
and then to even just I feel like the majority
of restaurants end up shutting down, But for you to
do that, that's an anomaly in itself.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Like to have a restaurant that was successful.
Speaker 4 (05:23):
Yeah, so most of the guys and you know women
who start restaurants, like you said, it's a high failure rate.
The chances of making it are slim to not slimming
not and people wonder how I made it. But I
wasn't gonna fail at whatever I did. I could have
been cutting grass, I would still be on I would
be successful. I could have been making purchase. I would
have been successful. So like the mindset that I tea
(05:44):
specifically when it comes to the documentaries that I recorded,
car what's really about Like can I I mean can
I like fuck it? M like it got it happen
for me, Like you know what I'm saying. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
like you're talking about like in front of projects. My
(06:05):
father was a dope thing. My mother went through subsidized.
I was like, I ain't I don't care about none
of that, Like none of that ain't gonna affect me.
I'm gonna make a way. And that's kind of like
the energy and yeah, not being defined by it and
more or less, like you say, not allowing it to
be an obstacle in your life. So you gotta realize
I come from the day to day obstacle being death
for jail, so it's easy for me to like get
(06:26):
into it with like the health department. That's light work.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
Now.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
At the same time, this is also a love story.
I do want to yeah this So now, Zodi, you
came into the picture also now you had a job.
You're a teacher, yes, you know as a teacher, and
I could see you being a great teacher.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
Thank you. I was, thank you.
Speaker 5 (06:43):
I was a teacher for fourteen years.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
Just from watching your videos and seeing you speak about
certain things like reverse gentrification, which we'll talk about shortly too.
But now, how did you guys end up teaming up
because some people also listen, you guys are anomalies, because
some people will also tell you did not go in
business with your significant other. But this has been working
out great, so talk to me about that.
Speaker 5 (07:05):
So Derek and I met initially in twenty eighteen at
a music festival in DC. That's where I'm from. Derek
from Baltimore is Broccoli City, and I was immersed in,
you know, the concert and just like enjoying the time.
So I personally I don't remember, but.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
The person that.
Speaker 5 (07:27):
I was having a good time, but the person that
Derek was with was following me on Instagram and gave
him my handle. So now it's important to note Derek
is literally this is very social. Media is not something
He's always been forward facing it. So he was he
would send me like DMS from his homemade brunch page,
but the page was filled with like breakfast so and
(07:49):
the sandwich.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
I was.
Speaker 5 (07:52):
I'm a nice person, you know. I would post the
daily devotional a lot and he would reply and just
you know, say like really, just chill things not trying
to holler or anything like that. But when my grandmother
passed in twenty nineteen, we wanted to have a celebration
of life, and Derek reached out to me via the
DM so the Eggs. You know, it was like dmmy
(08:13):
and said, like, you know, I know someone. I was
looking for an entertainer for the to perform and Derek said,
I know someone. I'd love to pay for them to
come from Baltimore to DC. And I was just like
that is so nice, Like I would love to FaceTime you,
like I need to see who this person is. And
you know, we talked after that FaceTime for several weeks.
(08:35):
We met on Actually soon we'll be celebrating six years.
We met on March twentieth, twenty nineteen, and we've been
together ever since. And then I'll let you chime in
to talk about the conversation we had when I came
onto the brand. So I was teaching, okay, and it
was and then you called.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
Me that sure I was at work.
Speaker 4 (08:54):
We had been together for yeah some change, and yeah,
I went over to number So like all right, So
for black people, I tell us, you know, I always
say enough is enough because we don't have enough. And
what I mean by that is like, if we continue
to do the things that we're doing, we're gonna keep
getting what we're getting and we already don't have shit.
So how do you now change the narrative? And I
(09:14):
think it specifically can start with a two income household
mutual sweat equity until the person has the best plan.
So I always tell people, once you get over the
good luck, you get some good money. Right. So I
always believe that no matter what household you in, the
person that's in charge of the business should be the
person who was the smartest with the best plan. It's
not about being a man or being a woman or
(09:35):
any thing like that. So by the time I had
Miss Zodi, I had two restaurants, in a food truck,
I owned the building. My death to income ratio was
like ninety ten, Like I had like ten percent that
I could cover all of my bills in like a
month with just opening up my business. And it was
about now like a nown web. Right. So she's right
(09:56):
about like how we men at Brockoli City. She don't
remember me because she was high smoke. No problem with it,
because you know, in my mind, I'm unforgettable. For really,
you don't remember my personality.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
You remember zode definitely.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
And she said you sent those dms not trying to holler,
but in your head were you kind of.
Speaker 4 (10:21):
Hollering No, no, like no, I love Zodie. No, No,
it was really about I thought that she was really smart.
She was she seemed spiritual. Of course she's attractive, but
I just saw something in her that was alike. So
I've always had the ability, like to be very like
Perrent in my approach with people.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
So is it spiritual type of.
Speaker 4 (10:43):
More spiritual connection. Then once we went on a date,
I was like, oh, yeah, I love this person like
this she was phenomenal right, so like and and but
to be honest, like yeah, I'm gonna be honest with you,
like I tried to holler at at Brackley City. She
was high. She don't remember me. When I first took
her out on the date, I was trying to get
some ass. Okay, that's all. I was thinking, like, yo,
I want that's it, you know, because I wasn't. I
(11:04):
wasn't in the space. Yeah, I wasn't in the space
in life as a man, but I was willing to
commit to anything long term. But once I got to
know her, she was the woman of my dreams because
she kind of she checked all of the all of
the boxes. But then more specifically, she was an anomaly
because she was someone that was willing to go on
a journey with me, and not just a professional journey,
(11:27):
but a mental journey, a spiritual journey, economic journey, and
a physical journey. So I always wanted a girl like
that I could ride with. I come from like the streets,
so like I come from, like I put the packs
in your mother house. I tell you hold a pistol.
If I go to jail, I need you to answer
the phone, bail me out. I needed a woman who
was like with it, you know what I'm saying. And
(11:48):
you know, despite how she looks externally like we like
we the same internally like two hit us. You feel me.
So like a lot of people don't really understand because
Zode's very introverted in terms of how personal side. So
she's a Gemini and she kind of like she not
gonna say too much, but she's a straight savage mm,
you know, and she's my ride to dush. So like
(12:09):
I've been able to get more done with this woman
than I've been able to do with most grown men. Yeah,
and I think as black men, we need to be
more realistic about our relationships and pouring into our partners.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
So and look what you can build. Hence the Brown
Collective to everybody, but that yeah.
Speaker 4 (12:24):
Yeah, so alright boom so we so, just being honest
with you, we were in this space and we was like, yo,
I had the real estate, like I had accumulated a
small portfolio of things, and yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I
had it. I had accumulated, uh, the trucks I owned
out right, I had three properties that I owned. Then
we had another two properties. We had a a homestead,
(12:45):
and then we had a small property that we were building,
and we had all these things, right, So i'm'a tell
you how I approached it. When I was hustling, just
being honest with you, said, if I had a brick,
if I had a brick of coat, I know, I
can't sell all this shit by myself. So I need
a bunch of guys in different neighborhoods that I could
connect with that's gonna help me sell it, you know
what I mean. And I was like, all right, cool,
(13:06):
So if I build all these businesses. I could find
all these young black and brown people that's going to
buy into my story to entrepreneurship, and then I can
give them away. So it was really like my mindset
was like build it, fucking figure it out later. Figure
it out later. Right. So most of the time when
I bought the properties, I didn't have enough money beyond
like the down payment and the escro. I barely conserviced
(13:26):
it that I didn't really know what the hell was
going on. But I treated it like the streets. Like
if you go up to a guy you got money
for one kilo and he tried to give you another one,
you're gonna say, yeah, I could take that. I can't
handle that, you know what I mean, You'll figure it
out later. So the Brown Collector was a byproduct of ownership.
We had a lot of things that we own. We
wanted to give people the opportunities to participate in the brand,
(13:47):
and we wanted to do it with a level of
autonomy that most white folks wouldn't give us. Right, So
it's really about putting black and brown faces in white spaces.
How often have you walked down Rodeo Drive and seen
a black entity? How often have you worked down say
Madison Avenue, and seeing a black entity, it just doesn't exist, right,
So we typically approach it from a consumption standpoint. Even
when we had the pan on we talked about real estate,
(14:09):
it was maybe three hundred people there, but maybe ten
people raised their hand when they came to ownership. Ownership
for black people is just something that's so far fetched.
We don't even see it as a reality.
Speaker 3 (14:17):
Were used to being property.
Speaker 4 (14:19):
We used to be in property. We used to being
in that space. So like when you welcome to your
favorite store on Madison Avenue, you don't know the comps
of the real estate. You're looking about the purse or
the bag or the shoes. So I always looked up
to like ownership. I mean my grandfather he had a
forty five thousand dollars house and we grew up there
and it was fourteen of us, and I came out
of the house with the mentality like I'm my own everything.
(14:41):
I remember getting locked up as a young kid and
you need to bail out and you need property, right,
I couldn't. Yeah, I couldn't bail out. So like the
whole thing for me was ownership. It was I wasn't
worried about like being the cutest guy. I wasn't worrying
about being like the most successful online or being the
most popular. I was just straight going for deeds titles.
Speaker 3 (15:01):
Real estate played a big part in your overall journey, right.
Speaker 4 (15:04):
Yeah, yeah, real estate really changed. It changed my perspective.
So I always tell people, along with the three e's,
I mean the three essays, you got the three e's
and the three essays, saving plus sacrifice equal scaling. Okay,
so stacking money and saving right, So like always say
saving plus sacrifice equal scaling because whatever situation that you're in,
if you're willing to become more lean in a way
(15:24):
in what you spend more money, and then you're willing
to double down on your efforts, you probably can generate
more income as well. And when I talk to a
lot of our people, we're not willing to compromise the
trip to Jamaica, the All Star Game, the private flights
or things like that. But like a lot of time,
my answers lie in our disciplines. That's the true answer.
It's not the big things that you do every day,
it's the small things that you don't do. You see
(15:46):
what I'm saying, so I was able to like, yo,
I'm gonna eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I'm drive.
