Why Selling Isn’t “Selling Out” | Richelieu Dennis on Essence Fest Fallout & Black Business Issues

Summary

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Podcast Summary

Podcast: Earn Your Leisure
Episode: Why Selling Isn’t “Selling Out” | Richelieu Dennis on Essence Fest Fallout & Black Business Issues
Host: iHeartPodcasts (Rashad Bilal and Troy Millings)
Date: March 26, 2026
Guest: Richelieu Dennis (Entrepreneur, Investor, Owner of ESSENCE, Founder of Shea Moisture, New Voices Fund)

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Episode Overview

This special “mentor edition” features Richelieu Dennis, trailblazing entrepreneur, investor, and cultural tastemaker behind Shea Moisture, ESSENCE, and New Voices Fund. Rashad Bilal and Troy Millings, co-hosts of Earn Your Leisure, dig into the complexities of Black entrepreneurship, the stigma of “selling out,” the dynamics of generational wealth, and the real meaning of ownership and reinvestment in the Black community. The conversation addresses the fallout around ESSENCE Fest, the challenges of building and keeping Black-owned institutions, and why extending grace, support, and opportunity is crucial for future success.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Black Entrepreneurship: The Real Challenges

• Starting Out Against the Odds

  • Dennis recounts building Shea Moisture from street vending on 125th & 5th in Harlem in 1991, at a time when Black brands couldn’t easily access mainstream retail. ([07:17–09:13])
  • Quote: “[W]hen we started back in 1991...there was very little opportunity for black brands and black owned businesses...we were really able to pioneer that journey...transform how retail engaged with black women.” – Richelieu Dennis ([07:17])

• Family Business Dynamics

  • Dennis credits the success of Shea Moisture to collaborative family stewardship and ensuring that roles are defined by merit, not just family ties.
  • Quote: “It’s not just, hey, because you’re a family member, you automatically get a free pass...the business deserves to have the best players in it in order for it to be successful.” – Richelieu Dennis ([09:38])

2. Reinvesting in the Community

• Building Economic Infrastructure

  • From the start, Shea Moisture’s model included investing in the women who produce shea in West Africa, helping them move up the supply chain and gain economic empowerment. ([17:31–20:04])
  • Quote: “...it’s called women’s gold...if it’s women’s gold, they should benefit from the gold...we’re going to work with the women, we’re going to train them, we’re going to provide equipment...so they can produce the finished product...that program has now impacted hundreds of thousands of women.” – Richelieu Dennis ([17:31, 20:04])

• 10% Reinvestment Promise

  • Shea Moisture pledged 10% of revenue from products to support African-American women entrepreneurs, partnering with institutions like the Tuck School of Business for executive education and providing early-stage capital. ([20:38–25:23])

3. The “Selling Out” Narrative

• Facing Criticism and Its Root Causes

  • Dennis discusses the backlash Black entrepreneurs get when selling their companies and debunks the “selling out” myth. He explains the business necessity and community impact behind such exits, emphasizing capital limitations and lack of generational infrastructure. ([25:23–39:25])
  • Quote: “But that’s not how generational wealth is created...History is littered with black-owned businesses that thought that way, waited too late...and are no longer around.” – Richelieu Dennis ([30:00, 30:19])

• Barriers to Generational Wealth

  • Challenges include lack of access to capital, talent, institutional support, and the risk of public opinion impacting business valuation and opportunity. ([39:25–42:32])

• Public Backlash’s Economic Toll

  • Dennis notes that negative social media sentiment can actually lower acquisition prices and hurt the whole Black business ecosystem. ([39:25–42:32])
  • Quote: “If my community turns on me, am I going to be able to stay in business?...we’ve seen examples where the community turns and the business can’t recover.” – Richelieu Dennis ([39:47, 39:51])

• The Essential Need for Grace Within the Community

  • Dennis argues that, without grace and understanding from within, Black entrepreneurs are pressured out rather than supported in learning and scaling from mistakes.
  • Quote: “I think it’s where we’re getting to a place in our society where we’re forgetting that the only way our ancestors got through this environment was by loving each other...that’s what we need to stick with.” – Richelieu Dennis ([43:09])

4. American Double Standard and Black Business Mistrust

• Unforgiving Consumer Attitudes

  • Mainstream corporations make frequent errors—privacy lawsuits, recalls, product failures—without being “cancelled.” Black businesses experience harsher judgment for minor mistakes. ([46:40–48:07])
  • Quote: “A t-shirt comes three weeks late and it’s like you make a TikTok video...this is why you don’t buy from black businesses, because black people don’t know how to handle business the right way.” – Rashad Bilal ([47:04])

• Consequences for Future Entrepreneurs

  • Dennis warns about potentially discouraging future Black entrepreneurs, which, against the backdrop of AI and a transforming job market, could leave Black talent locked out of new opportunities. ([52:13–54:00])

5. Capital & Opportunity: The Real Bottleneck

• Chronic Lack of Investment

  • Only a minuscule percentage of venture funding goes to Black founders (0.3% in 2026), despite making up over 13% of the U.S. population. ([55:34–57:53])
  • Quote: “At the end of the day, it always just comes back to capital...if you think about it, I think stats are like 20, 21, it was like 1.2% of capital went to black businesses. Today it’s 0.3%.” – Richelieu Dennis ([55:34])

• Losing Institutions & Opportunity Platforms

  • The disappearance of iconic Black cultural and business events and institutions (e.g., Bronner Brothers Hair Show, Curlfest) accelerates the loss of foundational community infrastructure. ([58:22–60:52])

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ESSENCE Fest Fallout & Black-Owned Institutions

Addressing the Criticism

• Structural Growth Pains at ESSENCE

  • Dennis acknowledges some warranted critiques around the last ESSENCE Fest but clarifies the unique importance of ESSENCE as the only Black-owned platform of its scale, fostering Black culture, economic opportunity, and multi-generational community. ([60:33–66:17])

• Expanding Cultural and Economic Impact

  • ESSENCE Fest has diversified its programming (music, Food & Wine, film, literature, beauty), drives millions annually into Black businesses and New Orleans’ local economy, and provides a free convention experience for tens of thousands. ([66:17–83:01])
  • Quote: “...you're bringing super bowl type economics every year...we are a small to medium sized business. But if you compare us to our community. We're it.” – Richelieu Dennis ([83:01])

• Ownership of Culture and Wealth

  • Dennis and co-hosts stress how Black culture is often monetized by others, underscoring the need for true economic participation and platform ownership in order to build lasting generational wealth. ([66:17–68:32])

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Building toward a Legacy: Generational Wealth and the Future

• From “Sell to Survive” to Infrastructure for Generations

  • Dennis explains the difference between other communities’ transfer of wealth (e.g., the Ellisons/Skydance-Paramount, Waltons/Walmart) and Black communities’ struggle to even begin these traditions, due to lack of historical access and capital. ([68:32–73:12])
  • Quote: “It’s I build it and I put my kids in position to go build too...Now they go build the next thing...we just, as a community, haven’t had...the opportunity to do those types of spectacular things.” – Richelieu Dennis ([68:32–70:29])

• Second Generation Black Wealth: The Inflection Point?

  • Are we at a turning point? Dennis is hopeful but clear that it will require many coordinated efforts and infrastructure-building to make multi-generational Black wealth the norm, not the exception. ([70:29–73:12])

Real Example: Teyana Taylor as ESSENCE Fest Chief Curator

• Handing Over the Platform
  • Teyana Taylor is brought in to curate ESSENCE Fest, symbolizing a handing over of legacy to next-gen Black visionaries and a move to allow culture drivers to shape Black institutional futures. ([66:18–74:28])
  • Quote: “...to be able to take the infrastructure that we have and now put people on our platform, people that can take it to the next level...That’s the vision that we have.” – Richelieu Dennis ([74:28])

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Black Unity: Across the Diaspora and Within the U.S.

• Bridging African and African American Experiences
  • Dennis shoots down critiques labeling ESSENCE as “African-driven,” instead re-centering on Black unity and broad-based collective opportunity under one cultural umbrella. ([78:54–82:23])
  • Quote: “The infrastructure is black driven. It is focused on serving black women...The organization, the structures...the teams, everything is in service of this vision of how do we put black people in the best light we possibly can.” – Richelieu Dennis ([79:17])

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Memorable Quotes

• “We don’t always need to burn things down to build something new...preserve what’s been built.” – Richelieu Dennis ([45:05])
• “If my community turns on me, am I going to be able to stay in business?” – Richelieu Dennis ([39:51])
• “We don’t own any of [social platforms]...We create the content, but we don’t monetize it.” – Richelieu Dennis ([67:39])
• “You bring Super Bowl economics every year, and we’re not the NFL. We are a small to medium sized business. But if you compare us to our community. We’re it.” – Richelieu Dennis ([83:01])

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Important Timestamps

| Segment | Timestamp | |--------------------------------------------------------|-------------| | Origin and Growth of Shea Moisture | 07:17–17:24 | | Family Business Discussion | 09:13–11:13 | | Capital, Scale, and Selling the Business | 11:13–20:04 | | Selling Out Critique & Generational Wealth | 25:23–42:32 | | Black Consumer Grace & Corporate Double Standard | 46:40–48:07 | | Employment, Underemployment, and Lost Opportunities | 54:00–57:53 | | Decline of Black-Owned Institutions | 58:22–60:52 | | ESSENCE Fest Fallout & Community Impact | 60:33–66:17 | | Platform Ownership, Teyana Taylor as Curator | 66:17–74:28 | | Generational Wealth and True Legacy-Building | 68:32–73:12 | | Diaspora Solidarity & Economic Infrastructure | 78:54–83:01 | | Economic/Cultural Importance of ESSENCE Fest & Print | 83:01–88:56 |

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Tone & Takeaways

Richelieu Dennis delivers a blend of candor, mentorship, and challenge, urging collective grace and a shift from a culture of criticism to one of opportunity-making and infrastructure-building. He pushes listeners to understand the real market pressures on Black-owned businesses, the economic necessity of selling (not “selling out”), the importance of platform ownership, and the deep, often invisible work it takes to create institutions the community can rely on for generations.

