 I was muted. Hi, my name is Donya Pinkins and I am pleased to be joining you today with a second in a series of six conversations with brilliant black women. There are so many we can't possibly get to them all in six weeks, but this series is called Through a Black Woman's Lens and our first episode was with a theater communication guild in partnership with HowlRound. We had it during the TCG annual panel, and we were in conversation with Nicole Hodges-Cursley and Monica Indune White and Garlia Cremilia, and we were talking about access to theater and Hollywood. Now I'm excited today because I'm going to be in conversation with three brilliant black business women, and I wanted to have these conversations because in this moment where everybody's asking for what they want, black women are always supporting everyone in getting what they want. So I know that when black women get what they want, everybody will have what they want. So join me in welcoming my guests, illustrious guest. I'm going to begin with my newest, the person who I know the least, and her name is Dushana Spencer. She is the founder of Quelly TV. I am a subscriber. If you're not yet, become a subscriber because there's so much extraordinary content there. So please Dushana, join me now. And thank you so much for joining today and being in conversation with me. My next guest is my second newest friend, and her name is Lauren Ruffin. She is the co-founder of Fractured Atlas, and she is a lawyer, and she runs Crocs, which is an XR company, which I had to learn what XR is. It is the umbrella for VR and AR, and it is content creators in that medium from the diaspora, and there's so few of us. So please join us, Lauren. And my next guest is an old dear friend, not old, a longer time friend of mine, and we met at NTI, the National Theater Institute. She does anti-racism training around the globe, and she's currently in residency in Costa Rica, where she's writing her book about her work, and she's on staff at Yale, so join me in welcoming Nicole Brewer. Hey ladies, where are we in the world? I'm in New York City, the unceded territory of the Leni-Lanapi-Naticoque-Mahican people. I'm in New Mexico, and we are home to 19 Pueblo tribes who are most certainly still here on the land, although they're still fighting for their sovereignty. I'm in a DC area originally from Memphis, Tennessee. And I'm in the Guanacasti region of Costa Rica. This land has been stewarded for the last thousand-plus years by the Turretega people. And I live in DC, right? This land is the Piscata Way, and so when I put that into space, I'll be heading home in a few weeks. And for people who have accessibility issues, I want to say that I'm a heavy-set brown-skinned woman with golden twists, and I'm wearing a purple lipstick and a purple wrap dress with a lot of cleavage right now. This is Tanya. This is a delicious accessibility, like, find me in the screen when you find me right at cleavage. I'm gonna put mine up for the folks. I would if I could, but bras have been done since 2019. Oh, this is not a real bra. This is not a real bra. It's pretend. Make me feel like I'm being professional with that in there. So what brought me to this moment of being able to even be in conversation with you is that I became a business owner for the first time in this last year, and the fact that I wrote, produced, and directed my first feature film, and we're gonna show a preview about it, and I'll talk about my experience as a business person, and then we'll get into your experience. Crystal, would you please show the trailer for Red Pill? I was muted. I don't know what's happening. Just one quick second. Okay. We're learning. We're learning to do live, and I always say that I'm always willing to put my foot in my mouth or make a fool of myself for the sake of making connections to people. So here we are creating right here on the spot with you, and it has its errors, and I think the most successful people I know have failed the most. So I'm gonna say that before we see this Red Pill trailer that this was the most liberating experience of my life being the boss. I was not trained to be the boss. I was raised to be a good tool, and I was a great tool. I built lots of castles for people, and I know how to do my job well, but the experience of being the person who had the final say was profound, and it has made me have to question whether I want to do anything else ever in my life, and it was astonishing to me, and it still is astonishing to me how many obstacles people put in my path to keep me from success, and the way I chose to look at those was that I was like, I'm having too much fun. I'm gonna jump over that. I'm gonna go around that. I'm gonna go under that. I'm gonna go through that, because you're not snatching this joy for me. I see why you've been holding on to this. This is just too delicious for me to let anything that you want to throw in my path stop me from having this experience of getting to see my vision birthed with clarity, not having to answer to anybody about what it is, not even trying to please people, and in fact, getting great delight when some people would watch it and say, I don't like that. That doesn't work right, and I would be, you don't like it? What else don't you like? Well, that is good. That's good, because now you know how I feel when I watch most things. So yes, it's working. So that's part of the experience for me. Are we ready, Crystal? Should I keep going? We are ready. Okay, let's watch this trailer for Red Pill. We are a majority in this country, and we're going to win the election. Do you know what the Red Pill is? A Red Pill is someone who infiltrates a group and then destroys them from the inside. This place is spooky. Take it easy. You know what, guys? I'm going to go back tomorrow. I think we should call the sheriff's office. What do we do in the area? We die, but we take some of them with us. So that's my little baby. I have to say that birthing that was as thrilling as birthing my four children. And the question I first want to put out to you is, have you all had the experience of people wanting to support you in doing what they want you to do, but not support you in doing what you tell them and show them that you want to do? They want you to put your brilliance on their stupidity rather than support your brilliance. Anybody? I mean, I'll go first, I guess. I had the great privilege of being raised by a man. And so I was always taught that when somebody tells you that you're being selfish is usually because you're not doing what they want you to do. And that has been especially, you know, when I was in my 20s, it was hard. But once I hit late 20s early 30s, I just kept popping up. And that's, you know, sort of what what liberated me was really having the language and growing up with someone who did a lot of things that were on Orthodox, did not took really great care of me, but also took really good care of himself in a way that only men do. And that was my role model. So when I was in my once I hit that point where I realized I was making more money for somebody else than they were. And I was because I was managing everything. I was seeing the budgets. I was seeing the work. And I was seeing what I was bringing in. I was lobbyist at the time. I was like, I got to go. Like, and as I was leaving, they told me that if I was as I was going that I was I was not I was being selfish because I wasn't I wasn't committing to the vision that we had had. And I was like, that's not my vision. And I was like, my father always told me about that word selfish, you got to watch it with people throwing at you. So, you know, that's that's that's sort of my entry point in the conversation. Oh, I love that. I love, love, love that to Shana. Trying to beat myself. I apologize. Trying to beat myself. And I was a little slow on the gun. So I grew up in a very different household, both parents, mostly grew up in a very religious household. And I would say somewhat showing a stick. And so for me, I actually felt powerless as a woman is to really earth me. Right. So I remember growing up and thinking, well, boys, they have all the access to the world. And if you're a girl, you only can go so far. That was actually my mindset. And it wasn't until I got a little bit older, I want to say high school, like, literally, things are changing me. And I'm not sure if I should tell the story. Someone like that, like, because you know, you love your parents, you know, say anything that's been but one day, because my mother, my sister, they, they don't drive, like I'm the only female in my house who actually drives. And so I remember I was 15 years old. I was never about driving my my mother wasn't driving my sister, older sister wasn't driving. And I never forget my dad. So he's a he was assistant pastor or like a sociopath at the time and he my brother in the past with church for walking up this ramp they I can see they can see me and my mother. Well, my mother she was trying to learn it's like a little bit in the car and in the past was like I heard him say so. Minister more is my main name more. I see that another car stands there then your wife is trying to learn how to drive and my dad said some girls like I'm gonna ever learn how to drive it's gonna be me and my son Willie. And my dad says they've never I've never told the story I'll lie out loud to them my dad has no idea that I heard him say that, but it shifted something to me. Literally at 15 years old and I was determined not to be, you know, whatever my whatever they thought of me especially the church is being less than and so I was my mom was like I want to learn how to drive I want to, you know, I got a job that turned 16 about my own car. I, you know, paid for like literally I can wear pants either like I was I can wear pants I couldn't do anything that most normal teenagers could do and I just like I want to do this I want to do that and I just started shifting to my mindset and I also said why can't I be more than what I see you know I didn't have a lot of women who I looked up to who I could say yeah I want to model that especially my environment and I just said I want to be my own role model and I started focusing on that as I got older and