I drove a Mini Cooper for five years. I'm a
driver Mini Cooper. I lived in the studio like I'm
gonna make a way, and I just kept acquiring, acquiring, acquiring,
and and it was real frustrating at times because I
never had any liqui capital and I missed out on
a lot. But then I got something that nobody could
take away from it, straight ownership. Right.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
I agree with that it's a lot of sacrifice that
comes with China. But when you have a goal and
you know what it is that you're doing and which
is driving to it makes it better, you know what
I mean. When you know why you're sacrificing and saving
and you know not doing certain things that everybody else
is doing, it kind of makes you feel like, all right,
I know what I'm doing it for at least what
you built.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
We talk and we'll be talking more about and we
talked about going into partnership with it. Entrepreneurs don't always
think of ownership gives them financial security, like owning that
real estate. You know you're giving yourself, space for your
business to grow.
Speaker 4 (16:41):
And so much space.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
And when you talk about like going on rodeo driver
not seeing places that we own, like Zodi, you guys
have the Cloudy Donuts in Brooklyn in a neighborhood that
for some people were like, you know.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
The America's first suburb.
Speaker 5 (16:55):
It is just exactly America's first suburb.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
It is definitely a place that my mom actually used
to work right near there, so I used to go
to Montague Street with her all the time to you know,
we would go eat at restaurants that are on that block.
But to your point, nothing there is like black owned.
Is not black people that are owning those brownstones over there,
They're like ridiculously expensive. I've always known that since I
was a little kid. You know that this is not
(17:20):
a neighborhood where I would look to see a black
owned business.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
Yeah, And so talk to me about that decision, just
because I know when you guys first did that, people
were like, why would you want to put it there?
Speaker 1 (17:32):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (17:32):
I mean I remember when we were having conversations, you know,
with our peers, and we were saying we were going
to open up New York, and you know, people always
want to give you suggestions. They're like, oh, you should
check out you know, certain areas of Brooklyn, Flatbush, Bedside,
you should go to Harlem. And I actually lived in
New York. I went to undergrad at the New School,
(17:52):
so I had lived in all these places. And for me,
it was like, yeah, that makes sense. And of course
when i'm you know, Derek is is such a When
we first met, we agreed that we would be transitional,
transition people, right, and I was thinking that this was
extended to like our relationship and you know, change shift
the narrative of our families, et cetera. I had no
(18:14):
idea that this would be something that would translate into
our professional lives. And so when I came to him
and you know, I'm thinking, maybe we're going to look
in these particular areas too, Derek had a completely different
mindset about where he wanted to go and where he
wanted to open and I'll let you speak to that
and then I can, like, I started to look into
the history of these neighborhoods because that's something I'm really
(18:37):
passionate about. And so not only did we open up
in Brooklyn Heights, but I moved to Brooklyn Heights. So
I lived in the neighborhood for two years. I met
with the community board, I met with the schools, I
met with the churches, because it was really important for
me to coming in with like this community energy, to
(18:57):
ensure like community. Nowadays kind feels like a buzzword, but
being from DC, being a fourth generation Washingtonian and really
seeing the power of Chocolate City and black owned businesses
and things like that, it was really important for me
to establish myself within the already existing community because I
(19:18):
knew we'd be opening up right. And as I started
to do my research, I learned that we were the
first black owned food and beverage business in Brooklyn Heights.
And part of learning that was because one of our neighbors,
who had been living in the neighborhood for over sixty years,
came in and Derek and I were in the store.
(19:38):
We were like unpacking boxes. We hadn't opened yet, and
she thought that we were the movers.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
Yeah, I'm sure she.
Speaker 5 (19:43):
Thought we were the mover. She was completely floored. She
couldn't believe that we were the proprietors of the business,
and she said, I've been here my entire life, I've
never seen a black owned business, so I did for
the research. I found out Okay, when it comes to
food and bevers, we were the first, and it was
really important. And I learned through Derek to understand the
difference between like a black owned neighborhood and a black
(20:06):
occupied community, because there's a difference speaking specific to real estate.
And so that's when we started to open our eyes
to understand, like, what we're doing here is what I
call reverse gentrification. So it's all about bringing our black
owned business into affluent communities, apps and of color, and
(20:27):
providing value. So we're not just coming in and saying like, yeah,
we're cloudy, donut, what's up, Come get a donut like
we are. We gave out so many complimentary donuts. We
connected with so many neighbors, and we were actually the
first on our block. There's several businesses. We were the
first business in the community to open, like have a
ribbon cutting ceremony with the councilmen. We opened two days before,
(20:48):
you know, we opened the store. So all of that
was really intentional, you know what I mean, And unfortunately,
you know, for some people even to this day, and
definitely when we open even people within our community just
couldn't wrap their minds around why we would go to
a white neighborhood. But Derek, I mean he had insights on,
you know, finding the place. I remember when you found.
Speaker 3 (21:07):
Call it reverse gentrification. I call it initiate inclusivity.
Speaker 5 (21:12):
Absolutely absolutely So for me, yeah, I turned into like
a young angela.
Speaker 4 (21:19):
Right. So you walk in down Montague Street with your mom,
because kids are taught things subconsciously through visualization.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
Right.
Speaker 4 (21:25):
So you see this all white neighborhood and they own
all this stuff where I came from. You bet not
break or funck nothing up, right. You know, we overhere
amongst these white folks. Now be on your best behavior,
right exactly. We're just talking about so black people have
been able to kind of navigate through white society from
a space of fear what they're afraid of? Right, So
(21:50):
I never was afraid of white folks. I actually grew
up in a neighborhood free of all white folks, never
seen them until we had interactions with the police from
Baltimore City, the second largest black city in the country. Right. So,
as a black man who was successful, I always lived
in these affluent neighborhoods that was not only absente color,
but abstinently like people like myself. So I mean I
(22:13):
lived in I lived in Beverly Hills and I couldn't
connect with nobody. I lived in Tribeca. I couldn't really
connect with nobody. So I wanted to put businesses in
neighborhoods where I would personally live. But I wanted to
bring a level of authenticity to the neighborhood too. That also,
you gotta show white folks sometimes that listen. I could
do the same shit, and I could do it better.
(22:34):
It's just what it is. You know. I ain't gonna
lie to you. I wasn't moving there to be friends.
They don't move to our neighborhood to be friends. I
had a product that was dynamic, they got a built
in audience, the kids and people who liked what we got.
And our goal is to build up by our brand
and include black people. But also we are aware that
(22:54):
we do have white customers who buy the product. But
it's really about shaking it up. So like black people
always say, you should have went in bad style as
a black neighborhood, that's not a black neighborhood, that's a
black occupied neighborhood with a bunch of Georish boyson and everything.
That's it. That's not a black people. Yeah yeah, yeah,
So we really gotta figure it out. So how do
we grow our brands if we continue to do the
(23:15):
things that we do. That's why I always push enough
is enough, because we don't have enough? Right So all right, well,
let's talk about the twenty five black businesses that in
bed Style that still haven't been able to scale. Let's
talk about the twenty five black owned successful businesses in
Atlanta that still get lack of access to capital. See
the thing about it in America is this, no matter
how good you are, you still black. And I know that.
(23:36):
So I know that no matter how good we are
in Brooklyn Heights, no matter how good I am in
Beverly Hills, I'm still only gonna get but so far
because of my blackness. Right, So then your mindset is like, well,
fuck it, it's house money. Let's put the store wherever
we want put it. Let's sell whatever we want sell,
and that people who fuck with us let them come
whenever and however they want come. That's freedom. See, that's freedom.
(23:57):
And then a lot of people don't understand that because
a lot of entrepreneurs and spaces where they kind of
gotta bust the ass to make ends meet, and now
they gotta walk on eggshells. But then you basically back
to being a little girl on Montague Street, afraid that
if I say the wrong thing or do the wrong thing,
I'm gonna be in the same situation. So I always
tell people, right, we spent our childhood trying to be adults,
(24:18):
and then we spent our adulthood running from our childhood.
You gotta look at it like this. I'm already a nigga,
I'm already black, I'm already from the ghetto, my father
already a dope thing. Open a motherfucking spot up and
see what happened. Right. I don't care what they say,
I don't care what they do. I'm here for me
and if I don't shake it up, because I could
(24:40):
have easily opened up a fried chicken spot and bad
style and had a bunch of guys out there drinking
and smoking and had all the rappers pull up, and
that would have did something for the community, right, negative
may be positive, well, who knows, But what would have
changed for a person that's me? A young version of myself.
Speaker 3 (24:55):
What do you want entrepreneurs to take away from that?
Speaker 4 (25:00):
So I speak for specifically for black people. I just
gotta be honest with you because the white reality and
the black reality is totally different. So I always tell
black people, for white folks, it's twenty twenty five. For us,
it's nineteen twenty five. When it comes to our entrepreneurs,
we have to move from a space of fearlessness. Yeah,
don't be afraid to take a chance and make a choice.
(25:22):
You gotta live with it. They gonna hate you either way.
Some people don't wanna come in just cause it's vegan.
Some people been dying, They come in cause it's vegan.
Some people mad we're in Brooklyn Heights. But then it's
black people who live in Brooklyn Heights, like it was
never no black people here. I'm so glad you here
right right, So Dan, if you do, Dan, if you don't,
just rock out and make sure that whatever you do,
(25:43):
if you give it your all, it'll give you everything
you want.
Speaker 3 (25:46):
M speaking of fearlessness, you're going into film now cause
you haven't done enough?
Speaker 4 (25:50):
Yeah yeah, yeah, so so yeah, we we got a
docu series called The Seven streams and it's really it's
really about this. So in our community there's a lot
of love and support and people who want the game
right and they want the game, and I'm like, all right,
how can Like Zode taught me a term called the
(26:11):
medicine and the candy, where like, how can you give
somebody something that's good for him, but how can you
present it in a way that they are attracted to it.
So we're gonna fashionize the brand in the sense that
we're gonna do four boxes a year, like fashion drops
win a summer, spring fall, and when we drop the boxes,
we'll drop seasonal content that led up to us dropping out.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
Excellent, Yeah, for dessert boxes for a dessert boxing.
