 New York City, it's your mayor Eric Adams. Welcome to the Gist of Dundcast. Let's get to it. When you hear the word hog, you think about someone holding things to themselves, not willing to share. But I'm here today with just an amazing New Yorker, Deborah Colt-Nigsburger. And she is from the thrifty hog. I was out in the street one Sunday, looking at how we were going to transform Broadway and you were standing off to the side and we started chatting. And you told me about your thrift shop. And I was just so moved, I walked around the block and I was able to go inside and actually I purchased a nice tire worth the other day. Yes, you did. You did, you did. Tell us the whole journey, you know, because one does not find a African American model, German last name, now in a thrift shop. Born in Jamaica. Born in Jamaica. You know, just a real New York story. And I was just so impressed and I enjoyed the conversation we had and just the whole vision. You're more than just a thrift shop. So take us back to the origin of how did you end up off Broadway in an area where you would probably not believe you would have in a woman of Jamaican ancestry with a thrift shop in a neighborhood. So give us, take us on this journey. Okay, so first of all, it's so amazing to be here. Thank you for having me. My journey has been a journey indeed. I came here as a child from Jamaica. My parents came and then they did the usual, you know, immigrant story where they sponsored my brother and I and we came up. I lived in the Bronx and grew up in the Bronx and I had a very special childhood. My parents were always very much into community service and my brother's mandate in mind was always to go help that person or give back or whatever. And at one point in my life, I was kind of always mad at my dad because we would back in the seventies, it snowed every day in the winter, right? So we would be my mom worked at NYU and we would have to go down and get her from work. He'd pick us up from school and we would go down and you can be sure that there would be a broken down car on the side of the road and that my dad stuck in the snow, can't go anywhere. And my dad would be the only motorist stopping to dig them out or help them. So I was always like, can we go home? I'm hungry. And in spite of all that, it's just interesting how I became my parents because I saw it so much. I lived it so much. So they embodied it, you know? So I went to NYU and during my late teens and early twenties, I modeled. So I loved the fashion business. Well, I dreamed of doing forever, except I also loved languages. So I majored in foreign languages at NYU and my goal was to work at the UN and be a diplomatic translator. Graduated college. What was your major, by the way? My major was romance language. So I majored in languages. Yeah, I majored in French and Italian and minored in German. I can see French and Italian in a romance language, not German. No, it's not. So that was my minor. My minor was German and I started at the UN but I really just didn't love it. I went back to fashion because I really loved it so much. So I worked my way up and I worked in a lot of showrooms. I did a lot of fit modeling and then... What's foot modeling? It's like fit, yeah. So every garment that's made basically is made on something or someone, a shape or mannequin. And so you call fit models and a lot of big designers, they have a muse. So they use that person as the person they used to measure what they're going to, you know, how they're gonna fit that garment. And I loved it but I especially learned so much about fashion and doing it that I was just really taken away by it. So I started working as, you know, in sales, I modeled for stores. They would hire me to come in for a weekend and just wear whatever was in the store. And then I started working. I really loved like the exchange between, you know, the customers of myself and I innately somehow knew, and I think it's probably from all the fit modeling, what things should look like on a woman and how it should be worn. So I was a stylist before it had a name in the early 80s and I would just, you know, always advise my customers, you know, let's do this, let's take the belt off, whatever this collar doesn't work for you. But you were modeling at a time when there weren't many African-American models. Oh, absolutely. I mean, the business has changed and still not enough. I mean, if you look out there today, you can still count them on two hands. But I had an amazing mentor, Beth Ann Hardison. And Beth Ann just made you believe that you can be whoever you want to be. Love it. So did that. And then kept working in retail, loved it so much. Eventually became a partner in a store. Not the same, not the same store. No, I moved, I kept moving around. I kept going from store to store just demanding more money from my talent. And until I finally got to the point where my partners were like, okay, you probably should branch out on your own because we can't afford to keep paying you because you make too much money. And so I literally under just a very short period of time realized that I had no way to grow anymore in that business and I needed my own thing. And of course I didn't have that my own thing money. So I went to my mom and I was like, okay, I'm leaving this store and I'm leaving this relationship and I want to open my own store. Interesting. Now was your mom an entrepreneur? My mom worked at NYU as a nurse's aide. She had a little boutique in the basement of our apartment in our house in the Bronx. She, you know, you could call my mom for anything and she would do it. My dad was the same. He was like the super when he wasn't the super. He was