Fearless Fridays - Hidden Battles

Ladies and gentlemen and gentlemen, gentlemen, welcome to Fearless Friday with your hosts Vanessa Lindsey and Sydney Johnson, empowering to live fearlessly through authentic conversations that inspire purpose and action. I'm your resident DJ, DJ Willie Wood, and I hope you enjoy the show. You better, you better, you better.

Well, well, well, well, well. Listen here, folks. All the way, the kid himself is from Trenton, New Jersey. Exit turnpike off the turnpike 7 Alpha, 7A. Alpha is for all you military folks. Out that way right there. But 7A drug him all the way across country, sitting right here in the Tundra downtown Oakland, right? My man, the one and only Sanford Livingston. And we are very, very, very happy to have you with us today.

Keep your eyes on me. Keep your eyes on me.

I got your eyes on you, girl, right?

You know, we trying to deal with the tech at the same time. But listen, we have a very special guest Listen, in the beginning, if I was hearing everything right, they started off with hundreds of thousands, went to a million. Now we up to how much million that we moving in, in volume?

$110 million in guarantees.

$110 million guarantees. We're going to start off with his story, what's really going on, how he fits into the bigger picture. And he just came back from the National Black Caucus, if I'm not mistaken.

I exactly did.

He came back from National Black Caucus, so he has Much to tell, much to communicate about. And folks, this is a live— this— you, you want to track with this young man with vision. You got what I'm saying? Okay, for all of us who's out there kicking and screaming, looking for opportunities, looking for the money, you know, we're trying to tell you to get up and move. That's what the show about. He's going to tell you about his hidden battles. Vanessa, say hi to the young man.

Oh man, I am so excited. I am so— because not only are we about to learn about some Black history, We about to learn about some Black future, and both of them are dynamic. So I am so looking forward to it. So Sanford, welcome.

Thank you, Miss Vanessa. And I'll let you know, and all you listeners, all you wonderful folks out there, uh, I like to say it. I like to start off with my, uh, my, my, my, uh, my Hawaiian art of forgiveness and that practice of love, which is, I'm sorry, please forgive me, thank you, and I love you. And that is to embrace all the folks that are on this channel, talking about, you know, Ms. Vanessa, you said, the past, the present, and the future. Well, you know that Einstein actually proved that all 3 of those coexist at the same time.

That's right.

And then we're bringing it all together today. My name is Sanford Livingston Jr., I hail from Trenton, New Jersey. Trenton makes, the world takes. I was born in the midst of the crux of civil rights. 1964 is that year. And I'm still alive today to kind of see where we are landing today in terms of the very rights that we were fighting to actually be included in to now preserve. I am the president and CEO of NorCal Financial Development Corp. here in Oakland. right here in Oakland at 300 Franco-Gower Plaza. We cover all of California, and what we do is we actually, uh, are the, the, the middleware and the go-between many lenders, maybe 120 so far, and the state program, which is the Small Business State Loan Guarantee Program, uh, which allows us to, for lack of a better term, provide insurance to lenders That are providing capital to those overlooked communities and those places that are, you know, hard to reach with the traditional financial underwriting practices that are currently being used by the larger banks. And rightfully so, everybody does what they're good at, what they do. But we actually work— Working with primarily with about 45 lenders, small credit unions and regional banks and CDFIs, those are community development financial institutions, if you did not know, that are actually brought together to provide that much-needed debt capital that you need. Debt capital, remember, you'll learn a little bit today as—

Break it down for us.

Vannessa and Sydney kind of talk to you about how we are bridging the gap between what you need and what we have and how to protect it. We— when I came aboard, I've been with NorCal about 13 years, but I've I've been, uh, at the helm and leading a great team. And I, I just, since we got time, I'd like to say that Miss Jackie, Miss Nikki, uh, Byron, uh, Chris, uh, the other Chris, Robbie, uh, uh, Kashra. You see all the great names we got. Uh, Shailen, uh, Miss Constanza. We've got Lydia. Those are the folks that make up the team.

George.

you know, Blaine. We've got some incredible, incredible people that are working together. And believe it, Miss Vanessa and Sid, they're all over the country, right?

Wow.

We got people in different places, 'cause when the pandemic hit, you know, and I gotta tell this story, when the pandemic hit, it allowed us to be able to spread out the work, but then all of our work Right now is focused on small businesses in our communities here in California.

So hold up, you guys was able to, um, during the pandemic with all chaos, or the plandemic if you will, you guys was able to build and continue to thrive during that time?

Yes, we did. And we, and we knew one of the biggest things, Sid, with that is, uh, and, and what's taking over right now, one of the biggest priorities for people who are doing work digitally, and you should know this, is cybersecurity. So we took it upon ourselves to build our system around a portal and cybersecurity because we deal with financial information and stuff like that, and that's very sensitive. So we built a model that folks are kind of looking at us today and saying, wow, you know, while everyone was worrying about one thing, we were worried about something totally different, and we're able to grow and scale this business unlike it's never been before.

Talk a little bit about what is that business. You know, you said you guys mobilize, you mobilize across the country, but what is that business that you're actually doing? Are you doing loan guarantees? Are you all out there helping people apply for loans? Tell us a little bit about more about what it is that the business entails.

Sure, sure.

Well, you know, we, we do a couple of things, but our core, our core competency, our core mission, Miss Vanessa, is to be able to provide The— and I'll tell it, I'll tell it more of a story because when we tell it in a story, people can kind of say, oh yeah, now I— you know, you go outside of your house right now, right? You see all these cars out there, right? And, and like with Black folks, I'm gonna try to use things we understand. Yo, we all got pulled over by the, by the popo, right? They say they actually— they put— they ask you a question, right? They ask you for a couple things. They ask you for license, registration, and what?

Have you ever been— uh, you've got a warrant?

Insurance.

Insurance.

Insurance and a warrant. And a warrant. If you got a warrant, most times you don't even stop.

I ain't asked that question.

So it's the insurance, right? So you think about all those cars out there. You can't even register your car when you buy it without insurance. When you, when you go to buy a house and you're closing on, you know, you're closing the escrow and stuff, you know, and you walk away, the first thing they're gonna want because you got a loan on that is what? Insurance.

And sometimes even if you don't have a loan, they want you to have insurance.

You got to have insurance. And so insurance is, is a component of capital, of capitalism, that allows the system to work in case of catastrophic issues, you know, uh, fire, accidents, and those kinds of things. Well, there is something even with your credit cards there, you can buy insurance. So if you get sick or something, they'll make the payments for you. So That's what happens. And because you think about small businesses are, quote unquote, some of the riskiest businesses based on performance, based on just knowledge of a restaurant, you know, these things, they, you know, most small businesses, they may have a life of, a shelf life of maybe 3 or 4 years before they go out of business.

Mm-hmm.

And so how do you lend to an institution, to an audience like that? Well, what we've decided back in 1968, there was a program that came about. It came about in the early, you know, before King was assassinated, but it got accelerated afterwards after the civil unrest and many of the catastrophic things happened. But, you know, there was a $30 million policy that was— I mean, trust fund that was set up, and that trust fund allowed certain lenders to lend, and they say, this is Sanford, this is a Great, great business. They got everything lined up. They got all their paperwork. They just need this loan. They need more collateral. So I have something called synthetic collateral, which is this guarantee, and I can guarantee 80%. Back in those days, it was up to maybe $230,000 or just something really small. Now it's 80%. I can loan up to 80%, up to $5 million maximum to a particular loan. Make sure that everything's set. It's not free money and all that kind of stuff. Mm-hmm. Because everybody that lends their money wants it back.

That's right.

But what happens is, is that we take this, these, these loans, and if properly underwritten and if properly looked at and with technical assistance that allows people to know what they're getting into and what's going on, this guarantee allows for that lender to make that loan. And if there's any challenges or issues, we then, like, like you would have collateral, like I'm sorry, go ahead.

No, go ahead.

Like, you have a secondary, uh, a second signer. Most of us know that. I'm talking about stuff that we know. You know, you gotta get a second signer to get a car. So, you know, if you don't sign— cosigner. So, you know, we're like a co— we're like that proverbial cosigner when you're trying to get your money from the lender.

And so, so how often do you find that as a cosigner that The loans fail, that you don't— you're not getting your money back. I know you've had to say a lot, like you talk about 3 to 4 years businesses fail. It's a good question.

If you had to— how good do you think we've been? We've been pretty good, right? We were less than 1%, 1%, less than 1%, uh, and after the pandemic, because of all the other issues, less than 1%, it's now less than 2%.

That is—

that's a 2% for Black people to get this loan. Is that what you're saying?

Let's talk about the Black.

No, the whole everybody's the whole. Okay, okay.

Is if this is yeah, yeah.

That's the full enchilada right there.

Yeah. Now unfortunately, many of us haven't taken advantage of it because listen to what he's saying. There are not many of us that know about it, and then here's the key: the keys. There are not many lenders that even know about it, and the ones that do don't necessarily equate that to. the challenges and issues we have as Black folks trying to get money. So, so, so here's what happens when we come into a bank. You know, we first of all, we go to court, we got a lawyer, we, we go, we go to get our taxes, we've got a bookkeeper, we got everything. But when we go into a bank, we think we can do that, we can do it ourselves. Well, you can't. You don't speak their, you don't speak their language.

It's not like—

The lexicon is not the same, and you need guidance. And there's those places where I'm going to talk about where you can go and get that.

That's right.

But we've gotta, we've gotta, you know, we, you know, I, I should say this in Trenton, is that every time a child is born, you know, uh, you know, they need it. They need a psychologist that works with them today. When they don't come out crying, they should be, oh baby, that's gonna be all right. I got— let me, let me, let me coax you and get your mind right. Because our mind has been, you know, our DNA has been flooded with a lot of experiences that are, are kind of disrupting our movement today. And, and one of them is You know, we think that when we go into a bank, well, that they won't give me this money, they won't give it to me 'cause I'm Black. No, the whole system is set up a certain way. You're not even in the picture anymore. You're just an afterthought. So here's the thing. If you want to get that money, act like and know and speak the language of capital. Right? And so when a banker asks you, okay, you know, yeah, Sanford, what do you—

What do you—

What are you, what are you here for? I'm here for, for, I, you know, I got this, this bakery I'm gonna start up and, you know, I, I'm gonna hook it up and I, I just need some money to get started. Yeah, all right, Sanford, well, how much you need? Miss Vanessa, you know, they, you know, how many people will say, how much, how much can I get?

You know, that is—

They already know at that point in time we got problems.

We got problems.

Houston, right?

Yes, right. So, so, so those are the issues. You know, it's not about how much you got or, or can I get a grant or, you know, how much it going— how much is the loans? Is it, is it, you know, that's 10%. That's way too much. All these kinds of things. And when we peel the onion off of this and have the discussion the way we're having it right now, I would say to my peoples, I said, well, wait a minute, let's stop for a second. Dig in your pocket and pull out a credit card. Just pull out one. I know everybody got one. If you got a telephone, you got a credit card. Because that's why, that's how they get you. So you pull the credit card out. What do you think the average interest rate of a credit card is?

26%.

Ta-da!

Ain't nobody, anybody complain? You ever walk by somebody say, girl, I'm, man, and that, that 26% kicking my ass? I don't ever hear that. But you go into a bank and you want somebody to invest in your dream and you want them to do it for free.

Absolutely.

I mean, Right, right.

When I put it this way, they say, now you got a point there. All right, come on, man. So, and I'm here to just to speak the truth and shame the devil. So I, I say, when you go into a bank and you're looking for, for funding, go to a place like the SBDC, which is a Small Business Development Center. These are under the federal government. They're all over the country. You can go in, they can help you with a business plan. Be professional, get your stuff set up. Go ahead, my dear.

No, I'm just saying, I'm saying you're absolutely right. Um, because, uh, quick little story. When I, when I first moved to Georgia, the first year I wasn't even here a year, and I went and I said, I've seen an office building. I said, I want that office building. And sure enough, I went to SBA and they walked me through the whole process. They found a bank for me. They helped me write my business plan and the whole 9 yards. And it was, it was really simple. But you're right, you have to come in there, you have to go in there knowing what you're talking about. You have to have some type of credibility. For me, it was my long history of what I was doing and I was transferring it on over. But they will, they'll help you. It was the easiest thing I've ever done. I'm a grant writer. I started nonprofits, I build up, but doing— getting that loan to buy that building, that was the easiest thing I did because you're right, they were there to support me along the way.