Speaker 4 (26:32):
Okay, so the dessert box itself will be fifty dollars retail,
but if you subscribe and get the dessert box, then
you'll get the content as well. Some people won't be
interested in the desserts and will want the content, and
then you feel like you want because I didn't want
to position myself as like I'm the model, I'm the
high to guy. I didn't want to be like a
guy like I can teach you how to grow crypto,
How to build a restaurant, Like, I'm not that guy,
(26:54):
and I feel like that sometimes we put ourselves in
that space. It allows you to kind of be ridiculed.
Damned if you do, Damn if you So I was like, well,
look if I give him a box and then I
give him like ten principles. So I got ten principles
called like Biggie had the ten Crack Commandments, I got
the ten Black Commandments. Ten principles that black people can
live by in general that can allow you to make
it through tough situations that are difficult, whether it's a relationship,
(27:16):
whether it's a job, whether it's feeling like you're down
or out or like for all the guys that I
speak for coming home from prison, yeah yeah.
Speaker 5 (27:23):
And those are principles that Derek has taught me. I mean,
aside from being you know, partners in the business in life,
he served as a major mentor to me because being
somebody that went to art school their entire life, I
was taught that creativity is finances are the death of
creativity and go into something in your things, which is
wild when you have this art form in your thing
(27:45):
and now you are trying to figure out how you
can monetize it. You find yourself in a way in
which you you know you're in a battle with yourself.
And so the Ten Black Commandments have been really positive
in my life because I really had to recenter myself
coming from a you know, a single mom that doesn't
have a lot of financial savvy and even assisting her
and understanding how can I how can I again shift
(28:09):
the narrative of how life goes for us?
Speaker 4 (28:11):
Yeah? Yeah, So it's like stuff like enough is enough
because we don't have enough, meaning like yo, it's as
general as why not get together and do something we
already broke, right, you know what I'm saying, enough is enough.
If I'm in a position at PR and I could
give you a leg up like Angie doing us a
major favor by saying, like, yo, I'm already gotta show
I like what you got going on, enough is enough
because we won't have enough. So our black media, like sometimes
(28:33):
our black media gatekeepers and it's like, well you'll cover
like Shade, but you don't want to cover us, and
we really winning, you see what I'm saying. Or this
is another thing that's extremely important. The media and black
culture typically want to see us two ways. They want
to see. It's bagging and crying that we get ready
clothes because.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
Then now we'll we'll we'll rally up.
Speaker 4 (28:52):
Yeah, we'll rally up and spend some coins on something
at a time, right, Or they want to see us
in a conforming standpoint like okay, well I'm a time.
Basically I'm exactly who White America wants me to be.
They've accepted me, so now I can get that deal.
But when you really standing on, like na, I'm really
doing something with a real black woman and we really
got two locations, it's like, well, that's not a story.
They already made it, right, you see what I'm saying. Total,
(29:14):
And it's crazy because it's like, Yo, this should be
a story that allows us to become successful, free of debt,
free of outside interference, and allow us to create a
vertical that can now grow and employ people in our community.
Like it's so crazy because we're in Brooklyn Heights and
everybody who work for is black and brown, and people
walk in and don't even notice that. Yeah, versus like
(29:35):
when we in like in Atlanta and Baltimore, it's like, oh, yeah,
you got all black kids working there? You black you're
doing this, I'm gonna walk straight in. So we need
our community to come out and not only support but
also consumed by the product. If you don't eat donuts
or you don't eat vegan just coming there. W wish
me the most success and brighten my day, cause some
days it be fucked up.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
Hey.
Speaker 4 (29:54):
I mean, you gotta realize, yo, were walking outside around
all these rich, privileged white people who never been around
black people, and it ain't bad style, right, but how
do you kind of shake it up? You gotta shake
it up because black people are not a monolith, right.
We can be multiple things at multiple times. Like you
know how many black people I know that's wealthy that
still eat sweet potato, but there still love fried chicken,
(30:15):
that's still like racter shit, And like they can't they
can't have that connectivity because it's like, well, if I
go back and I'm in the hood, they hate me,
and then I ain't black enough for the rich white
people who are around me. You gotta realize, successful black
people go through a lot of bullshit because we always
in the middle.
Speaker 3 (30:31):
I grew up in that and write you know, I'm
actually writing a book called you know the Price of
growing up in racial isolation. But what I hear when
I'm listening to you is your mindset and black people
are an incredible study and resilience, and that there are
stories just never told that way and what you went through.
(30:55):
Where does this resilience come from? I know it's in
our nature. We're all to remind yourself that what you
are resilient that you can share with our audience.
Speaker 4 (31:04):
So my thing is this, right, I feel like that
it has to be an extremely huge why right? I
mean some days I get on zodia nerves, you get
on my nerves. And we got collective goals, but what
helped us make it as a couple, it's independent goals.
Speaker 5 (31:18):
Mm.
Speaker 4 (31:19):
So like I don't really always treat it like a road.
It's stay centreated. Just like this. If we driving down
the road and it did come across, we keep going.
Because there's a stop sign, we keep going. If there's
a detour sign, we find another way. Well, black people
have to understand it's it's not gonna always be about
a passion or a certain amount of income. It's gonna
really boil down to like, yo, what type of life
(31:42):
do I wanna live? And how do I see myself
and nothing else fucking matters. Yeah, not wide opinion, our
black opinion. Now what nobody say, because at the end
of the day, if you stay focused on that journey, bruh,
you gonna get where you gotta go. It might be
a different role. That Drake Road and the Nipsey hustle
(32:03):
role was two different roles. But when you saw them
at the end of that role, you've seen two successful brothers.
That's what you see. If you see a bunch of
moguls in the corner, they all might not have the
same role, whether it's Robert s. Smith Don people was
at Tyler Perry, but you see three winners. If I
see Angela, yeah, if I see Beyonce and I see
Viola Davis, they all winning. You can't miss with none
(32:24):
of those people. And I think, like we are concerned,
we're focusing on the next man role, stay in your line.
Speaker 2 (32:34):
Oh now, I gotta ask you, Zodie, how what made
you that you guys briefly talked about how she left
her job, you know, because of the plan, right, this
was the plan that felt like it was gonna work.
Speaker 1 (32:46):
How was that for you? You said you didn't think
twice about it.
Speaker 5 (32:48):
Yeah, I mean, so I was. I spent the majority
of my educational career teaching in elementary school. I was
a theater teacher, and then I ended my career. You're
teaching in early childhood because I did a stint in
middle school and it was wild and I was like,
oh my gosh, I need to understand the psychology. How
(33:08):
did we get here? So I wanted to go back
to early childhood. I was in a position where, you know,
I think for myself, I've always been a woman of service.
I've always been a person to take care of other people,
and I think that sometimes we can find ourselves in
ways where we say like, oh, like, you know, I'm
taking care of this person. I'm taking care of this
(33:29):
because it's easier to take care of somebody than to
take care of yourself. So when Derek and I had
a conversation one day and I was just like frustrated
with my like coworkers, and I was like I'm over this,
and he was like, all right, Like he's a very
serious person, as you can tell, right, and so like
if he's not the person that you come to and
complain like because.
Speaker 4 (33:50):
So like this what I did just kind of chaman.
So she was working and she told me what she
was making a week, and she was catching ubers to
a job, and then she was paying for like helan
and I went over the numbers and I was like, zoh,
so you know, like you basically net like three hundred
dollars a week. Yeah, after all of her expenses, right,
the teacher's more. Yeah, teachers don't make a lot of money.
So she loved that. She was passionate about it. She
(34:12):
had did it for so long. And then I realized,
like she said, she's a service woman, so she had
taken care of so many other people up to the
time that her grandmother passed, that she never really considered herself,
despite the fact that she's done a lot of great
things and contributed towards society, she didn't consider like, yo,
you can get an hit, you can get a bank account.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
Because I think we also think that part of being
in service is not making a lot.
Speaker 4 (34:33):
Right.
Speaker 1 (34:35):
Right exactly?
Speaker 2 (34:36):
Yeah, yeah, like being financially successful with being a person
that also is a giver and yeah yeah, yeah, yeah undred.
Speaker 5 (34:46):
And then also to be honest, taking taking advantage of
the experiences that you have. Because I grew up like
upper middle class, so I already grew up with a
level of privilege. Privilege, so I assumed that things would
just fall into places they have, and you know it's not.
So you get with a grinder that you realize you
gotta work for everything.
Speaker 1 (35:05):
That's why I'm savage because.
Speaker 5 (35:06):
Now like I'm not playing, like absolutely not playing.
Speaker 4 (35:10):
Like lives and like and like I just said, like
like like you're right. They make it synonymous. They make
the giveaway with being broke.
Speaker 1 (35:17):
And that's why activists you shouldn't know, the home.
Speaker 3 (35:20):
A hard time about it.
Speaker 1 (35:21):
Yeah, it's crazy, you're an activist. Why is this person
flying first class? Like why not? Absolutely?
Speaker 4 (35:26):
You know, people kind of like they kind of make
us the devil one. It's like, Yo, we're gonna do
this pop up with you, but we gotta make some money.
And they're like what about the community, Like, yo, there's
no community without capitalists, right, was able to do the things?
They get rich and they get the money to their
white wife and she passed it up to the white
nonprofit she might might not care about. That's just we
gotta understand our reality and the world that we working in. So,
(35:49):
like I gave a reality. I say, yoh, you make
three hundred dolls a week. I could pay you that.
Quit the job. She was on our lunch break. She said,
I'm gonna put my two weeks and when I get.
Speaker 1 (35:56):
Off the lunch break, Yeah, stressed my arm.
Speaker 4 (36:00):
That was it. Yeah, I mean, it's just because I
think and like you say, speaking to a level of seriousness, right,
I think for black men, it's the most important time
to be ultimately serious. Like it's no reason for me
to come on for prison, have all these things against me.
Wake up every day black dealing, whether I'm dealing with FBI,
DA task for as robbers, other drug dealers. So I'm
in a corpor world and I'm dealing with health department,
(36:22):
I f ire the department. I'm dealing with the neighbors complaining.
So it's like I'm already waking up behind the line.