electrical engineer at Marbell. You know, so I kind of grew up in this kind of funky, everybody was trying to do something. Mom had a boutique though. It was a room in the basement. Okay. But I'm saying she had the idea. Yeah, she had the, right, right. So she put it to see. And I think it's important, you know, even before you go on with your story because I'm reflecting on what you said about watching dad stop at the, on the side of the road always helping people. You know, I always see it as a karate kid moment, you know, in the scene in the movie where he thought he was learning how to wash the car, but he was actually learning karate. We've reflect on some of the things our parents did. And it was annoying at the time, but little did it, did we know that it was going to shape our character. So that little boutique in the basement has created a large boutique now for you. That's right. That's right. And she used to, all her church sisters would say, you know, have a wedding coming up and she would go down to Orchard Street and pick out the dresses and they would come to the basement. It was just, it made sense to me. She had seven jobs. We were immigrants, that's what you did. You didn't have one job. I still have a hard time today having one job. But think about that work ethic. Yeah, it's really solid work. It's really solid work ethic, like no other. Were they home owners? When we first got here, we lived in the Bronx 170th and Grand Concourse. And then my parents saved up and finally bought a home in the Gunhill Road area. And, you know, the bank owned that home, but we were okay, the mortgage was paid, whatever. And I was going to school, I got into Cardinals, Feldman High School, so my parents moved to a place that was closer so I could walk back and forth to school. And so they owned that home, you know, basically my whole life. It's amazing. I find that with Southerners and those who come from the Caribbean, South America and other immigrant groups, there's this real desire of home ownership. Because my mom and dad came from the South and my mom, just even when she was renting in a terrible environment in Brownsville, she always was focused. Her North Star was, we will buy a small house, no matter how small it was, it would be hers. And she really, she planted that seed in me, son, you have to own your own. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it's, you know, the Jefferson's moving on up situation. But I think when, for these immigrants, as you stated, that's a moment of I've arrived. You know, that checks that box for them. And they hand that on to their kids. As they're showing us what you should want and they want us to not be able to get a mortgage for it, they want us to buy it, you know? So they'll say, you know, we got the mortgage and we're gonna pay this down, but you need to find a hand to buy this house. So I had a lovely childhood and I traveled, studied abroad in France. I speak French, German and Italian. I love cultures. I love all things that are just like, culturally different, interesting. And from traveling a lot, my horizons are just like endless, you know, they're boundless. And so I believe, and I was taught that everything in your life that seems negative is only a moment. Well said, well said. Yeah, you just need to not own it. Right, right, right. You need to acknowledge that it's a moment and keep on moving. Right, and you know what I found? That it's a lesson. Absolutely. Mommy used to say that you will find yourself in dark places. You determine if it's a burial or a planting. I love it. I love it. You know that? I love that, yeah. That moment, you can't own it, learn your lesson and move from it, grow from it. That's a thousand percent true. Yes, yes. And so my brother and I just grew up, you know, knowing that we had to go do something that my parents hadn't done, neither of my parents went to high school. So, you know, for me, it was you will go to college and you will do certain things. And so I did and I had a really great education at NYU, lived in Paris for a semester and a summer, traveled a lot, just really was like, you know, whoa, this whole world out here, it's so amazing. Isn't that something? That's why travel is so important, you know? Yeah, everybody used to need their back yard. Exposing our young people to the global atmosphere, so much else is out there. And my parents had never traveled. My mother used to say, where are you going now? Whose child are you? She would say to me. I was like, I'm going to Spain with my friends, I'm doing whatever. And I learned so much from the exterior. It really took what my parents had, like instilled in me, like really instilled in me. And Jamaican people, when they instilled, they instilled. It's a strap that's instilled, something is instilling it, but it's being instilled. So when it came time to make this decision about my business, it was like, okay, you're going to do it, but I couldn't do it without an angel. I had my mom, of course I approached her about mom. Do you have any money? The answer, of course, I knew was no, which was a real no, she didn't have any money. But she said, you know, I'm going to take tomorrow off and I'm going to go to Chase Bank and see what I can get from the house. Wow. She could get $29,500. I needed $200,000. Wow. So I kind of called up my friend who had planted this dream in my head and I said, John, it's not going to work. And he said, why? I said, because I've got not even $30,000, we need $200. And he said, hold on, tell your mom to get that money. And so I said, okay, fine, I got the money. And he said, I'm going to get your contractors to build your store and not charge you