I would say that's sort of my story where I did not have someone telling me that you know you know don't be you know you can be you know you know selfish thing that Laura was talking about I didn't have those types of conversations and it was a very opposite thing for me you should you know women should be quiet women should you know women should know their place I mean I mean I wasn't told that specifically like women should be quiet but just sort of how how I felt and sort of how I was interacting with growing up that's sort of how it came across to me that only women had their place and men had theirs and I and I was really jealous I was jealous of my brother like I wanted I one part wish I wasn't a girl like I know it's crazy but I don't want to be a girl growing up I wish I was a boy because just so I could just so I feel like I could be normal you know like other kids and and so or I could have better access and do more and so now you know as an adult one of the things I I get really offended when as a woman you'll be surprised at things that men tell you I wouldn't as an entrepreneur uh at meetings uh one time that there's an at this event and this one brother he wasn't that old either he's probably 30s 40s and we're all sitting around I'm the only woman in this group we're all in this industry in streaming industry the only woman in this group at this meeting and he was like does your husband know you appear doing all this like this and I was like what my husband does he know I'm here yeah he dropped me off at the metro like he he he wears quite sweet stuff every day like of course he knows I'm here and if he didn't he's not my daddy you know like I hate this whole and I just hate that aspect of sort of I think a lot of times men want to be fathers to us instead of being you know like helping us sort of get you know they don't see us as an equal they see us almost like we you know oh and she's a little cute little girl who's trying to build something one day um and that's my biggest dilemma but I can ask him the only one of our stories I've experienced with and I'm not a man back because my husband's great he's not like that I miss the ominous like that but I've definitely had you know a lot of issues you know as a woman I'm trying to be an entrepreneur and and people not seeing me as a fool separately seeing me oh you're a woman and you know you should you should stay in your place you stay in your in your role so hopefully I answer your question hopefully I go for too far absolutely Nicole so you having a uh you probably went from pre-pandemic not many people wanted to hear from you in your business to so tell us no I think you just named it right so just putting that in the space I think the offering that I want to bring is like present tense I am in this moment dealing with the situation of um people who wanted to work with me and utilize whatever I'm bringing right for their own needs but I was very clear in the beginning what it was for me and what I needed addressed and when they came back later and was like oh we're not going to do that for you then I was just like damn okay instead of what would have been which would have been like okay well what are these new rules what are these new terms and what are these new conditions and so I think a bit of what's happened is the sheer amount of work that I have that has created a sense of liberation financially that's actually not connected to any institution has also liberated me and where I work right because now like before um there was a sense of scarcity and like also a real need of to supporting my children bringing money in to take care of my kids right and so there was always some bending in my own boundaries to be able to make ends meet that's not necessary now my my business itself sustains me no other affiliation even comes close to what my business does for me so um I think that there is a certain freedom and what you were talking about Tanya of being able then also to take uh people's critiques who don't ultimately matter in terms of how that decision gets made or how you show up in the world for me anyway that has allowed me to be more assertive without an apology around taking up space holding space and drawing more firmer boundaries about what I need right I'm making sure like I was cleared and if that's not something that you can meet then thank you very much I'm going this way and you may go that way yeah so that's where I find myself right now you know folks always say oh we need we need their mentorships we need their investments we need we need we need we need their whatever but Lauren uh said something to me when we first met about what what what the black community has and I would love you to share it with uh with with people listening today I talk so much did I tell you about our income you did that's what it was but I want you to share it I'm always just rattling off random shit yeah but it was good shit so take that but no people are real quick to tell us that we need stuff from them and I take a totally different what's not a viewpoint it's just looking at data um which is a black america was its own country we'd be the 15th most you know the 15th wealthiest country in the world by GDP um we actually have a ton of wealth we don't organize it um often we don't invest it and when we have it we act like white people with it and so you know I think I think that's the thing that we need to um that we should think about and um and y'all are all you know sort of storytellers and story makers in a way that I'm not um and I I think there's a what I what I'm thinking about a lot is around narrative you know why have we let this the scarcity and sort of poverty stricken narrative um last for so long a couple years ago black black well black families before the pandemic black families were the fastest growing families that were reaching $200,000 a year um you know we were really doing it the pandemic obviously um has had a has taken its toll but you know I tend to be generally optimistic about us in a way that I think a lot of us have internalized not to be that's the good point I was going to piggyback on this I remember early on um doing pitch competitions and I would get these interesting comments from you know white investors asking can black people afford clothing and like it's five nine out of a month we can afford it we're not we're not against it too and and I would sell people one reason I started playing to me because I wanted to change the narrative about what it means to be black I think that um for too long we bought even our own even ourselves a bond to the narrative about you know who we are we're we're probably stricken we're you know we're you know we're uneducated all those things that um the media has pretty much portrayed about the black experience and so whenever I do these pitch competitions I end up sort of changing the narrative in my pitch and to say this is what black people in America this is this is this is what we're worth this is what you know the fastest growing economy half of them are in Africa you know in Latin America um some of the fastest growing middle class they're they're um black Brazilians so I give the extra narrative to let people know that you're false about you know what what you think um that you know the wealth of the black community is and I think it's a really great point I also do think that we don't really spend money like we should in our own communities and and I've been trying to be focused never to be by partnering with more black owned businesses because I think you know we will kind of we will come up once we really start to invest in each other I always tell people all the time I've it's been very difficult for me to get investment dollars and I'm not going to wait for a broker to the convalier or a broker LA to determine my success right I'm gonna you know bubblegum spit glue ever take to hold the company together like that's what I'm gonna do but I swear bro it's looking valley would not you know tear me down and it shouldn't have to be like that I think we should you know use our resources um to build up our build up our businesses especially our black media there's so few of us are actually like on and we we should make sure that we're stick around as long as possible now your audience Nicole is is you know not so much as so talk to us about that it's it's funny that you say that because my audience is I give people who say all the time like um they'll go this ain't for me right or I don't need to show up to this right and I'm like you absolutely do and I and I and I say that from a place of being like very grateful for the time that I spent at Howard as a student and as a faculty member please believe it um if I was at home I'd be reaching for my age you should uh but you know it's like the ways in which colorism and anti-blackness played out within that space and that type of um favoritism and toxicity that was happening as well as healing joy like all of these things right um that needs that that work needs to happen like there needs to be an analysis of how we are locating ourselves in relationship to one another and I'm saying that throwing myself under the bus as after I came out of a predominantly white institution and then went to Howard and was hired there first of all black people gave me every opportunity and risked on me before white people would even give me a glance and so I hope for ever like be grateful for my beloved community in that way and the way that they continue to support me but I was trying to teach that toxicity to them black bodies and them students was not having it right and so with that where I had to kind of come back to myself and was like wait a minute what's this work that I need to do me to me what are these toxic narratives that I am trying to pass on to them that aren't actually useful for their artistry or their craft and so the work that I do I'm thinking about black people and it's interesting you know Tanya you said if you take care of black women everybody else would be taken care of and in my work I'm taking care of black people and it just so happens that what I am offering is also useful for white people they they like what I'm offering too but it really was