So I treat life like a track race and it's
seven of us in the lane. I'm the seventh. So
how am I playing? You know what I mean? So
I came out with Adventures. I was on it. So
I was like, yo, quit the job. I'm gonna pay
you that. I could pay you more than that. And
then after she quit the job, I was like, look,
(36:43):
moving with me and we could work more hours on it. Yeah,
but everyone money, yeah, and save money, and everybody's not
built for that. So then we moved together. And then
I mean the brain grew manifold. It was basically eight
thousand followers. When I bought the Donuts Shop, I had
eight thousand follows. She grew it in a seventy something thousand.
I didn't really know anything about community because I was
I lived a very recluse life. I came home from
(37:07):
President I had did so much shit in the street
and the people so like, I never I never been
on I still to the day, never been on Facebook.
I never been on Twitter or Twitch or XC none
of that. But I owned everything, Yeah, And I really
had real money in a real credit score, and I
really had real businesses that I really owned, and I
really worked out, and I really was a man. I
really stand for certain things, and that mattered to me
more than like, you got a million followers, and you know,
(37:29):
I didn't really know nothing about the social world. But
I think she opened up the social world to me
in a positive way in which it allowed me to
change and for my business to grow to be here today.
Speaker 1 (37:38):
It's interesting that you didn't know much about it, but
she was DM and her from the.
Speaker 4 (37:46):
And it's crazy because one of the page Yeah yeah, yeah,
right right, you're right, And I'm always telling that to you.
I like, yo, if you ever left me, I'm anno.
Speaker 5 (37:55):
Enough that you do say that I can find our reallylationship.
You know, our business relationship is Derek builds the world
and I bring people into it.
Speaker 2 (38:05):
Okay, that's and I think that also works in business
when people have different roles. You sometimes you can't have
two people doing the same thing. Somebody is good at this,
and then this what you do compliments what that is.
So it's kind of like forming something instead of us
bumpingheads doing the same thing.
Speaker 5 (38:22):
And so you're I was going to say, and to
the point when you said that, sometimes people say, like
in business, like you shouldn't work with your partner.
Speaker 3 (38:28):
Right, Sometimes you shouldn't.
Speaker 5 (38:30):
Sometimes you shouldn't.
Speaker 1 (38:31):
I will say, sometimes you should.
Speaker 5 (38:32):
I will say, like you said, everyone has roles, and
so I would say to like women that are listening
to this or you know, significant others that are working
with their partners, to understand and trust your partner and
the role in which you're in, because we have found
ourselves in spaces where me being a woman of service,
I'm just trying to help. So I'm thinking like, Okay,
let me step off base so I can help with
(38:52):
this and help with this, And that's how riffs can
come occur, Like they can arise that way because you're
not staying, like Derek said, in your lane. But as
a woman, I'm thinking not like I see something, I
gotta fix it because it's just a it's an innate
thing that we do. But trusting the role and the
position is definitely a way in which I think can
(39:14):
work really well.
Speaker 3 (39:15):
And I admire both because I do the work I
do with couples in money. It's really difficult, but it
can also be the best learning experience. If you're willing
to go that distance and understand what someone's real intentions are,
you can learn so much about each other. So partners
shouldn't work together. Soulmates can though.
Speaker 4 (39:32):
Yeah yeah, I mean, And then, like like Zodie was saying,
staying your lane and don't bite off more than you
get you right, So like, for example, some of the
goals that we have as black people cannot be accomplished
in our generation. It's just not realistic. I think the
generational is something that's incremental and built over time. Right.
So another thing that kept me really focused is that
I understood the role that I played within my family
(39:53):
dynamic based off of the generation that I was born in.
I'm not going to build one hundred million dollar company,
but I can get to seven streams. So I always
tell people, when you tease slow, they learn fast. When
you teach fast, people learn slow. So my whole goal
with Zodie was not trying to become the wealthiest, most
successful company. It was just a brick by brick. I'm
gonna show you how we did this, and then i'm
(40:15):
gonna show you how we did that, and then little
that we can accumulate. Then i'm gonna show you how
to take care of it, and then i'm gonna show
you how, if you want to, you can grow it.
And that's enough. See a lot of times we don't
comp out our life, And what I mean by that
is that we don't come up with a dream like
that we want to live and then actually put a
real number to it that can make it make sense.
And then take your skill set and allow yourself to
(40:37):
incrementally glean into that number. So like when people see
it and they say, like, so, what's cloudy donut? Is
it gonna be fifty stores? It'll never be fifty stores
because that's not the economic goal that we have. We
don't have a donut of a year goal. We don't
have a James Beard or Ward goal. We don't have
a New York Times Best donut goal. We gotta get free,
go wake up and not do nothing goal.
Speaker 3 (40:59):
Pass it in awareness, because what you're talking about, like
my father's generation, his father's generation, they in so much pain.
They want I'm gonna save the whole family.
Speaker 1 (41:08):
Yeah, and make everything.
Speaker 3 (41:10):
I'm gonna fix everything like that, And they didn't have
that educate, the financial literacy education to do that. But
you know, I just you guys are gonna come back
very very soon.
Speaker 4 (41:21):
Right, yeah, yeah, yeah, come back. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:23):
Listen, every time I see Zodio when I did the
earn your Leazy thing, I was like, y'all put the
donuts to the side for me, please.
Speaker 1 (41:29):
That's the only reason.
Speaker 3 (41:31):
Now finished next week because I'm gonna eat these doughnuts.
Speaker 5 (41:34):
Now, well, well, we actually brought you guys a preview
of Cloudy Cakes.
Speaker 1 (41:38):
I saw you got.
Speaker 3 (41:40):
Cakes, cloud Were you eating those of the music festival?
Speaker 1 (41:43):
Or they're just right? We're talking about we have today?
Speaker 4 (41:47):
So we got a brown sugar pineap upside down with
more of like a bourbon glaze. I think I'm excited
for y'all to try that.
Speaker 3 (41:54):
Aren't you fasting this week?
Speaker 5 (41:56):
No?
Speaker 4 (41:58):
And then we have a lemon blueberry with fresh lemonclaz
on top.
Speaker 1 (42:03):
Lemon berry, but I want you to try to eat pineapple.
That's the only food I would say lemon blue bear,
So pineapple for you?
Speaker 3 (42:13):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (42:14):
Yeah, all right, Sorry, didn't last thing.
Speaker 3 (42:16):
How can people they can find you through us? We're
going to feature you, guys and wealth Wednesday's newsletter. We
were talking we're going to partner on the the zillion
things and how can people find you on social media?
Speaker 5 (42:25):
So you can find us on social media? U Cloudy
Donuts all thing Cloudy Donuts. There's two handles we have
in both Cloudy Donut Truck and Cloudy Donuts with an S.
You can follow me personally to learn about my neo
entrepreneurship experience through a woman's perspective at Zo D two.
That's my name and then collect the Brown Collective. You
(42:47):
can find us there and that's what you'll learn a
lot about the Seven Streams, which Derek will be dropping soon.
Speaker 1 (42:53):
We got a little previews, yeah, yes, absolutely.
Speaker 3 (42:58):
We were sitting there watching. We're like, oh, we're late
for our next interview.
Speaker 1 (43:03):
Yeah, but you're right. People need to see the whole journey.
Speaker 4 (43:05):
Yeah, definitely, so thank you.
Speaker 3 (43:07):
Yeah, and on Teamwealth Wednesdays dot Com, we're gonna be
profollowing them in our newsletter and if you could remember
all those handles we got to we got to Yeah, yeah, I.
Speaker 4 (43:17):
Think that's pretty much it. I will say they can
reach his homemade brunch, which I was turning into like
a seven Streams. And then we have a newsletter with
the Brown Collective that will give you information that's to win.
The doc you series is going to drop and the
cakes will be available online next week.
Speaker 3 (43:31):
Did you hear my stomach?
Speaker 1 (43:34):
All right? Thank you? Okay, pop up
What's up?
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Its way up with Angela Yee on our Wealth Wednesday.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
So Stacy Tisday is here.
Speaker 3 (00:08):
Happy Wealth Wednesdays everybody, and we are hungry today.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
We're gonna feed you today.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
We're gonna feed your bellies. We're gonna feed your soul
with donuts.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Nothing better than that and Cloudy Donuts. And we have
the partners from Cloudy Donuts here, Derek Falcon and the
amazing Zodi too Jewel. Thank you for joining us, Thank
you for having it.
Speaker 4 (00:27):
Thank you guys for having us. I appreciate it. So
excited to be excited.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
You know, I was talking to Zode because it's Women's
History months, so we were talking about things that we
could do in collaboration. You know, once you guys opened
the shop in Brooklyn, I was like, there's definitely gonna
be some synergy here for us to absolutely make some
amazing things happen. But I also saw you guys both
at Earn Your Leisure when they had their book launch
and Derek and I did the panel together. Derek, so
(00:54):
thank you so much for joining us. I feel like
I see you doing everything else. I'm like, when are
we gonna have our sit down?
Speaker 4 (00:58):
Awesome yeah, I appreciate it. I'm excited to be here.
As you know, we meant about three years ago and
you were one of the first people to try our product.
Not knowing me, you gave us a shot. You tried
to donut backstage and we reposted it that went viral.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
That was at King's Theater.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
Yah.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Yeah, yeah, I don't remember that, so.
Speaker 4 (01:17):
I wanted to thank you for that, and I'm appreciative
of the platform and everything that you built. So I'm
excited to be here.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Well, I'm appreciative because these are vegan donuts, and sometimes
people think vegan is nasty incredible, but it's incredible. I
always tell people, once you start trying things like this,
you won't want artificial flavorings or anything like that because
when things are fresh like this, it just tastes better, honestly.
Speaker 4 (01:40):
And that's why in our community can be a little
bit of a table to approach veganism, right because like,
even as black people in general, most of us grew
up in a scratch kitchen. What we grew up with
big products that were made by our big mamas, our moms,
and it had all of those fresh ingredients. So like
when we got into the world. For black people in general,
it's how I expectation when it comes to desserts and
(02:01):
bake goods. So we are happy that we have a
vegan product that's an alternative when it comes to certain
dairy allergies or people not having people having exposure to
eggs and things like that. So it's how can you
give them something in a traditional form but with a
non traditional approach.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Absolutely, and I think with the danges of what we're
putting in our body right now and people being a
lot more aware of that.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
You know, we're seeing certain things getting banned.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
We see when we go to other countries they don't
even use certain products.