This episode is a call to support Black entrepreneurs, institutions, and creativity not simply out of pride, but because these are the engines of collective wealth, opportunity, and cultural endurance.

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Transcript

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[Rich Lou Dennis]

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[Rich Lou Dennis]

Discover is accepted at 99% of places that take credit cards nationwide. Based on the February 2025 Nielsen report. If my community turns on me, am I going to be able to stay in business?

[Interviewer 1]

There's a narrative that when black businesses sell their company, what they sold out.

[Rich Lou Dennis]

A driving factor in why they want to sell Is because they're afraid.

[Interviewer 1]

How can we ever have generational wealth? If we selling out, we don't have anything to pass down.

[Rich Lou Dennis]

But that's not how generational wealth is created. I don't think they understand how hard it is to actually build these things.

[Interviewer 1]

A company like Meta Billion dollar lawsuit, where they were actually selling people's data and nobody actually installed Instagram.

[Rich Lou Dennis]

There's a lot of mistrust in our community, Some of it earned and some of it not.

[Interviewer 2]

We're not afforded the ability to make a mistake. What is your thoughts on family business? The dynamics of having both.

[Rich Lou Dennis]

Certainly, one of the most rewarding things you can do as a business owner is to build a business with your family. And the business deserves to have the best players.

[Interviewer 2]

When we look out at the playing field, who gives opportunity?

[Rich Lou Dennis]

Our business was built to so that we could invest back into this community. But now you got to go compete against l'. Oreal. How do you compete against that when you can't go to your local bank and get a $20 million loan? At the end of the day, it always just comes back to capital.

[Interviewer 1]

All right, guys, welcome back. On your leisure, we got a special episode.

[Interviewer 2]

This is like the. The mentor edition. Very rare.

[Interviewer 1]

That's a fact.

[Rich Lou Dennis]

Who's the mentor? Us,

[Interviewer 2]

obviously.

[Interviewer 1]

So, yeah, a good friend of ours, definitely one of our business mentors. Somebody that has been very gracious with his time and his wealth of knowledge. Not only us, but a variety of different entrepreneurs that we're friendly with that we know. Rich Lou Dennis. You may not be familiar with him, but you're definitely familiar with the brands that he's helped launch, invest in, be a part of, and, you know, we're gonna have a great conversation. When you think of his entrepreneurial ship journey, a lot of people probably are familiar with the shea butter or shea moisture. That was, I think, what really put you on the map as far as becoming a major. A major figure in entrepreneurship. And then, of course, essence.

[Rich Lou Dennis]

Yeah.

[Interviewer 1]

So you purchased essence. You are the. You. You own essence.

[Rich Lou Dennis]

Yep.

[Interviewer 1]

Correct.

[Rich Lou Dennis]

Me and my family. Yes.

[Interviewer 1]

And then you also have New Voice Ventures. That's New Voice Fund.

[Rich Lou Dennis]

New voice is fun. Yeah.

[Interviewer 1]

And that invest in a variety of different businesses.

[Rich Lou Dennis]

Yeah.

[Interviewer 1]

You've invested in Milano, right?

[Rich Lou Dennis]

Yep.

[Interviewer 1]

Pinky Cole.

[Rich Lou Dennis]

Yeah.

[Interviewer 1]

Derek Hayes.

[Rich Lou Dennis]

Yep.

[Interviewer 1]

So a lot of. A lot of the businesses that our audience.

[Rich Lou Dennis]

Yeah. Well, Milano we've invested in from a time and mentorship perspective.

[Interviewer 1]

Okay.

[Rich Lou Dennis]

The other two, from a capital perspective. Okay.

[Interviewer 2]

And now I was gonna say, I feel like from 2000, obviously, since we started to show a lot of the entrepreneurs that we meet that have scaled one, the one thing that they have in common is that they sat down with you or you've invested with them.

[Rich Lou Dennis]

Yeah, we spend a lot of time building an ecosystem and supporting, supporting that ecosystem. And then you, you know, he, you name it. If, if they're, if they're, if they're driving a business that's impacting our community, we've invested in them. Yeah.

[Interviewer 2]

And you have an eye for it. I'll tell everybody this. I feel like in our, maybe our first year and a half, we got a call like, rich Lu, Dennis wants to have lunch with you. And we were like, oh, okay. Okay. And so from that, that conversation on, we've obviously developed a relationship, but got a lot of insight from it. And like Rashad said, always valuable with your time. So we appreciate you being here.

[Rich Lou Dennis]

Yeah, well, you know, thank you guys. And it's, it's, it's been a absolute joy getting to know you guys and watch you grow and see the impact, see the impact that you have. Right. My, the way I look at it is my, my job is to share as much of the journey that I've been on and what I've learned and then help people figure out how to not make the same mistakes that I make. And because I'm always so far in front, I make a ton of them. So you get, you get to watch them and, and you get, and you get to learn from.

[Interviewer 1]

So, yeah, this is a rare conversation. Know, you don't really speak too much publicly. You've kind of been behind the scenes for a long time.

[Rich Lou Dennis]

Yeah.

[Interviewer 1]

But we're finally having a conversation. Yeah, it's a lot to talk about.

[Interviewer 2]

So it only took us five years.

[Rich Lou Dennis]

Two years. Five years scouting.

[Interviewer 1]

Thank you for joining us. Appreciate it. So let's, let's start, let's start at the beginning. Shea Moisture.

[Rich Lou Dennis]

We opened up in that journey, opened up the opportunities for others to come through. When we started back in 1991, which is many, many, many years ago, probably before many of your audience were even born, there was very little opportunity for black brands and black owned businesses that catered to black consumers at retail. And so we were really able to pioneer that, that journey with some incredible team members and some, some real insight and an understanding of what the consumer needed, what was missing. You know, people weren't focused on black women. They weren't focused on building products specific for her needs. And at the time, they were primarily only building products that were sort of like for women with perms. Right. And then the maintenance products that went along with that. And so we came in with a focus on natural hair and natural solutions and then went into retail and transformed how retail engaged with black women. It was completely unacceptable the way that retailers were treating black women as consumers. And so we're very proud of the work that we did that with people like Jelenar Baron and all the creatives that were there to help along the way. But that was. The idea was to transform the way the retailer treated black consumers.

[Interviewer 2]

I'm interested. I've never asked you this, but now I'm interested in it. We always get, you know, the feedback. You shouldn't mix family and business. And our model is like, you know, our family works in the business and it's worked for us because we obviously have established roles. I wonder what your take is. Obviously, you know, we know the team and obviously your brother. So, yeah, what are you, what is your thoughts on family business? The dynamics of having both?

[Rich Lou Dennis]

Look, I, I think it's. It's certainly one of the most rewarding things you can do as a business owner is to build, is to build a business with your family. The. The joy of building something that is transformative and doing with people that you care about and that care about you. There's no, there's no, you know, it's a great. It's a great thing. It feels, it. It feels really, really special when you're on the journey. But beyond that, I think about it as. It's how you build community. So it's not, hey, let me have my family member here, because they're my family member. It's, are you the best or do you have the opportunity to be the best at what you can do? And that's a criteria. And if you can grow and you can scale, then we can rock. But if you can't grow and if you can't scale, then you can't really be a part of this. So it's not just, hey, because you're a family member, you. You automatically get a free pass. You get the opportunity, right? Because if you're, if you're not able to deliver, then you're just taking up opportunity from somebody else that can. And the business deserves to have the best players in it in order for it to be successful. And it's only through that can you then leverage the business to drive impact in your community.

[Interviewer 1]

So walk us through this journey as far as, like this, the shea moisture, because a lot of people might not be familiar with Your business journey.

[Rich Lou Dennis]

Right.

[Interviewer 1]

So before we bring up to speed, we got to look back at, like, how you started. So you start a company. Shea butter, from my understanding, comes from West Africa, right?

[Rich Lou Dennis]

Yes.

[Interviewer 1]

It's been a thing for a long time. You introduced it to America. Are you responsible for that or no?

[Rich Lou Dennis]

No, we are responsible for introducing it broadly and creating scale at scale. Yes.