anything for a year. I'm going to get you set up for a year. I know you're going to be successful and you can pay everybody back at that point. And he literally did that, John Farrell, my angel. Wow, what a guy. You all have angels. Yes, we do, we do, we do. You need to acknowledge the existence. Yeah. And so they built me a store on 23rd Street between 5th and 6th, 19 years, 23rd. And I was there for 23 years. And yeah, I opened and the week after opening, I used that $29,500 to buy whatever merchandise I could. And the funny thing was like, I couldn't keep merchandise. So I kept running to the Garmin Center and buying more. And it was so funny. It was selling out. Is that why you couldn't keep it? Oh yeah, the merchandise was just turning over like mad. Wow. Yeah, it was instantly success. What was it? So the magic was, I think it was a trifecta. I think that I innately knew what I knew. So I knew what clothes should look like on women. And women loved that. They didn't have to work to figure out how to look great. I did the work. One, two, I'm a salesperson. Like I know how to sell, but not just to sell you, but to help you see what you should buy and why you should buy. Got it, got it. Which I think is different than to sell. So you put all of those skills you had previously into your first shop. Yeah, and I just was like, dear in headlights, oh my God, we have no more of this, we got to get more of that. And I also know that, look, the lack of pressure where I didn't really have a nut to crack at the end of the month for a minute. I had a year. Right. And so I just felt free. I felt like I could do it when I did. Because I also knew. Who was your, was the landlord also understanding? Oh yeah. So this man, John Farrell, was the managing agent for the 250th Avenue building, which was at the time of Hemsley Building. So this was not just any real estate. No, no, no. But that space had been boarded up for three years. It had been a radio shack and it was boarded up. And he's like, some money better than no money, let's get you going and I know you're going to do this. And he knew me for a long time. We've been friends. What year is that? What year? That was 1989. OK. So on September 5th, 1989, I opened that store. Four days after my birthday. Hey, and mine is the 22nd I found out that we're like regular people. I'm so glad that my mom, there was no world in which she wasn't going to do whatever she could because we knew that failure was not an option. So she knew like she was not throwing money into some rabbit hole dark well. And so within a year, I paid off the contract. I said, paid back my mom and I was gone. And I just literally, so I started to travel. So I was selling goods that I thought I could sell. And then people would always say to me, but what are you wearing? And what I wore was a class above what I sold because the customer was there, but I hadn't really discerned like how much money they would spend. Like I would save up two week salary and buy a leather jacket. You know, and I got that from my mom, too. She was like, buy better, buy less. But I thought my customer would want to be able to, you know, buy a pair of pants or forty dollars. I bought pants that are hundred and forty dollars. And they were like, no, but I want yours. And so that taught me that they like not only my style, but my style. So I started, you know, going to France and importing goods and bringing back. I went to I would go to France, Italy, Madrid, Amsterdam, Dusseldorf, I would go to the shows in all of these cities in like a four and a half day. Wow. Or a win or to myself with the goal of purchasing. Yeah. Yeah. OK. Purchasing. Finding brands that were things that I would wear purchasing. And, you know, learning the business as I went because I didn't have any experience in this. So it was like, how much do I buy and how do I buy goods abroad and import them and do whatever. But people were so kind and hopeful along the way. I literally learned as I went along. And that's why I tell people all the time, you know what? The kindness of strangers matters like I thrived on that, you know, but everybody wants to get on a boat that's floating. Right. I wasn't thinking. So clearly that was, you know, for my numbers, they were like, all right, you're going to do well. And that means we're going to do well. Right. So people invested, you know, they were happy to come back. And I I did that for a lot of years and in 1994. Total transparency. I'm a complete addict to Stevie Wonder. I take Stevie intravenously. I take him anywhere I can get him. His message is my life story. And so I, you know, I would be one of those crazy people who would sleep out on the sidewalks when Stevie was playing and get my tickets with the scalpers and be at every night. So in 94, I go to this contract series, conversation piece. And there's a song. Take the time out. Take the time out to love someone. Reach your arms out and touch someone, be a king or some homeless one, we are one underneath the sun. And that song, Seven Nights just played in my head. I was third row center dead on like, OK, Stevie, I know this is meant for me to do some action here because I diluted myself that, you know, Stevie Wonder wrote song so I can go do things. And so I decided I was going to look for something to do in my neighborhood that would give back. And so you were you were inspired by the song a thousand percent to say, OK, I'm going to do something in my neighborhood that I can give back. Yeah, I wanted my business to not only take from the neighborhood. I wanted it to also give back to the neighborhood. And at the time, the neighborhood was really in bad shape. I mean Madison