Speaker 5 (02:29):
It's incredible that yeah, and we're taking people back to
our roots already. We know for people of color, whether
you're from the Caribbean, we already are people that have
practiced plant based diets. So we're doing it in a
really sweet way where people are like, Okay, this is
something that I can ease myself into. So it's really
great to be able to provide, like Derek said, people
(02:51):
that have dairy a versions, people that are not free,
but also people that just want to enjoy the lifestyle
in a luxury way. You know, it's for all people.
You don't have to be vegan to have Cloudy Donut.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Well, let's talk about how we got here, because this
was not your first business. For Derek, I know everybody
knows you from Cloudys Donuts right now, but they don't
know the grind that happened before that because you had
another restaurant.
Speaker 4 (03:15):
Yeah. So I had a restaurant in Baltimore called Homemade,
And really, like I always tell people, I'm the black
Man's possibility, right, how can the ordinary man do extraordinary
things and building an architect of life from scratching what
you are able to accomplish or able to do on
a routine basis, whether you're a mechanic or whether you're
Amazon driver. It's about just really taking something that you
(03:37):
do really well and scaling your life with it. So
I started with a restaurant, and a lot of times
when you start with something, we are told that we
have to go up to something that we're passionate about.
But to be honest with you, I wasn't really passionate
about the restaurant. I made great quality product, but I
was passionate about ownership. So I spent eleven years across.
I readed two years I spent in solid turk confinement.
(03:59):
And when I was a sild Targe confinement, it was like,
all right, you really don't got access to anything. So
all I had access to was the newspaper, right, the
Sunday paper, really thick, It got the funnies in there,
the comedy section and things like that. And I would
read the financial section, and it said that most people
who became wealthy didn't do it all, didn't do it
off for one thing. They had a lot of little things,
a lot of little things that they made money off of,
(04:21):
so different streams. So the average man in that had
seven streams of income. And when I came home, I said,
I'm going after it. That's kind of how it started.
So I started with one restaurant, which led to another restaurant,
which led to a food truck, which led to buying
the building of my previous restaurant, which led to the
food truck, which led to four more Donna shops. So
(04:42):
it's really about the seven streams. How could I, as
a black man, come home and architect of life knowing
that I couldn't run fast, I couldn't jump really high,
and I wasn't a rapper, but I still had personal
aspirations that were similar to those gentlemen, and it was
really like, Okay, I'm gonna start with a restaurant. I'm
gonna figure this out, and I'm gonna build a life
from it.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
I want to say that's an anomaly in itself, though,
because the restaurant business is not being one of the
most difficult businesses to get into as far as being
able to maintain that, to maintain the quality, to maintain management,
and then to even just I feel like the majority
of restaurants end up shutting down, But for you to
do that, that's an anomaly in itself.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Like to have a restaurant that was successful.
Speaker 4 (05:23):
Yeah, so most of the guys and you know women
who start restaurants, like you said, it's a high failure rate.
The chances of making it are slim to not slimming
not and people wonder how I made it. But I
wasn't gonna fail at whatever I did. I could have
been cutting grass, I would still be on I would
be successful. I could have been making purchase. I would
have been successful. So like the mindset that I tea
(05:44):
specifically when it comes to the documentaries that I recorded,
car what's really about Like can I I mean can
I like fuck it? M like it got it happen
for me, Like you know what I'm saying. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
like you're talking about like in front of projects. My
(06:05):
father was a dope thing. My mother went through subsidized.
I was like, I ain't I don't care about none
of that, Like none of that ain't gonna affect me.
I'm gonna make a way. And that's kind of like
the energy and yeah, not being defined by it and
more or less, like you say, not allowing it to
be an obstacle in your life. So you gotta realize
I come from the day to day obstacle being death
for jail, so it's easy for me to like get
(06:26):
into it with like the health department. That's light work.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
Now.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
At the same time, this is also a love story.
I do want to yeah this So now, Zodi, you
came into the picture also now you had a job.
You're a teacher, yes, you know as a teacher, and
I could see you being a great teacher.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
Thank you. I was, thank you.
Speaker 5 (06:43):
I was a teacher for fourteen years.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
Just from watching your videos and seeing you speak about
certain things like reverse gentrification, which we'll talk about shortly too.
But now, how did you guys end up teaming up
because some people also listen, you guys are anomalies, because
some people will also tell you did not go in
business with your significant other. But this has been working
out great, so talk to me about that.
Speaker 5 (07:05):
So Derek and I met initially in twenty eighteen at
a music festival in DC. That's where I'm from. Derek
from Baltimore is Broccoli City, and I was immersed in,
you know, the concert and just like enjoying the time.
So I personally I don't remember, but.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
The person that.
Speaker 5 (07:27):
I was having a good time, but the person that
Derek was with was following me on Instagram and gave
him my handle. So now it's important to note Derek
is literally this is very social. Media is not something
He's always been forward facing it. So he was he
would send me like DMS from his homemade brunch page,
but the page was filled with like breakfast so and
(07:49):
the sandwich.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
I was.
Speaker 5 (07:52):
I'm a nice person, you know. I would post the
daily devotional a lot and he would reply and just
you know, say like really, just chill things not trying
to holler or anything like that. But when my grandmother
passed in twenty nineteen, we wanted to have a celebration
of life, and Derek reached out to me via the
DM so the Eggs. You know, it was like dmmy
(08:13):
and said, like, you know, I know someone. I was
looking for an entertainer for the to perform and Derek said,
I know someone. I'd love to pay for them to
come from Baltimore to DC. And I was just like
that is so nice, Like I would love to FaceTime you,
like I need to see who this person is. And
you know, we talked after that FaceTime for several weeks.
(08:35):
We met on Actually soon we'll be celebrating six years.
We met on March twentieth, twenty nineteen, and we've been
together ever since. And then I'll let you chime in
to talk about the conversation we had when I came
onto the brand. So I was teaching, okay, and it
was and then you called.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
Me that sure I was at work.
Speaker 4 (08:54):
We had been together for yeah some change, and yeah,
I went over to number So like all right, So
for black people, I tell us, you know, I always
say enough is enough because we don't have enough. And
what I mean by that is like, if we continue
to do the things that we're doing, we're gonna keep
getting what we're getting and we already don't have shit.
So how do you now change the narrative? And I
(09:14):
think it specifically can start with a two income household
mutual sweat equity until the person has the best plan.
So I always tell people, once you get over the
good luck, you get some good money. Right. So I
always believe that no matter what household you in, the
person that's in charge of the business should be the
person who was the smartest with the best plan. It's
not about being a man or being a woman or
(09:35):
any thing like that. So by the time I had
Miss Zodi, I had two restaurants, in a food truck,
I owned the building. My death to income ratio was
like ninety ten, Like I had like ten percent that
I could cover all of my bills in like a
month with just opening up my business. And it was
about now like a nown web. Right. So she's right
(09:56):
about like how we men at Brockoli City. She don't
remember me because she was high smoke. No problem with it,
because you know, in my mind, I'm unforgettable. For really,
you don't remember my personality.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
You remember zode definitely.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
And she said you sent those dms not trying to holler,
but in your head were you kind of.
Speaker 4 (10:21):
Hollering No, no, like no, I love Zodie. No, No,
it was really about I thought that she was really smart.
She was she seemed spiritual. Of course she's attractive, but
I just saw something in her that was alike. So
I've always had the ability, like to be very like
Perrent in my approach with people.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
So is it spiritual type of.
Speaker 4 (10:43):
More spiritual connection. Then once we went on a date,
I was like, oh, yeah, I love this person like
this she was phenomenal right, so like and and but
to be honest, like yeah, I'm gonna be honest with you,
like I tried to holler at at Brackley City. She
was high. She don't remember me. When I first took
her out on the date, I was trying to get
some ass. Okay, that's all. I was thinking, like, yo,
I want that's it, you know, because I wasn't. I
(11:04):
wasn't in the space. Yeah, I wasn't in the space
in life as a man, but I was willing to
commit to anything long term. But once I got to
know her, she was the woman of my dreams because
she kind of she checked all of the all of
the boxes. But then more specifically, she was an anomaly
because she was someone that was willing to go on
a journey with me, and not just a professional journey,
(11:27):
but a mental journey, a spiritual journey, economic journey, and
a physical journey. So I always wanted a girl like
that I could ride with. I come from like the streets,
so like I come from, like I put the packs
in your mother house. I tell you hold a pistol.
If I go to jail, I need you to answer
the phone, bail me out. I needed a woman who
was like with it, you know what I'm saying. And
(11:48):
you know, despite how she looks externally like we like
we the same internally like two hit us. You feel me.
So like a lot of people don't really understand because
Zode's very introverted in terms of how personal side. So
she's a Gemini and she kind of like she not
gonna say too much, but she's a straight savage mm,
you know, and she's my ride to dush. So like
(12:09):
I've been able to get more done with this woman
than I've been able to do with most grown men. Yeah,
and I think as black men, we need to be
more realistic about our relationships and pouring into our partners.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
So and look what you can build. Hence the Brown
Collective to everybody, but that yeah.
Speaker 4 (12:24):
Yeah, so alright boom so we so, just being honest
with you, we were in this space and we was like, yo,
I had the real estate, like I had accumulated a
small portfolio of things, and yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I
had it. I had accumulated, uh, the trucks I owned
out right, I had three properties that I owned. Then
we had another two properties. We had a a homestead,
(12:45):
and then we had a small property that we were building,
and we had all these things, right, So i'm'a tell
you how I approached it. When I was hustling, just
being honest with you, said, if I had a brick,
if I had a brick of coat, I know, I
can't sell all this shit by myself. So I need
a bunch of guys in different neighborhoods that I could
connect with that's gonna help me sell it, you know
what I mean. And I was like, all right, cool,
(13:06):
So if I build all these businesses. I could find
all these young black and brown people that's going to
buy into my story to entrepreneurship, and then I can
give them away. So it was really like my mindset
was like build it, fucking figure it out later. Figure
it out later. Right. So most of the time when
I bought the properties, I didn't have enough money beyond
like the down payment and the escro. I barely conserviced
(13:26):
it that I didn't really know what the hell was
going on. But I treated it like the streets. Like
if you go up to a guy you got money
for one kilo and he tried to give you another one,
you're gonna say, yeah, I could take that. I can't
handle that, you know what I mean, You'll figure it
out later. So the Brown Collector was a byproduct of ownership.
