- 2 days ago
This session will focus on the vital role Black and Brown-owned businesses play in driving economic growth and innovation. As key contributors to local economies and industries, these businesses are at the forefront of job creation, wealth generation, and community empowerment. Featuring a new report created by the Global Black Economic Forum (GBEF) and the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), this session will dive into data-driven insights on how Black and Brown entrepreneurs are shaping the economic landscape, overcoming systemic challenges, and contributing to the resilience and growth of economies on a regional, national, and global scale. Join us for an inspiring conversation on strategies to support, elevate, and sustain Black and Brown businesses, ensuring their continued impact on the broader economy.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00Everybody good? Yeah? I will ask if you're standing to take a seat please. Please do so. If you're standing, please take a seat. We have these phenomenal speakers up here. We'd love to give them, show them respect. I appreciate it.
00:16This conversation for me is very interesting because obviously, for those of you who don't know, my name is Jabari Young and I'm a magazine writer at Forbes and I cover business. And so having this particular conversation with these three phenomenal speakers is very good because I'm getting a diversity of thought.
00:35It's a lot of conversation we was having in the back about strategic ways, solutions, about black and brown businesses in 2025. What the state of them are, solutions that we need to move forward. We obviously know DEI has been shredded to pieces, but how can we move forward? Immigration right now, our Latino community, our brothers and sisters in Latino community are under attack, right? How can we unify and help them move forward?
01:02And I want to start this conversation. I want to ask, what if black and brown businesses in this country were equitably represented, right? What if we had just as many black businesses as we have black people in this country? We make up about 14% of the population here.
01:19So that's a 1,615,000 jobs or business that will be created, $1 trillion of revenue generated if we had enough black businesses to match our population.
01:36So this particular panel, we will tackle that, drive prosperity, impact of black and brown businesses on the economy. We'll briefly focus on the vital role that minority businesses play in driving economic and innovation with economic growth and innovation.
01:55And we'll also explore some of them who are shaping the financial landscape, right? So if you're a black business owner or a Latino business owner, who are some of the people that you can mimic in your business to help you scale it?
02:11First, some data, right? There are about 8.7 million black and brown businesses total across this country. 8.7 million black and brown businesses across this country. I get that right, Juan?
02:23That's right. Juan told me that's that just behind the stage. The average black employer business has about $850,000 in annual revenue. That's what they make.
02:35Compared to our white brothers and sisters, they have about 2.4 million. So there's a big disparity there. Huge disparity. How can we make that up?
02:4490%, 96% of black-owned businesses, and here's a problem, sole proprietorships, right? That means that it's only one person running the entire operation.
02:53How can we better improve and create more black employer firms? We're talking about in areas like oil, mining, manufacturing, things to get out of the consumer packaged goods space, right?
03:06How can we be better at scaling those other businesses and other sectors?
03:12Hispanic-owned businesses, they represent about 8.2% of employer firms, right? Just some data.
03:18How many of you can guess what the best state for black employment is? You will never guess this, right? See the sister raising back here?
03:29Georgia?
03:30No. Nevada.
03:32Can you believe that? Nevada. Yes. Nevada. And this is according to the Center of Economic Policy Research. I'm not making this up.
03:40Nevada, Maryland, Virginia, Texas, Florida, Connecticut, the best states for black employment.
03:46The worst? Arkansas, Michigan, Illinois, right here in Louisiana, and where I'm from in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
03:53Those are the worst, right? Very interesting data.
03:56I want to start this panel off by asking each of you one word to describe the state of black and brown businesses here in 2025.
04:05Why don't I start with you?
04:07Thank you very much. So, I would certainly say that...
04:10Just one word.
04:11Assault.
04:12Assault. Why assault?
04:14Because the government and the policies that it has been implementing, you know, going after D and I policies, for example, puts our community under assault.
04:23The big, beautiful bill, the big, bad bill puts our community under assault.
04:28Yeah.
04:28And so, that's my one word for the performance.
04:31Assault. Robert, what you got?
04:33Fertile.
04:33Fertile? Why fertile?