I don't know if you noticed or not, but Vanessa, she's from Oakland. She started her first nonprofit at the age of 21, and it's still been going on for the last 40 years.

Absolutely great. And, and so that— and so, so unless you also realize that, um, when you talk about SBA, and I, and I, and I, and I gotta love what the SBA is founded on to do, which is to help small businesses. Uh, there was a woman named Isabel Guzman that came out of California that ran it prior to this new administration, and she was trying to develop some other places. So we've got You know, in California, a rooted cause of doing those things. But one of the things that unfortunately they do not help with is nonprofits. But guess what? California's SBA, which is what we're working with, with the State Small Business Credit Initiative— I'm sorry, the SSBCI— as well as the IBank's State Loan Guarantee Program, we do nonprofits.

Get out of town. Stop. Freeze.

Yeah. Yeah.

Because that's what— Yes, go ahead. Wait, I am excited. I'm excited because this is one thing that I teach nonprofits. One thing I teach them, because people are always telling nonprofits, go write a business plan, and I'm telling them, no, go write a grant, go write a strategic plan, because really banks aren't going to loan you any money because you have no collateral. You have no way of paying it back. You're just saying, I'm going to do good. But now you are saying that I can stop telling them that because there is SSBCI in the state of California, just the state of California right now. I don't know other states. That they will give loans to nonprofits.

Okay, so let me, let me, let me just clarify. The SSBCI is called the State Small Business Credit Initiative, which was done twice. 2010, uh, where it was $1 billion and California got maybe $180 million, which half of that money came to this particular program. And then about 4 years ago, $10 billion was given and about $1.18 billion was given to California, which added to the other monies that it has in this trust that I'm talking about, which is the state small business, you know, guarantee loan program, right? And within that, that's what NorCal, uh, has an executive, uh, uh, uh, exclusive contract with 6 other FDCs, Financial Development Corps. We're one of, we're one of 7. And if you go to ibank.ca.gov and you click on Small Business Finance Center, it's going to explain to you in depth this whole program that I'm talking about. That, you know, I came coming out of a large bank, and you can see all that on the website. So when you dig me up, and so I don't be pubbing people's names and stuff like that, I'm letting you know that I didn't necessarily know about this particular kind of a program because it was too small at the time for me in my, in my early in my career.

Mm-hmm.

It was, you know, right now it's up to $5 million. Remember I said up to 80% with the $5 million?

Yep.

Yeah.

Well, well, guess what it is now? It's, it, you know, it, it, it started out back in a couple of years ago, was like when I, when I, when I came along, it was only $250,000 maximum. Then it went to $2.5 million at the first SSBCI tranche. That, and Miss Vanessa, those money, when I said a billion dollars in 2010, that was spread out domestically across a lot of different states. We got $1 billion here. We got, we got $180 million here.

Wow.

When we got the $10 billion about 4 years ago, uh, and I'm speaking things that are publicly public knowledge, so you can look it up. And, and, and I, and I, I'll let everybody know, go into your ChatGPTs and ask what SSBCI is and ask those questions so you can get more in-depth knowledge. But at $10 billion, We got $1.18 billion.

Mm-hmm.

That money got split in California between the State Treasurer's Office that has small business programs and IBank that has small business programs. IBank is under GO-Biz, which is the Governor's Office of Business, GO-Biz, which is under the governor, and the other half is under the State Treasurer. And so we took— of the $600 that went into IBank, $400 million came into this loan guarantee program, of which we work with about 120, the 7 FDCs. You know, there's Orange County down in, down in, in LA. Say hello to, uh, to, to, to Mark Robertson down there, good brother. Uh, you got, uh, Jim Ely and, and, and Mike Ocasio that, that actually take care of the Orange County. You got Jose— I'm sorry, I like to call him JC— Juan Carlos Hernandez that runs Southern, Cal Southern program. We got, and then we have the Central Coast because we got our ag brothers and sisters. We got Lee Takakawa at Cal Coastal. We got, and the Valley, we got Deb, Debbie Raven. And we just recently have a new person, see, we are, God bless her, I don't have her last name because Debbie Miramoto used to actually run that. She Just retired a couple of— about a month or two ago. But those are the 7 FDCs, and all of us work in tandem to cover all of California the best way we can. We work with about 120 lenders, which could be CDFIs, regional banks, a couple of mid-sized banks, and credit unions. And like I said, CDFIs, which are community development financial institutions.

Okay.

And some non-financial institutions like foundations and stuff like RSF and Mission Driven Finance. Those are— and it's a lot to deal with, but we bring all that together to what I would say builds a model of bringing together private money, which is the loans that— because we don't make loans. We make good deals better. We don't make bad— we don't make bad deals good. We make good deals better, and we don't lend money either. Those lenders do that. That's private money. That's their money.

Okay.

What we do as public money, we come in and we secure and, and offer guarantees with that money, making sure that a couple of elements come into play, like technical assistance, which is the ability for folks to, you know, have a checklist of what they should have when you engage with other people's money. Because just like we walk into— if I gave each of you guys a million dollars and I told you to go out and, and, and, and make dreams come true and do your thing that makes your life better, and you lend it out, the first thing you want is you want it back.

You want it back.

And all of the things that you say circled around this is that, how am I going to get it back? Because we're predicting the future. That's right. And so all of this information around underwriting and paperwork and what you want this for and why I gotta put up my house— well, it's your dream.

Mm-hmm. That's right. You gotta have some skin in the game, right? They want to come with no skin in the game, right?

That's exactly why we don't do 100% loans. We do 80% because we want the bank to have 20% in. We ask all of the borrowers and the entrepreneurs, how much have you invested? What have you— what are you willing to put up for? We don't want your firstborn and that kind of thing, uh, uh, but we do want everybody to have skin in the game. And what—

That's right.

There's some other, you know, I would say quantum physics to this, and, and, and I don't want to get all, all too untangled, but you know, some of these things are going to come up, and I want all of your listeners to understand and to know about something called the double slit experiment. Have you ever heard of that? Any— either one of you ever heard of that?

No.

Okay, so here's what it says. It says in the world that we live in, at a subatomic level, uh, when you have, you have particles, you have, uh, electrons. And when you don't watch the electrons and you set up a double slit, you know, they, they— these electrons go through both slits, one slip, and none at all, and it creates a wave pattern in the background. The minute you observe it or you try to record it, guess what happens? Those electrons turn into particles and they don't go— they go in one or the other and they create a pattern phase. Go look it up. There's something called the double-slit experiment. Look up Dr. Quantum or whatever and, and you'll come up with that. And, and, and what I— the reason why that's relevant to me, I believe that when you have loans and you look at them a certain way, they're gonna, they're gonna perform differently. And, and when we come in, what, what, what NorCal does and the other FDCs do is we have loan committees. Now they're very quick and easy now, but the fact that you come in and you look and you know I'm gonna look and you know I'm looking for something, you're gonna do something right. When there's no, you know, look, it acts differently. You look, it acts differently.

Right.

So when you ask me about performance. He said, well, how do you guys, you know, do all of this?

How do you—

how can you do that with, with, with, uh, with these riskier loans? Because, you know, I know I'm talking fast, but y'all can slow it down later.

We good.

But you got 2 things about money, uh, and, and banks are always looking at this. And, and, and, and, and, and like I say, always check all of this out. Run this through your little ChatGPTs. There's something called the ability to pay. And something called the willingness to pay. Now, the banks are real, real good at that, that ability to pay. They can look at what you've done, they can look at the money coming in, they can look at your bills going out and know what you got left over.

Right.

And that what you got left over, people, and anybody listening, is what you use to pay your bills, right?

That's right.

Well, yeah, just like if you got, if you got your, your, your paycheck And you get your paycheck and you pay your rent and you pay for the car note and you pay for the food and you got something left over. And what you do with that from a bank standpoint, they look at that too. But you know what they call it monthly? They call it debt service coverage ratio. They said that's what's left over for you to pay me—

My money.

My money. And so they look at that. And so we do have something of a benchmark called the 1.25 debt service coverage ratio, which means we want you to have 25% over what you bring in, what you're asking for from a monthly payment to make sure I get my money.

This is what they do.

So how much—

Yeah.

Yes. Yes. So then when you're talking about helping new businesses or helping businesses and we're talking about, okay, I'm a new business, I want to open up a restaurant. But you're looking at my— what I have coming in now. How much do they take into account how much you're projecting to come in from that new business when they're giving you that loan? Because they're looking at your leftover money, your willingness to pay. Can you pay my— this debt? So how much are they looking at? You're building this business and this is how much you're projecting to make after I look at your business plan. How much is that?

Okay, so, okay, okay, so that's a great question, right? Let's just sit that to one quick minute to the side for a second.

Okay.

When you, you, when you speak like that, sometimes what in my mind, and I could be wrong, but in my mind what slips in is something that's a different kind of capital sometimes, right? And that different kind of capital, Miss Vanessa, is equity. Equity operates differently than debt. So if I ask you, I said, I said, Miss Vanessa, I'm gonna make this barbershop, I got this barbershop I want to start now, I just need to get these clippers and stuff. And then, you know, so, all right, all right, baby, I'll hook you up. You know, here's some money, go buy them clippers and stuff. You're not asking for your money the next day, right? You're saying he got to cut some hair first. And but, but you know what, just give me a percentage of what you make. That's what you do when you buy stock, ain't it? You buy stock, and if the company does well, stock— the value of the stock goes up and it appreciates, and then they even pay you something called What, you know, that, that little dividend, right? So, so that's how, that's how equity works. I'm talking about debt. The reason why the projections are great for long-term debt— well, a line of credit ain't long-term debt. Guess when they want their first payment when they get— they lend you that money?

Like when you bought a car, your payment is— your payment starts next month. Give me this money, your payment starts next month. Yeah.

Not next year, not when things get better. Well, I'm doing shooting bad right now. Well, you shoot on. I need my money. So, so, so that's what you're dealing with also. So, you know, the, the bank is looking at you, the, the money you got coming in now, X out the expenses and all the stuff that you owe, tax, whatever that is, and what's left over is your net income. And what portion of that Is available monthly to pay me for the money you borrow. Okay, so that's one scenario. Now, now, now, now, that's one of the things you need to look at. Your payment is due in 30 days. Now, now, there's some particular conversations you can have, which is why what you did earlier when you said you went and got some help, somebody to walk you through issues and stuff like that. Say for instance you have a cleaning company, right? And you got a contract, and that contract says I'm not going to pay you until the work is done, 30 days or 60 days, whatever. But people don't wait that long to get paid. I work, I, I get— I don't want to get— I want to get paid every 2 weeks. Labor laws and all that kind of stuff. How do you pay somebody until the contract disperse this money for work done. You do it with what's called a line of credit, so to speak.

That's just—

and I'm keeping this, this as all the disclaimers. This is not financial, you know, uh, what do they say, uh, uh, this isn't, you know, advice. This is concepts.

Scenarios.

Scenarios that you can then take on and investigate and, and, and, and ask more questions about. So, so you get that line of credit But, but, you know, say that first month comes out and they say, well, damn, I'm not getting paid until 60 days. So what do I do when that first month is due for that line of credit? Well, sometimes, as Vanessa said, they do what they call interest-only payments until that contract pays off, and then you pay it down and you start over.

Yes.

These are the things It's a lot. And that we, we can get into and talk about when we pull off the facade that somebody owes us something.

They—

and I'm not saying people don't owe us nothing, but I ain't got time for that right now. I'm trying to tell you that as these businesses are and you protect them, understand the nuances of your company, understand the particulars of your cash flow of your business, you know, because a coffee shop operates differently. A coffee shop gets their money every day.

Everything.

Right? Uh, and, and I will tell you what happens with those other companies like that. They get sucked in very quickly to what I call the technology craze. 8 clicks to a dollar. If I fill out this form and do all of this stuff, clickety-clickety-click, read this— I don't read that, just scroll through. And you do all that stuff and you clickety-clickety-click. At the end of the day Your interest rate, when you collect all the fees and all the things that they're doing that are happening to you daily, can often end up being mid-double digits.