We had a lot of things that we own. We
wanted to give people the opportunities to participate in the brand,
(13:47):
and we wanted to do it with a level of
autonomy that most white folks wouldn't give us. Right, So
it's really about putting black and brown faces in white spaces.
How often have you walked down Rodeo Drive and seen
a black entity? How often have you worked down say
Madison Avenue, and seeing a black entity, it just doesn't exist, right,
So we typically approach it from a consumption standpoint. Even
when we had the pan on we talked about real estate,
(14:09):
it was maybe three hundred people there, but maybe ten
people raised their hand when they came to ownership. Ownership
for black people is just something that's so far fetched.
We don't even see it as a reality.
Speaker 3 (14:17):
Were used to being property.
Speaker 4 (14:19):
We used to be in property. We used to being
in that space. So like when you welcome to your
favorite store on Madison Avenue, you don't know the comps
of the real estate. You're looking about the purse or
the bag or the shoes. So I always looked up
to like ownership. I mean my grandfather he had a
forty five thousand dollars house and we grew up there
and it was fourteen of us, and I came out
of the house with the mentality like I'm my own everything.
(14:41):
I remember getting locked up as a young kid and
you need to bail out and you need property, right,
I couldn't. Yeah, I couldn't bail out. So like the
whole thing for me was ownership. It was I wasn't
worried about like being the cutest guy. I wasn't worrying
about being like the most successful online or being the
most popular. I was just straight going for deeds titles.
Speaker 3 (15:01):
Real estate played a big part in your overall journey, right.
Speaker 4 (15:04):
Yeah, yeah, real estate really changed. It changed my perspective.
So I always tell people, along with the three e's,
I mean the three essays, you got the three e's
and the three essays, saving plus sacrifice equal scaling. Okay,
so stacking money and saving right, So like always say
saving plus sacrifice equal scaling because whatever situation that you're in,
if you're willing to become more lean in a way
(15:24):
in what you spend more money, and then you're willing
to double down on your efforts, you probably can generate
more income as well. And when I talk to a
lot of our people, we're not willing to compromise the
trip to Jamaica, the All Star Game, the private flights
or things like that. But like a lot of time,
my answers lie in our disciplines. That's the true answer.
It's not the big things that you do every day,
it's the small things that you don't do. You see
(15:46):
what I'm saying, so I was able to like, yo,
I'm gonna eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I'm drive.
I drove a Mini Cooper for five years. I'm a
driver Mini Cooper. I lived in the studio like I'm
gonna make a way, and I just kept acquiring, acquiring, acquiring,
and and it was real frustrating at times because I
never had any liqui capital and I missed out on
a lot. But then I got something that nobody could
take away from it, straight ownership. Right.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
I agree with that it's a lot of sacrifice that
comes with China. But when you have a goal and
you know what it is that you're doing and which
is driving to it makes it better, you know what
I mean. When you know why you're sacrificing and saving
and you know not doing certain things that everybody else
is doing, it kind of makes you feel like, all right,
I know what I'm doing it for at least what
you built.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
We talk and we'll be talking more about and we
talked about going into partnership with it. Entrepreneurs don't always
think of ownership gives them financial security, like owning that
real estate. You know you're giving yourself, space for your
business to grow.
Speaker 4 (16:41):
And so much space.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
And when you talk about like going on rodeo driver
not seeing places that we own, like Zodi, you guys
have the Cloudy Donuts in Brooklyn in a neighborhood that
for some people were like, you know.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
The America's first suburb.
Speaker 5 (16:55):
It is just exactly America's first suburb.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
It is definitely a place that my mom actually used
to work right near there, so I used to go
to Montague Street with her all the time to you know,
we would go eat at restaurants that are on that block.
But to your point, nothing there is like black owned.
Is not black people that are owning those brownstones over there,
They're like ridiculously expensive. I've always known that since I
was a little kid. You know that this is not
(17:20):
a neighborhood where I would look to see a black
owned business.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
Yeah, And so talk to me about that decision, just
because I know when you guys first did that, people
were like, why would you want to put it there?
Speaker 1 (17:32):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (17:32):
I mean I remember when we were having conversations, you know,
with our peers, and we were saying we were going
to open up New York, and you know, people always
want to give you suggestions. They're like, oh, you should
check out you know, certain areas of Brooklyn, Flatbush, Bedside,
you should go to Harlem. And I actually lived in
New York. I went to undergrad at the New School,
(17:52):
so I had lived in all these places. And for me,
it was like, yeah, that makes sense. And of course
when i'm you know, Derek is is such a When
we first met, we agreed that we would be transitional,
transition people, right, and I was thinking that this was
extended to like our relationship and you know, change shift
the narrative of our families, et cetera. I had no
(18:14):
idea that this would be something that would translate into
our professional lives. And so when I came to him
and you know, I'm thinking, maybe we're going to look
in these particular areas too, Derek had a completely different
mindset about where he wanted to go and where he
wanted to open and I'll let you speak to that
and then I can, like, I started to look into
the history of these neighborhoods because that's something I'm really
(18:37):
passionate about. And so not only did we open up
in Brooklyn Heights, but I moved to Brooklyn Heights. So
I lived in the neighborhood for two years. I met
with the community board, I met with the schools, I
met with the churches, because it was really important for
me to coming in with like this community energy, to
(18:57):
ensure like community. Nowadays kind feels like a buzzword, but
being from DC, being a fourth generation Washingtonian and really
seeing the power of Chocolate City and black owned businesses
and things like that, it was really important for me
to establish myself within the already existing community because I
(19:18):
knew we'd be opening up right. And as I started
to do my research, I learned that we were the
first black owned food and beverage business in Brooklyn Heights.
And part of learning that was because one of our neighbors,
who had been living in the neighborhood for over sixty years,
came in and Derek and I were in the store.
(19:38):
We were like unpacking boxes. We hadn't opened yet, and
she thought that we were the movers.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
Yeah, I'm sure she.
Speaker 5 (19:43):
Thought we were the mover. She was completely floored. She
couldn't believe that we were the proprietors of the business,
and she said, I've been here my entire life, I've
never seen a black owned business, so I did for
the research. I found out Okay, when it comes to
food and bevers, we were the first, and it was
really important. And I learned through Derek to understand the
difference between like a black owned neighborhood and a black
(20:06):
occupied community, because there's a difference speaking specific to real estate.
And so that's when we started to open our eyes
to understand, like, what we're doing here is what I
call reverse gentrification. So it's all about bringing our black
owned business into affluent communities, apps and of color, and
(20:27):
providing value. So we're not just coming in and saying like, yeah,
we're cloudy, donut, what's up, Come get a donut like
we are. We gave out so many complimentary donuts. We
connected with so many neighbors, and we were actually the
first on our block. There's several businesses. We were the
first business in the community to open, like have a
ribbon cutting ceremony with the councilmen. We opened two days before,
(20:48):
you know, we opened the store. So all of that
was really intentional, you know what I mean, And unfortunately,
you know, for some people even to this day, and
definitely when we open even people within our community just
couldn't wrap their minds around why we would go to
a white neighborhood. But Derek, I mean he had insights on,
you know, finding the place. I remember when you found.
Speaker 3 (21:07):
Call it reverse gentrification. I call it initiate inclusivity.
Speaker 5 (21:12):
Absolutely absolutely So for me, yeah, I turned into like
a young angela.
Speaker 4 (21:19):
Right. So you walk in down Montague Street with your mom,
because kids are taught things subconsciously through visualization.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
Right.
Speaker 4 (21:25):
So you see this all white neighborhood and they own
all this stuff where I came from. You bet not
break or funck nothing up, right. You know, we overhere
amongst these white folks. Now be on your best behavior,
right exactly. We're just talking about so black people have
been able to kind of navigate through white society from
a space of fear what they're afraid of? Right, So
(21:50):
I never was afraid of white folks. I actually grew
up in a neighborhood free of all white folks, never
seen them until we had interactions with the police from
Baltimore City, the second largest black city in the country. Right. So,
as a black man who was successful, I always lived
in these affluent neighborhoods that was not only absente color,
but abstinently like people like myself. So I mean I
(22:13):
lived in I lived in Beverly Hills and I couldn't
connect with nobody. I lived in Tribeca. I couldn't really
connect with nobody. So I wanted to put businesses in
neighborhoods where I would personally live. But I wanted to
bring a level of authenticity to the neighborhood too. That also,
you gotta show white folks sometimes that listen. I could
do the same shit, and I could do it better.
(22:34):
It's just what it is. You know. I ain't gonna
lie to you. I wasn't moving there to be friends.
They don't move to our neighborhood to be friends. I
had a product that was dynamic, they got a built
in audience, the kids and people who liked what we got.
And our goal is to build up by our brand
and include black people. But also we are aware that
(22:54):
we do have white customers who buy the product. But
it's really about shaking it up. So like black people
always say, you should have went in bad style as
a black neighborhood, that's not a black neighborhood, that's a
black occupied neighborhood with a bunch of Georish boyson and everything.
That's it. That's not a black people. Yeah yeah, yeah,
So we really gotta figure it out. So how do
we grow our brands if we continue to do the
(23:15):
things that we do. That's why I always push enough
is enough, because we don't have enough? Right So all right, well,
let's talk about the twenty five black businesses that in
bed Style that still haven't been able to scale. Let's
talk about the twenty five black owned successful businesses in
Atlanta that still get lack of access to capital. See
the thing about it in America is this, no matter
how good you are, you still black. And I know that.
(23:36):
So I know that no matter how good we are
in Brooklyn Heights, no matter how good I am in
Beverly Hills, I'm still only gonna get but so far
because of my blackness. Right, So then your mindset is like, well,
fuck it, it's house money. Let's put the store wherever
we want put it. Let's sell whatever we want sell,
and that people who fuck with us let them come
whenever and however they want come. That's freedom. See, that's freedom.