[Interviewer 1]

So.

[Rich Lou Dennis]

But people have been bringing shade to this, to. To the US since, you know, forever.

[Interviewer 1]

But, like, as far as how it's. Shea butter is a staple now.

[Rich Lou Dennis]

Yes.

[Interviewer 1]

And not just for black people. Anybody, like.

[Rich Lou Dennis]

Yes.

[Interviewer 1]

Cvs, Any. Everybody has shea butter.

[Rich Lou Dennis]

Yes.

[Interviewer 1]

It wasn't always like that.

[Rich Lou Dennis]

Yes.

[Interviewer 1]

Are you responsible for that?

[Rich Lou Dennis]

We. We are. We had a large role to play in that. I can't say that. I guess I'm responsible for it.

[Interviewer 2]

He's a humble guy, isn't he?

[Rich Lou Dennis]

Yeah, it was, you know, Shay wasn't at retail when we started. We brought it to retail.

[Interviewer 1]

So you're playing well. All right, so how do you. So how do you start the business and scale it to the point where you can sell it for a lot of money like that. This is something that you started up, I believe, in, like, you know, the living room, dining room. Like, how do you. How are you able to grow it and have the distribution and have the packaging and have all that stuff?

[Rich Lou Dennis]

Yeah, as. As a start as a street vendor in Harlem. Right.

[Interviewer 1]

125th Street.

[Rich Lou Dennis]

125th and Fifth.

[Interviewer 1]

You were selling on the street?

[Rich Lou Dennis]

Yeah, 125th and Fifth. And the idea was, hey, there's. There's a need here. Again, natural products. And again, remember, this is 1991. So this. This wasn't a. The natural hair product movement, as it came to be known, wasn't. Wasn't yet known as a movement. However, there were millions and millions of black women all across the country that were looking for an alternative to the relaxers. Right. Their hair was getting damaged. They were actively pursuing healthier lifestyles. Right. And there was no offering for them. Right. And. And that's what we offered. Right. We offered that in a. In a Ziploc bag, and we would sell it by the ounce. Right. And from there, started to supply other vendors. But the learning was, you know, when somebody comes to you and says, hey, you know, my grandmother made in South Carolina, and she used these ingredients. She wasn't obviously using Shea, but there were all the different ingredients that they were using to make their homemade remedies. Right. And. And. And same thing. Whether it was in Alabama or in Georgia or In. Right. In Maryland and all these. And so we started to then go from just the shea butter to incorporate these different ingredients for at our customers requests. So customer would come and say, hey, can you. I like this, but can you add some JoJo? Because I want to accomplish this. Can you add some avocado? I want to accomplish this. And then we'd make it up for them and give it to them. So it became really a lot of customization for our individual customers on the street. And then we started to realize like, hey, this is. There's. There's a real demand here and a real need here because nobody's really thinking about what she needs and giving it to her in the way that she needs it. Right? And so that's where the. That's where the scale then came from. So we went from selling on one table to then supplying other vendors to then going into beauty supply stores and then to Whole Foods and then to Macy's and then national distribution.

[Interviewer 2]

You had partners in the early stages. I wonder what your strength was. Right? Like we are a company with three founders. Each of us have different strengths. What was your strength at this time in the brand? Right. Was it product management? Was it accounting? Was it logistics? What was.

[Rich Lou Dennis]

So my mother takes care of the money. That's what my mother does. But when we started, she was very focused on making sure that we made the product right. So that was her thing. My partner, who was also my college roommate, Nima, was very focused and very gifted at figuring out how to make it and how to make it at scale. Right. And so those were the beginnings. Right. And then my sister came in and took it to a whole nother level. And then we started to get in other. Other people that joined along the way that brought all these different talents and all these. And all these different skills. But to your point, I don't know of a business where there's one person that does it all and can do it all and then can help that and they can make that business scale. Most of the time when you have that sort of individual, it becomes very difficult for the business to grow and scale because they have to have their hands in everything. And that slows down, that slows down scale, that slows down decision making. It becomes. It takes away perspective. Right? Like one of the things that we're big on is diversity of thought, right? I want to hear what everybody thinks about it, how they feel about it. Let's make a decision. Let's make a decision quick and let's execute against that decision. But getting input from different perspectives allows you to build things that you wouldn't as one individual think about. Which when you come to think about it, was really that one of the core pillars of our success, starting on a table and, and listening to women telling you what they want and then going back and figuring out how to give them what they want.

[Interviewer 1]

So when you decided to sell, how did you know was the right time to transition?

[Rich Lou Dennis]

Well, I had always been focused on building businesses to reinvest back in our communities. Right. Like that was, that was always the focus, right. And so even as we were building Shea, we were doing that at a time when nobody else was really thinking about it. If you think about the cooperatives that we had that were producing the shay, where we went from just buying Shea to investing in supply chain with those women in Ghana, and then now it's Ghana, it's Ivory coast, it's Sierra Leone, it's. Used to be called Ulta Volt, Upper Volta. Anyway, it'll come to me. But in all these, we're in like five different countries now where we're, we're investing in their supply chain and helping those women manufacture, store, distribute. So move from, become from being sort of gatherers of nuts to now producing semi finished product, improving the value of the product that they build so that they're able to sell at a premium. Because prior to that, what would happen is that the women, like my grandmother, would gather the, gather the nuts and then the, the men would take the nuts and they would go process the nuts and they would make the, the premium on the, on the actual butter, right? We sort of say, hey, that's not fair. That's not the way this should work. And in Africa it's called women's gold, right? And so if it's women's gold, they should benefit from the gold, right? So we started to say, okay, we won't just buy the finished products here. What we're going to, from these sort of wholesalers, what we're going to do is we're going to go to the very beginning of the pyramid. We're going to work with the women, we're going to train them, we're going to provide equipment, we're going to provide safety, we're going to provide infrastructure, we're going to build processing facilities, we're going to invest in processing facilities alongside them so that they can produce the finished product, they can store it, they can have the capital to buy the, to buy the supply and then we buy from them to finish the finish. A butterfly, right. And that program has now impacted hundreds of thousands of women.

[Interviewer 2]

So the, the idea of selling. Right, like, because Shy's alluding to that part and I'm interested as well knowing when to do it. But also I'm thinking back to the time when it happened. When you sell, what was the environment?

[Rich Lou Dennis]

Right?

[Interviewer 2]

Because we, we're looking at now, we see companies sell. There's always critique, there's negative critique. I think it's has a lot to attribute to the lack of education around it. I guess when you were in this process, again, knowing the timing of it. But was there criticism at the time of yourself or like what was the.

[Rich Lou Dennis]

Oh yeah. When we, when we saw there was, it was tremendous criticism because it was, it was like, it was like the first of its, the first of its, of its kind and of its size. I think before that only BET had gotten that kind of recognition or gotten that, gotten that kind of scale and then the recognition around the exit and there were the concerns. But what I was alluding to in telling that story about the supply chain was our business was built differently. Our business was built so that we could invest back into this community. So that was the first place that we did that. Right? Then we started to recognize and realizing, hey, look, there's all these black women that are buying our product, right? And the same issues that those women in Africa have are the same issues that black American women have here. There's no access to capital for them. If they have ideas of businesses that they want to run, there's nobody, there's nobody providing them that capital. And remember now, this is back in the 90s, so it was even, it was even more foreign than it is today, right? So there was nobody that was really supporting our community of women entrepreneurs in an organized way. So we then said, okay, what we're going to do is as we build this business, we're going to take 10% of our top line revenue against the brands that we're putting through here, right? And we're going to invest that back in African American women and entrepreneurs in their communities, right? And so that's what we started to do. So we would go to, we would go sell a product to whatever retailer and say it was Walmart or Target or CVS or whoever. And we say to them, okay, when we get on shelf, we're going to take 10% of this revenue. We're going to put it right on the package so that people know we're going to take 10% of this revenue and we're Going to go invest it in these places, right? So the first place that we did that was around education. So we partnered with the Tuck School of Business and said, hey, we want to build a program. They already had an executive ed program. And we said, we want to partner with you on this executive program, but we want you to tailor it to the needs of black women entrepreneurs. And so we worked with them to develop that program, right? Today, I lose track. Probably 3, 400 women have gone through that program today. And that program still runs as we speak today. So the idea there was, hey, we can help our consumers and our community actually be better partners, be better customers. They can grow, they can scale, they can run their businesses. They can do the. They can do these things. And so we. We focus very heavily on that. But they would come out of these programs and. And we. We all have. Have heard this I don't know how many times before, but they would come out of these programs and be like, this is fantastic. I now have the Tuck Network. I've now met all these incredible black women that you guys have put through this program. We have tons of ideas. My business is. I can't wait to get back to my business. The only problem is, now I know all this stuff. I got no money, right? I can't go to the bank and get the. And get the loan. All I need is 25, $30,000, right? And back then, those numbers were real, right? In. In helping. In helping them get their businesses off the ground. So we then started to rethink it and say, you know, this education pie is great, right? Like, we're creating, like, a real entrepreneurial class of women here, but they can't run their businesses because nobody will invest in them. So we then said, okay, as the business grows, we're gonna continue to invest, but not just in the education. We're not going to take it up to invest in them so they can run their. They can. They can develop and grow their businesses. So as we started to do that, then we started to recognize how much greater the need was than what it was that we even thought when we started it, which then started to get to thinking, well, we've now built value in this business, right? We've built significant value here. We need to unlock that value so we can go and continue this work of building out an economic infrastructure for the women in our communities, right? And so that was the.