And real quick, Vanessa, if you see somebody, Jackie, trying to enter the room, that's, that's one of his team members. Okay, about that. So if you see her pop up, that's what—

She's popped up. Okay, there she is. Hi, Jackie. Hi. Hi. So Welcome. So I wanted to— oh, go ahead. I was gonna ask—

Yeah, go ahead, go ahead.

No, go ahead.

What's up, Jackie?

I did not intend— Sydney, hey, Sam. I didn't— hey, my dear, being part of the podcast, I just wanted to listen in.

Yeah, that's why, that's why I hadn't let you— I didn't let you in because I wasn't quite sure if you wanted in or not.

But you know what though, Miss Vanessa, you know what though, while we have Miss Jackie here, let's ask her just a couple of questions because Miss Jackie's also a native of, of, uh, of, of Oakland and she's, she's, uh, the, the, the, the most senior person here at NorCal. She's been here well over 15 years and she's working very diligently to help many of the small businesses get there. And, and I would just like to get— first of all, I mentioned your name, Miss Jackie, up front. But before you go, I just want you to tell them and the audience, you know, what are some of the issues you see for the small business and how we can prepare, uh, our, our community for many of the small businesses that we're, that we're, we're dealing with? Stop walking around.

Well, I had, I had— it was music going on in the background. I didn't want to be there to be disturbing.

Okay.

One of the main things that I see right now is the— how much that the small— how many small businesses are leaving Oakland.

Right.

And I also see how we are— how we're preparing to have them return or accept new small businesses. Such programs as NorCal with the guarantee program. We've been so active in the community getting our, you know, getting our information out so that the small businesses know that programs like this exist because a lot of the small businesses do not know. And that's one of the things That we work really hard at is getting our information out there to the community, the small business community, and letting them know that there is opportunity here in Oakland.

So you said there's a lot of businesses, small businesses leaving Oakland. What are some of the reasons why they're leaving?

Well, you know, it's The ongoing reputation of crime and security, but that has improved tremendously in the last, at least the last year, I know. And with the increase of Well, with the security of a new police captain and more police officers— yeah, we have more police officers now. We just graduated a new class, and I'm— and with that—

Jackie, I don't mean to cut you off. Can you turn your camera this way for me? Just turn your camera.

Oh, the long way.

Yes, please. Did did did that help? No, uh uh no. You're sideways still. Turn it again. There you okay. You're going sideways.

That's okay.

Stay up and down.

That's okay. Stay up and down.

Like that.

Yeah.

Hey, I don't know why we can't get.

No no no no no.

No, just keep it straight.

Just keep it straight. Keep it straight.

Keep it straight.

Go back. Go back.

Go back.

Go back.

Right there.

Right there. Okay.

Yeah.

Okay.

Okay.

So you get me, dude?

Yeah.

I'm sorry.

That was fun.

Yeah, so I think with those kind of— those kind of— that kind of, you know, crime prevention and also with Mayor Lee, We're very familiar with Mayor Lee, and she's interested, totally interested in our program. And we've had some sessions with her. And I think that with all of that in place, we will do better. Oakland will do better.

So what is it that— because I know as a small business or as a business, businesses need other businesses in order really to stay in business because if you have one business in the shopping center—

Absolutely.

So what is it that other small businesses can do to help promote this program for you guys or to work with you all to make sure that this message is getting out?

Well, we've done, we've done great with word of mouth from one business to the next business to the next business. We also get referrals. from other FDCs and also from the Infrastructure Bank of California, which governs the program. And, you know, other than that, it's like social media, these podcasts that Sanford is doing. I mean, he's doing— he's been doing an— oh my God, an excellent job of Just putting himself out there as NorCal's CEO and I mean just branding our company and just getting the word out. He's been doing a tremendous job.

Why do you think that more small businesses or more people of color or more people in general are not taking advantage of this opportunity to start or expand their business by getting more loans? Why do you think that is? Is it the fear, you know, the trust? We don't trust them. Um, we don't have the— we don't have the experience to be able to get this loan. So what type of things do you see and why do you think that's so?

Um, uh, the thing is, I think for, for most businesses is that they just— they don't know. They just don't know where to start. They don't know where to start. They don't know how to get it started. They don't have the information. They don't know Who to ask, they don't know where to ask. They, they don't understand that if, if, if they're looking for, um, monies, how to go about finding them and how to be prepared to borrow money. That's, that's a whole nother thing.

Yes.

Yeah.

So how long does the process usually— I'm sorry, Cindy, you know, I'll just take over the conversation and get one more question in.

This is really intriguing.

It really is. How long does the process usually take? Say, I know it, I know it varies from business to business and person to person, but generally, do you see a timeline? Maybe 6 months to get your loan approved, 3 months general. Is there a general, um, timeline?

I can help you out too, Miss Jackie. I can help you out.

Yeah.

So, so, yes, thank you.

So in terms of, in terms of the, the length of time You know, the underwriting process or the evaluation process by the lender, especially if it's a CDFI, which is the Community Development Financial Institutions, which most of us don't know about. Like I was asking you before, you didn't know about these people?

Mm-mm.

People tell— when you ask about a small business, they start talking about the large dominant players that don't deal this small. They really don't. They actually give money to CDFIs to do that. So it may take them 4 weeks, 5 weeks, and when they finish their process and they say they have a deal that is approved subject to guarantee, they'll turn to Ms. Jackie and I and they'll say, Jackie Sanford, this is a great deal, we love it, here is the submission, uh, look it over. And if it's under a particular amount, we can do it internally. If it needs to go to loan committee, Then it's going to take about maybe no more than 13 business days and we're good. That's, that's— so the process is not of question. The issue is of knowledge, of understanding, and even preparation, Miss Vanessa, of going to a CDFI. Don't just walk in, you know, with, with, with a, a shoebox full of receipts, which people do, believe it or not. Yeah.

They do it.

They come in with a shoebox full of receipts. They haven't filed for the taxes, they haven't done this, they haven't done that, and work a miracle, make my dreams come true. I say, well, come on now, you know.

Let's lead into that right there, because, you know, the biggest thing in our community is this basic education. Where do we even start to even know that? I mean, right now you on Starship Enterprise and I'm down here on Earth. How do we get beamed up? Step-by-step structural training. And then what is the lowest— what is the earliest age? And I'm thinking high school students, or what did we start to develop towards? We're looking at 5 to 10-year projections to make sure we have growth, spontaneity, ongoing economy, say here in Oakland. Do we approach these schools? Do we— how do we get these young adults for the projection of the future? And where do we go as a common person, as a layperson sitting on the 4th bench in the church, if you will, to get to the 1st bench of knowledge? Where does that start at?

That's good, Sidney.

Sanford actually has a youth—

Yeah, go ahead.

Sanford actually has a youth financial literacy, uh, program.

I want to see all that. This is awesome. This is—

Yeah.

Yes, I do. And I have it available for free on my LinkedIn site.

What?

Yes, I do. Yeah, it's a book you have. I got, I got, I got a parental book that goes with it. I talk about it. I, I— come on, you guys, you own it. Let's, let's be real about it. Let's be real about it. You bring up these issues As though that there, there isn't common tools out there to help us, right? You know, and both you, Miss Vanessa, Miss Jackie, and Sid, y'all know one of the biggest damn—

We don't read.

What are we— man, one of the biggest bills we had when we were going to school— what was the biggest? Best, especially if you went away to school like I did.

I would—

I went away to school. What was the biggest bill we had? It wasn't rent, that was covered by the school. The biggest bill we had was goddamn phone bill. I got on that phone, I talked to Miss Granny. Miss Granny said, you got 2 minutes, you got it, you're gonna hear it now.

What's going on?

You got Mr. Click and, uh, that's right, that's about it.

$200.

Yeah, boy, don't you call my house no more. That's right, because back then that was, that was, that was a lot of rent. So, so now today, now today we not only can talk to people, we can see them from different countries for free.

That's right, that's right.

Come on, people. So, so, Miss Vanessa, Sydney, Miss Jackie, why can't we get together, right? And what I did while I was here at NorCal, and I pulled my team in— you're going to hear some stuff here that you ain't heard nowhere— I pulled the team in. Every 3rd Friday we would get on the phone And I would click up on Teams or Zoom or whatever we had, and we got together and we talked about what stocks did you see, what investments did you see, what did you have, what's going on.

Normalized the conversation.

All that stuff is right there.

Yeah.

Stock plans.

And the way my kids started— yeah, stock plans. The way my kids started, they started with things they knew. They liked, uh, GoPro, Pixar, and they like the way Toy Story. So they went and bought Pixar, and then they went and they liked Aquaman and Superman and Spider-Man, and they bought Marvel. Pixar, Marvel got bought.

So what's my girl Sydney like?

That's what I'm talking about. Sydney's the main thing. She wanted to go to Vietnam. She says, Daddy, I want to go to Vietnam.

And I've been to Vietnam. I used to take people to battle tours there. Let's do it.

That's all I was thinking was like war and stuff.

I was like, listen, girl, go ahead and do your thing, you know.

Look it up. She looked it up and I said, well, come on and see me. And she's up in Reno. She came down, Sid. She came down and she said, well, hey Daddy, I need a ride. I was at a— I was at a party with the bros. She called me to my eye. I said, what you need a ride for, baby? She said, I needed that to the airport. I'm going to Vietnam.

I said, wait a minute.

Yeah, I thought she was preparing.

You thought she was playing around with you?

I thought she said, I'm gonna do it later. She was going—

When Sydney says something, Sidney mean what he's saying. He can just get— ask Vanessa. This is how this podcast— she calls me and said, I want to start a podcast. And then that Friday we was online.

But that's the universe. I love this universal spirit. I told him, look, Miss Vanessa, I was sitting here while they was doing some stuff. I know we off topic, but people can listen. They know what's going on. So I was talking to Miss Jackie. I was talking to them. They was fixing the computers to get ready for this podcast, right? So I'm looking through the phone trying to find Sidney's phone number. And then there's another Sidney that came up, Sidney King. Sidney King is the CEO and president of Commonwealth Bank in Mobile, Alabama. He's the guy I sat on that panel with. I said, let me— and he's also Byron's buddy. I said, while I'm sitting here and they're fixing the computer, he's talking to somebody.

I heard my name, but I know it wasn't me because he was in a whole different conversation.

He said, hey man, I ain't heard from you in about 8 years. What you What do you need? I said, I don't need nothing, brother. I saw your name. I thought it was important that I just connect with you and tell you what's going on.

I like it.

And he started telling me about some other Black banks and some things he was doing. I told him what we were doing here in California, making dreams come true. He said, hey, man, I think we're redoing our strategy. Why don't I give you a call and tell Byron to give me a call and see how we can join forces with NorCal and help build some things, given y'all got this Coliseum project coming up. I'm sure there's a way we can fit in. And that was happening, Miss Vanessa, while I was sitting here, while y'all was—

That's right, that's right.

And Miss Vanessa, this is like par for the course for NorCal. Things like this fall into our lap continuously, and we're able— I mean, we receive blessings and we're able to share the blessing and give it back. It's just, it's incredible. It's been an incredible ride.

Well, that's wonderful because I would I want to help you all be able to give more of that back because like Sydney said, I'm from Oakland. I'm maybe in Georgia now, but I'm from California and I still have a lot of roots and people that are doing small businesses out there, a nonprofit out there. We're definitely going to take advantage of that. Can I pivot just a little bit? Because you mentioned something about your friend in Montgomery, Alabama that you called him, correct? He's talking about how we work together as far as from city. You're talking about from state to state.

Yes.

Well, let's talk about a little city to city, because we had talked about a little the cities before and why we need to work now collectively and across boundaries, because how we used to have strong cities, but these cities have been destroyed. So can we talk a little bit about that history, even though we know we're on the same timeline? Can we talk a little bit about that?

Oh yeah.

Cities being burned down, what those cities were like, what— how we were thriving, and how from that point to where you all are trying to get us further to where— further back to where we used to be, where we owned stuff, where we ran stuff, where we had cities that were not destroyed.

You could take it all the way back to— um, um, oh, go ahead. I already know what you want.

Before, before you go, Miss Jackie, did you want to say something?

No, I just wanted to say that Sanford is— he's the perfect person for The job at hand. Yes, he'll get it done. He'll get it done, and he has an awesome team. I wish all of us could be on the podcast, but he has an awesome team.

We could bring y'all on next time.

That's right. Yes, that's right.

This is a continuous conversation, and is needed.