04:36Because everything is within us.
04:39Like, when you say all of those numbers and the lack of funding that there is, and we're still able to make those level of results, to me, that says the soil is ripe for opportunity.
04:53Elise?
04:55Unfolding.
04:56Unfolding. That's interesting. Why unfolding?
04:58I believe because we are, right now, shifting to the real power.
05:04We are understanding our power.
05:07We are going further.
05:09We are fertile.
05:10So, we are literally unfolding the power that we have to go further.
05:16Yeah.
05:16I want to stick with you for a minute because I want to ask each of you to give the audience a status report on your company.
05:22They may not know what your companies do.
05:24They may not know who you guys are.
05:26At least I'll start with you.
05:27Give me a status report on NVH Studios.
05:29This is a global group that designs lifestyle brands, right?
05:34Give me a status update and what the business mission is, as we say here in 2025 at NVH Studios.
05:41The business mission is not changing from what we were before to this week, right?
05:48So, we are a Kenyan brand.
05:51So, let me start with Enda.
05:54So, Enda is a sportswear brand out of Africa.
05:59It's the first sportswear brand going out of Africa that is going global and, you know, playing or competing in the globe stage.
06:09And Enda is proudly part of NVH Studios, as you were saying, that is a holding company that has other two lifestyle brands.
06:21One is Eferino out of Brazil.
06:23The other one is Twins for Peace.
06:25Twins for Peace, it's a French boutique brand.
06:28And right now, what I would tell you that our mission is, it's to stay rooted but going global, right?
06:39The purpose of our brands, all of our brands, is really on the building community side of it.
06:48It is to support the community.
06:50It's to build ecosystems where we can be developing, right?
06:54So, it is not just marketing.
06:57It is not just being there for status.
07:00It's literally supporting and being part of our community.
07:04Juan, League of United Latin American Citizens, otherwise known as LULAC.
07:11Well, LULAC is the country's oldest Latino civil rights organization.
07:15And so, right now, we find ourselves really focused on what we can do to help support Latino and minority communities across the country.
07:22And we're doing so primarily in a completely different way than we have in our past, which is fully intersectional.
07:29Working with our African-American partners and allies, with women-led organizations, with GLBT groups as well.
07:35We're here to advocate for small businesses.
07:38We're here to advocate for Latinos and minorities across the country.
07:42And where we need to, we will stand up and we will fight through litigation in order to ensure those rights are protected.
07:48Robert, what's going on over at the Broadway Collective?
07:54You got to give it up for Robert's outfit, too, man.
07:56Come on, man.
07:56That brother, look at that outfit.
07:58I was all jumped.
07:59I'm like, man, you going to upstage me?
08:00I done got a new suit made and you come in there with this.
08:02But you look great.
08:04Well, I appreciate it.
08:04You look better.
08:05You look better.
08:05So one of our programs is called Strength on Stages.
08:09And our mission is to help black and brown female entrepreneurs take their side hustles and turn them into six and seven figure small businesses.
08:19So right now, we're really helping them get their products and their programs launched because we know that when we change the economy in our household, we're able to change our communities and we're able to change truly what's happening at the state and national level.
08:37Robert, I want to stick with you for a minute because we had a pre-call this week and we were talking about some of the things we wanted to discuss on this very panel for you all.
08:44And you were very passionate about black women being underfunded, being underrepresented.
08:52And, you know, you just had that passion.
08:55And what is keeping you up at night when we talk about the underrepresentation, the underfunding of black women?
09:00It kills me because it's like looking at my mom.
09:06You know, I work with mainly single moms who really want a different world for their kids.
09:15And, like, I'm the person who went to all of the banks and every bank from my house denied me.
09:20But it was a black funder that actually helped, right?
09:24So, what's keeping me up is making sure that these women have the skill, not just the skills, but really the tools to help grow their businesses when they cannot get the quote-unquote traditional funding that many business owners will go and get.
09:42And so, something that I love Jabari asked on our pre-call was then what is the solution?
09:48You know, it's so, we always hear what the problem is.