[Interviewer 2]

The.

[Rich Lou Dennis]

The impetus of that thinking. So we started to think about it that way and say, okay, if we do this, that now allows us to go create 20 Shea Moistures, right? To go, to go support 20 Shea Moistures. And, and how many lives can that transform and change? And so that was, that was, that was the impetus for us. It hadn't been done before, certainly not at that scale, right? And because of the scale it was done at, it became very public. You know, we're not very public, but because of that it became, it became very public. And there were sort of three sides to it, right? It was the one side of, well, you know, they're selling out, right? They've, they've, they've sold out, right? You build something and then, and then they sold out. And we should, should, we should probe what that means, right? Then the, the other side of it was great. This is fantastic. Because we don't see, we don't see this. That was not as loud as that you saw, you sold out piece, right? And then there was the, there was the. Yeah, I hear what you say you're gonna go do, but I don't believe it. Right? This is, this is marketing. This is, this is talk, right? And so we actually did what we said we were going to do, and we continue to do it. And for those that were excited and motivated and inspired by it, I think we saw a huge uptake in businesses that were then thinking about, hey, how do we, how do we become multi generational, right? How do we, how do we come, how do we create scale, right? So here's a pathway to scale. Like, like Shea Moisture has shown us how you can scale. And so you saw then saw a ton of companies starting to do that and we can unpack that as well. And then there's still the contingent that was very skeptical, right? And, and, and I think in a lot of ways had been, had been disappointed so many times before, right around products that they thought, hey, you know, when, when, when this company was doing this, they were focused on me. They weren't watering down the product, product. Some change, something changed. And that's not necessarily the case. Although I'm not, I'm not here to say that, that you know, things don't change over time, because they do. But there's a, there's a physiological change that happens in the human body, right? So when you're 22, where your hair needs are, are very different from after you've had a baby and you know, you've, you've gone through certain life stages and then you move on, you go on. And so then it's so, so part of that is the journey of the human Being themselves to say, hey, oh no, this changed because it's not working the way that it was. And it doesn't necessarily mean the product change. The, the, the, the human changed. Right. And in some cases, when you do sell to these companies and that in some cases, in most cases, they're finding ways to, to, to maximize their return. So they're saying, okay, we, this company, we have this scale, we can change this, change that.

[Interviewer 2]

Yeah.

[Rich Lou Dennis]

And, and we can, and we can, and we can get a, a bigger return.

[Interviewer 2]

We change this ingredient might cost as much.

[Rich Lou Dennis]

Yeah.

[Interviewer 2]

We get more revenue if we add this one.

[Interviewer 1]

So let's have this conversation.

[Rich Lou Dennis]

So there's a three pack.

[Interviewer 1]

Let's have this conversation. In a very black and white format. There's a narrative that when black businesses sell their company that they sold out.

[Rich Lou Dennis]

Right? Yeah.

[Interviewer 1]

And you've been, you've sold the company, but you've also invested in a lot of companies that have been purchased and sold more companies. Okay.

[Rich Lou Dennis]

Yeah.

[Interviewer 1]

Meow. That was something. That was a recent one that was

[Rich Lou Dennis]

very, you know, being on Twitter, but an incredible couple. Right. Money

[Interviewer 1]

can Melvin. Yeah, definitely family. So let's really examine this on a. Yeah. On several different levels. Right. Like the idea that we, we can never have generational wealth because we always sell out. You don't see.

[Rich Lou Dennis]

But that's not how generational wealth is created.

[Interviewer 1]

But I'm explaining each one. So. All right, so that's the first.

[Rich Lou Dennis]

You got three. I'm a little passionate about that. Three pillars.

[Interviewer 2]

That's the pain point.

[Interviewer 1]

That's the first one. That's the first one. That's the first critique is that how can we ever have generational wealth if we, if we selling out, we don't have anything to pass down. What's your critique to that?

[Rich Lou Dennis]

Well, look, I think there's. History is littered with black owned businesses that thought that way, waited too late to take advantage of the wealth that they had created and are no longer around. And they're not around for a whole host of reasons. Market dynamics change. The biggest part of this and the common thread is, and we'll talk about this hopefully a little bit later, the grace that is not given to the black entrepreneur, which then takes away the opportunities that the black entrepreneur could earn. Right. So most of these companies don't have access to capital to $30,000. Right. What about to $30 million. Right. There's probably 10, 15 black entrepreneurs and businesses that you can, that you can point to that have raised more than $50 million. Even if that I'd be surprised, right? But, but the challenge with that is that, say you were building something in the 70s, and there's plenty of examples. There were great, great brands in the seventies. Brown and Brothers, Luster Products, Johnson Products, tcb. Like you can go on and on, right? And these brands our mothers and grandmothers grew up on, right? Many of them had the same idea of, I'm going to pass this down from one generation to the next, right? And they did that. And when demands change, when tastes change, not all kids are equipped to run businesses. Just because I had this child doesn't mean that this child can now do the things that I did. And is it even fair to put that burden on a, on a kid whose true calling may have been to be a doctor, right? Or to play a sport or to. But now you have to be tied to this business because we created and this is how the family survives, right? Many of those businesses made it from one generation into the second generation and then failed, right? Not necessarily. Not just because, hey, the second generation can do it, but it's a multitude of things. Let's say the second generation was exceptional at running the business, right? Now you've built a business, and this was one of the things that kept me up at night. Now you've built a business that's gone and taken share away from a multinational corporation that believes that they own that shelf space, right? And who's, who's, who's. Whose infrastructure is set up to compete to maintain that shelf space against competitors that have the same scale and the same reach, right? They have the same resources, the same, the same paths to market, right? That's how they're set up. I'm not saying they sit there and think, oh, here's a small brand, let me go kill it. But their machine is built to either eat or kill anything that comes on that. On that shelf space. So now I'm Generation two. I've now broken. And we'll use a brand like ORS Organic Root Stimulator. Perfect example. Organic Root Stimulator came out of Soft Sheen Carson and Softshine Carson built a beautiful brand. They actually sold that brand to l'. Oreal. They were one of the first ones to sell to l'. Oreal. I mean, this. To sell to a, a multinational, right? And. And the sun started up a second brand called ORS Organic Root Stimulator, right? And it took off, right? So Gary, obviously, highly, highly one of the most competent people I've ever met, right? But now you got to go compete against l' Oreal, who owns Soft Sheet, right? Or you've got to go compete against Pantene, or you got to go and compete against Cream of Nature or Revlon or whom, whomever it is, right? And they have access to capital, they have the infrastructure to produce at scale. They've been doing it for, you know, 40, 50, some of them hundreds of years. If you look at a png, it's like hundreds of years. And so how do you compete against that when you can't go to your local bank and get a $20 million loan, right? Or go to a fund and get a $50 million investment to go scale a business like that, right? So you run into these structural challenges, right? So you have two things. You have, hey, does the next generation actually want to do it? And if the next generation can actually do it, are they going to have access to the resources and the capital to do it? And when you come from our community, if you've built a business that's doing $10 million a year, $20 million a year, $30 million a year, that oftentimes is probably the largest black owned business in your neighborhood, in your community, maybe even in your state, right? And so as a community, we look at it and say, wow, they're doing so well and they're so, you know, they've gotten so big. But to the broader marketplace that says, hey, you guys have unlocked something here that is taking away shelf space from my business. I need to either acquire it or I need to knock it off, or I somehow need to compete against it, because that's how we survive. And so you end up now in an environment where you may be a big fish in our world, but when you hit the, when you hit the larger world, it's a much different game. And it becomes much, much harder for, for these companies, for our companies to compete. And then the other problem that we have is talent, right? So if you think about what it takes to become a, an executive inside of a, of a corporation, right? The investment in your education, right? The student loans that you have, the, the investment in self development, the things that you have to go through in those, in those organizations, because many places you don't feel a sense of belonging, you don't have the same levels of mentorship, it's not the same access to getting pulled up. So you're, you're, you're clawing your way up every day, right? You have to be, as our parents used to tell us, you got to be six times as good as the next guy just to get to, to first base, right? Like you've got to literally be that much better, right? And then you think, well, I'd love to go work for a black owned business, right? And you stop to think about it and, and, and realize, hey, yeah, that business may not be able to get the capital that is going to take to get from point A to point B. So now what I've done is I'm going to take a risk on all that I've built here, on all of the cost of my education. I now have two kids that I've got to put through college or other sort of familiar obligations. And so then the really great talent starts to think, well, that's just too much of a risk because I don't know if that company can survive, right? I don't know if they can get the capital that they need. And we're seeing that all around us today, right? So that's, that's, that's, that's the other thing that goes into that, into that mindset when you talk about going from one generation to the next, right? It's like, how do, how do you do it? And there's a reason that so few are able to do it.

