Keenan Beasley, Chairman at Venture Noire | The State of Black Entrepreneurship

Welcome to the success story podcast, I'm your host, Scott Clary. On this podcast, I have candid interviews with execs, celebrities, politicians, and other notable figures, all who have achieved success through both wins and losses, to learn more about their life, their ideas, and their insights. I sit down with leaders and mentors and unpack their story to help pass those lessons onto others through both experiences and tactical strategy for business professionals, entrepreneurs, and everyone in between. Without further ado, another episode of the success story podcast. Thanks again for joining me. I am sitting down with Kenan Beasley, who is the chairman and executive director of Venture and War. Now, Kenan is an industry disruptor, marketing executive, and serial entrepreneur with more than a decade of consumer marketing experience. After leading billion-dollar brands at Procter & Gamble, Reckit, Venkaiser, and Laurie L, he launched the marketing agency BLK Box, Black Box in 2014. His mission was to build a company focused on understanding how people were influenced and apply those insights to deliver growth for brands. Now, like I mentioned, he currently serves as executive director of Venture and War. We're going to go into what that's all about. He is a Walton Family Foundation grant recipient. Venture and War is a diversity, equity, and inclusion partner helping entrepreneurs of color with non-dilutive grants and mentorship to launch and scale successful businesses, born and raised in LA. Kenan is a proud graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point. Very excited to chat. Thank you so much for joining me. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it, Scott. That's my pleasure. It's my pleasure. You have an incredible career. You're doing a lot of good work, but I want to tease up. I like to go through the origin story. Walk me through your career and how you got here. Wherever you want to start is fine because you've done a lot, so I don't want to drag it out. I think there's a lot of really good experience that you have. I want to go through that, and I'm sure that's impacted what you're doing now. Yeah. I think the easiest thing to start is the fact that I grew up as a football player. So that speaks to a lot of my philosophy and the way that I shape things. I would say you can see the helmet and the football back there. But for me, it was this pattern around discipline, hard work and teamwork. So that is what carried me through to West Point and where I was a D1 football player. After West Point, I got into the business sector, and really I found myself in market. And I think it's a weird transition for people to go from West Point to engineering school into marketing. But again, for me, it was around teamwork, right, in service. And that's what the military teaches you. That's what football teaches you. I was outside linebacker defensive in. And sometimes you got to throw yourself out of pile for the guys behind you. So when you look at marketing, marketing is about serving the greater good of people, right? And solutions to them that they're looking for. So I worked at Procter & Gamble. That was on Tide, I led Gillette Globally, ended up in Reck of Inquizio where I led Lysol Globally, Lysol Death Hall, and then was the youngest vice president over at Luriao on Gartier. And all of that taught me just where the insights around humanity, right? How people are operating and what you need to do to serve them better. And so, you know, for me, what I've done is really dedicate my life to service. That's what took me to Venture Noir on a way to serve entrepreneurs to do a lot of what I've been doing. You know, I'm now, this is my fifth company that I started, which is supply factory brand. So we have an amazing air care line. I have a cannabis business. We've gone through all the stages, right? I've bootstrapped businesses. I've raised venture capital. I've done the friends and family rounds. I've taken out loans. I've done all of the tough things that we do as entrepreneurs. And I wanted to create Venture Noir to help more folks go through that process, right? Help navigate those seas for lack of a better word. And that's been really rewarding. So really exciting to do that. No, it's a really impressive career. And I appreciate you sort of lining up your experience. Now, when you launched Venture Noir, what were the types of entrepreneurs that you were working with? Was there a certain industry, a certain type of entrepreneur? Was it literally anybody who just needed some extra help, needed a little bit of a leg up that you would take on? What was the core customer for Venture Noir? You know, when I was coming up with the concept, it was the question I kept asking myself was, how come there's not a black Zuckerberg or Bezos, right? These moguls, right, and the epitome of entrepreneurship, I wasn't seeing that in the black community that I could point to, right, that really had the liquidity event. And when I say, you know, the top of the, you know, mountain for entrepreneurs to go public or get acquired, you know, wasn't seeing that, right? And I said, okay, there's an issue. So I had to start looking at the pipeline. And one thing that I've always been taught by my dad is you just, you need volume, right? So you need more. So Venture Noir is a venture catalyst organization. It is about creating and stimulating more businesses where I saw the gap was at the very early stage. So people that are considering becoming entrepreneurs, right, that are working corporally like I was and looking at making the leap where we've done some programs, folks that have just cracked their business plan and are stuck trying to