like what is the information that black bodies need me to need me to either say right on their behalf because it would be too risky for them to say what what are the questions that they need to be thinking about so the next time an intern comes in they're not trying to work them like a motherfucking mule for their last dollar which happens in some organizations and institutions and then treat them like shit when that person is like wait a minute is this how we go treat each other you know yeah that's a lot I was thinking about the fact that we have this wealth and that we don't think enough of ourselves to invest in ourselves I I think about it even in terms of the the theater community and the fact that with all the wealth that black hollywood has we don't have our own national theater or endowed theater or black uh you know for the fact that we are the majority we are the global majority that uh that our content has been blocked by things like uh babu of the pan african film festival had us read this book called the undeclared war by david putnam about how hollywood is the propaganda arm of the government and how the u.s. government requires uh countries that give them financial that we give a to to give uh you the u.s. as much as 85 percent of their film market so long as those films are promoting american values we know american values are anti-racism so anti-racist anti-black so like for me being in festivals this year i saw black content that rivaled anything coming out of hollywood so when i hear us complaining about what we have why don't we make this it's not that we're not making it is that they are blocking us from getting our work seen when i talk to people about vr xr they say oh that's a that's a white boy that's a white boy world you there i mean literally that's it that's a white boy world what what y'all got to say there's a first i want to say um on the black entertainers black celebrities and everything else there's a writer that i love named max x gordon s gordon if he's here if you listen to him please hollywood because i would read your ship forever and i'm a huge fan i talk about all the time he wrote a piece a couple years ago this it's called desecrating black art and he uses a jazzy and Beyonce as you know as an example and he asks this question i can't let go of which is essentially as well one what do we do with the black capitalist and two as black people and as black entrepreneurs because the country was built on our you know my great great grandmother's free labor do i have a duty to build companies that pay black people fairly like is my is my duty to fair labor into into practices that are going to be good for us is it actually rooted in our history as free labor and a commodity in the country that just stays with me all the time and the answer is once we get to the bottom of that we can have black institutions um you know what i mean like once we can really unpack that like as a as a community we get to have we get to have that that stuff um white folks have are removed enough now and have managed to create i i i don't under i don't understand why we we have people we have black billionaires now like bob johnson bob is building hotels for white people do you know like i just like what a waste um so that's i so that's one thing on the on our community is thinking about digital content and where we're going you know tanya i love how you're jumping into the xr space because the stories are important it's important for us to build those skills um and we need to leave with the stories because how you get people into an industry and young people in the industry it's with storytelling and art but the long form is spatial computing all the stories we're telling right now it's the it's where computing is going to be in a decade and if we don't use the stories now as an educational entry point for people if we like those of us who are here can't like get people into doing ar get folks into coding and that sort of thing we're going to get left behind with the next the next level of computing and that's why white boys are excited about vr and ar they know that that headset is actually the computer that we're all going to be working in 10 years and that in that ar spectacles snapchat spectacles that's going to be this deck this desktop computer that i'm on and so it's a long game and we have to get out of our our bias why are you know people why are you doing this weird shit it's my family my family is like yeah you're doing well for yourself but i don't know what the hell you do um nice house what is this what is a vr ar you know like whatever um but it's we have to get out of that because it's everybody else is thinking i shouldn't say that often i feel like i'm having conversations with people that i have a lot of respect for who try to shit on the things that i'm trying to build because they just can't see a couple steps ahead you are a visionary and you are already into the future because you have a pattern mind and you see where that's going like people always ask me about redfield did you write the ending after the 2020 election i'm like no i wrote the film two years before the 2020 election because i could see that that was what was coming that was inevitable was that a vision or was that just you paying attention i think it's it was like i like the aboriginal concept of pattern mind like i see the pattern the patterns are there for me in 2016 when people were talking about hillary i was just like she couldn't be the black man how you even imagine she's gonna be the white one it was like crazy to me but people treated me like i had two heads or with contempt that i could be so stupid as to think that that orange person could win but it was like that is already done that that future is already written so how do you find your content for quelly i mean like how did you do this nobody's done it it's the film business has been around since michelle how did you do it dishauna like nobody else has done it over didn't do it bob johnson didn't do it well he started every movie channel so that's not all black so he he did start an extremely service um so for me i don't know i don't have a background in film or television um my background is in journalism i'm a storyteller and i just want to see myself on the screen i want to tell people you know i just started financially pop into content creators i think a lot of times and i i created something that i wanted to see but i think that you know what makes koi tv successful or at least you know our goal to success is the fact that you know i had numerous conversations at least you know 50 to 60 conversations with um black content creators when i was initially coming up with the idea asking them what they want to see you know um if you had a streaming platform that focused on you at the content creator you know how are you wanting to look will be equitable to you you know uh versus like this i'm going to create this i haven't seen this film i heard i saw about on shallow neck and i sufficiently want to watch this so let's start the streaming service yeah initially it was part of that um but in and there i really wanted to create something that um black content creators could be proud of and they could say um i'm on this platform i get treated fairly and i want to share you know with everyone else and you're the only distributor that i know where people tell me to give checks from you yeah right i mean seriously um we i mean so many filmmakers are like you know i've been on this platform i have heard from it two years i don't know why my film is doing like take it off what's going on and so as someone who's a creator i never wanted especially you know like what uh laura was mentioning when i when i tell people that i want to give six percent of our subscription revenue to our content creators i get a lot of negative feedback um from investors from people like that's not how you become rich that that's not how capitalism works right um i see close to me it's more of a co-op right where we're you know we're sharing the love if it weren't for our content creators there will be no quality through these so why wouldn't i didn't make that film they did so they deserve to have it and so how i started you know um i would say ignorance is bliss because i didn't know i was doing you know to be quite honest uh i had online magazine initially i knew how to start online magazine i've worked in publishing for a while um and i just started again talking to filmmakers talking with tech people people who were full-time stacks um full full it's like full-time stacks of full something full stack whatever you laura may know it's called what's it called uh full stack devs yeah full stack yeah yeah because i people that wait a minute you just said some words you might have full stack developers they're people who who know multiple languages like they can do the whole thing for you very languages you mean coding languages yeah very like i thought in fact one minute we have the full package here for the world like we got Nicole here who can do the anti-racism training to train us out of our colonized mind so we can undo that we got Deshauna here who's going to help us get our content into the world and we got Lauren here who's helping us see where the world is going so we can get our footsteps there we can be on the moon before before the moon is there so like this is this is a conversation right here has all of the pieces are here right now right so full stack developer they can do front and backing and they can and they know various languages and so our initial beta was down by full stack developer i was told the story that the developer i found developer through a friend who was also who's a friend developer and um this full stack developer ghosted on me um i was like 90 percent of the platform was done and i decided to launch play tv anyway there's this quote by the co-founder of linkedin who said if you're not embarrassed for the first version your project you started too late and that was highly embarrassed for the first version it could play movies it could take people's money like the basics you know it can do anything else with that and um i had to let go of perfection because i feel like