[Interviewer 1]

So. And then also talk about like, how public opinion can actually sway even the future valuations of a company. Like if somebody's getting targeted on Twitter, like the next person that sells their company, the, the company that purchases that is going to say, okay, well I'm gonna have to buy it at a, at a discount because I know that there's going to be backlash.

[Rich Lou Dennis]

Yeah, yeah, right.

[Interviewer 1]

So that's actually hurting black founders.

[Rich Lou Dennis]

It hurts, it hurts tremendous. It doesn't just hurt black founders, it hurts the black community, period. Because I think what we don't, we don't truly one of the things to really appreciate and understand is what impact can a business or does a business like Mielle have on their community in Indiana, right? The jobs that they, they provide. And it's not just the jobs that they provide and the income that they make, but it's also that you're in a safe, comfortable environment to work in. Right? And that is priceless. Right? But I think what, getting back to your point, I think today many entrepreneurs, a driving factor in why they want to sell is because they're afraid, right? They're afraid. The things that I just talked about, am I going to be able to get the capital to continue? Am I going to, am I going to be, is the market going to change on me? And I'm not going to be able to react, am I going to be able to get the type of talent, support that I need to run this? And more than anything else, if my community turns on me, am I going to be able to stay in business? Right? And recently we've seen examples of where the community turns and the business can't recover or the individual can't recover, therefore the business can't recover. Right? And so I think you put those factors in there and it's a very, very, it's a very, very harsh environment for black entrepreneurs, right? Because the places that you should find comfort, oftentimes you don't, you don't get that comfort, right? You don't get that grace, you don't get that, you don't get that forgiveness, right? And you don't have the access to the things that can help solve the problem. Right? So, so it's, it's a double, it's a double edged sword. But I believe a lot of, I mean, when we, I gave you the reasons why we, we did what we did and we caught a lot of backlash for, for selling, right? And when we were selling the business, we were very clear in saying, hey, we're going to unlock wealth to invest in, in, in, in black businesses. And I think to date we've probably invested more in, in black businesses than just about any fund out there.

[Interviewer 2]

Now you're up there. I mean, the, the fear sounds like it comes from the grace conversation, right? The, or the lack thereof. Grace conversation. Because we're not afforded the ability to make a mistake because of that. If we do, what will happen, right? Or I might sell because I'm at the point where I haven't made the mistake. So let me get out while I'm ahead.

[Rich Lou Dennis]

Yeah.

[Interviewer 2]

What, what, I mean, you've, you've invested in a lot of businesses. You've seen them not be afforded that lack of grace. What do you say to both populations, the people who are not extending it and to the entrepreneur who's actually living in it?

[Rich Lou Dennis]

Yeah, look, I think, I think it's where we're getting to a place in our society where we're forgetting that the only way our ancestors got through this environment was by loving each other. Right? And, and that's the only way. That's, that's, and that's, that's what we need to, that's what we need to stick with, right? It's, we can be, we can be critical, right? Especially if that is to help you get better. There's, there's no, there's No, I mean, I, I take it all the time. I'm, I'm. I, I enjoy learning and saying, hey, oh, I missed that. Oh, we could have done that better. Oh, we should do this, this differently. Right? That's different from when there's sort of this. It's, it's so venomous that you can't see past it, that, that you. Then the message gets lost. Right. And now it's, it's, it's fight or flight, and you get, you get defensive and, and you lose it. I, I think that there's a way for us to help each other get better through, through love and care and hard conversations. Right? You got to have the hard conversations, but it's not always this sort of black and white thing, right? So that, so that's, that's, that's the way that there's like.

[Interviewer 2]

I guess it's a reconciliation moment, right. Like, there must be internal healing, because the criticism, a lot of times, yeah, it can be fair and you can learn from it, but when it's vile and there's no idea of, hey, if that gets torn down, you know, there's not anything coming after it.

[Rich Lou Dennis]

Yeah, I don't. Do you.

[Interviewer 2]

I mean, I feel like that's not part of the consciousness of that population that is creating that. What are your thoughts?

[Rich Lou Dennis]

Yeah, I mean, I, I think it's. I think for people that say that or that behave that way, I don't think they understand how hard it is to actually build these things. And even if they understand how hard it is to build is imperative that you still try to preserve what it is that's been built. Right. There's a. You don't need to burn this down to go build something else. I look around at other communities, I look around in other places. That's not what I see happening. And so it used to be that we could take comfort and solace, we could retreat back inside, get our strength, and then go back out and fight. Right. If we get to a place of where, you know, there's nowhere for me to retreat, right? There's, there's nowhere, there's nowhere to take solace. There's no way to regroup. There's no way to, to recuperate. Right? There's no safe environment. Because the community that I built is. Look, I've, I've met tons of entrepreneurs, we've invested in tons of them. We spend a ton of time with them. Like, like we do with each other, talking about hard things, talking about challenges, how do we work together, how do we, how do we figure this out? How do we, how do we move forward? If that's not what we're fostering, then we've got no chance.

[Interviewer 1]

So. But yeah, more like let's, let's break this down a little bit more as far as the grace that black businesses are not given because a company like Meta, you know, has billion dollar lawsuit where they were actually selling people's data and nobody actually installed Instagram.

[Rich Lou Dennis]

Yeah.

[Interviewer 1]

Or, you know, Apple, you know, has glitches every single iPhone that comes out.

[Rich Lou Dennis]

Right.

[Interviewer 1]

And purposely messed it up. As far as for Android users, there's not a mass to get rid of iPhones. Well, Mercedes Benz has a recall. Nobody stops buying Mercedes Benz. But it's like a t shirt comes three weeks late and it's like you make a TikTok video to actually bash the company and say how poor. And this is why you don't buy from black businesses, because black people don't know how to handle business the right way.

[Rich Lou Dennis]

Yeah.

[Interviewer 1]

So like explain that because that's, that's a level of not only grace that's not given, but it's, it's, it's campaigns that's run out of the enjoyment of seeing people fail when that same energy is never put into organizations and companies that have historically made 10 times worse of a blunder.

[Rich Lou Dennis]

Yeah.

[Interviewer 1]

Than somebody mismanaging, you know, things on a small business level.

[Rich Lou Dennis]

Yeah. Yeah. Look, I, I don't know what the solution is, but I can tell you there's a lot of mistrust in, in our community and some of it earned and some of it not right. But the way that I choose to live and I, I think the way that is, is. Is, is grace. Is that word, Is that word grace? Because the, the challenges that those businesses are facing and those individuals that are running those businesses are facing just to get that product on the market that you're so proud to see when you see it, like when you see that T shirt or you see that dress or you see that scarf or you see that shampoo or that like the pride that you feel because you know how hard it is to, to get it there. Right. The grace has to be come in to help us sustain it. You know, it has to come in to help us pick it up and grow it. Right. And not when it becomes successful. You know, just because somebody's business gets successful doesn't mean that they stop caring about the people that they, they've always cared about. Doesn't mean that they stop wanting to solve the problems that they're solving, right? But they're now dealing at a whole nother level with a whole nother set of problems that, that they haven't dealt with before and that they may not have a network around them that has dealt with it before. So they may not have the good fortune of you being able to pick up the phone and call me and say, hey, Rich, here's what I'm dealing with. How do we. How have you solved it? Right? How do, how do you get to it? They may not have that around them, right? They may not have that person in their organization that has run a business like this somewhere else and has that expertise. Because of what I said earlier is the risk of, of, of people coming over and that gets, that becomes a very lonely place, right? So now you're seeing women saying, and men saying, hey, you know what? I'm just gonna shut it down. I'm just, I'm just gonna pause, right? Because I, I can't, I can't do it. And that's not what our community wants. That's very detrimental to our, to our community, especially at a time where we're under pressure from. So, like, we're talking about. Unemployment rate is 7.7% for black people right now, right? That's double, right? What it is for the white community, right? 600, 700,000 women losing their jobs are being displaced from their jobs. That's real economic pressure that, that we're feeling, right? Between the unemployment, the direct loss of DEI means that the contracts that you were able to go bid for on a, on a, On a more even playing field, you can no longer bid for on a more even playing field. And that's got nothing to do with race. It's got to do with economics. If I don't have the capital to put the presentation together to drive the programs, to build the infrastructure, I'm not going to be able to, I'm not going to be able to win that, right? Then you add in there, you know, health care, right? And the cost of what that is. So you take a population that has a high unemployment rate, that's, that's now losing its businesses. You add in the. We're disproportionately impacted by these health issues, right? So now, you know, every dime I got is going to just helping me stay alive or taking care of my mother or taking care of my father, and you start to these things together, and we're ending up in a place of extreme economic destabilization, right? And so all of that coming Together puts a lot of pressure, not just on the business, but on the individuals.

[Interviewer 2]

Does that forecast a population that is predominantly going to shy away from entrepreneurship careers? We had a conversation about AI and the impact that it's going to have and how at some point everybody's going to have to have an entrepreneurial journey based on that. It feels like. No, that doesn't seem like it's going to be the path. In fact, there's going to be more of us that are going to be employees after employee after employee.

