 Welcome back to the 85th South Show. Yeah, black excellence. Spotlight. You know, that's where we try to spotlight. Excellent. Black. Excellence. How you doing today? We have a very special guest in the trap with us today, Ms. RJ White. How are you doing? Tell me a little bit about yourself. Pick a camera and give him a dope rundown. I'm RJ White. I'm owner of Vipers Pro Men's Basketball Team, also buying into Division I level men's pro basketball and aspiring to be the first black NBA team owner. I'm telling you, you're about to get a real major up in here. What's that? What got you into business? Like, where were you starting? How did all this come about? Six years old. I told my dad at six years old that the NBA wasn't doing the right. That's what he told me. He was like, I said, they ain't doing the right. They need me. And ever since then, it's just been pilot. Like, I said to myself, I want to own the NBA team. Like, I got something to prove. I've been studying this since I was six years old. I've looked at it from general manager role all the way to now owning the team, which is Vipers Pro Basketball. How's the experience being to know that you, like you set your mind on something. You write that. You know what? It's actually mind boggling sometimes. It really, it's kind of really tweak it sometimes when I hear all the accomplishments that I have. Right. And to me, it's like, oh, it's just normality. Like, so it's just a pretty cool thing, though. That's what's up. So at a very young age, I take it you had a love and a passion for sports. Did you play sports? No, I'm six feet and a half, six foot with heels, and I did not play sports. I ran track. I did not play basketball. My father told me until I got my attitude together, he was not going to put me out there to get technical fouls every single day. He told me I was going to find another way to burn off all of that attitude. And one of my cousins contacted me for track and that's kind of where I was at. That was my lane. That's dope. I like that, man. So just to be sitting here, you know, with a future NBA owner, what, I mean, what do you, like, do you scout talent or like, what are some of the roles that you take on as an owner? As owner of Vipers Pro Basketball, I'm the CEO, Chief Executive Officer. I handle everything from staffing to all general manager duties, marketing, travel, international travel. We're one of the largest analytics teams opposed to the NBA. We have about 2.1 million in analytics. I've been to 12 different countries. Our name is Valuable in 12 different countries, headed to Tokyo and headed to London within T minus 90 days. Come on, man. I'm loving it. I don't even want to have nothing. I can just listen and get the look. Clearly, you got a lot going on and, you know, you're seeing success. Yeah, we started out from nothing, literally. Like, I remember actually opening up the gym doors and I just had all the paperwork and stuff ready and I'm like, okay, we're going to have a rush of people and literally it was grasshoppers. You see the little hay blow across the gym and nothing. We went from that to having over 4,200 people in attendance. What did it take to turn that around? Marketing. It took marketing. Like, dedication, marketing, believing in your brand because, you know, when you're building a business, you hear a lot of, you know, naysay. You know, people tell you like, oh, you know, you need to just give it up or you need to just let it go or, you know, you know, if I'm a woman, you know, a lot of people will say, you know, women don't belong in sports to, you know, to a degree when it comes to executive roles but just getting by past that and actually doing what you love to do and having fun with it. Yeah. Sky's the limit. What has been some of your motivations and like... My kids motivate me. My mom, my dad motivate me. Family motivate me and that's just really my motivation. Like, because I do have moments where I be like, you know what, forget everything and they be like, yeah, okay, you be trying to 20 minutes, like, go over there and you don't get yourself together but other than that, just knowing the overall goal, which is NBA ownership. Like, you can't give up when you have a goal that big and you're so close. That's so dope. It's dope that you, even if it's not the NBA yet, you still own 10. Yeah. What advice would you give to the six-year-old girl who might be watching right now who says you're gonna own the team too? Believe in yourself. Regardless of what anybody else has to say, believe in yourself and make sure that, make sure that you stay focused on the goal because on a trail, you get so many different avenues that you could go on. As long as you stay focused, energetically balanced, you could pretty much do anything you want