(23:57):
And then a lot of people don't understand that because
a lot of entrepreneurs and spaces where they kind of
gotta bust the ass to make ends meet, and now
they gotta walk on eggshells. But then you basically back
to being a little girl on Montague Street, afraid that
if I say the wrong thing or do the wrong thing,
I'm gonna be in the same situation. So I always
tell people, right, we spent our childhood trying to be adults,
(24:18):
and then we spent our adulthood running from our childhood.
You gotta look at it like this. I'm already a nigga,
I'm already black, I'm already from the ghetto, my father
already a dope thing. Open a motherfucking spot up and
see what happened. Right. I don't care what they say,
I don't care what they do. I'm here for me
and if I don't shake it up, because I could
(24:40):
have easily opened up a fried chicken spot and bad
style and had a bunch of guys out there drinking
and smoking and had all the rappers pull up, and
that would have did something for the community, right, negative
may be positive, well, who knows, But what would have
changed for a person that's me? A young version of myself.
Speaker 3 (24:55):
What do you want entrepreneurs to take away from that?
Speaker 4 (25:00):
So I speak for specifically for black people. I just
gotta be honest with you because the white reality and
the black reality is totally different. So I always tell
black people, for white folks, it's twenty twenty five. For us,
it's nineteen twenty five. When it comes to our entrepreneurs,
we have to move from a space of fearlessness. Yeah,
don't be afraid to take a chance and make a choice.
(25:22):
You gotta live with it. They gonna hate you either way.
Some people don't wanna come in just cause it's vegan.
Some people been dying, They come in cause it's vegan.
Some people mad we're in Brooklyn Heights. But then it's
black people who live in Brooklyn Heights, like it was
never no black people here. I'm so glad you here
right right, So Dan, if you do, Dan, if you don't,
just rock out and make sure that whatever you do,
(25:43):
if you give it your all, it'll give you everything
you want.
Speaker 3 (25:46):
M speaking of fearlessness, you're going into film now cause
you haven't done enough?
Speaker 4 (25:50):
Yeah yeah, yeah, so so yeah, we we got a
docu series called The Seven streams and it's really it's
really about this. So in our community there's a lot
of love and support and people who want the game
right and they want the game, and I'm like, all right,
how can Like Zode taught me a term called the
(26:11):
medicine and the candy, where like, how can you give
somebody something that's good for him, but how can you
present it in a way that they are attracted to it.
So we're gonna fashionize the brand in the sense that
we're gonna do four boxes a year, like fashion drops
win a summer, spring fall, and when we drop the boxes,
we'll drop seasonal content that led up to us dropping out.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
Excellent, Yeah, for dessert boxes for a dessert boxing.
Speaker 4 (26:32):
Okay, so the dessert box itself will be fifty dollars retail,
but if you subscribe and get the dessert box, then
you'll get the content as well. Some people won't be
interested in the desserts and will want the content, and
then you feel like you want because I didn't want
to position myself as like I'm the model, I'm the
high to guy. I didn't want to be like a
guy like I can teach you how to grow crypto,
How to build a restaurant, Like, I'm not that guy,
(26:54):
and I feel like that sometimes we put ourselves in
that space. It allows you to kind of be ridiculed.
Damned if you do, Damn if you So I was like, well,
look if I give him a box and then I
give him like ten principles. So I got ten principles
called like Biggie had the ten Crack Commandments, I got
the ten Black Commandments. Ten principles that black people can
live by in general that can allow you to make
it through tough situations that are difficult, whether it's a relationship,
(27:16):
whether it's a job, whether it's feeling like you're down
or out or like for all the guys that I
speak for coming home from prison, yeah yeah.
Speaker 5 (27:23):
And those are principles that Derek has taught me. I mean,
aside from being you know, partners in the business in life,
he served as a major mentor to me because being
somebody that went to art school their entire life, I
was taught that creativity is finances are the death of
creativity and go into something in your things, which is
wild when you have this art form in your thing
(27:45):
and now you are trying to figure out how you
can monetize it. You find yourself in a way in
which you you know you're in a battle with yourself.
And so the Ten Black Commandments have been really positive
in my life because I really had to recenter myself
coming from a you know, a single mom that doesn't
have a lot of financial savvy and even assisting her
and understanding how can I how can I again shift
(28:09):
the narrative of how life goes for us?
Speaker 4 (28:11):
Yeah? Yeah, So it's like stuff like enough is enough
because we don't have enough, meaning like yo, it's as
general as why not get together and do something we
already broke, right, you know what I'm saying, enough is enough.
If I'm in a position at PR and I could
give you a leg up like Angie doing us a
major favor by saying, like, yo, I'm already gotta show
I like what you got going on, enough is enough
because we won't have enough. So our black media, like sometimes
(28:33):
our black media gatekeepers and it's like, well you'll cover
like Shade, but you don't want to cover us, and
we really winning, you see what I'm saying. Or this
is another thing that's extremely important. The media and black
culture typically want to see us two ways. They want
to see. It's bagging and crying that we get ready
clothes because.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
Then now we'll we'll we'll rally up.
Speaker 4 (28:52):
Yeah, we'll rally up and spend some coins on something
at a time, right, Or they want to see us
in a conforming standpoint like okay, well I'm a time.
Basically I'm exactly who White America wants me to be.
They've accepted me, so now I can get that deal.
But when you really standing on, like na, I'm really
doing something with a real black woman and we really
got two locations, it's like, well, that's not a story.
They already made it, right, you see what I'm saying. Total,
(29:14):
And it's crazy because it's like, Yo, this should be
a story that allows us to become successful, free of debt,
free of outside interference, and allow us to create a
vertical that can now grow and employ people in our community.
Like it's so crazy because we're in Brooklyn Heights and
everybody who work for is black and brown, and people
walk in and don't even notice that. Yeah, versus like
(29:35):
when we in like in Atlanta and Baltimore, it's like, oh, yeah,
you got all black kids working there? You black you're
doing this, I'm gonna walk straight in. So we need
our community to come out and not only support but
also consumed by the product. If you don't eat donuts
or you don't eat vegan just coming there. W wish
me the most success and brighten my day, cause some
days it be fucked up.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
Hey.
Speaker 4 (29:54):
I mean, you gotta realize, yo, were walking outside around
all these rich, privileged white people who never been around
black people, and it ain't bad style, right, but how
do you kind of shake it up? You gotta shake
it up because black people are not a monolith, right.
We can be multiple things at multiple times. Like you
know how many black people I know that's wealthy that
still eat sweet potato, but there still love fried chicken,
(30:15):
that's still like racter shit, And like they can't they
can't have that connectivity because it's like, well, if I
go back and I'm in the hood, they hate me,
and then I ain't black enough for the rich white
people who are around me. You gotta realize, successful black
people go through a lot of bullshit because we always
in the middle.
Speaker 3 (30:31):
I grew up in that and write you know, I'm
actually writing a book called you know the Price of
growing up in racial isolation. But what I hear when
I'm listening to you is your mindset and black people
are an incredible study and resilience, and that there are
stories just never told that way and what you went through.
(30:55):
Where does this resilience come from? I know it's in
our nature. We're all to remind yourself that what you
are resilient that you can share with our audience.
Speaker 4 (31:04):
So my thing is this, right, I feel like that
it has to be an extremely huge why right? I
mean some days I get on zodia nerves, you get
on my nerves. And we got collective goals, but what
helped us make it as a couple, it's independent goals.
Speaker 5 (31:18):
Mm.
Speaker 4 (31:19):
So like I don't really always treat it like a road.
It's stay centreated. Just like this. If we driving down
the road and it did come across, we keep going.
Because there's a stop sign, we keep going. If there's
a detour sign, we find another way. Well, black people
have to understand it's it's not gonna always be about
a passion or a certain amount of income. It's gonna
really boil down to like, yo, what type of life
(31:42):
do I wanna live? And how do I see myself
and nothing else fucking matters. Yeah, not wide opinion, our
black opinion. Now what nobody say, because at the end
of the day, if you stay focused on that journey, bruh,
you gonna get where you gotta go. It might be
a different role. That Drake Road and the Nipsey hustle
(32:03):
role was two different roles. But when you saw them
at the end of that role, you've seen two successful brothers.
That's what you see. If you see a bunch of
moguls in the corner, they all might not have the
same role, whether it's Robert s. Smith Don people was
at Tyler Perry, but you see three winners. If I
see Angela, yeah, if I see Beyonce and I see
Viola Davis, they all winning. You can't miss with none
(32:24):
of those people. And I think, like we are concerned,
we're focusing on the next man role, stay in your line.
Speaker 2 (32:34):
Oh now, I gotta ask you, Zodie, how what made
you that you guys briefly talked about how she left
her job, you know, because of the plan, right, this
was the plan that felt like it was gonna work.
Speaker 1 (32:46):
How was that for you? You said you didn't think
twice about it.
Speaker 5 (32:48):
Yeah, I mean, so I was. I spent the majority
of my educational career teaching in elementary school. I was
a theater teacher, and then I ended my career. You're
teaching in early childhood because I did a stint in
middle school and it was wild and I was like,
oh my gosh, I need to understand the psychology. How
(33:08):
did we get here? So I wanted to go back
to early childhood. I was in a position where, you know,
I think for myself, I've always been a woman of service.
I've always been a person to take care of other people,
and I think that sometimes we can find ourselves in
ways where we say like, oh, like, you know, I'm
taking care of this person. I'm taking care of this
(33:29):
because it's easier to take care of somebody than to
take care of yourself. So when Derek and I had
a conversation one day and I was just like frustrated
with my like coworkers, and I was like I'm over this,
and he was like, all right, Like he's a very
serious person, as you can tell, right, and so like
if he's not the person that you come to and
complain like because.
Speaker 4 (33:50):
So like this what I did just kind of chaman.
So she was working and she told me what she
was making a week, and she was catching ubers to
a job, and then she was paying for like helan
and I went over the numbers and I was like, zoh,
so you know, like you basically net like three hundred
dollars a week. Yeah, after all of her expenses, right,
the teacher's more. Yeah, teachers don't make a lot of money.
So she loved that. She was passionate about it. She
(34:12):
had did it for so long. And then I realized,
like she said, she's a service woman, so she had
taken care of so many other people up to the
time that her grandmother passed, that she never really considered herself,
despite the fact that she's done a lot of great
things and contributed towards society, she didn't consider like, yo,
you can get an hit, you can get a bank account.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
Because I think we also think that part of being
in service is not making a lot.