figure out how to get started and where to go. A lot of what Venture Noir is about is eliminating that blockage, right, to just get you through that first run so that you build some momentum, build that MVP, get in front of investors and now the suddenly experience becomes much more familiar. And that's why you see people do these things over and over and over again because entrepreneurship is so familiar, right? Like I said, I'm 36 and I'm on my fifth company and it's just because that's just who I am now. So the fear of starting, I don't have, I'm just like, I'm starving. I was actually, I was going to mention, man, I didn't want to say anything, but I'm like, shit, you look young for these roles. Like, you look, you look like good job, but like, congratulations. You're not like a couple of friends in there now, I got a couple, but not too bad. So, but as you, as you built this out, like I was looking on the site and you said for Venture Noir, there's three, three resource pillars, curriculum, community, and access to capital. Is that when I look at, when I think about an entrepreneur, curriculum, the knowledge, access to capital is obviously important. I feel like community is something that isn't focused on enough. Is this, the community in your mind, is it like an incubation program? Is it somebody who has gone through the same life experiences as somebody of the same color understands cultural background or nuances? What's community that you would bring to the table? Because that's the one piece that I, I don't know well. No, no, it's a great question. It comes from the philosophy really that, you know, density breeds success. So it's, if the idea of a strip mall, right? So, you know, here in America, we have strip malls where, you know, you have one company that's doing well. Well, those companies that are around it tend to get some of that, you know, a fall off traffic, right? And they tend to have better sales revenue because of that, just from sheer proximity. So a lot of what I think was lacking in in the, you know, underprivileged or underserved or minority communities was that density of creation. So there was no Silicon Valley with diverse black and brown entrepreneurs. So we have to build those ecosystems. And what ends up happening is you start to rise then collectively together. You share experiences, you share resources, tips, but you also can share talent, right? A lot of times behind the failure rate of an entrepreneur is incredibly high. But in order to recruit those people, they need to feel like, hey, well, if that company doesn't work out, is there another job nearby that I can get? That's the unknown thing about, you know, Silicon Valley, you join a tech company up in San Francisco, right? Or a middle of heart. Yeah. Hey, that company fails, you got miles and other startups that just raise capital that you can jump over to. You can walk down the street, create another job. Absolutely. So that's part of what that community is, right? It's a way of sharing resources, but it creates a bit of safety and familiarity. And why this is, this is a big question, I guess, I don't want to, I don't want to make this question too big. But when there's a Y-combinator or in Toronto where I am, there's creative destruction labs, and there's a whole bunch of other types of these types of programs, Y-combinators are probably the best known. At what point does an under, an underserved or an underrepresented group fail at getting into a Y-combinator? Is it when they're very young and they didn't have the educational circumstances to facilitate that or enable them to get to the point where they felt confident or competent enough to apply? Is it at the very last point where there's, you know, maybe perhaps not the ability, I don't know, I want to say racism at that level where they're not being accepted. Are they getting accepted, but they just don't feel like they have a lot of peers represented in the same group? Like what's the point that the traditional venture capital or incubator programs fail under represented individuals? A lot of it is confident. So, what I found was, you know, a lot of these minority entrepreneurs just were insecure in the process because they didn't know anyone else who had gone through it. There was no one in proximity, so there wasn't the entrepreneur in the family. There wasn't, you know, the aunt or the uncle that they could call on to talk about the process. So it's this foreign land and a lot of what was happening in that foreign world of entrepreneurship, there were these early stages of capital that were not afforded to some of these groups, right? And the thing that leads our venture space is not BC capital, right? Less than a percent of all companies received venture capital dollars. The bulk of that is coming from friends and family and personal loans. Well, when you have a wealth gap and in the United States that is, you know, 250 or so years, that has a real impact on being able to serve that community because there isn't an accredited investor in your family to give you a friends and family loan. So that $25,000, $75,000 to get you started doesn't exist, right? So you now have to figure out, well, now it has to take out a personal guarantee. Well, if I take out a personal guarantee and I fail which 90 plus percent of us do, well, now they have a huge impact and a setback. But now I just took that 250 year gap, now just went to 250 years or 260 years, right? So it's very detrimental. So, you know, you have to figure out ways to build that confidence, which is why how can we lower the cost of barrier, right? The entry point of entrepreneurship, why combinator in those groups don't address that? That's an interesting way of putting it. So you're lowering the cost, you're giving them