[Rich Lou Dennis]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's where we're headed. Unless we course correct. Right. And we've got to course correct internally. Right. Amongst ourselves and within our community so that we can go out. Right. And go and go fight for these things to go. Go out and fight to get the capital. Go out and fight to get the shelf space. Go out and fight. Right. Like we've got to fix that internally. And quite frankly, I don't believe that this is overwhelming part of our community. I think it's a small part of it, but I think it's a loud part. Right. And so it becomes something that you, you, you, you can't get away from. But there's also lessons to be learned in there. Right. It's not to say, hey, that these things don't matter, that there's lessons to be learned in there.

[Interviewer 1]

So most of my vocal minority. That's why. Yeah, but I mean, as far as the.

[Rich Lou Dennis]

But it's. It's harmful.

[Interviewer 1]

No, for sure. Even that you had mentioned more employees. I don't know if we're gonna have more employees because unemployment. So talk about that, Talk about the disproportion. As far as black unemployment, white unemployment, how alarming that is, how you know your thoughts on that.

[Rich Lou Dennis]

Yeah, well, I mean, it's, it's. The gap is growing wider. Right. Right now it's. It's 2x plus. Right. And that. That gap is growing wider.

[Interviewer 1]

So there's two times more black people that's unemployed than white people.

[Rich Lou Dennis]

As a percentage.

[Interviewer 1]

Yeah, as a percentage. As a percentage, it's like 8% of black people.

[Rich Lou Dennis]

No. 7.7, 7.7, 7.8. Depending on what.

[Interviewer 1]

We could round it to 8.

[Rich Lou Dennis]

Yeah.

[Interviewer 1]

And then it's like 4. 4% of white people.

[Rich Lou Dennis]

3.3 something. Yeah.

[Interviewer 1]

So black unemployment is two times that of white people.

[Rich Lou Dennis]

Yeah.

[Interviewer 1]

And it's growing.

[Rich Lou Dennis]

Yeah. And it's higher than every other group too. It's higher than Latinas, it's higher than Asians.

[Interviewer 1]

Why is that? Because we know that per capita black women have the most college degrees. So

[Rich Lou Dennis]

they have the most college degrees, but they don't have a equal proportion of the opportunities. Right, Right. So. And for many that are in jobs, they're really underemployed. Right. So they're not necessarily leveraging all it is that their degrees give them all it is that their experience give them because they're now having to accept jobs that are not necessarily on par what their experience or their expertise is. So it's not just the rate of unemployment, but it's also the rate of underemployment.

[Interviewer 1]

So how do we. Because. And black men are losing jobs at

[Rich Lou Dennis]

rapid rate also similarly. Yeah.

[Interviewer 1]

So education is not the answer, obviously, to solve this problem.

[Rich Lou Dennis]

I don't, I don't know. Right. I think education, look, I grew up in a world where everything was education, education, education. Right. We now live in a world where you can certainly do tons of things without having to have all of the rigor of the educational structure and the costs of the educational structure that we had. And you talk about, you know, you said you guys were talking about AI, right? You talk about AI and what that's going to level. At the end of the day, it always just comes back to capital. Right. That's the thing. It's, it's. I can be the smartest guy in the world, the best business guy in the world. If I can't get access to capital to build a business, I'm not, I'm just not going to be able to do it right. Or I'm going to be able to build a fraction of what it is that I could build. And what's going to happen is somebody else is going to see that fraction and they're going to go build something that goes to the moon. So it boils back down to capital. It's the economics of it. And if you think about it, I think stats are like 20, 21, it was like 1.2% of capital went to black businesses. Today it's 0.3%. Right. That's a period of five years. Right. And that is a dramatic decline on an already tiny number. If we're 13, 14% of the population, right. And the investments that come our way are less than 1% of the, of the, of the funds that are, that are being invested, then we're not going to be able to build these businesses. And then the few that we do build, we have to make sure, survive.

[Interviewer 2]

It's, it's alarming. It is alarming. Right. And somebody might hear it was 0.4. Now it's 0.3. It's one basis point. But we're talking, like, in terms of billions, Billions of dollars that go to. To black founders. I think the. The piece. The capital piece is important. I think the opportunity piece is equally as important. Right.

[Rich Lou Dennis]

Like the capital buys opportunity.

[Interviewer 2]

It buys opportunity. Which I'm saying, which is why when we look out at the playing field, who gives opportunity?

[Rich Lou Dennis]

Yeah, Right.

[Interviewer 2]

And if we attack places that give opportunity, then we have none. Obviously, you guys have essence. We invest fast. These are structural opportunities. We're bringing people together to create opportunities. Talk about being mindful of losing spaces because you even gave us education on. Look, this institution is no longer here. This institution is no longer here.

[Rich Lou Dennis]

We're losing them fast. We're losing them fast. You know, when I was coming up, there were. There was no greater holy grail in the beauty world than Broner Brothers. No. No greater holy grail. Right.

[Interviewer 2]

For

[Rich Lou Dennis]

I think Browner Brothers, speaking of multi, I think Browner Brothers is in its third generation of operation now. Right? And I just saw on. On Line on Social maybe two weeks ago that the Bronner Brother hair show is not happening this year. That every hairstylist, every. Every black makeup artist, every. Designer, every. That came out of the black community in the 70s, 80s, 90s, 2000s. Bronner brother was where they got their start. Brown Brothers is where they got access to customers around. That's. That's where they got their start. Right? For that not to be happening is devastating to us culturally and socially and historically. Right. There are going to be people who never heard of it, who never missed it, who never. But that grounding that we had as a community is not happening this year. Right? And then there's, you know, curlfest last year. And you can go. You can go up and down, up and down the list. The. Losing these businesses, losing these institutions. And there's a mindset that can be. Yeah, business is business. It's not performing. It's not doing these things. No argument here. But the fact that we're in this place of where the things that we are culturally connected to are being lost is something that we've gotta. We've gotta do something about.

[Interviewer 1]

So let's have this conversation. Essence Fest last year, gotta. Got some negative backlash. Do you think that that backlash was warranted? How. How do you, as a leader address that? What changes were made? What's the roadmap moving forward?

[Rich Lou Dennis]

Yeah. So look, when you're. When you're building a business, and I'VE said this and we continue to do that. When there's backlash, there's always some reason for it. Right now, the scale that it gets, how it gets, the way that it travels, the misinformation that may come with that or not come with that, those can be dealt with individually. But to just say, hey, no, there was just, that's, that's not, that's not the way to, to think about it. It's not the way that, that we think about it. I think there were, there were some structural challenges in terms of transitioning and building for growth. Because it's the same thing that we're talking about earlier is if, you know, ESSENCE is the, this is ESSENCE is really the only black owned platform, the essence of scale, right? That's the only independent one, right? It's, it's either Live Nation or aeg. I mean, you guys know this. So it's, it's what we have left. And, and, and what is extremely important is that it is the home and it's the place that we can come to and love on each other, right? And be with each other and, and, and, and enjoy being with each other. And we can develop and we can grow. And that's, that's why, you know, the Essence Festival of Culture, right? So we're highly focused on the music. The music is still incredible. It's still, still great. Three nights of incredible music. But then there's also the cultural aspects that, that are now in the festival. The Food and Wine Festival. Come and experience black chefs, black owned vineyards and spirits, right? And come and get that whole experience. There's the film festival now where you come in. We had over 600 submissions last year. We're on pace to get that same amount of submissions this year. Come and support the directors in our community, the filmmakers, and especially as AI comes in, what's the new model going to be? So you get all of that. Then there's the Book and Author Festival. I think we had almost 60 authors last year doing signings and panels and discussing their books and, and all the like. So. And then it goes, it goes on and on and on. There's beautycon, where there's all the celebration of our beauty, right? Whether it's the brands and the products, the hairstyles, the master classes, the like, all of that, right? So the idea is to continue to bring to our community the, the things that are, that are most important to us, that, that are, that are grounding us, that we, that we're building on and that we're Driving and then for us to take ownership of that, because that's, that's another big part of this is, you know, a lot of people talk about our culture, right? But we're not always the ones that monetize that culture. We're not the ones that benefit from it economically. So creating an environment where that can happen is extremely important. And so that's the vision, right? The vision, the vision is to really take all of these pillars and provide them back to our community or give our community an opportunity to platform themselves on there. So you have all the, the, the professors, you have all, you have all the, the educators, you have all the entertainers, you have all the, all of these different genres, the entrepreneurs. You know, we, we, we've done over a million dollars in pitch competition grants, right? So investing in businesses there. We have over 400 black owned businesses that are there that are selling their products, that are getting exposure to almost. The convention center will have somewhere between 40 and 50,000 people come through, come through every day. And we provide all of that free. Right? So you know, any of these other experiences, there are some, some charge of general admissions for the entire convention center is free. Right? And it's, I'm not talking about, we're not talking about having, you know, like, we're having top tier guests that are teaching classes, that are talking on panels, that are, that are signing books, that are giving lectures, that are, you know, last year we had Katanji Brown Jackson doing a lecture. We had Oprah two years ago, we've had Kamala Harris, we have. So, so it's, it's this idea of continuously giving back and reinvesting in our community, especially around our cultural anchors.

