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Legacy Starts with me

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Legacy Starts with me presented by (Merrill logo)

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Adenah Bayoh

CEO & Co-Founder, Cornbread Farm to Soul

CEO, Adenah Bayoh & Companies

 

Speaker 1 (00:03):

In partnership with Merrill and their Diverse Viewpoints Research Study, we're exploring the financial experiences of black Americans in our new series, Legacy Starts With Me. Today's profile features Adenah Bayoh, who escaped the Civil War in her native Liberia to become a successful entrepreneur in the US. She now owns seven restaurants and a multimillion dollar portfolio of real estate projects and shares how she stays motivated to achieve. To learn more about Meryl's Diverse Viewpoints Research, visit ml.com/diversity.

Adenah Bayoh (00:40):

My name is Adenah Bayoh. I am CEO, co-founder of Cornbread Farm to Soul, CEO of Adenah Bayoh & Companies, and development entities. I am a entrepreneur. I am a mother. I am a woman, and I am human.

Many affluent Black/African Americans noted the importance of learning from people who have worked hard and have proven they can be successful

 

My grandmother was this very hardworking, but yet extremely kind. And she always told me, "People always remember what you say to them and how you make them feel." Before I even came to this country, and I want to say that she had had a greatest impact on my journey.

 

Affluent Black/African Americans are nearly 2X more likely to say they are motivated by ambition or desire for personal achievement compared to the general affluent population    

 

Adenah Bayoh (01:50):

Coming here, starting my journey in public housing, in public school, working my way through college, getting out, starting my career working at McDonald's. I've always been a worker bee. So right now, I have two Cornbread's. We have four IHOPs. We have Urban Vegan. And then we have the real estate development happen of affordable housing. Right now, we have over 250 developed units. We have another 200 in construction right now, almost 200 construction right now, and we're just going to keep going.

 

“As an African American woman, I ultimately want to have an impact on society”

Adenah Bayoh (02:42):

So when I look at money, I don't look at it to embrace myself. I look at it to make sure that people around me, their lives are better.

Affluent Black/African Americans are 4X more likely than the general affluent population to view local business owners/community organization leaders as financial role models

 

I'm having an impact on people's lives that money have allowed me to make. Black women have helped me every step of my journey. Even me sitting here to date, I said, "I have franchisee." It was because of a black woman. I, as a black woman, we have been so impactful on this world. We have had to make so many sacrifices and we give so much. We give so much of who we are to anything that we do that I think that have really shaped me.

 

“The way you thank people who believe in you is by being successful”

 

Adenah Bayoh (03:55):

When someone give you an opportunity is to take advantage it and do something with it and make them proud. So if I was to say what got me here today? Hard work and community and women.

 

Younger generations of affluent Black/African Americans are more likely to describe themselves as financially savvy compared to those 55+.

 

I became financially savvy by making mistakes. Over 10 years ago, when a 2008 financial crisis hit, I was one of those people that got hit. I was almost bankrupt. And I can tell you the lessons from that, you can't learn from anywhere else. It taught me that you can fall and you can stay there or you can fall and get back up, dust yourself up and finish your race.

 

21% of affluent Black/African Americans say that inheritance and passing down wealth is part of their financial plan                                                                             

 

Adenah Bayoh (05:09):

I want to have that conversation. I want to help more women start their own businesses in a restaurant space. I want to create opportunities for women to step in their own purpose and say, "I, too, can do this because she did it." I want to leave my mark. I want to have an impact on this world. They said, "No well-behaved woman have ever changed the world." I want to be that woman that when my daughter open the history book one day, that somewhere, there's a sentence. There's a word about me. I want to make the landscape a little easier for the next generation of entrepreneurs coming, particularly women of color.

 

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Legacy Starts with me presented by (Merrill logo)

For more information: ml.com/diversity

 

Legacy Starts with me presented by (Merrill logo)

Image of Adenah with her name

 

4907256 9/2/2023

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Legacy Starts with me

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Legacy Starts with me presented by (Merrill logo)

For more information: ml.com/diversity

 

Janice Bryant Howroyd

Founder & CEO, ACT-1 Group

 

VO:

Speaker 1 (00:02):

In partnership with Merrill and their diverse viewpoints research study, we're exploring the financial experiences of Black Americans in our new series, Legacy Starts With Me. Today's profile features Janice Bryant Howroyd, the founder and CEO of ActOne Group. She's the first Black woman to own and operate a billion dollar company and shares how her upbringing helped her achieve that kind of success. To learn more about Merrill's diverse viewpoints research, visit ml.com/diversity.