the resources because you have the ability to offer these at scale as opposed to going and fixing all the venture capital out there and trying to funnel it more towards, more towards, well, young, black or underrepresented entrepreneurs. And I think that's an interesting way of putting it or not putting it, but actually helping facilitate because all I see all over Twitter is just, I hate referencing Twitter. I'm sorry, it's not an educational resource. But I see a lot of anecdotally, a lot of people speaking about, well, VCs have to invest more and VCs have to invest more in underrepresented and I was actually going to ask you, how do we do that? I don't know if you have a thought on how do we actually facilitate that, but you're taking the other, you're taking the other route, which I think is actually a very smart way because it's a quicker, it's a quicker thing to action. You don't have to change, you know, the whole cultural of a certain VC group that doesn't invest in underrepresented, you just, you can enable them with the tools and resources you already have at a much cheaper, almost like wholesale rate is the best way to put it. Yeah. I mean, look, venture capital is a formula, right? So there's a way to hack that. And so they're investing in very like-minded companies and a profile of people. You know, if you're a Stanford dropout and you want to start a company, you'll probably get a million dollars, right? Just by saying you want a company. And, you know, the minority communities, you don't have that familiarity. So I had to address that in a different way. And part of what I feel the responsibility with, with Inventory Noir is to make the process of entrepreneurship in the underserved community and make it more familiar with that investment community. So invite those venture capitalists into workshops. Let them see the innovation, right, the creativity, the thought. Now let's give that then innovator the process and the formula and how to package and sell that idea. And that's just part of the work that we have to do. And it's tough, but, you know, I can give you, you know, I don't want to go on too much of a tangent, but I think what you also find in a lot of minority-based communities is the easiest thing to start with very little capital is a service business. A service business does not require venture capital because it doesn't scale in the same way. The venture capital. The venture capital. Because they want that. They want that exit. Exactly. So that's why when you look at a lot of minority founders, they don't have to write businesses for venture capital. You know, now if you transpose that with, you know, a guy like my friend, Rodney Williams, with listener, it's a technology, right? It's a beacon tech. So people get that. It's told in a very clear narrative that it's modeled after a lot of what Silicon Valley has done in the past. I'm not going to say it's ever easy to raise capital, but he has a much better chance in some way that is starting an agency like was my first business. My agency would never raise venture capital. And where about, like, where are you finding entrepreneurs? Is it, you know, what's your best audience that will have the best chance of success? Is it people in universities or are there individuals that are later on in their career? Where are you sort of finding your group? I think the great thing is the entrepreneurs find us because they're just so curious. So a lot of, you know, the work that we're doing and why we, you know, are constantly trying to raise sponsorship dollars is we need to do more events, more activities, or ways that people can then, yeah, they can find us. And they reach out. So we've done some great things with colleges, have a great partnership with USC. We've worked at TCU with internships, University of Chicago, et cetera. I've even done some talks at West Point. If you wouldn't believe they have an amazing entrepreneurship community there. So colleges, absolutely. But then I think there's people with that real expertise from some of these companies that would do well in a startup environment, right, that I think they could really start to shape a culture because they have that technical expertise. So I'm also looking at bringing some of those folks over. And then I think you have your influential leaders, right, your cultural leaders that I call it, right? They may not have the technical ability, but they have the means to get reach and attention, which is also needed for success. Well, now I'm pairing them with a technical expert. And now you have a really cool team to build from. So yeah, we look everywhere. No, I think that like this is like obviously like a small, a small fix or a small step in the right direction. Like there's so many things that have to happen. And there's so many, I guess, replications of your group or yourself have to scale to the point where this can sort of act like a group, the size of a Y-combinator to really start to invoke meaningful change at a national level and then eventually international level. But I think as we look at one thing I've seen and I think everyone's seen the news is LeBron James and Maverick Carter doing the $100 million investment into building their own, I guess, coined the phrase media empire. What, where do you, how do you continue the momentum of, you know, yourself, your building out venture noir LeBron and Maverick, they're building out their own thing and you'll probably see some of this stuff and it seems very relevant right now and topical right now. But how do you maintain that momentum and passion and just will to get people to do things a little bit differently, take on new initiatives like yourself, a leader in the black community who's starting this, this thing, how do we continue that