Speaker 4 (34:33):
Right.
Speaker 1 (34:35):
Right exactly?
Speaker 2 (34:36):
Yeah, yeah, like being financially successful with being a person
that also is a giver and yeah yeah, yeah, yeah undred.
Speaker 5 (34:46):
And then also to be honest, taking taking advantage of
the experiences that you have. Because I grew up like
upper middle class, so I already grew up with a
level of privilege. Privilege, so I assumed that things would
just fall into places they have, and you know it's not.
So you get with a grinder that you realize you
gotta work for everything.
Speaker 1 (35:05):
That's why I'm savage because.
Speaker 5 (35:06):
Now like I'm not playing, like absolutely not playing.
Speaker 4 (35:10):
Like lives and like and like I just said, like
like like you're right. They make it synonymous. They make
the giveaway with being broke.
Speaker 1 (35:17):
And that's why activists you shouldn't know, the home.
Speaker 3 (35:20):
A hard time about it.
Speaker 1 (35:21):
Yeah, it's crazy, you're an activist. Why is this person
flying first class? Like why not? Absolutely?
Speaker 4 (35:26):
You know, people kind of like they kind of make
us the devil one. It's like, Yo, we're gonna do
this pop up with you, but we gotta make some money.
And they're like what about the community, Like, yo, there's
no community without capitalists, right, was able to do the things?
They get rich and they get the money to their
white wife and she passed it up to the white
nonprofit she might might not care about. That's just we
gotta understand our reality and the world that we working in. So,
(35:49):
like I gave a reality. I say, yoh, you make
three hundred dolls a week. I could pay you that.
Quit the job. She was on our lunch break. She said,
I'm gonna put my two weeks and when I get.
Speaker 1 (35:56):
Off the lunch break, Yeah, stressed my arm.
Speaker 4 (36:00):
That was it. Yeah, I mean, it's just because I
think and like you say, speaking to a level of seriousness, right,
I think for black men, it's the most important time
to be ultimately serious. Like it's no reason for me
to come on for prison, have all these things against me.
Wake up every day black dealing, whether I'm dealing with FBI,
DA task for as robbers, other drug dealers. So I'm
in a corpor world and I'm dealing with health department,
(36:22):
I f ire the department. I'm dealing with the neighbors complaining.
So it's like I'm already waking up behind the line.
So I treat life like a track race and it's
seven of us in the lane. I'm the seventh. So
how am I playing? You know what I mean? So
I came out with Adventures. I was on it. So
I was like, yo, quit the job. I'm gonna pay
you that. I could pay you more than that. And
then after she quit the job, I was like, look,
(36:43):
moving with me and we could work more hours on it. Yeah,
but everyone money, yeah, and save money, and everybody's not
built for that. So then we moved together. And then
I mean the brain grew manifold. It was basically eight
thousand followers. When I bought the Donuts Shop, I had
eight thousand follows. She grew it in a seventy something thousand.
I didn't really know anything about community because I was
I lived a very recluse life. I came home from
(37:07):
President I had did so much shit in the street
and the people so like, I never I never been
on I still to the day, never been on Facebook.
I never been on Twitter or Twitch or XC none
of that. But I owned everything, Yeah, And I really
had real money in a real credit score, and I
really had real businesses that I really owned, and I
really worked out, and I really was a man. I
really stand for certain things, and that mattered to me
more than like, you got a million followers, and you know,
(37:29):
I didn't really know nothing about the social world. But
I think she opened up the social world to me
in a positive way in which it allowed me to
change and for my business to grow to be here today.
Speaker 1 (37:38):
It's interesting that you didn't know much about it, but
she was DM and her from the.
Speaker 4 (37:46):
And it's crazy because one of the page Yeah yeah, yeah,
right right, you're right, And I'm always telling that to you.
I like, yo, if you ever left me, I'm anno.
Speaker 5 (37:55):
Enough that you do say that I can find our reallylationship.
You know, our business relationship is Derek builds the world
and I bring people into it.
Speaker 2 (38:05):
Okay, that's and I think that also works in business
when people have different roles. You sometimes you can't have
two people doing the same thing. Somebody is good at this,
and then this what you do compliments what that is.
So it's kind of like forming something instead of us
bumpingheads doing the same thing.
Speaker 5 (38:22):
And so you're I was going to say, and to
the point when you said that, sometimes people say, like
in business, like you shouldn't work with your partner.
Speaker 3 (38:28):
Right, Sometimes you shouldn't.
Speaker 5 (38:30):
Sometimes you shouldn't.
Speaker 1 (38:31):
I will say, sometimes you should.
Speaker 5 (38:32):
I will say, like you said, everyone has roles, and
so I would say to like women that are listening
to this or you know, significant others that are working
with their partners, to understand and trust your partner and
the role in which you're in, because we have found
ourselves in spaces where me being a woman of service,
I'm just trying to help. So I'm thinking like, Okay,
let me step off base so I can help with
(38:52):
this and help with this, And that's how riffs can
come occur, Like they can arise that way because you're
not staying, like Derek said, in your lane. But as
a woman, I'm thinking not like I see something, I
gotta fix it because it's just a it's an innate
thing that we do. But trusting the role and the
position is definitely a way in which I think can
(39:14):
work really well.
Speaker 3 (39:15):
And I admire both because I do the work I
do with couples in money. It's really difficult, but it
can also be the best learning experience. If you're willing
to go that distance and understand what someone's real intentions are,
you can learn so much about each other. So partners
shouldn't work together. Soulmates can though.
Speaker 4 (39:32):
Yeah yeah, I mean, And then, like like Zodie was saying,
staying your lane and don't bite off more than you
get you right, So like, for example, some of the
goals that we have as black people cannot be accomplished
in our generation. It's just not realistic. I think the
generational is something that's incremental and built over time. Right.
So another thing that kept me really focused is that
I understood the role that I played within my family
(39:53):
dynamic based off of the generation that I was born in.
I'm not going to build one hundred million dollar company,
but I can get to seven streams. So I always
tell people, when you tease slow, they learn fast. When
you teach fast, people learn slow. So my whole goal
with Zodie was not trying to become the wealthiest, most
successful company. It was just a brick by brick. I'm
gonna show you how we did this, and then i'm
(40:15):
gonna show you how we did that, and then little
that we can accumulate. Then i'm gonna show you how
to take care of it, and then i'm gonna show
you how, if you want to, you can grow it.
And that's enough. See a lot of times we don't
comp out our life, And what I mean by that
is that we don't come up with a dream like
that we want to live and then actually put a
real number to it that can make it make sense.
And then take your skill set and allow yourself to
(40:37):
incrementally glean into that number. So like when people see
it and they say, like, so, what's cloudy donut? Is
it gonna be fifty stores? It'll never be fifty stores
because that's not the economic goal that we have. We
don't have a donut of a year goal. We don't
have a James Beard or Ward goal. We don't have
a New York Times Best donut goal. We gotta get free,
go wake up and not do nothing goal.
Speaker 3 (40:59):
Pass it in awareness, because what you're talking about, like
my father's generation, his father's generation, they in so much pain.
They want I'm gonna save the whole family.
Speaker 1 (41:08):
Yeah, and make everything.
Speaker 3 (41:10):
I'm gonna fix everything like that, And they didn't have
that educate, the financial literacy education to do that. But
you know, I just you guys are gonna come back
very very soon.
Speaker 4 (41:21):
Right, yeah, yeah, yeah, come back. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:23):
Listen, every time I see Zodio when I did the
earn your Leazy thing, I was like, y'all put the
donuts to the side for me, please.
Speaker 1 (41:29):
That's the only reason.
Speaker 3 (41:31):
Now finished next week because I'm gonna eat these doughnuts.
Speaker 5 (41:34):
Now, well, well, we actually brought you guys a preview
of Cloudy Cakes.
Speaker 1 (41:38):
I saw you got.
Speaker 3 (41:40):
Cakes, cloud Were you eating those of the music festival?
Speaker 1 (41:43):
Or they're just right? We're talking about we have today?
Speaker 4 (41:47):
So we got a brown sugar pineap upside down with
more of like a bourbon glaze. I think I'm excited
for y'all to try that.
Speaker 3 (41:54):
Aren't you fasting this week?
Speaker 5 (41:56):
No?
Speaker 4 (41:58):
And then we have a lemon blueberry with fresh lemonclaz
on top.
Speaker 1 (42:03):
Lemon berry, but I want you to try to eat pineapple.
That's the only food I would say lemon blue bear,
So pineapple for you?
Speaker 3 (42:13):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (42:14):
Yeah, all right, Sorry, didn't last thing.
Speaker 3 (42:16):
How can people they can find you through us? We're
going to feature you, guys and wealth Wednesday's newsletter. We
were talking we're going to partner on the the zillion
things and how can people find you on social media?
Speaker 5 (42:25):
So you can find us on social media? U Cloudy
Donuts all thing Cloudy Donuts. There's two handles we have
in both Cloudy Donut Truck and Cloudy Donuts with an S.
You can follow me personally to learn about my neo
entrepreneurship experience through a woman's perspective at Zo D two.
That's my name and then collect the Brown Collective. You
(42:47):
can find us there and that's what you'll learn a
lot about the Seven Streams, which Derek will be dropping soon.
Speaker 1 (42:53):
We got a little previews, yeah, yes, absolutely.
Speaker 3 (42:58):
We were sitting there watching. We're like, oh, we're late
for our next interview.
Speaker 1 (43:03):
Yeah, but you're right. People need to see the whole journey.
Speaker 4 (43:05):
Yeah, definitely, so thank you.
Speaker 3 (43:07):
Yeah, and on Teamwealth Wednesdays dot Com, we're gonna be
profollowing them in our newsletter and if you could remember
all those handles we got to we got to Yeah, yeah, I.
Speaker 4 (43:17):
Think that's pretty much it. I will say they can
reach his homemade brunch, which I was turning into like
a seven Streams. And then we have a newsletter with
the Brown Collective that will give you information that's to win.
The doc you series is going to drop and the
cakes will be available online next week.
Speaker 3 (43:31):
Did you hear my stomach?
Speaker 1 (43:34):
All right? Thank you? Okay, pop up
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