Awesome.

Yeah, and you have a lot of information that you have a lot of information. I was writing down that. We definitely need to know and how you can bring those small businesses together. Yeah, we're working on it because we need to— we as small businesses, we need to help each other. And that's the way that we can help each other. Sometimes we're always depending on others to do things for us. We don't— we don't— we're always looking for a handout, but we can all give a hand up.

And how can you— You are your bottom line. You are your bottom line. And it's all— it's all going to fall on you. So you have to That's right. You have to be proactive and get your business out there.

That's right, that's right.

And we've done it in 60 cities before. I was mentioning cities, and don't, don't make me pull up my phone and start labeling.

Okay, thank you.

We're gonna see you again, right? We're gonna see you again, right?

Absolutely. I think you're with me every day.

No, we're gonna have it so it's gonna be the Jackie Show.

Okay.

One day.

All right. Yes.

Okay, thank you.

All right.

I'm gonna be listening in.

All right.

Okay. Okay. All right. Thank you.

Okay, please.

Awesome.

Okay.

So, so you asked a great question. I'm gonna tell you how smart these computers are.

Okay?

This is something just that, that I, I, I, I, I very quickly, and you'll see what happens. Uh, watch this, Miss Vanessa. Just watch this. Can you tell me— I know you know about Tulsa and those kinds of cities, but you and I were talking before. Can you give me a rundown of some of the cities like Seneca and some other places where there were—

Greensboro.

Greensboro. There were thriving Black cities that were either flooded, burned out, racially profiled and destroyed, or just redeveloped because of redevelopment and highways and those kinds of things. Can you tell me about some of those cities?

Sure, I can give you a quick rundown. Historically, several Black communities across the United States thrived economically and culturally, only to be devastated by violence, forced displacement, or urban redevelopment. Tulsa's Greenwood District, often called Black Wall Street, is the most cited example. In 1921, it was destroyed by a racially motivated massacre. Beyond Tulsa, there's Rosewood, Florida, an African-American town destroyed by a mob in 1923. Seneca Village in New York City was a predominantly Black community seized through eminent domain in the 1850s to create Central Park. In Detroit, the Black Bottom and Paradise Valley neighborhoods were hubs of Black culture and business until the 1950s and '60s, when highway construction and urban renewal projects led to their destruction. In Atlanta, the Sweet Auburn district faced decline after interstate construction. In North Carolina, Wilmington's Black community was decimated by a violent coup in 1898. Oh my God. And in Greensboro, parts of Black neighborhoods were affected by urban renewal efforts as well. Many of these communities lost their homes, businesses, and wealth due to a combination of racial violence, discriminatory policies, and infrastructure projects. If you'd like more detail on any one of these, just let me know.

And ain't none of them talked about us burning down our own place, okay?

No.

So, so, and then what do they call—

what is it called today? It may not be burning down, but what is it called for the infrastructure What's it called? Gentrification.

Gentrification. They got all kind of names. They keep us, they keep us floating around. But here's the thing, and what I'm telling you is everybody got their phone, everybody got a program they like to talk into. They just use it to find the best, uh, uh, uh, place to get some, get some hot links or some oxtails, or, you know, where, where's the closest gas station. But this thing is, is powerful. This thing is talking to you. Now watch this when I ask for it. I've been around— No, no, I'd like you to now tell me, I want to rebuild these companies, these, these cities. I want to be just like Chinatown and Italian Town and, and, and our other, other, you know, uh, ethnically based communities. We are one of them that is here. We want to be able to control our companies, our countries, and our communities. So how— what are some of the very critical elements we need to institute in and, and help grow these small businesses and take care of And those dollars over in our community, give me some ideas.

Absolutely. To build a vibrant, self-sustaining community, there are a few key elements. First, access to capital. That means establishing community development financial institutions, credit unions, or cooperative investment funds to help small businesses get loans. Second, business education and mentorship. Training programs, workshops, and mentorship networks help entrepreneurs navigate everything from marketing to bookkeeping. Third, local ownership of property. Community land trusts or cooperative real estate models can prevent displacement and keep wealth circulating locally. Fourth, support for local shopping. Encouraging residents to buy from local businesses and partnering with local government to set up markets or events that spotlight those businesses can help money stay in the community longer. Fifth, collaboration with local government and nonprofits to secure grants, Incentives and infrastructure improvements that prioritize the community's needs. Finally, cultural pride and storytelling. Celebrating the history and achievements of the community helps build a shared identity and encourages reinvestment. These steps take time, but they can set the foundation for a thriving community like what you see in Chinatown or Little Italy.

I love it, and, and, and it just hit the points and some of the points that we're talking about today. today, um, that, that financial where you talked about that you are— you, you have that financial to help with employment and housing. And then you talk about the financial literacy. You have the book. I'm so interested in your book and getting it to some nonprofits to say, can you guys institute this into your nonprofit when you're working with the kids and the adults? Because some of the adults sometimes need to learn at a kid level because we think we know but we don't. But we could just take those bites at the kids level. How do we get those books and that information to some nonprofits and to the community so we can learn more about financial literacy and won't be so afraid to go to the bank, to come to your program or the bank to say, okay, I'm gonna go to the bank, get this money, and I know that it can be backed by this. So one question, not the topic. So when you go to the bank, would you say, hey, I'm putting this loan in, I want you to now go to CCDFI, or will they automatically know, or do you tell them this I want you to, because we know they're gonna automatically—

because redlining, they're gonna automatically know, right?

But if I already know, would I tell the bank?

Hell yeah. Well, because here's the thing, we're uncovering everything, right? You go to ibank.ca.gov and you ask for— you go into that spot that I showed you about, it gives you the list of all the banks that are already certified. Ain't no secret, public knowledge. Go look at these lenders. And many of them are CDFIs. Many of the banks don't deal at the levels of entry points that we're talking about, right? There's a lot of businesses that are sophisticated Black-owned businesses that are right now doing, say, what I call EV charging stations.

Right.

They're getting the dollars that they need. They don't understand they can get more. And there still is an institutional kind of Subconscious thought when we think about even this guarantee program. The reason why most people don't know about it, people shy away from it. I don't want to be known as somebody who needs help and blah blah blah. And then a lot of times, did you guys ever see the the the the uh the banker? The movie The Banker?

Come on now.

Come on now. So somebody look it up. Samuel Jackson. Look it up. Look it up. Can you look it up by there?

Sure.

Because because because 'Cause these folks realized, and this is a real life story, there ain't no, this ain't no, you know, this ain't no black—

Right, right, I saw that one.

Okay, okay. So, so, so yeah, kind of, kind of pull it up a little bit because these guys realized that they were gonna be, you know, pushed back because of, of their race, right? So they flipped it. They went and got a white man that worked for them.

They flipped it.

To be the Quasi-owner-looking dude.

And he knew how to talk the numbers when he was pressured within the chamber.

They taught him.

They taught him stuff like that.

He was nothing but an engine— he was like an electronic subcontractor.

Right.

But when they found out, because he went— this took this thing back to Texas or wherever he was from. And when he started— this white man showed up and he started doing all of these deals with these people of color. They found out about that. And these brothers actually got— went, you know, that they, they got prosecuted for, for lying. Isn't that funny? Not, not for breaking a rule, lying and saying that they— that somebody else was the owner of the bank and they weren't.

Okay.

Right.

And they—

yes, and they did some time. So, so this is real life stuff.

It's a really good movie, by the way.

Right. So these are real— and I don't even know why.

And I'm thinking this right here, before you even sit on any of Sanford's classes I'm— I would say make that a pre-qualifier just so you can have the understanding of historical evidence of what took place. So that, that would be a good, um, I guess we said prereq before we even go into his classes, so you can go ahead and start understanding what spirit lies behind that and walk us out physically, mentally, financially, and everything.

I love y'all people, man. I love my people, and I've just been blessed enough To go through A Better Chance. You look at that program. Anybody know, got kids that are going into high school and they're touched with a particular talent academically, there's a program called A Better Chance. I was a better chance. I went from Trenton up to Amherst Regional High School, which was actually another public school, wasn't even a private school. But it's one of the baddest public schools in the country, because damn it, if everybody's Mama and Daddy wasn't a professor because there were five colleges in that area. It was UMass Amherst, it was Amherst, Smith, Mount Holyoke, and Hampshire College. And everybody, and so people would come in my classroom and be fighting over a B minus and an A minus. And my my son deserves a higher grade. I I I know this paper, and I'm an English professor for twenty years. That's the kind of people I went to school with. And so when I ended up leaving there and going to to Wesleyan and and having great great roommates and people that were in a bubble of academic learning. And if you look at Wesleyan now, even one of the presidents, Michael Roth, he's out there fighting for the freedom of liberal arts education, just like I'm fighting with you and telling you about opening the doors of doing that. It's in the blood of how I put— And then I went to Came out to California under some extreme circumstances, but it was okay. I made it out here, you know. And all the time my mom talking about, Mama, now, now, now, you don't need to be going up there trying to know white folks. They got their thing. I know, Mama, but they got to respect me. She said, No, just go get that money and come out here and get the rest of us. All right, Mama. All right, but they ain't gonna respect me. She got to the bottom line quick.

Yeah, she did.

And I got to tell you a story about that too later. But, you know, since we talking about how these these strong Black women helped push your brother through it. I went to something else called— after I did, I applied to another program called the Consortium for Graduate Study in Management, CGSM. Make sure you write that down. .org or .gov or whatever. But that's a program that looks for people of color, in particular Black folks, to help them get—

CGSM.

Consortium for Management and Graduate Study.

Yeah.

Graduate Study in Management, CGSM.

CGSM?

CGSM. Just pull up the Consortium for MBAs. Just pull that up real quick. Just, just, just Google that. And, and, and, and there are a lot of great schools, right? USC was, is, is one of them. The North Carolina Chapel Hill, UVA, uh, uh, uh, what was it, Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin, uh, Texas Austin, all of these folks. Then we have Full fellowships to go to school for 2 years. After that, I, I became a presidential fellow down there, went to Japan and all this kind of stuff because somebody cared about me the way we're talking on this phone right now, on this, on this call. Those are programs you guys have never heard about, those programs, probably.

I've never heard it. No, I'm sitting with an MBA.

Okay, uh, uh, it's amazing. And then, then the way I got to that, the brother who's— I like this, and I do like the thought Throw a couple names around. Brother Wendell Jones. Wendell Jones is still now— he was the chairman of the board for Main Street Launch here in Oakland, Miss Vanessa. And now he's— they've coupled him and they've, uh, they've blended together with another, with another, uh, uh, uh, CDFI, which he's still the main guy of. And he happened to do the— to help me by doing the, um, back in the day, early in '92, somewhere '91. He did the interview for me to get into that program. I didn't even think I had the confidence to do it. He said, man, you don't know what you're talking about. And here I sit today. Those are 2 programs that you ought to know about.

Here I sit today.

These are the things that, that, that, you know, and we could go to these schools now and go pull on those, those Black MBAs and say, hey, can you write a— help me write this report on such and such? Many of these small businesses have access to these young kids that are going to school and can write papers and help them and be interns. And, and I, I got plenty interns. And, you know, Sid, when you come with me to the coffee shop, I'll be going crazy up there. But I'll have them—

You do. Now, that's what got my attention from the beginning, because he, he'd be up right upstairs. He'd be up in that coffee shop. They got like several offices up in here, by the way. That couch you got in your bigger office?

Yes.

I had that same couch when I was in Germany. But, but listen, and then all the people walk around here, they always— there's a whole team That's how I met Jackie, right? I had that hairstyle be laid every single day she'd be up inside here. And then the rest of the team members, right? You gotta— his chief of staff is a young guy that, you know, you can almost call him his son, you know what I'm saying? These folks, these people are not playing with you.

They're about to help you. They're focused on helping people get money and to help build the community.

That's right. And I try to do it, I try to do it in layman's terms. Everything I speak here is in layman's terms because I can talk all that foo-foo stuff later. I did— I get enough of that when I'm talking to other people to get them to understand the academics and the, you know, the, the more of the professional protocol and in the office. And I've done that, and I, and I, and I— and that's okay. But I, but, but I want it to be actionable so that, you know, you've got enough tools now today.

Enough tools today.

