Yo, My Man…Check This Out…

Posted on December 10, 2009 by Ed

Real talk, I’ve seen more than enough African-American entrepreneurs run their business game like inmates hustling at the county jail. Many of yall cats are familiar with how things go down behind bars where everybody on the inside got a two-bit scheme going on and they always start off saying “yo, my man….check this out” before they spring some two-bit ass hustle on you trying to get you a part of it. This is the same type of ish I see with it comes to fellow African-American entrepreneurs and we need to step our business game up from that.

I don’t want to make it about the cat who post up just a Gmail account in the comment section the other day because this is a bigger trend that I’m seeing over and over again. You look around at the so-called cornball Black digerati and you see the same hustle tactics that you see done at the county jail. Cats be trying to clique up and brag about their numbers and affiliations but none of them are bigger than the warden and correction officers. Same with the Black digerati voluntarily acting like 2nd class citizens to the White male tech bigot culture. Then you got cats behind bars who bragging most of the time about how they are getting over on another instead of working together. The same tired crap cats be doing up in county jail, you see educated brothas and sistas pulling the same jive ass hustle and want to call it business.

Brothas and sistas need to be real about doing business if they want to reap real rewards. It is so much opportunity out there that we brothas and sistas can seize upon but instead we choose to limit ourselves by doing things in a two-bit jive ass fashion. Even more so, you got Black people that will enter an industry like technology and instead of realize the global opportunities and billion dollar potential, they looking for other Black people to compete against and run some HNIC pissing match game that focus on popularity instead of profits.

Real Business is Real Serious.

You can easily tell who is real seasoned business and who is lightweight by knowing if that cat ever had to deal with legal matters related to the business. Cats who seen and been through enough frivolous lawsuits without merit, dealing with federal regulations and compliance and putting up with board members who leaking stuff out to the media and competitors know how serious the business game is. This is why I roll my eyes at these so-called young Black entrepreneurs that are profiled in Black Enterprise magazine with all smiles and ish because none of them looked like they spent 5 to 6 figures on legal and compliance like I have and trust me, I don’t smile like those so-called young Black entrepreneurial cats either. That is why I say real business is real serious because trust me, the legal verdict, the government review board and the lawyer fees is change any cat into realizing how serious business is. You damn sure don’t see Donald Trump or Bill Gates smiling ear-to-ear like the entrepreneurs you see all up in Black Enterprise with their cute stories.

With that said, when you decide to launch a business and you seriously want to go places and work with the right people, you have to be aware of how you conduct your operations and carry yourself. Because as you grow your business, the biggest thing you will learn is how litigious corporate America really is and you want to avoid getting caught up in the courts instead of working on your hustle. Anytime you get into a business deal and the business deal goes back, lawyers are getting contacted and lawsuits are being prepared. Either cats are going to learn this the hard way when they see their hustle is a real threat to the game or they will not realize because their hustle is not even worth paying attention to.

You Have to Seek, Not Solicit Talent

One of the biggest causes for business failure and instant implosion of a business operation is how a person choose to bring talent to their organization. And how a brotha or sista brings people into their organization is the number factor that every season business person and investor look at before doing business with them. You may hear over and over again how investors want to see a strong management team and it is a reason for that – they want to see if the person at the top has the leadership and influence to bring key people on board and if they got a knack for recognizing knack. Every major CEO from Bill Gates to Donald Trump biggest skill is not making money – it is the ability to pick the right person and talent for the job and convince them to get on board. This is what a true CEO is good at.

However, when it comes to African-American entrepreneurial ventures, especially in the tech sector, I’m seeing some of the biggest jive ass cats on the planet with no real tangible talent or asset to show for. Web operations like the Root, Global Grind and WorldStar that specializes in typical ad-supported content, yet they act like they have something to leverage when it comes to business. Don’t get it twisted – millions of user traffic is not something a web site operation can leverage as an asset and News Corp found that out when they acquired MySpace and Excite found that out in the 90s when they acquired Blue Mountain Arts. The only thing you can leverage is talent that can produce the proprietary processes and assets.

You cannot solicit talent, you have to go out and find it. You cannot make some cattle call or casting call for people to join your hustle. You must have the CEO skills to know exactly what it takes to get your hustle up and running and know exactly the kind of talent you have to seek. I’ve spent several years and worldwide travel looking for talent to help me with Fooky, Inc. and I simply could not bring anybody in who think they will hit a pay day. For example, why would I bring in some fan boy tech idiot who think Google, Inc. is so great instead of me bringing in an innovator who can help demonstrate how Fooky.com can do it better?