09:51And I really believe that the solution is already within ourselves and within our communities.
09:57And what would happen if we start looking at our black brothers and our black sisters and instead of going to big companies, we go to them, right?
10:07And that is, that's what I want to fight for right now.
10:12Yeah.
10:12And to add a little bit more context, I'm not sure how you all know, but $2.1 trillion.
10:17A 2026, that is what the black community, that's the spending power of the black community.
10:23$2.1 trillion.
10:25Think about that.
10:26That is bigger than the GDP of Mexico, bigger than the GDP of Canada.
10:30We spend more money than countries, right?
10:33And so, what Robert is talking about is instead of going and asking people for money, we can do that amongst ourselves and work amongst ourselves.
10:39One of the things we hear on Wall Street is how black and brown businesses, we don't talk to one another when it comes to doing business.
10:46We seek other outside businesses, but we don't talk to each other, knowing that we have $2.1 trillion of spending power.
10:54Think about that.
10:55Robert, I want to take it to you, man, because that's a piece of data.
10:58And we were talking in the back about the data that the Global Black Economic Forum, as well as LULAC, came up with.
11:04Give me some numbers that stood out to you.
11:06What surprised you about that report, that economic data report?
11:10Well, you know, I would say that the combined buying power is $5.1 trillion.
11:17Combined with black and brown.
11:18Black and brown.
11:19And so, for far too long, we've been looking at both communities in silos.
11:24We talk only about the African-American community and the Latino community.
11:28And we don't talk about them combined.
11:30If you were to go to Walmart, they would tell you we have 20% African-American employees.
11:36We have 30% Latino employees.
11:38Well, really, you have more than 50% black and brown employees.
11:42The same thing, basically, with Amazon, the second largest employer in the country.
11:46Over 1 million employees.
11:48Those are warehouse jobs.
11:50They're over 50% Latino and African-American communities.
11:55So, we need to exercise that power.
11:58We need to talk about it in unity.
12:01And we have more power when we go to the table together.
12:04Myself and Alfonso or Derek Johnson or Mark Morial.
12:08We really need to work more closely together and be committed to it as a community.
12:13Yeah.
12:15Elise, I want to shift to you because we were in the back talking about opportunities in Brazil
12:18and looking at this thing from an international standpoint.
12:21But, before you do that, you talk to constituencies around the world.
12:26When they look at the U.S. and they look at DEI being shredded.
12:30They look at the immigration policy.
12:31How are they viewing us?
12:33Because I watch Bloomberg all the time and I'm staying up at night and I'm seeing all these
12:37other countries looking at us and just laughing at us.
12:40Right?
12:40Europe, Africa, all of them.
12:42They're just sitting there laughing at us.
12:43What are you hearing when you go around the country with NVH Studios around the world
12:48about how they're viewing the U.S. when it comes down to black and brown business?
12:51I wouldn't say they're laughing.
12:53It's actually a concern.
12:55Because we also have to understand that the U.S. is a model to other countries.
13:02So, for example, I'm from Brazil, from a very small city in Brazil, in Minas Gerais.
13:05And the dream of most of us is to come to the U.S.
13:10Yeah.
13:11Is that still a dream?
13:12It is not.
13:13It is changing a little bit.
13:16So, for example, for, you know, I'm going to talk about us, about the black and brown
13:20community, right?
13:21So, right now, if you see a young Elise over there, it is dreaming to go to Africa.
13:29The U.S. is not the dream anymore.
13:31Or, like, the American dream is kind of shaking because people are concerned.
13:36Am I safe?
13:37What am I doing?
13:38Is that really where I'm going to make the money?
13:41Or is it just where I'm going to survive?
13:44Am I going to survive?
13:45So, I wouldn't say that it's left, but it's really a concern around the world.
13:50And you see in Africa, it's still, I spend a lot of time in Kenya because of ANDA.
13:55And it's still between UK and the U.S., but you see people shifting.
14:05Maybe home is where we should be.
14:07Yeah.