a lot of like you look at the first facebook of the first versions of any product they all look like crap but i think you know as as a black person especially the black woman sometimes we feel like we don't get as much grace and so we feel like it needs to be more developed and an md a better product than maybe when mark zirkeberg was able to pull you look at the first like amazon it wasn't as high tech and there weren't trucks all day one um for amazon prime day right it was a very basic website that you can buy books from um and he got grace right um we don't get that so i had a lot of anxiety around that but at the end of the day i wanted to prove if people wanted i want to prove people wrong they would do black people like anything other than sort of like mainstream content you know the reality shows are really popular back in the day that people told me that i need to have i didn't have ratchet content all i think is people said that only black people want to watch where we have been able to prove that we like documentaries we like to learn go figure you know that's not no one genre documentaries inside fight and number two and so um i was able to prove that point and i was hoping to get funding which i'm not sure if we're talking about some of the challenges that black women face when giving our investment dollars but um i marched it with it being looking like crap and again despite lack of funding i've been able to you know build it if organically as i can i love that you know i think that perfection is the devil and sometimes when anybody waits till it's perfect it's not ever gonna get done and so many times you know when i finished my movie i know that if a white boy had made this movie oh my god he'd be a superstar from what i did with 10 days and no money but people be like oh we just we just wish you had had a bigger budget and i'm like give me a give me the budget i can remake the movie with a bigger budget okay oh no no that's not really what they meant it's like you know they always got a story for you about why they can't do what you want them to do so lauren i want us to get into the future how are we gonna get there lauren because i i'm i'm loving vr xr but you know i'm old my brain and i'm not gonna code but i want to get there as you see i want i want us to be in the future and we got to have some vr xr on doshana's platform so how we don't have we don't get there yeah i mean i think it's a it's a couple of things first i mean i i think the technology matters so much less than being able to tell a story you know when you go to film festivals still and where they're having xr festivals a lot of people know the tech who don't know plot who don't know character who don't know how to tell a story so i'm i'm on my mind so the tech doesn't matter if you've got a good story people always been so good at telling stories like we've never had that problem so i think that's the first thing but i think collaboration right like you know i'm there are people who in in the show i don't know if you know there's people who ask me about your work and i have nothing but good things to say about you because crux is in theory it should be it's a platform and we're cooperatively owned um i um but there are people who who do that you know what do you think about what the show doesn't i think it's fucking dope i'm hoping i can invest in you know like i think it's what's up um and vice versa because i think that there's so much money out there there's just so much wealth um there's no reason why we should be fighting over it like there really isn't um and i want us to have all of the platforms that are owned by black people and owned by black artists in particular and i want them to make a whole bunch of money so they can start their platforms i want black ass punk platforms with stream and music you know like i want black anime i want all that shit um and so i mean that to me is the future it's really like you know just getting out of the mindset that we have to be competitive that we can only have one thing you know we can actually have a whole lot of things if we want it um but on that on the investor side tanya that um i'm not the point now where i tell people like i don't need anything from me but your money and i'm hard to manage like i don't even play like if you if you can't just give me your money and leave me alone then i can't deal with you if i need your help i'll ask you for it but what i'm asking you for right now is money you know what i mean reach oh you know i had that conversation with rashaab robinson because color of change is trying to go into the theater community the way they are and i was like look rashaab we we don't need no more jobs we don't need mentorship programs we don't need we need them to just give us the money to make our own things for some Broadway theaters in harlem and queens if new york is Broadway Broadway needs to be in brooklyn and queens and the bronze and all those places and just give us the money and we will make the stuff because all of american culture everything you sell in the world it began with us and i love what you talked about with the money thing someone said to me today europe built its wealth in 3000 years the us built it in 200 because of the free labor and that the whole idea with the free labor is they found that they could give them enough food to eat so that that would sustain them but that was less profitable it was cheaper to let them starve to death or die and replace them than to actually give them enough to sustain them and that colonial slave model has moved into capitalism it is always cheaper to replace your labor because they think of us as a replaceable endless supply of us oh yeah i mean and and we think that about ourselves too i'm fascinated by what's happening on tiktok have you all been following the tiktok dancers who are striking now no what does that mean tiktok dancer striking oh so there's like freedoms right what do you say i create is that the black the black creators who are who are basically not gonna not on tiktok right now yeah i'm not on tiktok either but i'm just again like i'm nosy i'm just like what are these young people doing what are they doing what are they doing so right i should tell you what they're doing um so whenever there's a song that comes out black people make a dance they don't make any money off of it and then white people take the dance and make a shitload of money off of it so megan the stallion just came out with a song and black tiktokers are refusing to make a dance to it and it's been out for i think like close to a week now and there ain't no dance and white people are these white tiktok dancers are trying to make a dance and it is ugly that's just so weak right now it's so ugly and it's hilarious it's like hilarious to watch them flail oh my gosh can i just say to like two-year point ruffin even the anti-racist theater with me like moving that into a larger platform to make it a class that was available people i had a sister friend who called me and said nicole i just got off a call with a lot of people and these folks is up here talking about anti-racist theater and they nobody mentioned jonay right and so i've been to an anti-racist theater for three years like specifically using that phrase or terminology in the field um when other people were still full on working and not using it and i was like wait a minute wait a minute either i'm gonna get out here with an imperfect product and share what it is that i've been doing on a large scale platform my shit's about to be co-opted by white people and i'm gonna be left at the dust um you know being told oh we didn't know we didn't know you did this one of your anti-racist students is going to be out there teaching it and saying they learned from you you know you know so it's like that that is real the ways in which our imaginations are already set up for us to dream of futures to dream ourselves out of whatever our situations are and whereas you know i don't necessarily know that that is true for for those who fall within the umbrella of whiteness that they don't need to have imaginations that are dreaming of better because they've already arrived at their top or whatever that is i'm gonna say something i want to know what you guys think about it i just watched a brilliant uh film called uprooted the history of jazz dance it it doesn't have distribution yet to shana and it is tracing jazz dance all the way back to the african continent i i know the people and stuff i got a private thing for it and one of the powerful things that that they talked about and that dr gregg car talks about is we as a culture as a people we are people that it's about generosity you know we are always giving and sharing and that other culture is about how can i commodify and repeat and make money off of it and in this jazz dance documentary you see that all of the greatest dancers they didn't start schools they was dancing and you could come and be with them and dance and then somebody would come in and and get about a tenth of it they couldn't do what the person did but they could pull out like 10 of it and they would start a whole school and books around the world about this 10 of this thing and and and then you have all these things and then no nobody talks about or elevates the names of the people who were doing it but we know that this is infinite like this thing that's coming through us is infinite so we we will give it away we ain't worried about writing it down because it's changing as i share it with you it's going to become something else and you're going to make something else and we're not trying to distill it down into something that is less than what it can ever be as it's flowing through us what do y'all think about that can't hear you nicole oh i'm amen and you i'm sorry i'm just over here like what a word a word the only small thing i always say i always tell people that you know black people wear the seasoning right you know on everything you know and we we sprinkled our seasoning on some on on dance on music on art um and we do it sometimes free right and in kind of what we mentioned with tiktok um or or instagram or every other platform we give no way our seasoning to and other