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Welcome to the Black Entrepreneur Experience Podcast. Inside the business buzz and brilliance of black entrepreneurs. Here's your host, Dr. Francis Richards.

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What happens in Vegas goes all over the world on Black Entrepreneur experience. Episode number 503. Hi B Nation. All those who have supported Black Entrepreneur experience podcast. I'm Dr. Frances Richards and I am the host and founder of of Black Entrepreneur Experience podcast. And I want to say first of all, happy Black History Month 2025. It has been a minute since I have actually done a solo episode. So I decided that I was going to just do an episode, let you all know what's going on, what's on the pipeline, what I've been up to. And gosh, I cannot believe April 2025 was will mark eight years that I launched the podcast. So if this is new for you, I want to say that we have over 500 episodes and first of all, I want to thank the listeners. I want to thank all and every previous sponsor. I want to thank every entrepreneur that has graced our stage stage and dropped value bombs about their life and their business and they've given us behind the scenes information. And the purpose of the podcast is really to mitigate the wealth gap in urban community. What is really near and dear to my heart is really about elevating Black entrepreneur experience. Black entrepreneurs. And so in 2017, I was bitten by the Internet marketing bug and I wanted to personally start an Internet marketing company. And I had a lot of basically failures. And so I was going to throw in the towel. And what I was going to do is I decided I was not going to even try to be build an Internet marketing business. But I said before I throw in the tile, what I'm going to do is actually create a podcast. I didn't have any mentors, didn't know anything about podcasting, but I started to do a podcast. Now I had some kickbacks regarding individuals, said that I should not call it Black Entrepreneur Experience Podcast because I was actually limiting my scope of entrepreneurials, the entrepreneurs that I would allow on the podcast, and I was very clear, I had been in corporate America for many years. I had taken directives from everyone and I decided this is something that I wanted to do. I wanted to have a platform where, where black entrepreneurs across the black diasporas could share their story. And so we've had some successes, we've been very successful. And about three years ago we did open up our podcast to allies, other nationalities and other cultures who are allies and who support our mission, which is to mitigate the wealth gap for urban communities. And so I'm very clear on why I'm doing what I'm doing. So to fast forward, we've had again some successes on the podcast. We've had some amazing guests and I would recommend that you go back and listen to some of the episodes and let me know if there's a specific industry that you want to hear about, if there's something that you would like us to add to the podcast. What I really want the purpose of me not only coming on, sharing what has been going on over the years to give you an update, but more importantly, I want to make impact. I want to connect with you. I would like you to reach out to me, whether it's send me an email@francis richards.com or or on any of the platforms. I'm on LinkedIn, mainly on LinkedIn. I am on Facebook and Instagram, but primarily on LinkedIn. And let me know if you have any suggestions for the podcast. You can also reach out via my website, www.doctor Francis richards.com but I want to know how can I support you? One of the things we've also done, we are and a media and communications company. The name of the company is Arlene Richards Media and Communications Company. And what we do besides being storytellers, besides the podcast, we also do audio family legacy recordings where we capture your health history, we capture your story that you leave a legacy to your family. We also do asset inventory and documentation. We go into your home, we document all your assets in the unlikely event that you have a fire, a burglary or a memory fade. One of the things that we've noticed is that there has been an increase of individuals with Alzheimer's and dementia. So that has been very, very near and dear to me that we've been doing some work in the brain and the brain health that's been very important that we preserve our stories and in the unlikely event that we have a memory loss, what we would like to do, we've also opened up our platform. If you know of any successful entrepreneurs that you think that we should feature, we would like you to reach out to us and let us know if you have any ideas. Again, you can reach us@francesricards.com if there's a spot specific industry, if there's a specific title, if there's any suggestions you have for us to make the podcast better. Our objective is to be here to make impact in the community. One of the central themes that we have seen throughout is access to capital. What we'd like to do is figure out a way. How we can be that answer? How can we provide access to capital? How can we help more black businesses keep their doors open? If you have any suggestions or anyone that you know that would like to collaborate around that, let us know. What has happened since then is some of the success stories. Like I said, we have over 500 episodes, some since we've launched. We've been very fortunately, very fortunate that we have not missed an episode. We drop our episodes every Wednesday. We have a new episode, and we've had a lot of transitions that we've made in terms of we want to look at adding more video to our podcasting. So we do capture the video when we do the interviews. A lot of times we don't release the videos because we do have a smaller crew that is working with us and it takes a lot of manpower. And that's one of the things that we're looking at. How can we get more of our content out? Because we do have a lot of content that's sitting there that we would like to actually release. I just want to mainly come on to say thank you. Thank you. Thank you for believing in us when no one knew my name. And it's not about me or Black Entrepreneur Experience Podcast, but I do want to thank those early entrepreneurs eight years ago that didn't ask me how many listeners, how many followers. They just believed in our platform. So for that, we thank you for that. Again, we would like to reach out. We would like to build community. If you have suggestions on what we can do to build community, to make impact, I am open. I don't want to belabor this. It was just mainly to say thank you. I appreciate you. You are loved and appreciated. If you have any suggestions, let us know. Again, Dr. Francis Richards here, founder of Black Entrepreneur Experience Podcast, and I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart. Thank you so much for supporting us. And if there is a episode that you really enjoyed, I ask you to please share it. We would like to increase our numbers this year. We want to mainly increase our numbers so we make impact, so we can help elevate the profits. And it's not just about sharing the information about the black entrepreneurs. It's about for you to do business with those entrepreneurs. And because they are. They have a family, they have employees, and they are trying to make impact. So we ask you for your support not just in listening, not just in sharing, but absolutely. Let your dollars do the talking. So, as we say, our objective is to keep our business and our bank accounts in the Black. So we thank you again from the bottom of my heart. Dr. Francis Richards. Thank you for sharing, listening and subscribing. Have an amazing day.