14:07If we develop over here, if we grow around, you know, our community, if we do more for
14:15ourselves, maybe it should be the best place to be.
14:18So, that is my understanding, my view.
14:22It's me talking to people around the world.
14:24And it is also my personal opinion.
14:27That's how I see.
14:28Let's suppose all of these people here that they were entrepreneurs and they may be looking
14:32outside of the U.S. to do business.
14:34Which country outside of Africa would you recommend?
14:37Brazil?
14:37We were just talking about that.
14:38Not just because I'm Brazilian, but Brazil is definitely a good place to go to invest.
14:46If we are talking about our community, Brazil is 56% black.
14:5256% black in Brazil.
14:5456% black.
14:55That is what the data say, the official data say, but we know that it's more.
15:00Brazil has the blackest city in the world outside of Africa, that is Salvador, and the blackest
15:05state that is Bahia.
15:06We have opportunity to connect directly to ourselves.
15:14We don't have to go around.
15:16So, NVH Studios, one of our businesses is in Brazil with this purpose, right?
15:23There is other business in the whole group that is also based in Brazil.
15:28Our headquarters are there.
15:29There is a huge opportunity to connect, to grow, to build.
15:33And I would say that the doors are open.
15:37We just have to talk to each other.
15:39We have to connect.
15:40We have to do better.
15:41Yeah.
15:42Africa, Brazil, two countries, one continent to keep an eye on.
15:47Right?
15:49Juan, I was listening to your interview on Tavis Smiley to kind of shift it back.
15:53We got about nine minutes left here.
15:55About the unity between black and brown communities and how we don't talk to each other.
15:59We spend more time maybe going at each other instead of talking to each other to do business.
16:03Again, $5 trillion worth of spending power there.
16:06And the quote you said is, for the African American community to get where it needs to get to, it needs Latino support.
16:17For the Latino community to get to where it needs to get to on immigration reform, we need African American support.
16:24Elaborate on how we can better strengthen that unity between the two groups.
16:28Well, we can strengthen it through conversation, through dialogue, through forums like this, where we can actually share ideas.
16:37You know, look, there has been a lot of tension within the African American and Latino community for a long time.
16:43You know, Latino men voted overwhelmingly for this president, and they found out.
16:50They found out.
16:51Yeah.
16:51Right?
16:52But we need to break that cycle.
16:54So, we need to start working together because we're not going to be able to get to where we want to get to.
16:59There's just so much that connects us from a health perspective, from a small business perspective.
17:05And that's really the gap that I'm basically trying to address.
17:09And there's two sides to this conversation.
17:11There's a workforce component to it where we make up over 50% of the workforce, but we're also the consumer side of it.
17:19Okay?
17:19We're setting trends.
17:21We're setting cultural trends, for example.
17:24You know, from a fashion perspective, the African American community leads that from a music and entertainment perspective.
17:31What would these corporations do if they lost a million customers tomorrow?
17:36Because that's what Trump is talking about.
17:39He's talking about deporting a million immigrants.
17:41And they're not just Latinos.
17:44They're black from Haiti, from Ethiopia, and they're Muslim from Eastern European countries as well.
17:51Yeah.
17:51You just mentioned a big, beautiful bill.
17:54We can talk all day about what's wrong in it.
17:57Is there anything right in it that will help black and brown businesses that you've seen?
18:03And it just was passed last night, so, you know, if you don't have it, that's fine.
18:07I mean, look, there's $168 billion appropriated to immigration enforcement.
18:12Literally more than would be appropriated to defense of this country.
18:16That's a concern.
18:18The short-term tax benefits are short-term.
18:20They will expire in two years.
18:23You may get a tax saving of $400, but you're going to have an increase in health-related costs of over $4,000 per family.
18:31So, we don't think it's good at all.
18:34They are restructuring the levels of power and the redistribution of wealth.
18:39Make no mistake, that's what this bill is about.
18:42Robert, I want to shift to you, right?
18:44We can look around the world or look around and stay in this country, as a matter of fact.
18:48Again, so many black and brown businesses, 8.7 million total.