We just— I just— I didn't even know all these cities they were talking about. And I didn't prep that phone to do that. I asked it a question, a question of relevancy, and it gave me the answer. It even tells me about me. For somehow or reason, it knows about me. It says, Sanford Livingston runs the NorCal Blog. He came from Trenton. I was like— because it's pulling from these sources now that are up there.

Your online DNA, I call it your brand DNA. It's literally out that way, and I was able to pull together your whole entire— look, me and Sanford did not communicate about his presentation pieces. I was able to go out there and pull his brand DNA and organize everything and give him what he's going to look like for the show. So he's out there, folks. He's definitely out there. Again, you know, you have to become the student of him. This is incredible.

And when you talk about that everything's online in that brand DNA. When you're going to apply for a loan now, people can look you up more than just the information you have. They're looking at your— I'm not— I'm assuming, because I know when you do grants now and stuff, they're saying, oh, what's your social media and what's your website? You know, they're asking more questions. Does that come into play too? Because sometimes when you're loaning people money, their credibility is also based on how they show up. But before we had all this Instagram and Facebook and stuff, you really have to go by face value and what's on paper. But now they can look more at, as you say, Sydney, your DNA online. Does that play into play of how people look at you? Absolutely.

I'll give you a good example. I'll give you a good example.

That's right.

So this brother's, you know, tearing it up, right? Cooking his food, doing his thing. And he was wanting to break away from the restaurant, right? He's like, man, I gotta get it. I gotta get this thing bumping and doing. And the bank is like, we'd love to help you, but you gotta, you know, you gotta, uh, fuel your own dreams. You know, you don't have any history. Like when you, when you get a loan from, from some of the fintechs, they charge you a high interest rate because you have no history. They're basing it purely on what's coming in today. But now what they're doing, just give you an idea, that brother who wants to, you know, Get that truck so he can sell his food out of a truck and stuff like that. Yeah, him want a whole bunch. So what's gonna lean me over to him? Remember that willingness to pay?

How do I—

can I test his willingness? He told me his food is good. How can I find out if his food is really good? I don't want to taste it, but what do you think? I want to— what do you think I want to do?

Look at his ratings for people that already ate there.

Exactly. I'm going to Yelp.

That's right. Yelp. And I will grab your brand DNA. It has to be live.

All of that stuff and becomes a key market to throw me over the fence and says, you know what, I'll at least give him a piece of this money because I already can see what he's bringing in for somebody else. And if he can just bring in 30% of that for himself, he has enough to cover the— he's not, he's not getting a full— one of the things Miss Jackie didn't say was that Yeah, it's crime and that stuff, but it's also the fact that leasing agreements and payments are driving people out of business. They can't afford the leases.

Okay?

That's what's going on. Even I look back here locally, a lot of the people, the corner stores, I know just about everybody on the block in terms of small businesses. It was the leasing. Every year the leasing would go crazy. One guy, matter of fact, is the Jamaica place. Just a block down before them was Asian people that I was communicating about doing their systems and everything, but they wasn't even inside the shop for 4 weeks.

I don't—

I mean, 4 months. So, um, I don't know if that's the same thing.

No, it is the same thing. So you had that problem, but, but you can control that by controlling your property. One of the things is controlling property. Remember they were talking about the computer said it should say land trust and things of that nature? So we've got to do that part. But going back to that story about this guy with this truck, because of his Yelp and some other online pieces, we're able to say, Sanford, can you just at least give us a part? You don't have to do an 80% guarantee, do a 50% guarantee. Anything to give us a partial coverage for this. Guy's doing fine. And what they did to, to affect the willingness to pay— remember that willingness? Well, they put a machine onto that truck. If he missed the payment for two months, that machine shut that truck off. Can't even start.

What?

So guess what? He gonna pay.

That's right. That's right. That's right.

Willingness and and ability. They came together and we got our money.

But at the end of the day, the great thing is we're able to.

We're able to help the next person because that person paid back, and that story doesn't get told either.

Right, right.

The actual track record of the successful James Brown, the big payback.

Man, payback!

Yes, payback.

We gotta pay it back.

You gotta pay it back. You gotta pay it back.

That way we can pay it forward. I'm telling you, man. That's right. I thank you for this, this, this, this, this, this platform. form to tell the truth, to tell the truth. And I, and I, and I need just— can I, can I have a— no, a commercial break? Because yeah, I, I, I, I like to talk about how these— this, this stuff is, you know, we talked about— because we said violence, right, and stuff like that. I'm like, okay, don't worry about it. I, I, I, I ain't talking— I ain't talking— I ain't talking about that. I'm talking about the fact that, um, There's some strong women that got me to where I got to be.

Amen.

And I like to just like talk about them just for a hot minute.

Go ahead, please do, please do.

My mom, Dorothy Livingston.

Dorothy, y'all.

Dorothy Mae Livingston. And she was the— she, she knew everybody on the block. She did all kinds of great stuff. I, I, I— you heard about Miss Granny. I ain't gonna do that one again. But, but, but my mom was just as She was bad as she was bad as all get out, and this is just a and I love those those ladies and what they did for me and got me to where I go. So if I could just have a commercial break to bring this one story up, go ahead and bring it up. One day, and everybody was getting ready to roll out to the various places we're going to go. My mom's best friend, you know, son named Larry, was getting chased down the street. My mom saw it, and she kind of walked down the. To the end of Poplar Street by the Poplar Bar. I'm on Poplar Street where I live. To see what was happening, why was there so much commotion. And when she got down there, she saw her best friend's son being accosted by 4 crazy little, you know, uh, young folks in the neighborhood, you know, starting some trouble. And they was on Hart Avenue, which was one street over. And so My mom was like, okay, fellas, y'all break it up. It's hot out here. Y'all need to leave Larry alone. He's trying to get ready to go to camp. And say, listen, lady, you know, I don't know where you come from, but we get ready to take his money and we'll take yours too, and we'll fuck both of y'all up up here on this corner. He said, well, that's a tall order, young man. And, uh, if I'm not mistaken, didn't your mama get killed on the corner over next door, right across the street there? I guess we're gonna have a, you know, a complicated comparable episode over here on the Papa Street side in a minute. And they started, you know, reaching all down and get ahead of— one of them had a stick, the other one had a bottle, and it looked like they was going to wreak a little havoc on my mom. So I was running down the street, I could have to break And this is real, bro. I grabbed the brick and I'm running down the street because they mess with my mom. I don't— yeah, forget Larry. I'm like, my mom's in trouble. My mom reached in her motherfucking bosom, she pulled that .22 out, and she looked at him. She said, I guess today is your lucky motherfucking day. She said, you know, your mama died over there, but now we're gonna have to Memorialize this company over here. So if I was you, I'd back up with that sticks and stones shit that you got. This here don't play. And then my mom pointed this little .22 at these people and she started counting for some reason. She's reaching, she was bobbing the gun up and down saying, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. Oh shit, 2 of you motherfuckers gonna get shot twice. I got 4 bullets, 2 people.

That's, that's basic math.

It was a 6-shooter. She said, oh shit, you know, and then this is— I couldn't make this story up. I, I was like trying to do my thing. Okay, good.

Thank you.

So we, you know, that, that's— can y'all believe that? That's— these are the women.

Yes.

That I grew up with. God bless their soul. And so I'm putting together this book. The reason why I have these stories kind of lined out— I take a drink and I tell them— because I'm putting together this book so that my kids— I was thinking I can share some of this stuff. I'll share with y'all because y'all are family, but it's just the fundamental letting them know What they're going through, there are some people that of shoulders they stand on to get there. I have a daughter that speaks fluent Japanese and characters, and she went to West Williams. She's in New York working for a major company out there. I got one in the one that went to Vietnam. She's in Reno, and my son is mine. He's a the third, and he's taking it. Like I said, I wear my father's name like an old over. Coat because, you know, nobody told him it was a nice name. Well, he's very professional. My father was a bumper fixer. He used to, you know, back in the day when bumpers were made of steel, you know, when they got into accidents, he would fix them and build them back and resell them and redo stuff like that. And, uh, I just realized of the shoulders that I stand on and the fact that I'm here. They put me here so that I can spread this knowledge and share the information that's come—

That's good.

That I've come up to. And break it down in a way that makes it for you to be able to, to devour it and use it in the most elemental way in your own use of your own lives and the building of your own businesses.

Right. So they can take what you have to offer, build their business, and leave it for somebody else to stand on— their, their children— that leave a legacy. So as you were able to stand on somebody else's shoulders, you're helping other people Strengthen their shoulders so someone else can stand on them too and continue on with this life.

Absolutely.

Were you thinking that, Miss Vanessa, when you had about this car? You was thinking, what the hell this guy gonna talk about? Because he, he just sound like he's the— he's a bit much.

No, I already knew the area you was gonna be leaning towards and everything, you know. Oh yeah, yeah, that's the pitch cards and everything like this so she can—

But I had no idea, really. I had no idea when you, when you came up, because I ain't even gonna lie, to read those pitch cards I had no idea. I've been ripping and running.

She's been running 100 miles an hour. Look, that's my job, she said.

Yeah, I'm just asking a bunch of questions here, you guys. Miss Vanessa and Sid, you guys, you don't even know, uh, just from doing this episode and this platform, even if it's only just a few people, if we got 5 that can pull on the hem of our garment Yes. And look back and say, you know what, those 4 pieces of information about how to engage with folks to get money and the importance of your, your, your reputation and repayment. You know, people are worried about, well, you know, my FICO score and this and that and the other. All things are, are, uh, representative, uh, of you, uh, not just that piece, but you know, the pieces that— of your education and where I went to. Yeah, I'm from Trenton. Yeah, and I'll tell people quick, you know, you know, I can, I can, I can meet you in the penthouse or I can meet you in the pavement. It's your choice. I could meet you in the ballroom or in the alley. It's your choice.

Right.

Uh, because I've seen both sides of the fence and, uh, I've passed that knowledge on to my kids. I raised my— my sister got sick. She, she passed But, but, but, you know, I, I, I grabbed my mother's, my mother's grandchildren, I would say, and all of them were under one roof. It's like, you know, sick. I got 3, my sister had 3, and I brought them out here with me in California, and they survived.

Mm-hmm.

And it gives us a chance to spread that, that, that Livingston, you know, uh, reputation and knowledge, and, and to be able to share the goodness that somebody shared with me. I still stay in touch with the woman who taught me to play the piano when I was 6.

Mm-hmm.

You know, her name is Ms. Hurt now, but it's called Ms. Jones. And love her to pieces because when I get down and out, I get on that piano and I play to myself, you know, uh, uh, and, and I sing all the time. I, you know, I'm on that, you know, I love Rakim. I actually met him. He's gonna be here October 22nd. And Yoshi, uh, he's, he's really the father of hip-hop. And he didn't have to curse, he didn't have to do this, he didn't have to talk loud. But you know, the Paid in Full, people don't even realize what that was. Each of you know Paid in Full? I'll have to pay a little homage. You know that one? Do you know that one, Sid?

Yeah, I definitely know.

You know, Miss Vanessa, do you know it?

Yes, I do. Yes, I do. Yes, I do.

Yes.

You know what, I was every bit of 34 40 years ago.

Okay, well, we're gonna say a little bit of it, but, but, but, but Sid, do you know what the— what's the most wildest part about that story?

No, tell me.

It has no hook. You know how you— most songs have a hook?

Yeah, yeah.

You know, this was Thriller. You said Thriller all the way through. There is no duplicated song. So he sits there, this— but as he says, you know, thinking of a master plan, thinking 'Cause ain't nothing but sweat inside my hand. So I dig into my pocket, all my money spent. So I dig deeper, it's still coming up with lint. So I start on a mission and leave my residence thinking how I'm gonna make some dead presidents. I need money. I used to be a stick-up kid, so I think of all the devious things I did. I used to roll up. This is a holdup. Ain't nothing funny. Stop smiling. Still don't nothing move but the money.

Nice.

But now I learned to earn 'cause I'm righteous. I feel great, so maybe I might just search for a 9 to 5. And if I thrive, then maybe I'll stay alive. So I walk down the street whistling this, feeling out of place 'cause man, do I miss a pen and a paper, stereo with tape, a man every day, and a nice big plate of fish, which is my favorite dish. But without no money, it's still a wish. So I don't want to dream about getting paid. So I dig into these books of these rhymes that I've made and take a test to see if I got pull. So I hit the studio because I'm paid in full. 1986, '87, that changed the world. And then not one hook.