If you do not try to understand the right talent for your business in the same manner you try to understand the right customer for your business, then you are going to suffer the results of your own doing when the business kicks off. I’ve seen some real nice hustles go straight to sh*t because someone brought aboard their homeboy or someone who looks good on paper but got no real hustle in the game.

Real talent is hidden in someone existing hustle or emerging below the radar. This is why companies raid other companies for talent instead of put out an open solictation for positions like President/Vice President. It takes skill to find the right kind of talent and that is what headhunters are in the business for. Think about college football and basketball – do they just bring anybody to play on their NCAA team or do they have talent scouts out there looking for the right up-and-coming talent, know what specific high school that is cultivating talent and so on? Talented is acquired, not solicited and your business operation will either succeed or fail based on the talent you bring or choose not to bring to the table.

Presenting Yourself

Whenever you present your business or hustle to someone else, first impressions matter because money and relationship is involved. Business is worst than marriage because you going to have to have relationship with people you probably don’t like and you have to put money in the relationship and hope the other side have the same faith as you to make it work. If things don’t work out, cats want to sue the crap out of each other and none of them are progressing. Because of this, you should always be open, honest about who you are and your hustle to avoid having bad relationships. This is why I do not hide behind aliases and such when I present myself.

When you present yourself to people in business, you have to make the other person feel comfortable before you can talk serious business. You must address the who, what, why, where, when and how whenever you meet someone in business upfront or you will be seen as someone who appears shady from the outset.

Keep in mind, when you meet people to do business, they will have natural objections to a stranger and this should be expected normal behavior. As a business person, you should always overcome those natural objections to strangers and introduce yourself and your hustle in a way that helps people understand the following questions they have going in their head:

Who the f*ck are you?

What the f*ck you want?

Why you bringing this sh*t to me?

Where you really going with this sh*t?

When you going to walk the walk on this sh*t you talk?

How you planning to do the sh*t?

You must answer every last one of those questions from the get go. If you cannot, then you will present yourself as someone who leaves a lot of questions and if people have questions about the 5 Ws and how, then they will consider it a risk that is not worth their time. Even if they join your organization and the first setback happen, they will remember how they first met you and if they recall meeting you under some alias or on Craigslist, then that person is going to jump ship. The most loyal cats in business will always recall how they first met the CEO or leader and how that person earned their respect and loyalty, remember that.

There is even a bigger benefit to making sure you knock out these objections about who you are and what you about – you want to be 100% sure the person you making a pitch to actually care about who you are and what you about. Most people make the mistake thinking the other person should give a sh*t about their hustle but don’t know what movitates the other person they soliciting. Personally, it kills me hearing cat thinking I should go in on them on a hustle but never bothered to find out if I’m already under existing contractual obligations.

In Summary

African-Americans have a lot of real opportunity out there where we can get it cracking as global entrepreneurs. But the big problem is we hold ourselves down by not doing business the right way with each other. We need to stop doing business moves like some cats at the county jail and start doing business the right way by doing the basic fundamentals. The jive ass hustle, fronting like success and talking a good game need to take a back seat to getting real paper in the 21st century.

Quite frankly, if you going to pull some “yo, my man…” ish to recruit cats to your hustle, then your hustle is either trying to get over on cats or it is something so simple that you scared people will run away and do it themselves. Real business has nothing to do with the hustle and has everything to do with relationships and talent. You have to be open and honest to establish a good relationship from the beginning and you need to understand what real talent look like. If you are good at those two things, then you will always be a successful CEO that can launch any kind of venture you want.

In 2010, I’m hoping more brothas and sistas start to come to the table and do real business deals instead of some jive ass county jail ish and think that is the business. The African-American community badly need to start focusing on cultivating and recruiting REAL TALENT instead of messing around with clique socialites and fronting cats. We need to start having a global outlook to expand our possibilities instead of engaging in worthless bullsh*t like trying to be the HNIC. We got to demand better and strive harder than the Global Grind, WorldStar and the Root tired and broke-ass ad-supported content model.

See, while these cats bragging on their cornball Black-orientated/hip-hop/urban web operations, I got serious moves lined up at Fooky, Inc. and it is obvious cats ain’t got their ear to the ground to hear what’s going down in the industry regarding me – that’s all I’m going to say to just let cats know the only way I’m capable of even making the kind of I will make is because I understand how to recruit talent and serve my customers.