momentum? You know, I patterned my success just from a bit of fearlessness and volume, right? I'm not afraid to work and just work really hard. So again, for me, not everyone can raise $100 million, right? LeBron can raise $100 million because frankly he has $100 million. Didn't have to raise anything. So that's a, you know, that's a feat that's a little different for him than say your average entrepreneur. But what I think we can do very easily is create more, more small businesses, right? So, you know, I think we've touched a thousand small businesses and black owned and black and brown owned companies in the past year. I think we can replicate that and I feel that we can help, you know, that scales, right? So I wouldn't be surprised if we did 5,000 next year with more volunteers and more donation. And if you create 5,000 new businesses across the country, let's just say a couple of those. Break free, right? And they then raise an A round and maybe take on $5 million and $10 million. Well, then that group is going to raise. That's how it starts, right? That's how you then go by a covenator. It's volume. And so we have to start somewhere and we're just, you know, we've taken the first step and now we need some help taking another couple of steps, but hopefully some corporations come in and they want to start donating and that'll build the momentum even more, but volume for sure. And I think that, like, you know, I see some, and the only reason why I focus on momentum is because I see a lot of like, see a lot of knee jerk reactions to social change and it worries me because the second somebody takes a knee jerk reaction, I hope they don't think I'm good. I've done my bit. I've liked my post. I've posted my black square and that's it. And that's a really dangerous feeling for somebody to have that they've made a change by doing nothing. And that's what I'm scared of. I saw something the other day about Netflix. They just hired a new CMO and she's a, she's a black lady. She's like super, super experienced like, and then, yeah, that's the name. I blanked on the name, but I was just reading the article on it. I actually, the first thing I went to is I wanted to look at her background and like her background, her resume is so impressive. And I was happy because like, she's, she obviously deserves the position and I want more companies to make moves like this. But I don't want the lose momentum and I don't think, you know, this was a prime time for Netflix. They, they were hiring for the role. The last VP who I also can't remember her name stepped out of the position after a year and they hired somebody who was qualified and and she was just really qualified. That's, that's the way I look at it. It was a great hire. She's really qualified. You're going to kill it. But I don't want companies to pass over on executives like this in a year from now or two years from now. And I think that's the, the red flag that I'm seeing like, I know venture noir is going to be around. But venture noir is still small compared to the people that still move industry and these titans. I just don't know how to keep them engaged and keep it top of mind because you look at some of these executive teams and there really isn't a lot of diversity, right? And that's the same issue with the VC funds. How do you start to, I think it's the education and I don't really have an answer. Obviously, I don't think anybody does. But I was just curious. Yeah, I think that the fear is, is real, right? And I think a lot of us have that, but we're sitting in the situation where there's a massive gap right now, right? And I use the, the wealth gap because it's just so indicative of the history of the country. So when you look at that, every, you just have to try to take a step to close it, right? And right now is a moment and it's about how many steps can you take while it is top of mind, right? And I think that's where my focus has been on, you know, Venture Noir is not new. We didn't, we didn't start this, you know, after, you know, the death of George Floyd or, or a mod or Brianna Taylor, we started this a year ago, right? This has been a passion of mine. I've been teaching at USC for six and a half years now for free, donating my time to help this. And there's people that have been doing it for decades. So, you know, now we're just starting to get the attention and I think it's about building on that momentum, which is what you're talking about, to close the gap a bit more in this time period. And now what happens is you get 10 companies to get through and raise some amazing series a five companies to raise a series B, two, well, those companies then become really successful. Now you have a pattern of success. It opens the door then for that, you know, college student or that college dropout for that matter that looks a bit like me who has a great idea is extremely passionate. You know, and now there's somebody that may want to take a chance and make that first investment, which all entrepreneurs end up taking, right? Somebody takes a chance. So I'm actually really excited about this time to see what's going on to see the attention. And I think people are going to make some huge stride. I appreciate you breaking it down and going into this because I know it's, you know, every time I go into social issues, it's so, it's topical right now, but it's a tough discussion to have because I think like you mentioned, like we want to sort of leverage the momentum and it's sad that there wasn't momentum already. Like it's sad that there has to be that spark that ignites a fire for my goodness for for an executive to be hired into a role that she should have been hired in or for more programs to start up or for VCs to start looking at investing in underserved minority groups. Like