people capitalizing on it and um and that's why this conversation is also so important because i think that the reason we get away for free because we think that by giving away for free we will eventually get get seen get known or be seen right um and and then we have i call the colonizers who come in um it's sort of hijacked and then the ones who capitalized off of it but i think that you know if we continue to do things like what the young tiktokers are doing and saying you know what i will no longer add my seasoning to tiktok so you can go and take my seasoning using capitalize off of it i'm going to just give it you know keep it to myself but i think at the same time we need to figure out a way okay if we keep it to ourselves not to say what to build our own tiktok or anything like that but just making sure that we're we're able to make money off of also think that as a community we need to speak up more when we see colonizers so hijacking things and taking it and making money off of it i know that people just speak up i guess it was like maybe early this year like last year when there was a tiktoker a young woman she was doing this dance on one of those late night shows and and it was actually some white girls started it and um people were vocal about it like why weren't the originators of this dance why weren't they on i forgot what show it was but people spoke up about it i think they eventually um i'm not sure they came on but they actually gave them recognition or the girls who started the dance recognition so i think the more we speak out about it i think those things would eventually change hopefully i just want to say that for everybody listening we are going to have questions um that you can put in the chat and we will give the questions to the ladies the women who are here with me today and i do women with the w o n y n because we don't need a man in it um so put your questions in the chat and we will we will we will answer them um so what do you i know we know what lauren wants you wants your money just give her the money so she can keep on moving us into the future but i want to think about like i always say about money you can't eat it you can't drink it you can't wear it you can't build a house out of it i want us to somehow um because we got to get out of this capitalist model you know capitalism is built on expansion there's nowhere else to expand and um i want to know how we're gonna we're gonna move out of that like i look at the the the bitcoins and the the cryptos and i'm like they don't hate it and they don't try to kill it because if the brawn james makes some gym shoes and you can only buy them on crypto buy buy dollar uh i'm looking to how do we start moving into money is some made up thing like okay i'm gonna put your movie on my thing and you're gonna give me child care or i'm gonna put my movie on your thing and you're gonna cook for me and back into this this sharing of resources beyond this invention that is enslaving us all uh great car told me this morning like when um the civil war happened and they freed the black people they told them you know you know keep working this land and um then we'll pay you and they're like work we're free they tow up them cotton jans and then they said no no no uh keep working the land and and then we'll give you the money to buy the land well we can work it and we can we we're gonna be able to own the land okay well no we're not gonna pay you but you can own the land if you work it so these black people ran those plantations at a profit that's how well they ran those plantations and of course andrew johnson comes in you know withdraws sherman's field order and we don't get anything but we know how to work we know how to make things we built this whole this whole world here that people are living on we built it we know how i always remember that they have destroyed everything we built and they keep doing it and i don't think they can help themselves and so tony kate bombaris said in the opening of the salt eaters when the woman who was being healed do you want to be well nicole do we want to be well i can't speak for the we but i know i do i i am seeking wholeness i really am and when i think about the the culture that i grew up in and american capitalism i think about capitalism as a spectrum and so what i understand of capitalism today is an overuse or a hyper capitalism and so i don't think that i have ever been alive when capitalism has been used with balance and and so i'm wondering what that would be like as a culture and to be able to kind of get back to a place of capitalism is built on infinite growth and you cannot have infinite growth in a finite system you know i i want to just put out there tony for me that what i'm just saying and offering is that where we are at is extreme and where it has always been has been extreme because anytime you're you're growing off of free labor anytime you have enslaved a person and robbed them of their personhood like that shit is extreme i have never lived nor seen in history books how capitalism functions in a balanced way so like the theory and the practice from what i understand of capitalism have never been in alignment it has always been far skewed and so what i'm putting into space is like i wonder what that is to have balance i know that as i'm working in contradiction in capitalism because that's where we're at and so i am a part of a capitalistic system i am helping to gatekeep and support and prop up a capitalistic system that the best ways that i can try to seek my own wholeness is to make sure that my money is intentionally going to black people and that i am not just you know running to some place to give my streaming service so that if i can afford uh 1499 for netflix can i afford you know the smaller much smaller price uh shawna that you're gonna be 99 a year right please please exactly please um the fucking csa in dc that i was belonging to like 400 dollars for six months of fresh vegetables cut it out right so how do i make space for supporting in that way but also i am very much too of a place of just shut up and give me the money there has been so much mistrust that we need some type of guidance and how to spend the money that we need questions i mean i just applied for a grant where i'm being questioned about who i said i wanted to come down to costa rica and have a relationship deepening time with i'm being told where this person lives or where they don't live and how this trip was not necessary and i'm like shut up and give me the money i'm not lying i'm not distrust worthy i i am in the realms of whatever this is and yet you were questioning money that's not even yours you were simply the gatekeeper to saying yes and no and cut the fucking check and so i always try to do that i try to like make money yes for myself and to support my family but also for my community and where can i do that without people having to know that that's what i'm doing that i'm donating my money to this place or i'm bringing this person in regardless if i need them or not uh because this institution was willing to pay me the money so i'm gonna bring you in to do this or that i'm dropping names like roughen you name that that is so important for us to learn how to shine each other up and move away from scarcity if i can't do it someone else can do it i shouldn't be doing it and so but i want to make sure that i'm gonna like say this person is doing this thing let me like even if we don't agree with everything and so i'm kind of getting to this place of i don't know what's on the other side of capitalism i want to try new models but right now um what i'm trying to do is be healthy to my community that doesn't have opportunities because we're so oftentimes perceived incompetent and i'm tired of that too and also how we can sometimes like not bring them young folks around i'm quick to name young people as my mentor or young people that are whispering wisdom into me that i'm folding into my work but i understand that i have a crude power positionality privilege and so people are willing to listen to me or make me more credible right to them uh that's actually not true and not real so yeah you're right i wish i wish i could i wish i could burn it all down but you say this you know for me making red pill was about the fact that despite you know my 50 years in this industry i still find that i walk into rooms of people who do what i do and i'm not listened to i speak in their silence and then they move on or i'm invisible or uh you know nobody looked me up before i came in the room so there's an assumption that i don't know or couldn't be um uh you know that that sense that as a black woman we do everything and so we are completely uh taken for granted because everybody knows we are atlas and we are not ever going to let the world world we're not gonna let it fall we're not gonna let it fall we we're not we're not constitutionally capable of that so people can rely on that but as we are all saying we're tired of that so we're gonna let it fall i think it's an interesting question because i think about it again raised by a man men let things drop they show do they let they let shit drop people pick it up and find a way they're angry about it um so i i think about i actually have to say in both of my companies and i wasn't one of the i'm not one of the co-founders seat by fractured atlas i'm one of the co-ceos right now gotcha and so and that's important because it's a white led organization it's always been white it's an organization that was founded on whiteness that has thrived on whiteness and i've taken it as far as as i can and now i'm transitioning out so i'll be leaving there now two months but i think um nicol to your your comment about the about philanthropy and their suspicion philanthropy is rooted in distrust if philanthropy really wanted to help poor people and really want to help brown people there wouldn't be nonprofits they would just give us the fucking money or buy us a house do you know what i mean so like let's like let's just cut cut that out um and i've seen how that works i've always worked for pretty large nonprofits but the questions that um that my friends now who run black arts institutions get asked by funders