[Interviewer 2]

You, you announced.

[Rich Lou Dennis]

Did you know we had all of that?

[Interviewer 2]

Well, I knew. The world knows. You announced. And this is something that the world knows. But even I was confused to what it really meant. Teyana Taylor, who's having an incredible year, Golden Globe winner, I mean obviously musician events, all the things. Super talented, incredible. The chief curator of.

[Rich Lou Dennis]

Yeah.

[Interviewer 2]

ESSENCE of the entire event. Explain what that means. Because I'm like, I know Rich runs it. So what is, what does this mean?

[Rich Lou Dennis]

Yeah, yeah. Well, so the first thing is I don't run it. There's an incredible team that does that. But what it means is, so if you think about the future of me and we should talk about this, what's the future of media? Right? Like what's, what's the future? And how do brands, legacy brands that have served our community all these years, ESSENCE is going to be 57, 58 years old this year, right? How's, how does. What has to happen for Essence to be here another 50 years, right, in an environment where everything's changed, right? The, the, you know, the, the Facebooks, the Instagrams, the Tick Tocks, the. Right, that's the destination of choice today, right? That's where, that's where everybody's. We don't own any of that.

[Interviewer 2]

That.

[Rich Lou Dennis]

Right. We create the content for it, right? We make it hot, but we don't monetize it. Let me rephrase that. Proportionately. We don't. So you, you can monetize YouTube, you can monetize Instagram, you can do that as a creator. You absolutely can. But as far as the ownership and the wealth that gets created, and then the other thing, going back to your, Your earlier question is they build it, they sell it, they trade it, they take it public, right? They're free to do that, right? Which means they can then take a look at what's happening now with. And, and I admire the business acumen and the skill here of, of David Ellison.

[Interviewer 2]

Yeah.

[Rich Lou Dennis]

Second generation, right? His father created enormous wealth, right? Invested in him in a small business called Skydance. He proved himself there, right? Or, or did what he did there, earned his father's trust and some other people's trust. And then now Paramount, then next thing, Warner Brothers, right? They're able to do that because his father was able to capture that wealth in Oracle, right? Release it and move it forward. That's where we have to get to because that's when we'll be able. When you talk about true generational wealth, it's not just I build it and I give it to my kids, it's I build it and I put my kids in position to go build too, right? So now they go build, they go build the next thing, right? Another. And I know we're going backwards. Another model that I love, and I talk about this all the time, is the Walmart model. Sam Walton built an incredible business, decided, hey, my kids, for whatever reason, are not going to run this business, right? I'm going to go out and get the best team that I can, right? I'm going to put the, the best financial, financial infrastructure together, right? And we're going to continue to rock. But my kids now get like, they're like in the top 10 of richest people in the world every year, right? There's different ways to do this. We just, as a community haven't had and for a whole host of reasons, and I think we all know what those reasons are, haven't had the opportunity to do those types of spectacular things, Right. And so it's going to take one of us, two of us, five of us, 10 of us doing it, doing it consistently over a period of time for it to become natural to us and for us and for us to understand it.

[Interviewer 2]

Do you think we're at that inflection point? I talk about this all the time, about having grace and black wealth transforming over the past 10, 15, 20 years. Will you have more black billionaires? We don't know what second generation looks like because we haven't gotten it yet. Most of them are, well, pretty much all of them are first generation. So what do you.

[Rich Lou Dennis]

They're all first generation.

[Interviewer 2]

Do you feel like we're here now at that deflection, like, okay, let's plan to build so that your kids can build and so we can help?

[Rich Lou Dennis]

I think everybody's thinking that way. The next step is going to be instituting the infrastructure that enables it to happen. Right? And that's, that's a hard thing to do. And that's not one person can do that. It's going to take, you know, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 100 people thinking similarly and doing that. Right. Like I said, from, from our perspective, it was, hey, when we unlock this, we're going to go invest in the best black businesses and black business minds that we can and we're going to try to provide them infrastructure, we're going to try to provide them capital, we're going to try to victim access. And we've done that. And so now you have the, the miles of the world, right? You have the honey pots of the world. You have the Big Dave Cheesesteaks of the world, Derek and his. Right. You have the, the money points of the world. You have the Caribbean of the world. Yeah. And I could rattle off 30 or 40 of them, right? That's how you start to build infrastructure. Right? But you've got to invest in it and it, and it takes time. And I think these other people that are doing these incredible things too are thinking similarly, right? But I don't know that this next generation is going to be where it's already. And then the other thing is everything that we knew about business is out the window. It's nothing that you knew about business five years ago that you should be relying on today because it's all gone, right? If I were to tell you five years ago that Skydance would own Warner Brothers, right. Or that 20 years ago that Amazon would own what's the studio they now. They own. They own one of the large. Mgm.

[Interviewer 2]

Yes.

[Rich Lou Dennis]

Right.

[Interviewer 2]

Yes.

[Rich Lou Dennis]

Mgm, as well as owning Whole Foods. Yes. If I had told you that Amazon was going to own Whole Foods, would you. If I had told you that Nvidia would be what it is today and IBM would be where it is today, you would have been like, you're crazy.

[Interviewer 2]

You wouldn't be sitting here.

[Rich Lou Dennis]

Exactly right. So the point is, like, everything that we know, we have to. We have to be thinking differently and we have to throw it out and start over. So we. But part of what's good about that is that our people are thinking about the future. You're now building infrastructure on new technology and new thinking, Right? So that's good. The part that is going to be hard is that those people have already hit escape velocity. They've already done it, and they're now on to the next thing. When you talk about the black billionaires that exist or even the black millionaires that exist, what we should be concerned about. What I remain concerned about is the black woman who graduated Spelman seven years ago, has gone out and gotten some experience at Pfizer and now has an idea on the next miracle drug, and that she gets an opportunity to bring that idea to life. That's where I'm concerned. And that's where I think we really need to build the infrastructure so that that can happen at scale.

[Interviewer 2]

We got into business. I never let you get to tell us what Tiana is, actually. Oh, yeah, business does that.

[Rich Lou Dennis]

Yeah, I get excited about that. Excited about it. Look, Tiana is one of the most incredible human beings I've ever. Absolutely right. And. And she has been a part of the ESSENCE journey, or ESSENCE has been a part of her journey from jump right over the. Over the years. Lots of love, lots of support, and everybody at ESSENCE is so proud of the journey that she's. That she's come on. And as we think about what the future is going to look like, when we think about, hey, we've got this brand that means so much to so many people, right? Who are the people, though, that truly embodies the brand? It's tion. Right? And so to say we're now turning this platform over to our community, right? We've. We're building infrastructure so that people can be successful on this infrastructure. They can bring scale to this. To this infrastructure. We can leverage the scale that we have as a media company. If you compare ESSENCE to the. To the giants, when we're nothing, right? But if you compare us to our community. We're it, right? So to be able to take the infrastructure that we have and now put people on our platform, people that can take it to the next level, that can, that can, that can drive it. I'm not saying that, you know, I'm not putting that pressure on Tiana. That's, that's what it is. That's. That's the vision that we have, right? And now for Tiana is to come in and take a look at the festival. How do we make it better? Right? Let's get, let's get different. A fresh set of eyes on it, right? Help us make it better, right? Everything from how it looks to how it feels to what the themes are, to what should the place smell like, what should it feel like? And we're not asking her to do it all on, on her own. Like, hey, come, right? It's, there's infrastructure here, there's teams here. She's got a great company and aunties, right? She's done this time and time again. It's not like she hasn't done it right, but now she gets an opportunity to do it for something that she cares about, something that she, she got an opportunity to be a part of from early on in her career. And we're extreme. We're extremely proud of it. And so even some of these conversations that we're having is like, like, she and I had to have like a real hard conversations because she wanted to make sure, hey, what am I getting into? Right? Are you, are you guys really serious about this? What is the, what is the, what is the plan? What is the path? What is the, what's the journey going to look like? And so, so we had those conversations because I think the other thing in business and, and, and like, with family is if you shy away from the hard conversations, you're never going to be successful because eventually they will pop up in some other way, right? So we had, we had some great conversations and we're like, okay, let's, let's go. Our community deserves us. So we're excited, we're excited for her to be doing this. She's, you know, we're gonna have other folks join in these different capacities, like the book festival. Like, let's get somebody who's really transformed the book industry. Like, like the, the, the, the, the, the, the way we think about literature, the way we think about community, the way we own community. Let's, let's have, let's have somebody that can, that can think about that as well, right? And Then connect with, with the vision and the mission and, and all those things. So we're, we're excited about it. And you'll see that same thing with, with, with beautycon on the beauty side. Yo, man, this mic right up in your face. I'm not used to this. I like to talk, but damn. So it's really getting into all of these things that we call cultural pillars and making sure that we have fresh minds on them, that we have people that are actually moving the culture and that are impacting the culture, a part of developing it for our community. Right. Because that's super, super important.

[Interviewer 1]

There was conversation about critique of Africans and African Americans.

[Rich Lou Dennis]

Yeah.