to do. A lot of times we get in the business, we get around people with bad energy or just, like I said, the naysayers. We get steered off of our track, thinking that they're the ones that knows what's right for us. But ultimately, it's your vision. It's your goal. So you can't listen to nobody. You gotta just stay the course. I saw that you're interested in owning some other teams and other sports as well. Yeah. I'm thinking about varying out. Right now, I'm still developing in Europe. Like I said, I own her as a Pro Men's team there. I've gotten some calls from Asia. I got some calls from China. And I've been having some conversations lately, obviously, with the NBA. And obviously, WNBA just keeps being thrown at me. Right. So you never know what might happen within the next couple years. Have you done any business in Africa? You know what? I've gotten a call from them too, actually, which is really funny to say. But I haven't yet, but that is on the itinerary for 2022-23. Are you interested in getting a soccer team? You know... That's the biggest sport in the world. I've heard how big soccer is. And especially in Europe, it is something that's very valuable there. But I haven't had the right proposal yet. If it makes sense, literally, then it's something I would exercise. It'll go. Like you get a black... You get a super team of all the black players, because it's so racist. And then you put them all on one team and they just beat everybody and make a movie about it. That's what I plan on doing with my NBA team. So, yeah. If you had your choice right now to buy any NBA team, which one would you... Going for the Pelicans. Yeah. What is it about the Pelicans? Well, Roots for me started in New Orleans. All of my family is from the Louisiana area, New Orleans area, Jonesville area. And it's just something about the South for me, you know? And obviously, it's a good franchise to rebuild right now. They got a lot of good, valuable parts that I could work with. I got a couple prospects in mind that I argue with people about all the time that when and if I do on this team that I'm bringing over there. I argue about all the time. I can't tell them because then they just go get somebody the opportunity to use my idea, right? But just know it will be a super team, okay? No disrespect to LeBron. He could stay over there. He's not one of them, nor is Curry, okay? Okay. So, it's some people that are very small in the game, but very valuable if you were to put them together. That's what I was saying. Yeah, the strategy. I definitely do. That's dope, man. Damn, I'm pulling up some more of these facts because there's so many of them. You can definitely ask a question, Kat. Yeah. I didn't hear about it, actually. And I wasn't really interested in it because my ultimate goal right now was NBA, to be honest. But I've had plenty of offers before that sale and getting into the WNBA. Hold on. This is another one that stood out to me, too. It says you started your first company when you were 17 years old. Actually, I was 16. 16. 16 years old. I was working and in high school, trying to figure out how to go to sleep and get up and go to school and do work. I started a credit repair company and I ended up reaching out to... Well, I ended up running across a military, somebody that was in the military, and they were like, well, I'm about to get deployed, I need help with my credit, I need help paying my bills when I'm deployed. They were in distress. And ultimately, back then, they didn't have a service for that. So I said, okay, well, you know, I got a credit service and I could actually add that to the part of my service. That's not a problem. And one person turned into 50 people and 50 people turned into 240 people and 240 people turned into one of the largest military-contracted companies in the world. So, yeah. That's 16, man. You see what I'm saying? You see what I'm saying? That's exactly what this platform is for, man, so people can see people such as yourself to know that, yes, you can do this. Yes, you can be black and be successful and achieve your dreams whatever they may be in any forms of fashion. After? ABA. Tell me a little bit about the ABA. So, mostly everybody knows about Julius Herving when he had the red, white and blue ball. Same league, a little bit more revamped. A little bit more eclectic. And for us, the good thing is we are where we are, I would say in the league but independently. Like, there is no money that's given to us from marketing like you have for the NBA. There's no budget that's set for us like the NBA. There's no, you know, advantageousness. You know, everything that you see for Vipers Pro basketball is me. Like from the 2.1 million analytics, 12 different countries to, you know, social media platform to, just did a