that i know you know white organizations with that that's a good thing they're using capital to grow black and brown organizations with that why do you have that do you pay your debt payments on time what's your the the questions that my friends get are really really really suspect um and the reality is that if there was if labor was paid fairly for it's for the labor there would be no need for charity right yeah i mean but i and i think that's i was i was talking to some some folks out here in new mexico last week and we were on a panel about you know financial wellness or whatever and you know even the things that people who do well in our community tell people they need to be doing you know life insurance invest in real estate you know that's really good for you and your family that's not structural that's not that's not real change um and i think that you know having to be of dual minds around i want to i want to be okay and i want my family to be okay but also like the community in the black world and the diaspora has to be okay it's i think it's hard for a lot of people to hold those things um and to your question tanya i i give a lot of my time you know like i think and like when i was way younger um and i was working in juvenile justice um you know time is really important um and not time like mentorship i mean like just straight up time and you know like connections and that sort of shit um so i give away expertise you know i know how to start a nonprofit you know i know how to write a contract at what the law school so i like i give this shit away to people and you know i'm not keeping track of it but to me like you know i rarely say i don't have 15 minutes for somebody even though i am pretty busy um and i think if i were able to like if i spend the next 10 years working my ass off and supporting other people i'll be able to like have my own non-capitalistic system where i'm just giving my time away and the seeds i plant in conversations will become cyclical like that's kind of how i'm thinking about like trying to move myself out of capitalism yes ashay ashay i for me i've got reached a point in my life where i don't need much you know my material needs are met and so when i am spending money i'm spending it to support uh somebody's business somebody's family that's what i'm spending money for um because i'm blessed and privileged that my needs are met so i i feel like the law of life is that there's a flow from this place to that place and that there's a perpetual flow and capitalism is an extraction hoarding model extract hoard when there's flow from here to there it can sustain itself forever and so when i whenever i get i'm like i need to send it on through because it's got to keep flowing out to other people i want to say the challenge though that um i'm facing as a startup company in capitalism is that our customers are expecting us to be netflix they expect us to have the same exact platform as if we are a multi-pillion dollar platform we get those well netflix has this so why don't you do that why aren't you here and like what lauren's like well we need more money and so while you know i have this love hate thing with capitalism in order for us to compete that's the limit that i'm facing as an entrepreneur um like how can we adequately compete how can we when i talk to customers i i don't want to like well we only start with 20 000 you know then like oh my so i've said that sometimes to customers and i don't want to like shame someone to stay and subscribe to quillie tv you know like please for the love of god i put myself in a like i live in several ways like in front of a husband i will be homeless sit like for real like you know um and so and but we get all these people who want to subscribe finance too much i i need a better platform like well what we have we've been able to do really really well and i think that as a community we change our mindset and and grow with the company right knowing they'll pay this company starting here they're offering good service it works it's not the beta it can we can do way more than take with money and play a movie now um and we've been building what we can i think if if we sort of take that like we're growing together type of mentality um i think as a community we will we will go so in front especially with our black owned businesses because we just don't give ourselves grace and that's why they show me the money is to me i hate to say oh yeah just you know write me a check blah blah blah but like yeah that's reality because you know in order for us to adequately compete like we need checks you know i if i had the money i know exactly where i would take the company i have a plan like literally have a plan ran out but i've only made you do like five percent of it because you know we're you know we're barely scraping by and so um we how do you come back that you know you know that you need money you know that capitalism isn't um a just you know type of uh future for us but at the same time we do need capital in north even to play equally with the white counterparts it's just popped into my head as you were talking to shana i want to hear what the other ladies think about it but you all think that but i was like i i took this negotiation course and one of the things they said is that people in the west are the worst negotiators in the world that people in the east like the eastern europeans the russians they're the best negotiators because we want we care what people think about us and that the the the russians the slaw people they don't care and that the point of a good negotiation is to destroy the other person's expectation so if the market is that you know this costs ten dollars and so everybody's expects ten dollars and you're hoping that you can prove that yours is better and maybe get 12 you know you're expecting them to come in around nine or something so the eastern negotiator would be like two dollars now your world is jacked up you you all face you don't even know what world you in and so they got they got you because you don't even know what world you're in and they're just negotiating okay and that when someone gives you the price that you want you gotta flinch because you know people don't want to feel like they they say it too much so i started thinking about with you and it was like you know anybody who thinks they can negotiate are going to be playing those games but what can i get what can i get it for less and i was like well why don't you say um netflix doesn't have this oh you said you was missing you wanted some black joy does netflix have ten black joy does netflix have blah blah blah i should be charging you a lot more this is a bargain and you know what in fact in six months is going to be more because there's nowhere in the world you can get this content if you didn't see it at the festival you can't see it you got to come through me to get this right now yeah i mean you know it's it's hard being a good person running a company because you i mean like if you're small you're doing customer service that should is day in and day out right like that customer service yo i'd be bad at it because i'm an asshole but like when i'm like when i used to be in an office listen people i would be like if you don't hang that phone up right now but and you know we had to come up with a fractured atlas like actual interactions protocols which was you can't you can't hang up like but i think that wears on you and so then i'm wondering if you know the pricing thing like do we internalize our value as being less than it's like i mean you know it's sure i think you've built a dope-ass platform um so although i have to revisit i haven't i've been on in a bit now i gotta be better about it to be you know totally transparent um but it's also basketball season so that's where i'm going to stream in basketball so um but i i just i wonder about like that value piece and labor and how we value ourselves and you know and as women in particular but i think we do have those moments where somebody gives us a little criticism and it does really it really cuts um yeah but that's why you know i think it's important for us to have these conversations just surround ourselves with i know one of the oh sorry no go on no one of the things that was uh a big a big hard thing for me um but also life changing for me was um people not liking the choices i was making being mad at me attacking me and me having to sit in my discomfort of that in the awkwardness and the sadness but then ultimately going people hate the boss and i like being the boss yeah i'm just thinking too about like how i'm trying to be healthy within my capitalism right so it's like what is that sliding scale model for people of my beloved community what what is that sliding scale model for folks that is always available in anything that i'm doing that's like the cold run um but also hearing in like the very beginning people telling me oh you should be charging more you should be charging more you should be charging much more right um and i'm like if i charge much more then i i scale out people who i'm trying to actually include in so this kind of like charge more get more you know turn it to your point it's always president it's always there and and what i'm thinking about too in terms of futures entrepreneurship money is how can i and i don't want to sound like morbid or whatever like oh it's too late for me but what can i do to help these other generations who are like stroud with debt so i'm 39 right i've got about 143 thousand dollars of student loan debt of which a good good 45 thousand dollars worth of that is just interest and that particular they can't roughen but i'm also like what were the conditions right first of all i don't how is this not a lawsuit i was lied to has been to be another yeah the federal government hasn't had one but all the all the for profit college that needs to represent them and that's what's it's it's all these different sectors of how you know how how folks get got yes you know yes i mean yeah i i just uh i i fucking hate student loans i hate them but i can't wait for the government to do anything about that well i told i told my students do not plan your life around paying them student loans you