Not one.

Right out of high school, fresh guy in the army at the time. Okay, I didn't even realize he never had a hook.

Didn't have a hook.

It was just straight lyrics.

Just straight lyrics.

Straight lyrics.

Boom, boom, boom.

Like that. Go ahead, man. Go ahead with your bad self. You was rapping that.

Hey, man.

Hey. He's still rocking it. What, he rocking it? He was rapping it.

And so I sit here and there are going to be many, and I can't tell you who, but we bringing some Black banks to Oakland.

That's good.

Because the mecca of how we do this is to have a system and an entity that's already specialized in what they do. And you got a sea monster, you bring Aquaman.

And I think they talk about the first HBCU here in Oakland also. Um, I mean, I saw that the other day.

That's right, that's right.

They're talking about the first Black HBCU.

Remote classes.

That's right, that's right.

It's remote classes. And we're gonna— we gotta redefine this thing. And, and if you go back into my, my, my cadre of information Uh, Miss Vanessa, I don't know if you saw it. Did you see the Wealth Beyond Reason?

No.

There's an Experian— uh, do you have that?

The Wealth Beyond Reason?

Wealth Beyond Reason. Yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's from experian.com. Uh, one of my, one of my, uh, my, my, my, my, my, uh, roommates' old— one of the people that, that actually, um, uh, uh, managed their money and stuff, just, you know, all these people. They said, well, you know, this family helped you, Sanford. Can you tell us a little bit about your life and how it changed you and what happened? Because they did help me come to California in '88, and my life has changed. And there was a— it's one of the best— the Experian.com, they did about 200 of these things, and this one's still the top one. And it's the Esperian, it's I-S, but, uh, I-S.

Okay.

Yeah, yeah, you see it? Just put in Wealth Beyond Reason and put Sanford and it'll pop right up. Um, and it talked about me as a kid, it talked about my mom teaching me about, uh, a job. And Sanford, that's, that's, that's just over broke, dog, you know. Um, you, you, we got to get better than that. We got to be looking beyond that. Uh, and, and that's a A podcast that I did for them. I did a podcast for these kids in Buffalo, New York, literally months before that shooting. Some of the kids were actually— were, were in that, that, uh, store when it took place, where that kid walked in, it was, it was shooting people. Uh, yeah, yeah, that, that's it, that's it right there.

I got you right here.

And experience. Yeah, can you share it?

Yeah, yeah, I'm about to put it inside the, um—

And, and, and, and I want you to be able to to hear these things. You said kids. I talk to kids all the time. I will go over to East Oakland Boxing Association, Miss, Miss, uh, Donna, uh, over there, and, and, and I talk to those kids about, you know, things. And, and one of the things that I tried to talk about too, and I don't know if you guys even know it, uh, any— you know, I said my Cash App looks like a payroll service because I got so many people that try to help and do things. But, but if you look at that, do you know that you can buy stocks with Cash App? Did you know that?

Yes, you sure can. I love it.

You can start in low and just get—

begin to see something, you buy for $10, $20. Yes, you don't have to have the whole— you have to buy a stock, you buy a portion of it. And do we teach our kids that? You know, when they— because when I— for my kids, we meet like every 2 weeks, and when they want to borrow $100, I'll send them $90, but I'll send them $10 stock. And then in order to pay me back, they pay me back by putting in all into their own system and show me that they've done it, a stock worth that amount of money that I gave to them. So that way they start to have that ability to do that.

That's an incredible, powerful mentality.

Have any of you heard of Stash?

No, I haven't heard of Stash.

Okay, the crazy thing about Stash is you can— you could— they'll give you a debit card, right, too, and you can put money into the account. You can buy all the stocks just like you can with all these other things, Robinhood, whatever. But their, their, uh, system with Stash— so when you go in and say you buy, uh, ketchup, it will take 2 cents and put it into Heinz stock and put it in your account.

Okay.

It's—

these are little things that add up over time. It's, you know, it's grains of a sand that make a beach. That's what I'm trying to tell people.

That's right. That's right.

Not rocks. That don't work that well. But with grains of sand, you know, we could be grains of sand. We— and you know what, you know, and when we look, we trace the back through the— through the— and I like to talk about it. I like to weave in the fact that there are bodies in the ocean, millions of them, that belong to us in our DNA that you know, a trace, a path back to where we— from whence we've come. And a lot of people are not disconnected in that fashion in their DNA, and we are, but we've made the best of it, and we've created things, and we've pulled on not just the spiritual religious components that have helped us, you know, live over this, this, this, this, this, this incredible pathway. But we've become more spiritual in understanding that there's— you can't— I mean, I look back at my, my, my, um, my yearbook, and I had Maya Angelou, and, and, and one of the quotes that I picked was, still I rise.

Still I rise.

Yeah.

Still I rise. I said that when I was 18.

Wow.

And, and I'm in my 60s now, and still I rise. my children will rise, and their children will rise, and your children will rise.

Affirmative confirmation.

Yes, right.

Decree of growth.

And that's what I— that's where—

and I—

so, so us starting small business is, is we don't need to learn how to do it, we just need to remember how we did it.

Remember how you did it. Yes, yes, that is so— this is so powerful. And I was thinking, you know, for those of you who've You know, my thing is, are people answering their calling? A lot of us have a calling. When we came down to earth, we had a calling. We all had a calling, but some of us put it on mute, some of us put it on do not disturb, some of us put it on silent. But if you even think that you have a calling, or you think there's something that you want to do, and you might not want to do it for a year from now, and you're not quite sure— would you recommend this, Mr. Sanford? Would you recommend that they start if they're thinking, I'd like talked about, my credit might be bad, I might not have any collateral, but get started because you can have a plan and go and talk to a bank, go and find out more information from Sanford and their company to find out what is I need to do to start planning towards answering my call. I might not be able to answer it right now, but maybe 6 months, a year down the road, if I get that support and know more about it when I'm here, to not be afraid of it. So they can start now and maybe a year from now you might not be ready I mean, you might not be ready now, but a year from now you could be ready to get that business or buy that house if they started with you all and got prepositioning ourselves strategically.

Right. I love Fearless Friday because it is fearless. You can shoot the man, but you can't shoot the dream. You can't shoot the vision. And that's why I love Fred Hampton Jr., that brother Fred Hampton. Oh my God, man. 21 years old, 21 years old, bringing those people together. And happened to be the biggest enemy of the state, not because he was killing it or destroying intelligence.

'Cause he was intelligent.

He was building and caring.

That's right.

And all I say is that, you know, I appreciate his life and his vision. People look at Malcolm X. Malcolm X was also, you know, not just black from America or from us. Like, he was Caribbean, man. You know? They killed his father, ran him over the train tracks, cut him in half.

Yeah.

Him and his mom was Garveyan. They were Garveyan. Garveyanism. All they wanted to do was set the people free. And they locked her up, and she didn't get free until after he was killed. He got freed, and she didn't die until the '80s. People don't know about his mom. You know? You know, I mean, I mean, I mean, these people, and, and, and then you talk about the welfare state, you talk about these things, and all these, all of these were contrived notions and dreams. You know what the best book, a movie I love people to go look at, but look at it differently now? Claudine. Have you ever seen Claudine?

Yes, yes. But really look at it. Yeah, okay, I'm gonna look at it different. You know, we grew up in Claudine.

Yes, keep away from him, Mr.

Welfare.

So, so when you look at it this time, look at the fact that— okay, and, and I can send you all this information. There was a structural analysis done after King and— Yeah, uh, Malcolm X and all these people, they said we've got to stop the messiahs from rising. The way you do that is to tear up the family. All these guys came from—

Take him out the house, give him welfare. Take the daddy out. The husband is now the state.

Exactly.

The controlling mechanism.

So now they'll pay for the kids or whatever. And so go back and listen to the— so, so, you know, Curtis Mayfield did the, the, the soundtrack, soundtrack, and Gladys Knight did the, the sound for it. She, she was, she was the, uh, singer in the groups, uh, and remember Mr. Welfare? Keep away from it, Mr. Welfare.

Yes.

Yes, forget your man, divorce him. Said, you know, he wants to— oh, don't spend all your time with him, you know, right? You got to get rid of him, Mr. Welfare, and keep it with— so when the, when, when, when, when, when the, uh, the, the lady came or the social worker came, they didn't come to help you with the job and figure out how to change you. They came looking for a toothbrush, a pair of shoes, and some pants.

That's right, that's right.

Come on now, I didn't look at the movie that way. I was— remember the kid that they thought was crazy. He just wanted to be invisible, so he ate invisible food and shit like that.

Jesus.

Mental illness of our people. Imagine she wanted to beat the girl because she was pregnant, having a kid again. Yeah, keeping the cycle going. Brother, she was looking for the brother. He was out there, you know, fighting for freedom. At the end of the movie, when they was getting married, the cops came in. Oh, But see, I didn't look at it back then like that. I was a kid, you know, I was just— I enjoyed the movie.

Yeah, that's what it's about.

She was on welfare, but she was sneaking around catching the bus, working in white folks' neighborhoods so she can bring in extra money to cover the bills. Yeah, and she was dating a garbage man, and she couldn't even have nothing that he brought to her. He brought her secondhand stuff, she had to hide it.

She had to hide it.

Yeah, think about how The psychological of that movie. And I was like, that's Claudine. And it was done. They, they picked the most incredible woman to play that part. Diahann Carroll.

They picked her.

She's a woman with class, but she played that welfare mother of 6 kids like no other.

Yeah.

Yes.

Oh my goodness. Yes, that you could feel it. I, I, yeah, it is. It's so true. And we've— and, and it's so many of us have failed for it, and we're so caught up in that system, and there's intergenerational dependency on welfare. And it's like, this is an opportunity that you all are offered to help break that cycle.

Wait, man, that's what my thing is. So now— and, and I, I, I've been— I didn't know I was groomed with going away from home because I, I, I miss my mom, right? I missed it. I missed that, those years of development. Because when I went to school, high school, then I had to go to college and I moved and all kind of stuff took place. But I, but I—

okay, I got these stories I've shared with you.

Yes.

This is the monkey and all that. Oh girl, I got a ton of them. So we got these stories and then I come out here and, you know, I, I, I look at The raising of my kids and, and what they're doing, and my nephews and grabbing them. And I look at the two difference because my nephews didn't have the, the, the, the, the access to me intellectually and, and, and, and, and maturing under my tutelage the way my kids did. And I can see the difference.

Mm-hmm.

I love them both. I love them all. But I, I'm telling you that, and then we can point out the— this thing about, uh, being a, a, uh, uh, uh, living in above the rim and stuff like that. So my kids, and my kids don't know nothing about nothing but just timeshare, going to Carmel, going to, going to, uh, to, to Lake Tahoe.

Real vacations.

Real vacations, you know, being in a room with a kitchen, you know, a couple bathrooms.

Growing up in North Carolina, you You know, it was the paper bag, chicken in the bag, going down to Atlantic Beach, South Carolina. That was the Black beach because we wasn't authorized or it wasn't appropriate or received well to go into the real Myrtle Beach. You know, I can remember all those days. We would go through the border of South Carolina and right there where Dillon stopped to get your gas. You have to know where to stop at to even get your gas.

The Green Book back in them days, brother.

Yeah.

So, so, so, so these are the things that I did. And then, you know, um, you know, I would bring my kids. I, I was doing a great job with the other bank that I worked with, and I, I had a little— because I, I, I monitored people even from— I learned how to deal with remote managing back in the day because I had other issues. I hired people from different states, so I had rooms in the city where I didn't have to keep renting hotels.

Mm-hmm.

And so I would, on some weekends, I would take my kids over to the room And they would be telling their people, my daddy got a place in the city. I said, you stop telling people your daddy got a place in the city. Daddy ain't got no place in the city.

Cut that shit out.

But I would take them and we would do things and we would have the craziest fun about, yeah, your dad's the CEO of a company. Yo, yeah, y'all do such and such. And we, God bless, so Miss Jackie didn't go, but I took a large ton of people, you know, The, the— I've been blessed with the lady that did the, the, the, the coffee shop is real close to me, and, and, and, and that's how I kind of stayed up in there doing some stuff. But bro, we went into— we went, we took dozens of people with us.