[Interviewer 1]

And the infrastructure of. Of ESSENCE being African driven and the audience being African American. And that was a, that was a critique on ESSENCE Fest last year.

[Rich Lou Dennis]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Interviewer 1]

What's your thoughts on that?

[Rich Lou Dennis]

Well, that's not true. Right. The infrastructure is not African driven. The infrastructure is black driven. It is focused on serving black women, which are overwhelmingly Black American women. And we are focused, though, on our culture broadly. Right. Because I think the notions of separation makes us smaller. Right. The idea of expanding how we think about each other, the things we can do to each other is what's going to open up those opportunities and those broader opportunities that we talk about. So it's not, hey, we're focused on Africa now. Nothing could be further from the truth, right? The organization, the structures that we've built, the teams, everything is in service of this vision of how do we put black people in the best light we possibly can on this planet, and how do we give them the maximum opportunity that we can, leveraging this platform and leveraging this infrastructure? So we're highly, highly, highly, highly focused on that. Right. And, and, and the thing that, you know, I. If you think about when essence, again, you go back to when ESSENCE was formed, right, 57 years ago, that's a lot of generations that ESSENCE has served. And every time a new generation comes in, there's a new set of needs. We've got to create space for our children. Right. And for their children. Because again, when you talk about this generational thing, if we're only serving the people that started with Essence, then we won't be here in another 10 years. Right? But if we're serving the people that started with essence, and we're doing that deeply, we're providing her everything that she needs there, but we're also serving her granddaughter, in some cases now, her great granddaughter, and we're providing her what she needs, then there's one place for them to convene. There's no other place like that on earth. There's no other place for four generations of black women to go and be with each other and fellowship with each other and love on each other and party with each other and eat together and travel together and go all over and do it in mass. You can do it as a family. Yeah, right. You can do it as a family reunion. But can you do it with 400, 000 people that have the same sort of zest for you as a human being? That's the place to do it.

[Interviewer 2]

I mean, it brings me to the point of the economic impact, right? Like when people think New Orleans, especially people who are from New Orleans, it's a part of the fabric, right? Like, yes, they had the Super Bowl a year ago and it was like, oh, that's a huge.

[Rich Lou Dennis]

That's almost every 10 years.

[Interviewer 2]

Only every 10 years. You're there every year. People understand, like, yes, there's vendors there, but the amount of people that you're employing, the local businesses, the travel, the hotel, talk about the economic impact because obviously we have an event. People can completely not understand that. Discounted, not really appreciated. Unpack that for them.

[Rich Lou Dennis]

Wow, that's a big one. It's big because it is. I think of things in terms of infrastructure, flywheel and scale, right? The infrastructure that we continue to build allows this flywheel to happen every year. What the flywheel does is millions and millions of dollars directly into jobs during that. That week period, right? Talent, security, transportation, those are all, those are all black businesses, right? Or employees that work for a business that gets paid because ESSENCE is there and ESSENCE is investing in them, right? So the scale of it, right? The workers in the hotels like you go to New Orleans. And New Orleans is a black city. Like people say Atlanta is a black city. Yes, Atlanta is a black city, but it's not black. Like in terms of the population distribution, right? And so you're bringing super bowl type economics every year, right? And we're not the super bowl, we're not the NFL, right? We are, we are a small to medium sized business. When you compare it to the rest of the world, I guess. Have you said, hey, in black media? Yes, we, we have some heft. But if you compare to, to the people that we compete against. Because our competitors are Live Nation, right? Our competitors are, are aeg. Our competitors are Conde Nast and Vogue and right. We're competing with Vogue to get people on our cover, right? We're not competing. In fact, can you unfortunately, we're the only ones left, right? We're the only ones left. If you, if you. And we. We have an incredible issue coming out for Festival, which will be our first one this year, and it's a double issue and we're going hard at it, but we're the only ones of magazine, of magazine.

[Interviewer 1]

Are you still doing magazine or is it just digital?

[Rich Lou Dennis]

No, we're doing, we're still doing magazines, Physical magazines. Still doing physical magazines.

[Interviewer 1]

Does it even make sense to do physical magazines anymore?

[Rich Lou Dennis]

Economically it may not, but culturally it does, right? Because where else do our women see themselves on their, on the, on, on, on the COVID on the newsstand on a regular basis? Where do our daughters see themselves? Physical space. And now with, with AI coming, Lord knows what they're going to be seeing, right? So where, where else is that? So it becomes extremely important. This is a place where partners are saying, oh, we don't, we don't, we're not advertising in, in magazines anymore, right? We're, we're, we're only now doing digital, right? We're only doing, we're only doing social. So as a cultural artifact, do we just let that go? Right? That's why we need the support, because we need, our daughters need to see themselves physically, right? They need to, as much as, even as they say, you know, now all the kids are on the phones, but every once in a while that kid wants to go outside and play, right? They want to go run around, right? They want to go. We have, we have to be there for our kids, right? We, this has to be here two generations, three generations, five generations from now. So that becomes extremely important. So that means we've got to make money in other places in order to make sure that, that, that, that happens, right? When, when a, a young black star is coming up, who's going to cover her? She's only going to get covered once she's hit it big. But who's going to put her in front of her community, right? How is she going to learn her community? How's her community going to learn her? We saw three weeks ago, four weeks ago, the BAFTA awards, right? As long as we're in somebody else's space, those things are bound to happen. We just did Black women in Hollywood the night 19th one, right? 19 years. We've been doing it to celebrate our women who don't get the same recognition. And even when they get the, the recognition, they don't get the time, right? It's not consistent, right? So you have a black woman in Hollywood that's there expressedly to make sure that she gets the time that they get, that they get the, that they get to shine, that they're the, that they're the focal point. Right. So I'm very passionate about this stuff because it is what it is that we have to do in order to live up to why God put us here.

[Interviewer 2]

Yeah.

[Rich Lou Dennis]

Right.

[Interviewer 2]

It's a great room to be into. Amazing event. We had the privilege to sit in one. Well, appreciate the invite.

[Rich Lou Dennis]

I don't, I don't know. We, we slummed that year.

[Interviewer 2]

Seat fillers. We were seat fillers, trust me.

[Rich Lou Dennis]

But it's, it's an incredible thing, right? And, and, and, and we need that. And then we have, we have black women in music at festival this year.

[Interviewer 2]

Okay.

[Rich Lou Dennis]

So that we're, we're celebrating the women that are, that are driving music. Right? And it's not just the, the, the, the women that are the incredible women that are performing music, but there's all of these women that are actually making it possible for music to remain true to our community and true to our culture. Right. And they're, they're in their behind the scenes driving this stuff and they're doing big deals, man. You know, the, the women in the music and the ones that are hitting a hidden boy, you know, they're, they're, they're, they're really running. So to be able to, to be able to celebrate them and be able to give them that platform, right? To give them, to be able to create an environment where that love and joy can be, can, can be like harnessed, right? And, and then you leave there and you're so motor. Even for you, right? For you guys and for me, when I walk out of that room, I can do anything, you know.

[Interviewer 2]

That's true.

[Rich Lou Dennis]

You can do anything.

[Interviewer 2]

Surround us with black women.

[Rich Lou Dennis]

Yeah.

[Interviewer 1]

Well, why, thank you for coming. Definitely. I think you shared a lot of light and a lot of wisdom, so thank you guys. Appreciate. When is ESSENCE Fest? August? I mean, July.

[Rich Lou Dennis]

July 4th weekend. July 4th. July 3rd, 4th and 5th. And we made. You heard it. We may extend a day.

[Interviewer 1]

Monday.

[Rich Lou Dennis]

We're not sure yet. It's, it's the, the demand has been, has been extremely high. So we're trying to figure out do we do that or do we sit tight and then do that next year? Probably we'll see. But I think let's get it right this year. Let's get it right this year. Let's, let's make sure all the, all the bugs that we had. Make sure all the issues are resolved, and then we can start to expand further again. But it's an exciting time, and I'm really excited about Tiana and what she's going to be able to. To. To do for her community and. And help us deliver. I think. I think that's going to be out of this world.

[Interviewer 2]

Yeah. She's having a hell of a year.

[Rich Lou Dennis]

Yeah. Well, I like. I like to think that we called it because we were honoring her last year.

[Interviewer 2]

That's true.

[Rich Lou Dennis]

Right. So we honored her Black women in. In Hollywood for. For what she had been doing in Hollywood. That was the kickoff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, no, actually, it wasn't. That was the kickoff for her. Yeah, yeah. Her year. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Interviewer 2]

I met her at Black Women in Hol.

[Rich Lou Dennis]

Oh, really? Yeah, she's. And. And the other thing is, you know, to see that room, man, and to see those women loving on each other and protecting each other, it's. It's really special. And then it's. It's the same thing at this. The same thing at festival. Right? And I. And I think a lot of it is people don't want to lose that, and they're. They're concerned also. Like, all. With all that's going on in the world is. Is. Is. Is just going to be here. All right? And I'm here to tell you it's going to be here.

[Interviewer 2]

Amen.

[Interviewer 1]

All right, there you have it, guys. We'll see you guys next week. Peace.

[Interviewer 2]

Peace.

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