can die oh and then them student loans there's a million ways more than one way to skin a cat plan your life around you not not gonna pay them student loans and you're not going to plan your life around figuring that out either i would love for us to be able to do that and also have other like pathways of how do we redistribute wealth in a way that takes care of that for people and and really begin to like level the playing field in housing like owning your own home whatever that is for you level the playing field and any debt that is accrued because of our systems of racism and oppression right and racial caste all of that stuff how are we and i'm gonna speak from my eye how am i organizing myself in a way where i'm thinking about that and not just being straddled with it because regardless it is something that even though i want to like just say fuck it and i'm not going to pay it or whatever i still carry it and i just don't want my body and my spirit to hold on to that debt anymore and i don't know how to breathe my way out of it or anything else i just need it gone we don't talk we can move that burden there's a lot of questions here about funding you know i'm gonna say i funded my own movie i funded pretty much everything i've ever done i work at other things in order to fund the things that i want to do but i will say from my spiritual discipline and practice there is nothing that anyone wants to do that the lack of money will keep them from doing if they intend to do that and it's how i raise my children if you want to do it i do believe that there are resources and says that you can call on and the ways will be made and so i want to say that and i'm going to open it to you all up about questioning but if you want to do something you can call in all the resources you need and and and money doesn't have to be one of them so funding you want people want to know about funding i heard you say twenty thousand dollars you started quality yeah i can't start um yeah i started quality initially twenty thousand dollars i won a competition uh pitch competition and it's interesting because the companies are for that was another pitch competition i was i was in i lost i was a finalist and they're asking me i asked why did i win they're like oh we're not sure about the future streaming which is so crazy uh and this is yeah i know um they were they were definitely didn't have like lauren uh you know vision for the future um but i will say that when i know she got the 20k the goal was to sort of build the beta in there from there raise more money um but i would say my mind says how to change a bit when talking to investors and the challenges i was hearing back from them um or what they thought about the community over the type of content they thought we needed in order to be successful for the black community and so i'd start to be more selective about the potential investors that i just speak to since coming up with the ideal and being in and out of beta we only raised two hundred thousand dollars and i only got a hundred thousand of the two hundred thousand i got a hundred thousand dollars a month ago so literally for the past five years i had only raised a hundred thousand dollars that's it um to run the company and i got the recently another hundred k and now it's a higher a full-time person literally running clit tv by myself so we talk about um the ancestors um and black women doing it you know one of the things that i hear from people like how in the world were you able to run clit tv by yourself i would say that there was something inside of me that gave me the strength to do it because no way in the world can someone have a platform with 500 titles over 400 filmmakers from around the world you know be on all these different platforms on real cool apple tv and build partnership by myself and run customer service i mean um you have to be a maniac to do and i think it's entrepreneurship i'm probably really crazy anyway you can't be normal to kind of to even be entrepreneur to be honest but i would sell people there as a world as a way i've met so many people who have tried to start similar things and they just haven't mainly because they're waiting for some big investors to sort of bless them with whatever and i never wanted for anyone to sort of bless me with the money to give me permission to kind of move forward that's okay if i only give 50 000 i only give 20 000 i'm going to run with that money and it's someone who grew up working class like i can i can stretch some money um and that's some those are some things that i would say maybe the bros can do they they raised two million dollars and it's this shit's gone in six months you know let me know what the how to run it but you know we can do so much or so less and so um that's why i tell people you know if you are trying to find funding um my my i would sell people to just try to figure out how to do it yourself as much as possible and also be intentional about who you get money from because you don't want money from everybody kind of a lords bitch thing some people like give me money i don't need your your your insight i just i know i want to do like i ask you for money so you can be my best being and come behind me every five minutes asking what am i doing i'm running my company right and so or people are going to tell you you should do it this way or that way and so it may even dilute your your mission and i turned down checks because people want me to dilute the whole reason why i started the company i would never do that um for the sake of a dollar and so while funding is amazing i think you just need to think about what the mission is and we talk about capitalism too in capitalism where you raised 10 million dollars you're ready to sell a joker one day if we're talking about you know having any sustaining differences that stayed black on in black led um then that won't happen if you get money from certain vcs because they want to see if you sell the viacom or some other company down online and so there's also something i've been fighting very heavily for is actually like ownership to control in my company and not having you know you know be a notch on there you know some white companies belt you know to me because that's where the black companies are they're not going to belt see we have diverse funds and we have this platform um and i don't want i don't want to be that i don't want to be the ceo of under above and under some other ceo who's you know i want to be a ceo of my own company like why can't we build these companies and why can't we work together kemel lorence mentioned earlier we can we can create a wild business where we're working together and collaboratively right it can you know it could be you know crux quilley sort of you know viacom said yes you know things like that and i think that's what we should be thinking about when we want to raise money because we want to think long term um about sort of you know how you want to see the trick the trajectory of company that's though loren um so crux was bootstrapped for the first year or so and i was when you funded it was that yeah yeah yeah i funded it um and i was i was fortunate to be able to do that um and and then we got lucky um we've been good we've we've been treated very well and then we didn't we we don't need anything now because the pandemic happened um and one of the things that we talk about a lot is how do you as a as a black person hold your success that came out of trauma you know of a of a pandemic and of an uprising where all of a sudden and you know nicole like the shit we've been talking about for a while now you hear us so and so we've moved to earn revenue model and you know i'm a fundraiser by trade so i've always been very good at asking for money hold watch your pockets um because i will come for your pockets will be like ah but i also like let's have some fucking fun with this shit you know like um so we've we've been we've been fortunate you know last year was really good we're we're on track to do a fair amount of business this year it's been a hustle like i'm literally running i'm running an event right now um but it was it's it's six figure it was a six figure event for us um and you know it's it's a it's a hustle um and i'm i want it to be less of a hustle we it's part of the hustle is um to to dishanna's point about you know what we do with with our like how much we stretch you know like i'm still not taking a salary i'm still paying my people really well there was a point you know not too long ago where i was like we might not make it y'all but the least we can say is we pay black people to order a pandemic like you know like that's all that would be if that was on our gravestone as a company you know like there were 17 black folks who made some income during a pandemic um and were able to do it safely and at home um yeah so we've we've been fortunate we've raised about 700 000 so far we're on track to do two million dollars in business this year it's a grind and i'm wondering a lot about myself like my generosity because i'm generous now because i have a full-time job like am i going to be generous in september you know like um so but i don't know it's it's fun work it's like joyful work but you know on the on the funding side we've just been really lucky and now some of the seeds of conversation i planted three and four years ago you know now my friends have moved in the roles where they can move capital um and again because of the trauma of last year and i'm just i'm trying to figure out how do we find space to process that shit like some of us are having some success now and there's so many of us who aren't here anymore and you know like that that's shit like i think about it all the time yeah yeah there's a question here that it says i've heard the term black people use by all of the panelists we live in a global world what exactly falls into the definition of black people i'm not sure any longer that's a question huh i don't answer that question anymore somebody else take it i'll try to think about like okay why we said no we just said no to that question and the question is um for for doshana what is the growth of quali tv with your various partnerships with little rel how we