 before we go to work come on man we got work to do it's time to get serious it ain't no time for me to be here with my shirt off showing my tattoos don't make me go back to the streets I just got out the streets man come on I'm trying to get on the path of righteousness and you know uplift the community you feel me I'm trying to be by my business like these brothers right here they got all kind of exotic fragrances multiple fragrances they ain't here they about to bring back S curls you play too much jail but it's seriously time for me to let the people know that the black market back on now this one I'm gonna do this different because the name of this company is already my favorite so I'm gonna let them say it cuz I don't want them to think I'm playing all right so look this was y'all gotta do y'all gotta look at the camera and introduce yourselves and tell me about this guy cuz yep you yeah my name is any time bariola co-founder and creative director of flourish the largest platform to shop and discover black-owned brands Steve Canal CEO and co-founder of flourish and this is definitely spot to scale and discover black-owned brands now what is flourish flourish is the spot bro you know when you with the woman you find that G spot I mean we might got a product like that because the point is shout out the holidays candy coated I think the point is to be able from the time that you wake up to the time that you go to sleep at night have a touch point and experience black-owned brand so whether it's a shampoo your toothpaste your toothbrush your beard oil your clothes the pancake mix the I mean the fragrances cards the cookies with the tabletop everything gotta be black on imagine that because at the end of the day what that means is if you have one home right and the products in the home are all black on what does that mean for the founders the problem that you're about to go down not I'm just messing with you you know they did that yeah but you imagine how that's supporting the black community right in the economy right allowing us to flourish allowing us to flourish I see how you think yeah I like what is going so how did all this come about man we wanted to create a platform to eliminate the search right you know let me find a black-owned such-and-such or black-owned such-and-such you go and flourish everything's there for vegan lip gloss flat out of heels you know like you said pancake mix lip balm you can find everything at that location but in addition to that we created the opportunity to the story tell so brands we create content and match them with influencers and we also activate events right so it allows the brands an opportunity to get discovered we just did a partnership with TD jakes and launched good soil where we were able to bring down 23 black-owned brands to get exposure in front of 2,000 people who attended the event right we did South by Southwest where you know they were we brought down about 15 brands 15 brands we got about five of them to come on stage and they're able to talk about themselves and the journey in their brand you know I'm saying in front of 25 you know thousand people that are coming in and out throughout the weekend so it's an opportunity for exposure but you know for any time in us it's in our DNA you know I'm saying being able to support black-owned brands and be able to support our people you know it was up to us to make this decision to push this forward and we accepted that challenge same reason why you do it you know I'm saying like the that feeling you get man like we say here watched you know like you get to put these people on a platform it's not just a brand or a founder these are people man this is our people you know you're able to legitimately change their lives you know like one of our brand partners got a hundred thousand dollar grant in good soil event we just did right we're putting people in position like overnight their lives are changing another another brand we had them design the merchandise for good soil right so we changed their lives overnight and that's that's literally the there's the there's this this this gap between this wall that our brands hit as they're trying to scale like you're gonna hit a wall you might make a million you might make a thousand make five thousand eventually you're gonna be saying well how do I get into the retail how do I do this I don't have the resources of the network or the relationships to get this part of the business done it's gonna take me to that next level make me really compete just like you said and that's exactly why I do this yeah right to have a platform and to not do something like that it just be crazy because people need to know that we are people out here doing different things they got the clothing brand they got the the food the snacks the desserts the cologne with they need to see us in all our greatness so that's exactly what the black market how did y'all link up on the business though man man you want me to get destroyed and we got two different perspectives so I want to fam you and shout out to family we're at the classic the Atlanta classic and I think out of all the people who'd have been on here fam you said all fam you's heavy man like more the more people and clay clay I want to you can't we came in together yeah you didn't fall 2000 so I was at this event at this at the dome and he was at the Georgia dome and he was like in corporate so I snuck up in the suite me and my homie snuck up in the suite he was the only black dude in the suite a bunch of all these white folks I was like man I hope this dude don't call us out and he just let us kind of kick it there he all know I don't think you knew us but I was like and I was watching him handle business and at the time I was just you know I was