it's very sad. And I just, you know, to speak about it and I appreciate you going through your with venture and more and whatnot. And I hope that it's, you know, I hope it's not, you know, sensitive to you because you did, you were doing this before and I don't want to, I don't want to make it seem like it is something that came to light now. And that's very important for me too because this is a great program that was already sort of thriving beforehand. Well, that's the goal of an entrepreneur, right? We are, we're supposed to see a world that doesn't exist. I like that a lot. That's just, that's our job fundamentally. So, you know, I don't spend a lot of time dwelling on problems or, or in the past, I'm a student of history, right? Because the learnings there are amazing, but I think what I'm focused on with our company is focused on what I see entrepreneurs every day focus on is creating things that don't exist. And so, you know, if we're not seeing that the quality then, okay, we then try to solve for that. And so, my attempt was, I thought it was a pipeline issue. I thought there, we need more volume of people going in there. What happens with volume? You get more successful entrepreneurs. A lot of these C-suite executives were required. Their companies were required. And through those acquisitions, they then take those C-suite positions that these multi-billion dollar behemoth. So, I see a lot more of that, you know, Tristan Walker, great example, started Walker Coe with Bevel, was acquired by Procter and Gamble. He now has a great board seat, right, with some company. So, you know, these things start to move, but we can't ignore the early stage. And I think with that, we're going to start to see some change really quickly here. I appreciate that. I wanted to, I do, I have a couple more questions that I like to ask yourself, if somebody is obviously like massively successful, you know, 5x or 5x entrepreneur. That's not bad, man. That's not bad. I, anyways, I have a couple more questions, but before, before I migrate off the topic of Venture and War, because I think we went into it, like we really got a 360 of what you're doing. I just wanted to ask, is there any questions that I should have asked that I don't know enough about Venture and War or the current predicament with underserved minorities getting access to opportunities in capital that I should have asked that you would sort of give some more information about? Yeah, you know, I think I'll touch on just the technology piece just a bit because it's fairly new and in a real fashion area of mine, but, you know, on my, on my for profit side, I have what's called Venture Studio. So we create and incubate brand to then one day, obviously sell a few of them off, right? So we have for brands that are in the Venture Studio that are super exciting. What I love about that model, though, is it's a volume-based model, again. So what we've taken is through Venture and War, we now have a collective. So how can we create more studios? So those studios then scale. So instead of helping one entrepreneur, we're helping five companies get started that are led by diverse entrepreneurs. And that piece is called Spectra, which is a very exciting portion of the business now that is all around this idea of an innovation collective that we're able to do to rapidly create. Where I think this has got even more exciting is we invite the large companies to share openly some of their problems, things that they're looking to work on. So we invite Walmart to the table. We invite Procter and Gamble and Jay and Jay and Lori out to the table to share, well, what are some of the challenges that you want to see solve? Right, you have an unlimited vendor network and resource pool, but you still have things you want big. Well, let's take those problems, let's throw them over to entrepreneurs and see what they come up with. And that ecosystem and communication has been really excited at launch last month. And we're excited to take that one forward, but it's really about taking technology and doing it in a true ecosystem of shared resources around this idea of the Venture Studio. And is this I just want to understand the tech a little bit more because I actually didn't know I didn't know this piece. So the tech itself is it like a portal that people go into and they get resources and ask and that's just that's sort of like the that would be the curriculum for the knowledge base, right? Absolutely. So it's both a portal and a community and of course, because all of Venture Noir still has a portal and a database, but Spectre specifically is for those Venture Studio owners to come in and be able to communicate and share experiences. Because what they're doing is, you know, you look at my studio, there's eight amazing entrepreneurs that are in my studio that are working on things. Well, my job is to go and find stuff to stimulate idea and creation for them. I now can work with other studio founders, work with corporations to bring those ideas to them because their job is they want to solve problems. An entrepreneur needs something to solve. And so what we're doing there is bringing in more problems in a very tight community. That's amazing. So that's how you scale a venture capital or an incubator model. You literally are creating these little micro communities of shared of shared resources and talent across like how big are you now right now? Right now there's eight Venture Studios in there. What we found is only about that few us. There's actually only 15 Black Own Venture Studios in the country. And we have eight in the collective. So that shows you like that's what when you when you talk about this stuff, like I feel like, oh, my ignorant have I just not heard of other like studios or like incubators, but