Janice Bryant Howroyd (00:36):

My name is Janice Bryant Howroyd, and I'm the founder and CEO of the ActOne Group. ActOne is a multinational workforce solutions organization. We offer technology, protocol and talent to companies across the globe. Oftentimes I look back to how I grew up, I think, wow. I grew up in a segregated community in a small town, Tarboro, North Carolina, and I had some very divided thoughts about what life would offer me. At the time, mom and dad were really critical about certain things in our youth. One of the things that they took a lot of pride in and invested a lot time with us around was actually appreciating who we were and who we could become.

 

GFX CARD (01:28): “I’m proud to be Black, and I’m so much more”

Janice Bryant Howroyd (01:31):

I grew up in a time in the United States when the Civil Rights Movement was just beginning to happen. I was one of the first to integrate our high school. I've often said that I've been all of it. I was born colored. That's on my birth certificate. And I attended school and became negro. Then James Brown said, "Say it loud. I'm Black and I'm proud." We all raised our fists and we got there. And around the time that I applied for school at the university level, I was told that I should fill out a box called African American. Dad assured us because we were very conscious of these changes happening within one generation of our lives, that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. And I've had to lean on that a lot as I've grown my career, but more importantly, as I've evolved my person.

 

GFX CARD (2:25): “Among affluent Black/African Americans, 46% preferred the term ‘African American’ while 45% preferred ‘Black’

 

Janice Bryant Howroyd (02:32):

I do think there have been tremendous influences though in how I've evolved as a Black woman. I think the biggest one of them is my continuous thirst and my engagement in continuous learning. You see, rules change, but sometimes people don't. Opportunities occur, but readiness may or may not be there. All of these things impact one's life. And certainly they've been a great impact on women growing up of my generation.

GFX Card (3:03): For Black/African American women, gender is as important a identifier as being part of the Black/African American community

 

Janice Bryant Howroyd (03:10):

Whenever I've walked into a boardroom, even to this day, I am acutely aware that I'm walking in as a Black woman. A woman, yes. Oftentimes American, may be educated and advanced. And for a long time, that was a burden for me. I held that burden in many ways. On the one hand, it was the burden of how will they hear me? How will they receive me? Will they receive me? And on the other hand it was, am I representing for all my sisters well? When I leave this room, what impression have I left for the race? These are thoughts, these are cares that I've had throughout building my business. So much of what I've built has been from natural instinct. A lot of it has been built from what I've learned and educated myself too. But the majority of it has been having the right angels in my life. And my mom has been key amongst them.

Janice Bryant Howroyd (04:10):

I came out to California, I had $900, she loaned me 600. And I started with $1,500 to start my company. Mom told me years later that that 600 was not an investment in the company I wanted to start. It was an investment in me, starting a new future on the West Coast.

 

GFX Card (4:32): Affluent Black/African Americans are 2X more likely than the affluent general population to have financial role models

 

Janice Bryant Howroyd (04:40):

My dad's my financial hero. My dad raised the family. My dad invested for a family. Dad taught us numbers and he taught us finance by playing bid whist on a kitchen table. And he taught us that on purpose so that we would learn to value numbers, we learned to measure everything around us, in how we instrumented our use of those numbers, and he'd often say whether he was speaking about numbers or life, "Do the math. Do the math." I've had opportunity to work with some of the financial wizards in my industry. I've had opportunity to attend conferences and classes that were quite advanced in finance. I never met anybody who, like dad, could do the math so well. When it comes to thinking about how to manage a business, how to do the things that are important, certainly on hiring the right people, certainly on continuing to learn from myself. I've had no greater lesson in all of it than sitting at the knee of my dad.

 

GFX Card (5:54): 30% of affluent Black/African American women are more likely to be optimistic about their financial future compared to affluent women from the general population

Janice Bryant Howroyd (06:05):

There's no question that African Americans and Blacks in America are a huge part of the economic success of a nation and a world. But we've got to learn how to bring that success home. And we've got to do it one person at a time. We've got to begin financial literacy classes and programs as a core to how we are going to evolve ourselves as not just strong communities and individuals, but also as continuing contributors to a society that we gain the advantage back from. The bottom line is until I've got sisters who are able to do that in numbers much larger than now, alongside me, I'm not achieving that worthy ideal. Because my success is only a part of the whole [inaudible 00:07:03] equation of our success. We've made a lot of achievement and we've yet a lot more to do. And I just believe that when we talk about Black women, that becomes an even bigger need for us to support each other. I'm excited about the support I've received and I'm committed to continue to give it.