a young kid doing some wild stuff but eventually I started just to see him in different spaces and I ended up writing three best sellers three books before I was doing this and we connected when he was at another company he was working at corporate company and he was doing a tour with Damon John and really pouring black dollar I mean pouring money into the black community via the corporate dollars through pitch competitions and stuff so I kind of saw him moving and grooving like that and I reached out to him to do it like to get involved and he's like I'll highlight you when you're ready and I thought he was kind of just you know kind of playing me left but he actually hollered at me when I was ready not when he was ready when I was ready when I was in a position to where it made sense for the relationship to get extended further so we ended up going on tour together he wrote a book a best seller the mind of a winner and in 2017 I think it was we took we combined a tour book tour I was going on exhibit great tour and tour domestically sold out tour globally Australia and sold out everywhere and and then did different ventures with the homie Kenny Burns then went on different tours together as well and just built our relationship and I learned like how he does business to pace it which he does business I saw y'all here bouncing ideas right imagine that my dids actually going into execution yeah and then you're looking it's like a moving product so I saw how quickly he moved and saw he was almost like this missing piece you know to my creative mind where he could actually execute and teach me a lot of things so he's like this mentor turn business partner right and we've been rocking since we had this idea in 2020 with flourish and you know it didn't exist it was a bunch of lists if you wanted to find a black brand I either had to ask you what you're wearing going IG in search or look at along the rest or directory of brands right so we try to make a seamless you know experience where people could just go to one place casually and find all the dope black brands they like and support right and you know being on this journey has been phenomenal because it's open the eyes of the corporate partners as well right because we filter the brands we have over 3,000 brands that are trying to get on to the platform and we're educating them on what they need to do to get on to the platform some of them might need better photography photo shots so we have photographers we sync them with you know some of them need finance so we have financiers who work with them you know some of them need better product description or copy or they just need that extra push right of direction and guidance so that's what you find at flourish is not just the econ platform you find a place where you're getting put on in a myriad of ways right from event execution to being getting distribution into retail we just launched the shade room shop we just launched good soil with TD jakes we have so you know how you think of a Walmart target and all these different big box distribution outlets yeah we're doing that virtually as well because when you think about the shade room they got 40 million in their audience I know right so when we create a platform you're actually on their space and they're posting about you every day we've done over seven million dollars worth of posts on the shade room for the brands to be able to get that exposure they're all getting a million views per post think about what that does to their family what that does to them and the legacy they're building by building this community and they all work together you know thinking about you know 3 pls distribution you know thinking about manufacturers where can I get a better costume t-shirt or a hoodie you know so this community we work together in this family you know we have over 250 brands on the platform that's all right you know like gatekeeping stuff all that like that's that expired with 2020 man like we're on a different wave I think culturally we're you know we're collectively finally contributing it's like cooperation and less competition you know what I'm saying like we're finally on one accord and it's lasted long enough it's year three so I know a lot of people are afraid like it when is this moment gonna end we here is it not we we're literally right here on the run this couch tell me about some of these good oh man yo shout out to Terrence Pratt with memoir fragrances he's got an incredible story and an amazing brand um he collects you know fragrances and he's been collecting for years his his collection his entire attic dedicated to just wall-to-wall bigger than the department store so his his knowledge on it is crazy and he had a passion for it and one time you know I was like yo what are you wearing bro he said my own stuff I said you gotta be kidding me so I said do you sell it he said no I don't have any attention to I just do it for myself my wife you know I'm saying like I said no you got there's no way you can't bottle this up so down the line from you know from different conversations we had he came out with a product to tell me how to smell man you know what I'm saying I'll let you do it yeah yeah yeah hold on this the one yeah yeah that's one of the ones check out speeding bronze wheel real quick yeah my dog said he want one of them oh we got we got you yeah we got you we got you yeah already called up I man that smells amazing yeah you don't keep doing that yeah it smells like money it smells like money I need everything we got you man we got one of these cars everything on here is black on yeah we love we got kindred paper which makes cards black on got you a set for mother's day come on so it's gonna die loud which is hung up got you your members jacket