00:01You worked with Charity D. Nim.
00:03Why did you connect with their organization?
00:07So I had an idea to throw an event.
00:11It was, I wanted to do a Juneteenth event.
00:14I felt like there was not enough attention around Juneteenth.
00:19And I went to, shout out to Patti Kukula.
00:24She works for the Detroit Public Safety Foundation.
00:26And I used to, she owned a business called Del Mar.
00:28I opened it five, six, seven, eight years ago.
00:33Wow.
00:34I reached out to her. I said, hey, I want to do this Juneteenth event.
00:36Who do you think, you know, I should deal with?
00:38They was like, well, you know, there's this lady, Charity Dean.
00:41And I had known Charity.
00:42I think we had met, but we had never really connected.
00:45Okay. So I sent her an email and a text message like,
00:48hey, I would love to sit down and do lunch with you.
00:50And she was like, no, let's go to happy hour.
00:54I'm like, fine with you.
00:57At the block. Shout out to the block.
01:00Another black owned gym.
01:03And, you know, we dreamed of this event, which turned into the Juneteenth Freedom Fest.
01:08Yeah.
01:10And we ran it for three years.
01:12The Black Business Alliance.
01:13The Black Business Alliance. Yep.
01:14And the first year, I think our goal was one or 2,000 people.
01:18And I think the first year we have 5,000.
01:19Yeah. Wow.
01:20Second year, 8,000.
01:21Third year, 10,000.
01:22And ultimately we stopped doing it because one of the missions
01:25of the Black Business Alliance is to solve problems.
01:28So that Juneteenth issue was now solved.
01:30Right.
01:31Because if you look around the city, there's 26 Juneteenth events.
01:35And I like to say we may have not done it first, but we for sure did it the best.
01:39Yes, yeah.
01:39Yeah.
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