18:53What's one that's doing it the right way, overcoming the odds, and they're thriving economically?
18:59They're doing it the right way that somebody in this crowd can look at that company and mimic.
19:03Who you got?
19:04It's Hello7, and their CEO is Rachel Rogers, and she wrote a book called We Should All Be Millionaires,
19:13and they recently had a conference two weeks ago, 500 black and brown women together,
19:19many of them that haven't yet left their jobs.
19:23But what she is doing at that company is taking these women through a 12-month business accelerator program,
19:32and people that have been through that program have started leaving jobs that they weren't even making six figures at.
19:41And within 9 to 12 months, they've gone from multiple six figures, some of them even reaching seven figures.
19:49And I love the most about it is that it's not just about wealth building for your family,
19:56but there's a huge foundational aspect to how they run their company.
20:02And so a lot of the money in that company goes to their foundation that really helps black and brown women
20:10when they are in the hospital giving birth.
20:13And I just think they're absolutely doing it right, and how they're working together with communities.
20:20Juan, you have a Latino company that's doing it the right way, that maybe black Americans, that we can mimic them?
20:26You know, there is, and I feel really terrible because I can't remember their name,
20:31but let me tell you the outline of it.
20:34Two Latinos from Chicago started an AI chat company.
20:38An AI chat company?
20:39An AI chat company that has raised over a billion dollars.
20:43Wow.
20:44And you forgot their name?
20:45In four years.
20:46I know, that's escaping me.
20:48But listen, they're not hard to find.
20:50I'm going to get it to you, Jabari, so you can write about these two gentlemen.
20:54AI and technology really is changing the landscape.
20:57Look, I started a technology company back in 2002.
21:02And here's what I'm going to tell you.
21:03I bought a $1,000 laptop, and I wrote a million-dollar proposal, and I sold it.
21:09That's it.
21:10I didn't have to go out and get financing or debt financing or friends and family.
21:15If you have an idea, and it's a good idea, and you can sell it, you can start with paying customers on day one.
21:23And you can grow, and you can scale that.
21:26Well, I want to stick with you for a minute because I would be doing the crowd a disservice if I do not talk about the incoming technology, talking about agentic AI.
21:35How many in the crowd, raise your hands if you have on your phone right now Google Notebook?
21:41Right.
21:42I know one person does.
21:43I told her about it.
21:45That's it.
21:46It should be more people with their hands raised.
21:48That is a very powerful app.
21:50If you've got Instagram and you've got all those other social media apps, you should be having Google Notebook.
21:53You can download a 50 or 100-page PDF document, upload it to Google Notebook, and it will spit out a podcast talking about that, which you just uploaded, in five seconds.
22:05Think about what I just said.
22:07Right.
22:08That will help customer service.
22:10Right.
22:10If you're a small business, agentic AI will help your customer service.
22:14You need to invest, and you need to be playing with Google Notebook.
22:17Right.
22:18Gen AI is one thing.
22:19Agentic AI is another.
22:21Right.
22:21When I mention those two texts, Juan, what would you tell the audience about making sure that they keep up with AI tech?
22:28Because black and brown communities seem to be the ones that's lacking behind.
22:33Absolutely critical.
22:34Not just from a business perspective, from a community perspective.
22:38Our children need to know this.
22:41We will be left behind if we do not embrace this technology revolution at the end of the day.
22:47And for me, that's the biggest concern.
22:49There are laws that haven't been written yet that will discriminate against our community.
22:54They will.
22:54So, we need to get out there.
22:57Look, the free versions of these things are great.
23:00It's a good place to start.
23:02But ChadGBT has something called deep research.
23:05It's $200 a month.
23:07It is incredible.
23:09You would literally have a PhD working side by side with you for $200 a month doing all your reports, all your analysis.
23:18I use it to analyze the bill.
23:211,100 pages.
23:23It turned back an hour of full analysis of the impact on immigration, for example.
23:28These tools are absolutely incredible.
23:30Use them.
23:32Take the time.
23:33It will pay off in spades.
23:35Yeah.