 

 

END CARD

Legacy Starts with me presented by (Merrill logo)

For more information: ml.com/diversity

 

Legacy Starts with me presented by (Merrill logo)

Image of Janice with her name

 

4907244 9/2/2023

Speaker 1:                           In partnership with Merrill and their Diverse Viewpoints research study, we're exploring the financial experiences of Black Americans in our new series, Legacy Starts With Me. Our first profile features Melvin Gravely, CEO of TriVersity Construction. Learn how he's invested in himself and why he calls black entrepreneurship a superpower.

Melvin Gravely:                I'm Mel Gravely, I'm the CEO and majority owner of TriVersity Construction Company. We're a commercial construction company headquartered in the greater Cincinnati, Ohio area.

                                                I'm also the author of Dear White Friend, And I would fancy myself as a civic and business leader, and that's the voice I use…So being able to write a book about racial equity, the realities of race, the value of partnership and relationship, and our path to equity, I think it gives me a sense of freedom to operate in the best interest of the things I value.

                                                And entrepreneurship really, and some level of wealth has allowed me to do that without fear of the repercussions from my actions. It's also given me a seat at a table in many organizations and a chance to influence how things are happening, because we can write our fair share of checks to support it. I think it puts our kids in a different place. There's no doubt about that that they get to start with a base of X when you know my wife and I started at a different place.

                                                 

                             Graphic card: Why I became an entrepreneur

The real reason I pursued entrepreneurship is because it just called to me as a special place where I could bring my talents and also reap the benefit from it as well. Entrepreneurship is not for everyone. So for those it is for, it can become very tangible.

_{Black/African Americans say they are 4X more likely to plan to start a business}

_{Source: “Diverse Viewpoints: Exploring Wealth in the Black/African American Community,” Merrill and Ipsos, 2019}

 

But for others, I think we've got to become more and more financially savvy around the other investment vehicles that are out there, including tax savings, and estate planning, and insurance, and long-term care insurance and all the things that protect our wealth and build our wealth at the same time. So I prefer not to have the either or, I say and both. We've got to be more savvy in doing them both. Wealth is critical to our future as black people and our pathway to racial equity and we've got to be more focused on wealth.

                                                Graphic card: There’s more than one path to wealth

Black/African Americans are 2X more likely than the affluent general population to have financial role models

_{Source: “Diverse Viewpoints: Exploring Wealth in the Black/African American Community,” Merrill and Ipsos, 2019}

Understanding what net worth really means and managing net worth is very, very important. The ways of getting there again, protecting assets, growing opportunities for income, growing your investment portfolio, realizing that difference between income and wealth, so that you can manage your consumption because you're managing your wealth.

Those lessons came to me far too late in life and my hope is that my kids are seeing a different way now and are on a better path to making good, smart decisions around what they spend, where they spend it and how they implement.

37% of Black/African Americans ages 20-34, say they would describe themselves as financially savvy

_{Source: “Diverse Viewpoints: Exploring Wealth in the Black/African American Community,” Merrill and Ipsos, 2019}

 

                                                Graphic Card: ‘You’ve got to be doubly prepared’

In my experience, there is no doubt that there is an expectation of me that is lower than my capabilities. And, so it is professionally inappropriate for me, it is professionally reckless of me not to assume the negative assumptions of others. I've got to assume that people believe I'm less capable than I actually am, which leads to you got to be on point. You got to be on time, prepared, maybe even doubly prepared. You've got to deliver value at every single turn because our margin of error is different. Our chances to screw up are different.

60% of Black/African Americans say they have to work harder than others to succeed

_{Source: “Diverse Viewpoints: Exploring Wealth in the Black/African American Community,” Merrill and Ipsos, 2019}

 

                                                So when, I tell my folks all the time, when we show up as an African-American owned company, there's certain assumptions that come along with us showing up. We cannot confirm those assumptions because once we do, we get put in that place and now we've got to dig herself out of a reputation that quite honestly, we didn't even create. This idea of working twice as hard is one that was taught to me by my parents, as I grew up in the seventies and eighties and what they would say, you have to work twice as hard to get half as much. That's not very exciting.

                                                               

                             Graphic Card: Black pride and entrepreneurship

Financial planning for an entrepreneur is definitely different than if you took a traditional route. You know if you took a traditional corporate route, I can plot that bad boy out on a spreadsheet, I can predict where I'm going to be at particular points in time. It's much different as an entrepreneur.