come on man this man yeah she ain't y'all give me a shit you ain't gotta take it in yours man yeah it's like that's all I do you know we try we try to bring on everything black on we try to make sure we bring the culture and to your point the high quality that is being produced by these brands right because the stigma the black on brands is customer service is poor you know quality is poor such and such such and such but with this with flourish you're gonna find high quality brands that are there that are ready now where can they where can they go and catch up where they need to go to be a part of this movement definitely how can they get their products gotta follow the f yeah follow the f with us man um flourish flourish dot com you know you gotta flourish you can apply as a brand right on the website it takes like 20 seconds to apply as a brand um you say what at every building we're building an app we're building that yeah proof of concept sir proof of concept yes sir yeah you're going flourish dot com with the why um you'll be able to apply as a brand we go through the process we zoom everybody so we have face-to-face conversations and make sure you're prepared for the platform once you're on the platform sync through our technology in the back end it'll take about 15 20 minutes you're on the site ready to roll and then based on you know your brand if you're ready for it because some brands you know taking a step back when he was talking about retail um and category leaders within this space you have to understand that just because you have a dope brand doesn't mean you're ready you know for for the action when it comes to the distribution and you love to tell people they ain't ready you gotta say you ain't ready so man you might not be ready but when you know a big box retailer says i need 50 000 pieces next you know next month you got to be able to deliver if you don't you're dead to them right so we want to make sure we put you in that position for success yeah so if you come through our platform you're on flourish and you're ready for a tsr the shave room shop right you can get distribution through the shave room that's a whole other ballgame right when it comes to the awareness and the visibility of the brands yeah so it's our job to be able to talk to the brands and understand who's prepared for that moment and who we need to coach to be prepared for that moment but regardless you're gonna have that opportunity yeah that's what's up man now if you hit him and he tell you you ain't ready i'm getting your feelings you just not ready he even told his partner hit me when you ready yeah so that's the same piece of advice though but but for me right i purposely went to corporate to learn how to run a billion dollar business yeah right i coined the term corporate manure i was in corporate but i was still an entrepreneur right so i learned what it took to push a machine right you know and then when going on tour with damon john from shark tank creator fooboo for five years in supporting and seeing what it took for businesses to scale and succeed we took all that insight imported into what we're doing as well you know what i'm saying so this isn't something we just made up out of the sky you know what i'm saying we know what it takes to be in retail we know what it takes to scale your business we know what it takes from a social perspective the content to create so we put you into that cycle in that community but from then just do the work yeah well man what's your social media we're gonna make sure we promote promote promote how can my audience get in touch with you one more time i g we flourish everything across the board we flourish with the y f l o u r y s h show me your shirt man right flourish and personal burial ask b-e-r-e-o-l-a-s-q-u-e and steve can now s-t-e-v-e-c-a-n-a-l howl at us you don't need to get your books man oh man it's all the more you ain't even tell them about the book i didn't all of them will be on flourish by the way but amazon wherever books are sold honestly uh bariola ask is the first book the contemporary gentleman and etiquette book for the urban sophisticated second book is gentlewoman etiquette from a from a gentleman etiquette for a lady from a gentleman third book is the gray a relationship etiquette study so it's all about etiquette don't i mean etiquette is just a way to maneuver relationships you know what i'm saying it's a way that the tools do you use to maneuver relationships you know i'm saying i think a lot of people get it misconstrued and they think it's a bow tie in a suit and yes sir and it it's not it's not who you are it's not like what you do what you put on is who you are and it's the tools that you use to navigate who you are and maintain your identity in the book i release called the mind of a winner is also available and it's available in audible as well um got damon john in there barbara cork ring got two chains in there as well that's inside the nbm tnt all in the book sharing their insights of how they not only attain success but sustained it over time you know i'm saying and all that's in there for you but look man i appreciate y'all stopping through here this y'all first time come yeah don't let it be the last absolutely not this might have to be quarterly or ever so often quarterly way that y'all moving you just want some more gifts huh different brands hey we got you by the way yes we'll come for the whole team we'll bring our brands our Atlanta brands and just have them just lay stuff out man you know the best part about y'all bro i didn't even have to tell you how much sad man y'all always welcome over here on the black market bro the black market is open and that's how we live and let's get a photo thank you for the record book i appreciate you man