if there's only 15 in the whole country, it's obviously there's not enough. There's not enough done yet, especially when you like yourself, you started this, you started this a couple years ago and you are half of them now. Less my bad math. No, you know, it's it's it's a it's always humbling when you look at the space and and again, the gap, right, they were trying to close. Here's roughly 150 Black entrepreneurs that have raised over a million dollars. So it's always weird to think of myself in a group that's only 150, you know, yeah, I think I think I have 250 friends in my phone. Yeah, yeah, about the country, right? Those those stats and numbers are alarming. That's insane. That's what really drives it home. We can talk all day about like underserved and not, you know, not having access to capital and not, and but like the second you say numbers, that really drives it home because think about think so 150 and what's the timeframe? Uh, that's that's ever. Dude, that's not cool. No, I mean, you know, if capital in itself is not like that old, right? But again, when you put the numbers behind it, yeah, when you start to put the numbers behind black owned founders, you know, that are raising over a million dollars, it's tough because if you think about, you know, the average beauty brand, for example, it's about a million and a half dollars over the first two years. So that means that entrepreneur who starts that business doesn't even get that amount. They're now trying to figure out how to get growth, take out loans, personal loans, right? They're doing a lot of other things to get to those, to get to that money. What it also does is it starts to handcuff you, right? Because you now are not well capitalized, right? A great business. We've seen tons, you know, we follow the IPO market. A lot of these companies have operated in the red, they are entire time, which means they're very well capitalized, where they can focus purely on growth. Where do you not entrepreneur that has to worry about payroll, their own bills? You have to worry about profit. Absolutely. We have to do, we have to be profitable out of the gate. Not too many businesses can build tech and be profitable year one, right? That's that doesn't even exist. So you have to start to pump in capital into these entrepreneurs and these businesses. So we got a lot of work to do. We have a lot of work to do. Yeah, you got to, you got a lot of work to get it to a point where my goodness, 150, that's just not normal. And that number is really, I'm sorry, I'm just really surprised. And that's just really not okay. Well, you're doing good work. I think that, you know, if anything, I hope that this, I hope the podcast gets you a little bit of coverage because I've worked with, you know, I just have a soft spot for entrepreneurship. I've worked with entrepreneurs. I used to work. I don't know if you know created instruction labs, but I used to work with created instruction labs with a lot of their startups, helping them with like, take the market strategy and I was doing that for about two years and I really loved it. And it's just, it's very sad that a certain group is so underserved because I think there was like, I'm sure there was like 20, I don't know, 20 to 30 different groups out of CDL every year that got access to that kind of capital. Yeah. You know, and that's one, and that's one small group compared to why combinator, which I think throws like 500,000 at how many different groups like a fair amount. Yeah. So it's just very sad. I don't know. I didn't realize that's that was so like, I knew there was issues. I didn't realize the issues were so prevalent like that bad, that bad. Anyways, I don't want to, I don't want to hijack. I apologize. That was really, really good. I was really good. I wanted to ask a couple, just questions to yourself, just about, you know, some of your, some of your like life lessons and insights. So you've been incredibly successful over your career. What's one thing that people misunderstand about you? I think it's probably the ease. I think they think what I'm doing is very easy. And mostly because publicly, I share a lot of normalcy, right? Again, I'm always trying to bring humanity to my work. So, you know, if you follow me on Instagram, you see me cooking a lot. You see me working out, right? It's very normal. I think what's often not shared are just the hours that you truly put in on these things. And not everything is big, right? I do a lot of really small stuff. And it starts to build. And that's how I've been able to do what I've done. Frankly, it is just falling off of past performance. You know, we've been through the war. We took us $300,000 grant. And we did over 30 events. You know, we talked to a thousand entrepreneurs on $300,000. That's impressive. I mean, the sheer volume of that is crazy. When you look at a pilot program, and that's just a lot of what we're doing, every event now doesn't have a thousand people, right? But, you know, when you can still touch and impact 10 people, 20 people, 15 people, five, one sometimes matters. So, you know, a lot of what I do is I'm not afraid to work really hard for the small thing and the small victories. And that's how you build momentum. That's how I build my career is just continuing to put volume of effort out there. And I don't always show that. That's a good answer. Very good answer. It's very telling. And I've heard I've heard that with very many, excuse me, don't know. Entrepreneurs just the the ease in which they become like the the overnight success. It looks at least to the person watching from the outside, but obviously not so much the case, right? It's just it's a lot of a lot of stress and grinding and grit and just it's tough, man. It's tough. And you've done