workout not too long ago with Bone Collector. Shout out to Bone Collector and working on some stuff. You know, James Harden ended up watching this. And to see stuff like that, you know, just really lets you know like you could start from the ground up and expand out. You don't need help or bagging from pretty much anybody. Like you just got to have the plan and execute Rain Hell's Leader Snow. Damn. So, when is like the Trials? I'm trying to get on the Vipers. Trials for us is June 26th. It'll be in Schoenberg, Illinois. We are considered Lake County, Gurney, Illinois's protein. Additionally, besides that, we are, you know, doing a tour. We do tours all over the globe. Like I said, we'll be in Tokyo and we'll be in Hawaii and we'll be in London. That's dope, man. So you got to bring it because I will cut you. Where the camera at? I'll pick one. Yeah. So you got to have the talent. You got to have professionalism. Like you said, about that six-year-old girl, six-year-old girl. Like the guys on our team, they got to have that level of mentorship. Like if you're not a role model, if you're not a business leader, if you don't have business acumen, if you're not here to make something out of yourself and be an example for others, don't even bother to apply because we don't need that. More about that character. Yep. But you still got to have skills, too. Absolutely. I'm trying to win. Championship. We do need that championship. Really? Yeah. So what are some of your philosophies? What are your inner sports like? Philosophies? Like some of your philosophies. I'm winning. Give me a philosophy. I'm winning. It's not about on the court. It's about off the court. Like ultimately, in this sport, if you're not building with your team off the court, you're not going to see no chemistry on the court. Another philosophy is, if you can't eat with me, I don't trust you. So that's the same thing that applies on the court. I like that one. Yeah. Another philosophy is, if you have a lot of things that you do off camera, it probably isn't beneficial for you to act in a certain way. You know what I'm saying? Like on camera. Because people will have that expectation of you because of what you showed them on camera. So those are just some of my philosophies. What's the philosophy on losing? Man, I hate losing. I'm not going to lie. But sometimes you do need to lose. You need to fall in order to know where you need to rebuild and to come back better. But it is a hurtful feeling, especially if you're really close and you end up failing at something. But it's ultimately an opportunity to get up and rebuild and regrow. You know, if you never fail, you'll never learn how to bounce back. Absolutely. Lesson learned. I've seen a quote not too long ago. It said, some of the strongest people fail plenty of times. So that'll be another philosophy. That's a hard one. One of my favorite quotes is, people think it don't, but it do. That's a good quote. One more? The ceiling is the roof. Michael Jordan. He really taught them kids, the ceiling is the roof. You can learn a lot from people just listening and doing their thing. Where can we check out the Vipers? VipersProBasketball.com. Vipers Proball on IG. Right. So if we had some people who were watching this show and they really, you know, was pursuing a hoop dream and they really going to show up at the trials. I heard it on the show. So I'm here. Well, it's six o'clock in the morning. Well, I just hang out to start. We got some people on here who, you know, can hoop. And that ain't going to be sending me videos. I'm proud that as long as they got everything that we need off the court as well as on the court, let's go. We got a wire on it. I'm sure I'm positive, but I got a lot of, I put a lot of energy and time into my company. So ultimately the time and energy that I put into it, I expect to get that out with my players, you know, as far as like their performance on the court and the personalities and the impact that they make off the court. It's part of our credo to our mission statement. Like you have to be a role model. Yeah, that's dope. And it's dope that you have that, you know, have a platform out there for people, you know, who can go out there and hoop for real. Because this might, you know, somebody might see you on this platform and really. We are accountable for sending 55 guys into overseas pay position. That's what I'm saying. The 56 for the 85. And I see that's dope, man. Creating opportunities like that. And we really appreciate you stopping through the trap. We need a Jersey or something. I got you. Oh, Bible is Jersey. 85. Who's number 85? Nobody, but we can make it just for you. Thank you. All right. Then you have it. This is RJ White. 85 South. Black excellence spotlight. What more could you ask for?