Vanessa, what she's talking— he talking about the coffee shop, that's the family that's been in this building now for 23 years. Oh, I believe 23 years. She's the one, the Tetro. It's an Eritrean family from, um, yeah, Eritrea, um, um, um, Africa. And they've been running this coffee shop. Everybody comes to the coffee shop and they know everybody's orders. I'm telling you. And I met the parents, right? The parents, I loved them.

Abdullah, right? So Abdullah actually bought it from this other guy that bought it from the Persian group with Moji. So, yes. And so there's a Café Teatro in Orinda over by the library.

Wow.

And there was one in Richmond. So, so what I've learned is how all of this stuff works from a family standpoint.

From a family standpoint.

And what— how you bring it together. Don't be ashamed of the folks in our families that have a different path because of the way God has chosen us to walk it, because we're walking it for each other's issues. We're walking it for each other's actually learning and development, because my development is a little different. I don't know how many times I've been here, you know, what's going on.

That's right.

And when we connect with Vannessa, we're connecting because of whatever it is that we need to, to learn from each other. I learned this from a guy named Dr. Hew Len.

Yes, he says so true.

He passed away in 2022. He taught the art of forgiveness through Ho'oponopono. You can look him up. I always tell your listeners, y'all can look him up, uh, Dr. Hew Len, H-E-W-L-E-N, you know. And what he said is, is that, you know, I'm sorry for whatever I've done to you, my family's done to you, to you and your family, all the way back to the beginning of time, because we're only here to make amends and for forgiveness for what comes up. I'm sorry, please forgive me for those things. And those— let that data and those memories go, right? Because they've done their job, you know. It's time to break that, and then they can go with You know, thank you, uh, for, for giving me a chance to, to make amends for that, and I love you. And you move on, and the super consciousness picks up whatever those things are and lets them go. And so that's why I started off in the very beginning of this conversation with, I'm sorry, please forgive me, I love you, and thank you. And those things have helped me, uh, on this journey of what we have.

Beautiful.

And, and I'm telling y'all You know, there's a there's an awakening. There's a there's a vibration and a frequency. Oh, it is that we that we can't ignore.

We can't ignore it.

And there is something about us meeting and talking and getting together. And like they said, tell them saying my job and my theme is to gather this information, twist it and clean it up and wring it out, and just go ahead and tell them saying tell. Tell them what it is.

Awesome, awesome. That is so true.

This has really been something. I mean, my God, my God, my God. And I'm just going over— even my, my, my, my side daughter is calling in from, from Africa right now. She probably just want to say hi and keep bumping in. She does the podcast with me right here. Here she is. You can say hi to her, right here.

Yes, please.

She's right here.

Oh, how you doing? How are you doing, girl? How's everything?

Yeah, she was my, um, my, um, my linguist when I was there doing child, child rescue. Yes, with the inside the interior with the Maasai children. She was the one as a child, she was the best English-speaking person, will be the one to translate with these children that we was, um, rescuing and communicating with us and everything, right?

Well, did she, did she hear this podcast?

Yeah, she's saying through the whole thing.

So why don't you just pull her up on, man?

Well, she's down there in Africa.

Pull her up on the screen, man. Just tell us. I love to say hi.

I know. And we we need to get that. We need to get some of this information. You might not. We not may not have the loans and stuff out there, but the education and information needs to get to Africa too. So if you can, Mr. Sanford, Sanford, how do we they get your financial literacy program? Where can they find that at? Can you give it to me? I'm a Put the put it on the ad. Do you see where it added that, Sydney? Go into um the uh program.

I don't know. It's on his side. It's on his side.

Okay. Well, we wanted we need it on here. So go into go into captions, Sydney, and type the information in captions, and then you can put it right here on the screen. It'll pop up on the screen.

Okay.

My ad.

So we can get.

Okay.

I can add, right? Mm-hmm.

And I'm gonna call it. I'm gonna um let me go.

So if somebody wants your program, that program needs to be everywhere. I want to get it. Everywhere. See how we can do it. When you talked about doing that program online, there's no reason why you cannot— like you talk about once a month, maybe get people or a group of kids together to come online and teach it virtually.

Called Building Dreams. That's the children one. I said literacy training for the parents.

Pull it up, pull it up, pull it up. I, I, I—

okay, now let me show you right here. Here we go.

And I think at the bottom of the screen you can share it. At the bottom of the screen, Cindy, you can do share screen.

Because I'm doing split screen. Which one you— which one is the same?

At the bottom, you can do share screen.

One of them is the manual and the other one is the training session for the parents later. It's both of them, man.

Okay, so let me— how about let's put the LinkedIn up that way they can go there and share it.

This is wonderful. So we got a little— we got a little bit of, like you say, it's, it's all The timeline is all the same. The past, the present, the future is on one timeline. We think it's years here.

You talk about let's do it, let's do it again. Yes, you know. Oh yeah, this is definitely, you know, a repetitive, consistent—

a consistency that we need to have.

That's right, that's right.

When you pull it up, now click on, click on, just click on one of them and see what Can you open it up?

Let's see right there. That's the link. But what you're talking about, yeah, I got that. But it's going to be the link.

Helping Black people make dreams come true for Black businesses. Yeah, Sanford Living said make dreams come true for Black businesses.

So what I did, is that another one? I got so many. What's that?

Linktree literacy training for the parents.

Yeah, click it. Click on it again and see what— yeah, yeah, look at the inside of this thing.

Yeah, share the screen, Sydney. Share your screen.

Okay, stand by. Hold on, let me do it this way. If I'm gonna share the screen, it just came up.

What happened to it?

No, I got it on my side. I'm about to share the screen. Hold on.

Go.

All right, screen. Let me go to this one and screen share. All right, so let me go out. Yeah, where we at right here is, is Linktree, and I posted a Linktree already inside the Facebook.

No, no, click that page. Just click it.

Just click on this one to see if it comes up.

It came up before.

Mm-hmm. I'm to 23 pages.

You guys get on there. You see this information?

Look at that. You don't want to look at—

you want to get this and it's free. You want to download it. If it's not for your kids, for yourself.

Look at number 7. Look at that.

Number 7.

What we said, can you speak the language of literature?

So can you go down here?

The language of legacy. Speak the language of legacy.

Okay, that was on page 7.

It's chapter 7, but keep going.

Chapter 7.

There it is right there. There it is right there. See it right there? It's like right there.

Speaking the language of literacy. Okay, got you.

Yeah, just read that. What does it say?

It says, um, your child is learning about vision boards, money mindsets, and dreaming big. Reinforce that language at home. What would Future do What, what, what would future you do with this money? It's a reflective kind of value. How does this decision help us live well? This isn't just about today, it's about our family's future.

Absolutely.

That's right.

Absolutely.

You see, you see, you see what I'm saying? We're talking about the action steps and then introduce a money talk Ritual, five minutes a week. And so these are the things that families can actually do: pick up the book, start to keep, and then keep a journal of what you're doing.

Work these questions inside here.

Nice.

So guys, go inside the go inside the feeds for this live show. Inside the comments, I put all his links inside there to include. If you go to his Linktree, it's going to break down every external link that you want, and you have a way to get to contact him directly as well through his website and beyond.

This is the real life stuff. Funding strategies that work. Save $5 a month and grow it. How you do that? Through Stash, through Cash App.

Stash and Cash App. I'm gonna check out that Stash.

They don't cost you anything.

Nothing.

I've done, I've done, um, I remember my first time doing crypto, I actually bought, um, $100 worth of crypto.

And you stop sharing, Sydney. Please stop sharing so we can see your face. Okay, we want to hear what you say. Oh, but get that training for the parents for financial literacy. That's beautiful.

Oh, we're doing a lot over here. Give me one second. Yeah, right there.

Oh yeah, Stash. Is that— that's stash.com and Cash App. You could buy it in increments.

I don't even see the stop sharing button.

Now the Stash— Stash has like an app on your phone also.

Yeah, real quick.

And just let you know, this is how crazy it is. You guys sign up for it and you give the link out to people, you know, you're, you're, uh, uh, uh, Fearless Fridays gets a $5 kind of a little foundation.

Yeah, we set up to even do the ad works and everything.

You can do that. That's how they— that's how they, they market, word of mouth. Each one teach one, and they— and you can get it done that way.

Each one teach one. Well, we're down with that program. That's right, growth and the cycles, right?

That's right. And I'm always— and about nonprofits, you're always looking for different ways to raise money. That's a small fundraiser for you right there.

Awesome, awesome, awesome. Exactly.

There's so many different ways to raise money. Yes.

And, and each one teach one, and do it in a way where you know who's actually taking your word for it, you know, who's actually following and implementing what they're lacking from your piece. Yeah, that's what I do with some kids in South San Francisco. I go over to the YG— Y something— the Youth Development— YDC, White Youth Development Corp or something like that. And, uh, I, I do— we do, uh, uh, some, some, some things. Uh, Black Wealth Growth is a brother named Eugene Mitchell that has a book out. We use this book over there with the kids, uh, and they graduate after, I think, after 6 weeks of training and going some things and, and, and learning, you know, how, you know, if all of us had a simple, you know, index, you know, a life insurance policy, they wouldn't shoot you as fast, would they? And every time you got to shoot somebody— Not at all. Pay a half a million dollars. I don't, uh, you know, don't shoot that man.

Yeah, that's the wrong one to shoot.

Yeah, that's the wrong one. So yeah, there's a lot of little things we used to do by word of mouth. There's a lot we used to do to build up our businesses, uh, that we still can do it. And then there's those other businesses that need special equity and they raise funds for it. I used to always say, here, I'm gonna go raise $2 million. I wish I can go— that's back in Trinidad— say, hey, Mom, I'm gonna be right back, you know, with a different plan in mind. You know, like, like Rakim said, thinking of a master plan, you know, I had to change it up, you know. You learn to earn 'cause you're righteous, you know, type of thing. And you use those songs and really listen to them and figure them— because you guys gotta remember, back in the day, uh, when hip-hop was born out of New York and stuff, they had the Poor Righteous Teachers.

Yeah, Poor Righteous Teachers.

That's from Trenton, New Jersey.

That's right.

From Trenton. You got Poor Righteous Teachers, you got the, uh, the the last poets. You have Gil Scott-Heron, you got KRS-One, you got all of these folks that would talk about what you needed to understand, even Rakim.

And this is amazing how woke they were back there. Not the woke that we think. I'm talking about the vibrational woke, the source woke, not the woke that they talk about on Black and I'm Woke. We're talking about the They were— the things that they were saying back then, you're like, what? Oh, I've been here before. This is not my first go-around. And so on and so forth. It's like, yeah, amazing.

You got— you guys are doing that. Fearless Friday is, is exactly what it's meant to be, because you've gotta be fearless, knowing— not, not because there is a reason not to be careful and with your courage, but the reason that, uh, If we were talking this way, if you, if you understand what we're saying right now, none of it has been to fight a particular enemy of some sort. But when you focus on what you're doing so much so, it's different. There's a poem called If. If any people know about If, you know, If you can keep your head about you when all are losing theirs and blaming it on you, you can trust yourself when all men doubt you and make allowances for for the doubting too, and not give way to hating. Don't hate. Or lies. Don't deal in lies. Yet don't look too good or talk too wise. That's a great one. If you can dream and not make dreams your master, and think and not make thoughts your aim. If you meet with both triumph and disaster and treat those 2 imposters just the same. Those are the things that we've got to talk to each other about.

That's right. You know, the hidden battles inside that we don't talk about. We don't have to battle it alone. We don't have This is what we're here for, right? To fight those battles and get through it. And here, this is what you can have on the end of it.

Yes, yes, yes.

The battle of fear of going for that loan, the battle of fear of doing something different, the battle of fear of fighting that business, buying the house, and the fear of dealing with the man. Because sometimes we were talking, I was thinking, I know some people may have the fear because we look at you and it's like, okay, wait, they got billions of dollars, the institution. How is it going to affect me? You know, what do they— what do they want from me out of this? You know, and, and they don't want anything. They want to see you successful. They want you to pay your money back, but they want to see you successful. Because when you're successful, we're all successful. It helps our communities and it helps our neighborhood and our family.

And girl, you go over here from Oakland, but you know, I, I gotta keep pouring out, yo. There's a place over on Ossosso Lake. It's called the Record Plant. Have you ever heard about it?

No.

Oh my God, yes, you guys, look it up. The Record Plant. It is one of the baddest recording studios ever built.