it five times. So I can only imagine that you have more than one gray hair, but, but if you could turn back time and tell your younger self, you know, 20 year old, you're not even that old, but say 18 year old self something. What would it be? You know, I'm really lucky. So that question is always tough for me. I have just some great parents mentors and my older sister. But the thing that's always stuck with me is stay humble, you know, work hard and operate with a sense of fearlessness. And so I've always had this sense of confidence. And even when I am insecure, what I find myself, I will take an action just to see. And I think, you know, part of what this is is you can't be afraid to fail. And I probably would have said that just that simply to my younger self is don't be afraid to fail. Actually, look forward to it because that means you can learn faster. And I think it would have helped me just push just a little bit harder. I think I still have some. I still have a little bit more in me. The next question, these are very quick. And then I'll just get some more information where people can get more information about you. One person or one question I like to ask is if you could meet two people that are alive, who would they be and why? I'd love to meet Barack Obama for president. Just because holding that position, I think being the first black man to hold that position and the pressure that comes with that, I would love to understand how he handled both the pressure but also the success. Because I think oftentimes they're the fear of success of reaching heights that no one else has reached. You know, it's one thing, you know, there's a fear of being the first person in the college and your family or being the first millionaire or billionaire. The first president's pretty big deal. It's a pretty big deal. So, you know, I'd love to have that conversation. I think the other person that comes to mind for me is a guy like Jeff Bezos. And just how he's operated in that sense of aggression but his desire to just keep going, you look at a guy that could have tapped out a long time ago. I mean, I think his network is up to $170 billion now or something crazy recently to hit that. Yeah, it's not because of just the sheer money but he seems to have this lack of complacency. He's able to fight that unlike anyone I've ever seen. I mean, he just continues to push day in and day out and he's attentive on his business and I just want to understand what's really driving that. And I'd love to learn from that. All right. That's a good answer too. Very good two very good answers. What would be your best tip for making the world a slightly better place? That's a big question there. It's a big one. You know, I think for me is it comes down to I'm a religious guy. It comes down to love for me. And I think when we start to see the humanity and see ourselves and other people, I think we'll start to see a much better world, right? Because it's hard to do harm to yourself. And it's definitely hard to do harm to someone that you love. And so I'd like to see a bit more of that and not to get too mushy on this. But to me, that's a great that's a great solve. And you know, I grew up with a lot of love in my house and in my friend network and I tell you, there's a lot of love at every stage that I've been in from, you know, West Point to every company. And it's why I find myself in these communities because in a community, you can feel that love. And there's just that willingness to help, willingness to serve and love always makes you humble. So I guess that would be that would be my answer. Good answer. It's a very good answer. And then last question before we close this up, what's a resource? A podcast, a book, an audible that you would suggest people go check out? Oh, that's another another good question. So I have to give one, huh? You have to pick, ah, you could pick like one or two, but like you can't go off. I know that you probably have tons, but just one that's relevant to you now. You know, a book that I often come back to and I love autobiographies. Vernon Jordan gives a book it's called A Vernon Can Read. And it was just the story of going through from, you know, sharecropper to, you know, becoming the, you know, senior advisor to Bill Clinton, right, when he was president. He's just one of the best orators in the world, but a self-taught guy, you know. And when I think about people teaching themselves to read, it's just like, it blows my mind like if you put Mandarin in front of me, I'm not sure that with my whole lifetime, I could figure that out. So I think that's just incredible. So I always find a lot of inspiration in his storyline. That's a good one. I've never heard that before. That's a good one though. Do you go ahead, sorry? I mean, no, no, because I don't want to go into business books. I think there's so many of those and I actually learn the most through application. So I'm a, I'm a big fan of autobiographies. That's all very good. I love to learn from people's life and their experiences and then I can take from that and apply it to my life in my scenario. Last question would be where do people go to get more about venture noir about yourself than what you're doing? Yes, so you can, you can follow us at Vintranor on Instagram, you know, Facebook, LinkedIn, you can, you can email us or go on our website at vintranor.org. You can follow me pretty much everything is just keen and easily as creative as I pride myself on being. It's probably the simplest thing ever because it's just my name on foot. I'm that on Twitter, on Instagram, LinkedIn, you name it. It's keen and easily. That's all for today. Thanks again for joining me on another episode of the success story podcast. 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