23:35Elise, the incoming technology.
23:37You're in a consumer goods space.
23:39So, how is that, the new technology helping NVH Studios and what are you guys seeing?
23:44It is helping a lot.
23:47We are having right now a whole different approach to technology in the fashion company as well.
23:56But the group has also a technology company.
23:59So, we can't, there's one thing that I said in the back, but I think that this is more to this conversation right here.
24:07We can't treat what they say that is gap in our community as something that is not opportunity.
24:15So, we have the opportunity right now to change the game, right?
24:19The technology is there.
24:21Everything is there.
24:21AI is there.
24:22We can have a podcast in five seconds.
24:25Two people in a conversation seems real, very real.
24:31So, customer service, but also the database, right?
24:35And one thing that we miss all the time is that we don't have our own data.
24:41They have our data.
24:43They know what's the billions that they're making out of us, but we don't know and we don't control.
24:49We don't have the power over it.
24:51So, we really need to start treating this, what is called gap, as an opportunity.
24:58This has to change for us.
24:59And it's changing.
25:00Our business is changing and other business, I would say, pay attention to it because it's reality.
25:06It's not a 20, 30 thought anymore movie theater.
25:10It is right now.
25:11It's happening.
25:12Yeah.
25:12I want to read this quote to you as we wrap up here.
25:15And this is from Robert, you know, in a 2024 podcast.
25:18Robert, your worth is not determined by who you're attached to.
25:23It's determined about how you feel about yourself.
25:27As we close this particular conversation, I'm going to give you the first word.
25:31Give some closing advice to these people that are sitting here today about just enhancing their business, enhancing themselves, as we say here in 2025, moving ahead, knowing that we have three years left of this current administration.
25:45We've got midterm elections coming up.
25:47We've got a whole bunch more to talk about, right?
25:48What's your closing advice to these entrepreneurs, these business owners?
25:52Get focused.
25:54I think we all play with time.
25:57And if I could go back or if I could be exactly where you were right now, I would get into a business coaching program or be with a mentor that has a proven track record of helping people.
26:09And I don't think we talk enough about sacrifice and it's going to cost, but the opportunity that's on the other side is what you have always longed for and always desired.
26:23And I truly believe, why not you?
26:26And so whatever it is, it's time.
26:29Get focused.
26:30Juan, your closing advice.
26:32Get comfortable in uncomfortable spaces.
26:36Okay?
26:36Be comfortable in uncomfortable spaces.
26:39If you're the only Latino, if you're the only woman, if you're the only African-American or black person in the room, get comfortable.
26:47Network.
26:48Ask for help.
26:49You will be surprised how many people will be willing to give you a hand and help lift you up.
26:54Yeah.
26:54Elise?
26:55Build your foundation.
26:57Build your foundation.
26:58Yeah.
26:59Never forget that your business is there because you had a dream, because you desire, because you have a plan.
27:05Build your foundation.
27:06Get focus is one of the things to do when you're building your foundation.
27:11Stay rooted.
27:12Believe on what you believe the first time.
27:15Make sure that your foundation is there.
27:18Process is very important.
27:21And make sure to connect within ourselves.
27:24Our community is here for that.
27:25We are here to develop a better ecosystem, to create it, and to make it better for all of us.
27:32You know, we are not just one right now.
27:34We have to walk as community.
27:36We have to walk together.
27:38So, build your foundation.
27:39Stay rooted.
27:40And everything's going to work out.
27:41Yeah.
27:41And I will tell you all, the follow-up, right?
27:44What does that mean?
27:46Follow-up with each other.
27:47You're getting all these business cards.
27:49Don't be putting those in the drawer.
27:51Follow-up with those individuals.
27:52Talk to them.
27:54Beg them, right?
27:55Get their time.
27:57Follow-up with each other.
27:58Talk to your Latino brothers and sisters, right?
28:00Talk to the other black businesses and entrepreneurs.
28:03Follow-up.
28:03Elise, Juan, Robert, thank you for the time.
28:05Jabari, thanks for listening.
28:06Thank you, Jabari.
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