Square Park was drug infested. It was really, you know, in bad, bad shape. And I lived up the street on Madison between 32nd and 33rd. And across from an Irish bar where all kinds of things went on. You know, people don't understand that Madison Avenue was. Right, right. They're like, what Madison Avenue? Like, yeah, I was there. I lived it and I would go down. And I have two boys that are now 30 and 28. And I would take, you know, my kids to that park. That was my park was my only park that I could access with my boys. But you would go in there in the mornings, push them to the swings, a couple of get out of dodge really quickly. And one day I stumbled across this young woman, she was 19 and she had a three year old and they were sleeping in a box in that park. Wow. Wow. Moment of change. So three things happened. Stevie song, the woman in the park. And also when my oldest son was a baby, I met Bobby Brown just before she blew up and became Bobby Brown. We were on vacation at the same resort in Florida, started talking. She was like, yeah, I'm a makeup artist. It's like, yeah, I'm a stylist. I have a store in New York. So we just got to talking and she said, you know, when I come back, I'm going to come visit your store and I'm a makeup artist and I'm hoping that something is going to break for me soon. Trust cut to six months later that she's like in Bergdorf Goodman. I was like, OK, guess you bet that. And she was my very first big supporter. She was the very first person I remember when I did my first fundraiser in my store, which was a fire hazard. A hundred and fifty people squeezed into a store. Oh, my God. And she gave me an auction basket that was worth, I think, a hundred dollars. And I auctioned it for three hundred dollars. And it was like this because everybody was so hot on Bobby and they were like, you got a basket. So I figured out that with Bobby's Bobby invited me actually up the block. Now, imagine this. I live with 32nd. My store is at 23rd and at 28th Street between Madison and 5th, there's a shelter of which I know nothing. And and I don't know of shelter. Like that's never a word that was ever in my vocabulary. I never heard it. There is no world in which anybody in my family or any family that I knew or grew up with would end up on the street. Isn't that something there's cousins? There's there's somewhere you go, but it's not on the street. Right. So that was such a shock to me. I went with Bobby. I did an event at the shelter where I was talking to the moms about how to put themselves together on the street. And she was literally giving them product, making them up, giving them product so they could look and feel good about themselves. Is that what the fundraiser was for? Well, once I had that experience, I realized that this was in my backyard and I could do something else. So I decided that that Christmas, at first Christmas, I spoke to the director and I asked her what were their plans for Christmas. There were 135 kids and their 90 plus moms living in that shelter. And she said, well, we don't, you know, Christmas, there's no budget. This is a shelter to keep them safe and whatever. It was run by the Red Cross. It was called FRC Family Respirate Center. And so that was their priority. But for me, I was like, but there are kids here and there's no budget for Christmas. So that first Christmas, I said, OK, I'm going to, you know, buy things. I'm going to use my profit from my store and I'm going to buy each child gifts for Christmas. So I did that. I did it for Christmas. It was an amazing experience just watching the kids be that happy. I did it for Easter. That Easter, I was working with Ivana Trump on a project, appraisal project for her stuff. And she was selling a lot of jewelry on QVC and I approached her and I said, listen, can you give me some product for the moms as a gift as I give the children, you know, Easter baskets? And she did. And so I distributed that. And then I realized that I really, the money that I was raising, I wanted to just give it to the Red Cross to do exactly that. But they were very transparent and they said, we can't guarantee you that this dollars will go here because we have so many priorities. So that's what started Hearts of Gold. I thought, OK, that I'm going to do it myself and spend the money how I want it to be spent and do the things that I want to do. So Hearts of Gold was born and out of that, you know, just every year celebrating everything I celebrated in my family, whether it was Mother's Day or Valentine's Day or Easter, all of those holidays out where we felt like we had community and they didn't. So we brought that to the shelter and then I started to fundraise on a larger scale just because everybody found out and people were like, can you help us with our shelter and our shelters? And we currently have, we use the phrase adopt the shelters. So we have like 12 adopted shelters that we support. Our programming has grown. It's really a lot about I believe in education. I know it makes all the difference. I've seen it in my own life and in my own family. I mean, you know, I came here with a mandate where you will finish high school, you will go to college. My two boys went to one to Yale, one to Middlebury College. And it's like you keep ticking up, right? You keep moving because that's what we were told you're supposed to do. But you weren't even further. Not only did you sell, you know, items in the store, but you even trained mothers who were from the shelters to actually work in the store. Like I met a young lady who was in the store. What did that concept come from? So I owned the boutique Noir et Blanc, which was my French boutique, which I