mean for black creators on the platform and what does the future look like for collaboration with other black streaming services like afroland tv oh you're muta baby i was making a mistake we've been impending it for how long it's still making a mistake all the time um so as far as the future um for a quiz to be with partnerships like little rel little rel's been really great um great partner i know before we're talking about another potential partner um that why didn't that go out go over so well um but um for us to go is just to continue to be a space in which we amplify black um currency rates from across the globe um in doing numbers various different ways on that platform we're going to be adding audio to call it to be um retro in process of revamping our platform so we can have video audio simultaneously and also creating more of a community in which our content creators and our in our customers can kind of connect more offline and online so that's kind of where we we see things going as far as partnerships um as far as collaborating with um other black streaming services i'm always open to collaboration i think it just depends on sort of you know what the overall goal will be you know um you know for for both parties but um i haven't really had a lot of conversations i think that the closest conversation i had was probably with lauren with uh we were talking about collaborating um a while ago um but that's probably been the only conversation i always be trucked lightly you know when it comes to having conversations um just because um kind of like what i mentioned like a whole new parker thing that i have had people not to say that you know all platforms like this but i've had you know people reach out to me sort of wanting some information under the disguise of wanting to partner and so um at the end of the day i'm always open to partnering i don't know what they'll look like you know to black streaming services but it could be showing sharing of content it could be you know one of things that you know for for me for my streaming service my i've always been mission driven in to me with so many things happening um especially within our community having black streaming services come together and say let's have a group let's have a a cooperative event you know let's come together and talk about some of these issues together we can all stream live on our platform that's kind of the ways i think we can collaborate um it's by sort of saying you know this isn't about you know me versus you this is this is what happened you know a brinatina george florida and as a community how how clearly bringing people together and having events that in which we can connect um and no matter if you're on afroland or if it's live event or vt plus and we're also allowing people to get the information that they need from any space in which they feel most comfortable with or where they actually aren't subscribing from so that's from how i see potentially partnering with those platforms if they're open to it we are in streaming wars and so uh that that's the challenge that we're facing right now because it is kind of like every man for himself at this point you switched your language from partnership to collaboration and i i loved how you did that because people come to us about partnerships all the time and partnership only happens between equals like it's it's not a partnership if you got me doing everything and i'm we're bringing all the resources like when i'm i'm very this time of year also the only person ever talked about partnership like you know because i don't i don't feel alignment with anybody else from afar you know like but people come to us all the time with partnership and i'm like oh this ain't it so we are we are at the end and i have one last question and i'm like each of you have the last word um you know right now we're in this moment where the um rule by minority is um is getting hammered in hard um if we don't win 2022 um if they don't get rid of the filibuster we are looking at minority rule forever um what is that's uh how are you all thinking about that in terms of being black businesses this this sharp turn towards authoritarianism in what had been thought of as the freest place on the planet you're trying to end us on a high note huh you know i'm that girl i mean shit tanya like it's always been a struggle i'm i'm not committed to physically being here but i want to make that really very clear you you ain't never lied like i'm i'm just not like and this is you know maybe ego but i don't know that i have to give the united states anything else like i just don't think i have to so i mean that's my answer i've worked in politics i think you're 100 percent right i'm tired of i feel the same way i did in spring of 2016 um and i'm tired of convincing people that so and i don't have to be here like you know and that that is absolutely privileged talking but my goal is not to struggle for the next you know 30 40 my mother also died when she was 42 and i'm also Nicole 39 so i'm like i really feel that time coming up and i'm like you know what i'm not supposed to spend my life someplace where they don't appreciate me or my skills and my gifts i'm just not going to do it so i mean that's how i'm approaching it i'm prepared for that because i don't think i don't see anyone thinking generationally with strategy who are who are democrats in position to power you know i don't i don't have a whole lot of thoughts so i'm just how many people how can i build a company where people feel like they have a way to go someplace else i'm there with you i know you are i'll be following your instagram you just got back oh my way out again oh my god i love it so much i just feel like there's such alignment between rough underneath jerks of like deuces um and i'm just trying to figure out energetically where that would be um in terms of i'm not willing to to give back any time any time of my life and i just got done reading an article about life expectancy for black people uh plummeting within this time of the pandemic but i would just say in terms of the government uh my accountant kept describing my last year as a windfall year for me and i have deep love for this human being but there was something about that language that made it sound like a unicorn that made it sound impossible to ever make that again or exceed it that i know was not their you know intention around it but i've been thinking about the sheer amount of money that i paid in taxes uh last year and particularly in relationship to you know the trump scandal and what he did or did not pay in taxes and how um i i need to regardless if i want to or not i am at the point where i have to invest in more knowledge around how to utilize the system in the way where it is not that i don't want to pay my fair share for you know services that are being utilized by old people but i would rather have control about my dollar going into my beloved community than my dollar going to uncle sam who's ever given a damn about me and so as for my community and so like as i'm trying to figure out this next year for me is around getting more information about organizationally how do i need to show up because the LLC model isn't working for me and how to be able to protect myself um as these people move back uh into um power and continue to exert anti-blackness in every aspect um of my life and so that's you know what i'm offering into space right now get the last word to show them very interesting i said i'm in the dc area so you know january six they had i'm in old town xander so just across the bridge and there were a lot of restraining on neighborhood so they had some locks and after that i literally stopped watching i haven't really watched the news since January the 6th just for self-care um i will say this um i started closety one reason i started closety was you know to see myself but also to be a safe space and so um for me that's been my mission even now like to me it's even more important to be a safe space for everyone you know like well laura mentioned you know is privileged to be able to say i'm going to leave a country and and just you know effort um and i'll let them figure it out because i'm the same way i don't really i it's kind of hard for me to see a path for i just don't i'm technically i'm an independent i'm not a democrat i'm not a republican definitely a republican um but um i sort of checked out with politics i definitely vote but at internet my goal is to make sure for people to have a safe space to have a safe space and to escape from what they're seeing on the outside world and for them to then get get joy to see by joy to see black laugh to see black success to celebrate ourselves through through our platform um and that's the only way that i can sort of manage what i'm seeing um because it's super frustrating but i know that even though i did mention some things the negative things that people said you know the positive things in here from class was like wow you know i was sick or i was going to this and quickly helped me out you know and so though that's what kind of keeps me going will i move out of the country meet my husband i'll be talking about moving to Ghana as well you know possibly so you know that's something we've also talked about um but i would say that's sort of my goal is to be to say space while people are sort of dealing with um the realities of the us right now i want to say you know i know that your time is the most valuable thing that any of you have and that you are very busy successful women and so i am really grateful to you for taking this time to be in conversation with me so i thank you and and bless you and hope that all that you give returns to you a thousand fold and um thank you to everyone who listened this will be available on youtube um this series is called through a black woman's gaze next month we're going to be doing literature and we'll have alice randell wrote the wind done gone and cindy abond who wrote ruby so um thank you for listening today and please tune in in july for the next um conversations with brilliant black women thank you ladies and um please stay on so we can say goodbye formally after crystal closes the livestream thank you everyone