                                    62% of Black/African Americans say they tend to chart their own course instead of following an established path

                                    _{Source: “Diverse Viewpoints: Exploring Wealth in the Black/African American Community,” Merrill and Ipsos, 2019}

There's a sense of pride to it but I think that as a black entrepreneur, we've got to be careful where our pride and our business acumen kind of merge and making sure we're making decisions for the right reasons and that pride doesn't get ahead of the other business kind of thoughts that we have.

Graphic Card: Why entrepreneurship is the ‘secret sauce’ to creating multigenerational wealth in the Black community  

                                                I did believe, and I continue to believe that entrepreneurship is the paramount way to get to multi-generational wealth.

21% of affluent Black/African Americans say that inheritance and passing down wealth is part of their financial plan

_{Source: “Diverse Viewpoints: Exploring Wealth in the Black/African American Community,” Merrill and Ipsos, 2019}

 

It is true that the top 1% of wealth in our country, their primary investment is entrepreneurship. So, they invest in all the other things, but primary investment on the top 1% of wealth. Those people who have over $16 million worth of wealth, that's the top 1%, their largest investment is in their own business and it still stays in their own business. So that's not lost on me that entrepreneurship is the secret sauce of being there and it is what's important to racial equity and I'm on that train right now. To me, if we're not intentional about growing black owned companies to scale, it will not happen without a level of intentionality.

                                                Graphic Card: Black entrepreneurship gets you a seat at the table and a chance to shape the future

It's just a secret weapon of changing communities, of changing our trajectory, of changing how decisions get made, to changing who gets elected to office. So in order for us to control our destiny, to have our influence felt, to have our voices truly heard and responded to with anything that is lasting and sustained, we're going to have to have people that are very rich and therefore very free and there are white people that way, and there must be black people that way. So that's one of the ways that I think it manifests itself. Well, let's just trickle all the way back down. Even if you don't get to be one of the 1% of wealthiest people in the country, that $16 million of net worth, think about the impact you can have on where your kids go to school, and how you influence your neighborhood, the way you can influence your family at the family reunion, the conversations you can have about savings and investing, how we can start to change the way our churches are thinking and the things they're engaging in.

18% of affluent Black/African Americans are motivated by being able to give back to their community/support a cause they believe in compared to 12% of the affluent general population

_{Source: “Diverse Viewpoints: Exploring Wealth in the Black/African American Community,” Merrill and Ipsos, 2019}

If I had to boil it down to just one thing, and there are a lot of things that would drive my passion around supporting black entrepreneurship, but it would be that black entrepreneurship gives us an opportunity that nothing else does. It gives us a chance to sit at the table where decisions are made and not just growing black entrepreneurship, but growing those sizable, wealth creating, multi-generational businesses that employ people to make capital investments and engage in philanthropy, but also are sitting at the table with decisions that are influencing community priorities, that are changing systems so that they're more equitable.

                                               

                                               

                             Graphic Card: My legacy as a black entrepreneur

I had a young man ask me just last week... You know he didn't know my story and so my story looked happy. My story looked easy. My story looked without struggle because today I run a relatively large construction company. I have a large presence in our community, and it appears that I've done very well, but be honest, I've run a bunch of C minus companies. I've run a couple of B plus companies, I've run some that I run into the ground. I've run some that were never a good idea to start with. I've tried running some for other people occasionally too. All of them build to where I am today, but when you look at a person in the state they are now and you see success, there's typically a story that came along with that.

Black/African Americans are 4X more likely than the general affluent population to view local business owners/community organization leaders as financial role models

_{Source: “Diverse Viewpoints: Exploring Wealth in the Black/African American Community,” Merrill and Ipsos, 2019}

 

Every other week, sometimes I say, every other day, I get tired. I mean, something will happen and you think, gosh darn. If I just had a job, I just wouldn't have to worry about that. I could go home and somebody else would have that headache. But on most days I sit back and say what a blessing to be able to engage like we are and make the difference that we can, and leave a legacy that when I'm moved on that there's a company here that continues to add value to its customers, and continues to be a great place to work for its employees, and continues to care for its community. There is no other way to do that and then entrepreneurship and so for that, I count that as part of the return on my investment in entrepreneurship

 

END CARD

Legacy Starts with Me

For more information: ML.com/diversity

 

4907238 9/2/2023