opened in September. Then 28 years. So 28 years ago, I started Hearts of Gold, the charity. And in 2008, when things started to go to the South financially, I thought, how else can I raise money? What's a tried and true way to raise money for this charity to keep us afloat? And I just said, well, do what you know. Well, you know, you know, fashion. So I decided to open a thrift store. And all of my customers were happy to donate all the things they didn't want anymore. So I started the thrift store. And then a few years later, I thought, huh, this can work. Now, why don't I help the moms get some job training, some work? Because they need they need to show that they are employed for 90 days before they can qualify for a voucher for housing. And but they don't have the 90 days because they it's a it's a vicious cycle. Right. A mom gets up in the morning, her baby is six. She can't go to work. How many times can you call your job? You know what I mean? They can call us every day. They will still have a job. So they call and something is going on. They have to rush off to school. We still we employ staff to support so that the moms can do what they need to do. And so the concept of the thrifty hog is I didn't want to call the store the hearts of gold thrift store because it was so boring. So I thought, what am I going to call this? I wanted people to know it was thrift. I wanted the hearts of gold element in there. So one night, like I do very often, wake up in the middle of the night with a thought and I thought, huh, hog, hearts of gold, hug piggyback. Money goes in and money goes out. So I had this whole vision in my head. And so that's where the name that thrifty hog came from. And so, you know, we, we, yeah, we hire the moms. We hire their adult children. We give them job experience. We train them, we cross train them as well as in the thrift store so that their experience is not like, you know, in a broken up. That's amazing. Where have the employees, those who were in homeless shelters? What are those success stories? Where have they gone from there? I'm sure someone went on to college. Someone went on to their own business. I'm sure you have many. But just give me, give me one. I'll give you a story. Okay, I'm going to talk to you about Laura. So Laura, I met Laura when she was 20. She was living in the shelter. She was pregnant with her third child. She came out of super domestic violence in Brooklyn and she was running away, you know, from this whole situation. Ended up in the shelter. I meet her when Jonathan, her second child, is it's his birthday. And he was just turning one. So we did birthday parties, of course. And I meet Jonathan a few months after meeting Jonathan. I get a call from the shelter and they're like, Jonathan had an accident and he's in a coma. And just like craziness. So I said, all right, what do we do? Laura was, of course, distraught. She's pregnant. She's seven months pregnant. And I helped her basically, I had to help her get her head enough together to deal with Jonathan, three, four-year-old Ben and get through this pregnancy and deliver a child, a pregnancy that she had been abused during so we didn't know what she was going to give birth to. So I took Laura from that point, literally, to getting her to the delivery room, being in the delivery room, her giving birth to a baby that did not look like he was making it for quite a few minutes. Then my husband and I, taking this baby to church and being Godparents, because we were afraid something might happen to getting her situated out of shelter, back to school, nursing school, nursing degree, you know, off married now, living in Florida, cereal, cereal. I said, are you sure you're not an immigrant? And she has five jobs. But she's so and she will tell you today, yesterday and tomorrow that the only reason she is anything is because of me in the hearts of gold. Her own mother, when she was pregnant and getting in that car in labor, her mother said, I'm not going with you. You figure it out. And she came to me to take her to the hospital. So there were so many stories of lives changed, of watching her kids now excel in school and her just instilling in them that you could be everything, you know? Right, right. And so that's just one of the stories. And so many moms have, you know, you're watching children break the cycle because they're going to college. And though they're, you know, it's a beautiful thing to just understand that you have this little power and can do so much. Like, you can impact people's lives. It's really special. And you know, the angel bless you and you continue to bless so many people over and over again. I really encourage people to go to your shop. The Drifty Hog. We are in Bad Iron Nomad on West 25th Street. Give us the address again. It's 11 West 25th Street is a Drifty Hog. And my French boutique called Noir et Blanc, which is black and white and French, is at 7 West 25th Street. And we're right there. But we are moving on the same block and down. And we're going, we're scaling up a little bit. People can see what you've done with those who were formerly homeless or who are homeless. How you have just really expanded your role of helping people. We cannot thank you enough. Again, we're joined with Debra Nixburger. Yeah, you got that, Debra. Yeah, awesome. Love it. She is just an amazing New Yorker. And I was thrilled when I met you. And now you go in my book as the fantastic New Yorkers that I've met. Thank you so much. Thank you so, so much for having me. What a special treat. Thank you so much, man. And this is the information I wanted to share today. I hope to see you for another episode of Get Stuff Done Cash.