What?

Over in Chippewa, over right before we cross over to get to Angel Island?

Yes. And Prince's first album was recorded at the Record Plant. Yes, Sausalito. Uh, uh, Sly and the Family Stone did all their stuff out of the Record Plant.

Oh, I see it.

Yeah, Fleetwood Mac, that was here.

Matter of fact, they even did the show, they did the historical value of that. I think it was on Netflix or something that I was, I was watching, and it broke it all the way down. Um, and it was talking about, um, how, how, um, the Family Stone and them, how they was reflected against Parliament. Was Parliament— they was doing it to reflect the value of all of them, how they had to come into their own because they had a different type of way of delivering the message.

There's so many things you gotta know about. So, so, so you know who else recorded over there? Stevie Wonder.

Wow.

Do you know Fleetwood Mac, that song? What was it called? You can go your own way, go your own way. That was a that was an argument, and the guy slammed the door, walked out of the out of the record player, and said, "You go your own way. I go my own way." They got drunk and high and started playing, and played a song called "You Can Go Your Way." So I want to check that out.

I'm coming back. I'm coming out there. Yeah, I come out there in January.

Song over there, and these are the things that I learned because they were trying to make it a historical place. and, and, and they came to get a guarantee to do the loan because it's a nonprofit that was trying to buy it.

Okay.

So these are the things that I found out I didn't know nothing about, all that crazy stuff. Like even with George Clinton, right? There's a guy who wrote Flashlight.

Flashlight.

So there's a part of that song, Spotlight.

1976, out there on 4th Street.

Exactly. So you know where he got one of the, the, the Famous riffs and flashlight was from he was a kid. He was six or seven years old, and he went to his friend's bat mitzvah. And guess what the little clip was? You'll know it right away. Da da da di da da da da da da da. Yeah, that's from the that's from that's from a bat mitzvah.

Okay, okay.

But he but the flashlight. Da da da di da da da da.

Yeah, yeah, I can.

Flashlight, spotlight. Now they lay me down to sleep.

That was from okay.

If we just keep knowing these things and we take time out, we have to talk about we.

This is crazy because we we're talking about the birthplace of many things.

Who?

ever known that thing started with an argument, right?

Right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, argument.

Now that makes sense.

It does.

I'm telling you, another famous one, you know, uh, La Chic. Remember La Chic?

Yes.

What was it? What's, what's the base Freak out?

Freak out.

Where do you think that came from?

Oh, people— somebody was upset and freaking out?

No, no, no, they were upset because he lived a block away from Studio 54. Ah, and they wouldn't let him in. So he started playing, he said— they said, fuck you. He said, fuck off. So he went home and they got drunk, you know, you know. Oh, fuck off! Fuck off! Then he said, when a bus driver gets you down and he won't pick you up, and he's spinning all around.

Oh, fuck you!

And he said, man, you know, they ain't gonna play that. Turn the Freak Out and they turn the Fuck You to Fuck, uh, Fuck Off to Freak Out. Okay, Studio 54, look it up. I, I, I just love stuff like that.

I, I, like I said, the historic history— you are historian. We're about to keep you. You got to— you need to come back and be the resident historian. That's it. We always talk about it.

You are a historian.

Financial and historian.

You guys have solved the issue of really uncovering the notion of the quietness of what folks need for cash. But cash is but one element of the success of an entrepreneur. It is to believe in the self of a dream. Don't look at the possibilities and the probability of success, because guess what? We're all here as a lottery ticket. You know why? There were millions of sperm cells, whatever you want to call them, and you were the one that made it.

That's right.

You are all winners.

All winners.

At least one time in your life.

One time in your life, you're a winner.

Yes. And you're here for a purpose. You've got to fulfill that purpose you're here for. Why did you win? You didn't win just to come in, just to be here. You won because it was a purpose for you to be here, and make sure you walk that purpose.

Live your purpose.

Don't walk that purpose.

Do things fearlessly.

So was this a great call?

It was wonderful.

I'm so appropriate. I so appreciate incredible being with you.

Really enjoyed it.

I so appreciate being. Yeah, I hope you reach out to as many folks. I hope they put this in a place where it can be grabbed and.

Oh, it will be.

It's going.

I already put it up on the site and everything.

And like I said, edit, cut pieces. We're trying to get all over the place.

I'm telling you right here.

And that's because we've got to get the message out. It's too— that this money is sitting there. This— and people talk about our reparations. Well, there's many ways to get it, and this is an opportunity for you to get some of your reparations. You're gonna pay it back, because don't think when you got those reparations before, it— you weren't gonna pay it back. It was gonna go back to them eventually because we was going to spend it. Oh yeah, this is our opportunity. This is our reparations. Go and get some of that money for those of you that's talking about it and do something with it. And then you build your business and turn it into your 40 acres and your mule.

Okay, that's right.

Amen.

That's well said. And, and, and so it is.

So give us a closeout, Sanford, about— yes, the next step. How to be fearless?

Um, you know, with the spirit that's within each of us, I say go back and look at those that have been overlooked, that have been trying to give us that message. You know, there was somebody that was trying to give us this message a long time ago. Sounds crazy, but please look it up. How many— y'all, y'all know because y'all in my age group.

Reverend Ike.

I'll be damned if he wasn't talking about this. He kept saying, you're looking over here, you're looking over there, you're looking out there looking for some man in the sky. Look within. Within is the power and the glory that we have.

Yes.

Uh, within, within is that, is, is that, is that godlike consciousness that needs to be awakened and it needs to be thought of. Within. Within. And we carry within us not just DNA, but we carry within us thousands of years of stories.

Thousands of years of stories.

That have, um, that deserve to be told.

That need to be told.

And I sit up in that damn coffee shop and I'm in the middle— millions of dollars you got moving all around.

So, Vanessa, I'm gonna take the pictures of the coffee shop. With him sitting inside of it. Okay, because he'd be up there with his whole team.

When I come there, I want to sit in that coffee shop with you. When I come, I want to— I'm gonna be there in January. I'm gonna be there the first 2 weeks of January, a week in January, 1st of January. And I, I'm gonna come.

Where are you now?

Where are you now?

In Georgia.

What part?

In Augusta. Right now I'm in Atlanta today, but I'm in Augusta, Georgia.

Come to Atlanta too, because you know what Atlanta and Oakland's doing? Swapping stories about the tax credit around the, uh, the, uh, entertainment, or I would call the creative economies.

Oh.

Because a lot of the jobs in California and the entertainment industry are shifting to Georgia because of the tax credits. But guess what? Guess what? They don't have this incredible opportunity because they got SSBCI money too, and they're trying to figure out how to use it. So we're talking to some of the people over there about— they're saying, well, damn, how y'all— y'all are just kicking it, killing it over there. I said, you know, we got a system over here that none of the rest of you folks have, which is called the FDC system, which is we have a middleware between the state and the lenders, and we're the middleware, and we're ex-bankers that are recovering, and we can, we can tell the— we, we're that lexicon between the government and these bankers to make sure we put it to good use. The banks make the loan with the private money, and we insure the money with a portion of that money with the guarantee. And therefore, uh, all these other elements take place. Like I said, look at the double-slit experiment about observation, all that kind of stuff. That's, that's real. That begins us to become aware of our surroundings, what we're doing in this ecosystem called life and love and, and care that we carry, each of us. We're not disconnected. We're all connected. connected one way or another.

They call it 6 degrees of separation.

I sat here and called another Sydney because I'm talking to this Sydney, and then kind of find out his daughter's name is Sydney.

So we just 3 deep up in here.

It's just Sydney all over the place.

Yes, all over the place.

Well, Sephora, don't let this— do not— this is not gonna be our last conversation because I just want to just sit and listen to your stories. But don't let this be the last time you come on and you chat with Yeah, you're welcome anytime.

You're definitely welcome anytime. If you got a program or something coming out, or you, you have something that you want to communicate, just hit me up. And hey, you know, mic's yours.

Let's do that, brother. I appreciate you. I appreciate you, Miss Vanessa. I appreciate you, Sydney.

I appreciate you.

We appreciate you.

I love energy, man. I mean, just, just a wealth of knowledge with the energy at the same time. No, and you're not gatekeeping. No, you know, knowledge is vain without sharing. So if you're sharing it, then you, you, you multiply. Teach one, each one teach one.

It's like faith without— faith without works is dead. Faith without ingenuity and execution is what it is.

Exactly.

Yes, it's just a book. It's just a book. Just doesn't do anything.

Yeah, and please get that last book I told you about, Black Evidence. Oh, Black Candace.

pull that up right now.

Candace Watts Smith. It's a history and a warning.

Candace White?

Candace Watts. W-A-T-T-S. I think it's Watts Smith. Okay, you see it? Black evidence. Black evidence comes right up.

There it is.

There it is right there. I got it. Okay, so I'm plugging everything into the timeline so that way we can always go back. Yeah, so we can always go back and know what it's about. Watson, I got it right here.

Yeah, just read the caption so people know what it says.

Okay, if you notice, if you know, Black Evidence: A History of Warning by Duke University politician scientist Candace Watts Smith is a non-fictional book published on March 3rd, 2026. The overall theme, the core argument: the book examines a recurring Recurring American pattern: periods of racial progress and reckoning followed by severe retrenchment. Smith argues this cycle stems from a deep-seated national habit of denying the lived truths and experience and memories of Black Americans. Yeah, you definitely— we definitely got to get this.

I'm gonna put this on. I'm gonna bring this right here.

Definitely. Definitely. We all need to get that book, read a little bit of it, and I'm sure there's stories in there. There's stories, like you said, stories need to be told.

And warnings.

Smith warns that denying Black truth has dangerous consequences. It weakens society's ability to spot warning signs of authoritarianism, That's what we're dealing with today, right?

Right.

And increases our tolerance for cruelty. And just to hit on that right there, the objective, as I would see one of the marginalized objectives that we marginalized to, to listen to all this rhetorical negativity all the time, is to browbeat people into a cycle of forgetfulness or forgetting. You know, you can strip everything you want out of the music. out of the Smithsonian. But the truth is we can never forget because if we keep our storytelling with inside the families there to include our own spots on the internet, he can get rid of the National Archives, but he can't get rid of Sanford's story. He can't get rid of Sanford's website. So all these mended and places we can go to to build our historical accounts, right, is easily stayed because we are in the information age and AI now has quadrupled the possibilities of becoming completely independent, you know. And this is why I dive deep into that, just for sustainability and everything. But yes, this is— this is even on the financial side and the investment side. And I'm sure some people— I'm sure he got some pointers on that too with the AI margins. I gotta just to let you guys know, I got a young man that basically came out of United States military through a friend of a friend. He's birthed inside of Kenya right now. He's an African American, but he's sustaining himself through bots that does trading for him. His calls and puts is based upon the bots giving him the predictability analysis. So this thing can go long and long and long. But we need to start with the basics, and we have the basics master right here to walk us up to the promised land.

That's right.

In the terms of the financial— getting away from the financial ignorance that they beat us with or try to subject to us on an ongoing basis. Let's change the conversation at the dinner table. Let's change The conversations and the pulpits. If we're going to yell Jesus, yell it with a, a, a confidence of this is how we get ahead at the same time. And we thank Pastor Jamal Bryant, people out there in different ministries and different organizations that's pushing the value of who we are through the learning mechanisms of, hey, the reality step by step. And we thank you, Mr. Sanford. We really do.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.

We thank you. And you, you're, you're our longest running podcast, and we thank you so much. Like I always say, we got to get out of here. We got to have you come back for 2. We could just all just sit and talk, and we just, we feed off each other. Oh yeah, and then this, and then— so with that being said, Mr. Sanford, we're gonna give you the last word before we close out.

And I say, Lord, don't move this mountain, but give me the strength to climb.

Yes.

You know, and there's got to be rain in your life to appreciate the sun, the sunshine, the sunshine. God bless everybody, and may all of our dreams come true. And when we realize the wonderment of being alive and having this journey path on Earth, And smell the flowers, watch the sunset and the sunrise, watch the waterfalls and the— and watch the deer run. And God bless all of you and have a great one.

Awesome. Bless you. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I'm gonna play us out.

Go ahead.

Join us again. Thank you for Fearless Friday, where we face challenges, share our stories, and move forward together. Until next time, take care, stay encouraged, and keep being fearless.