Monday Manufacturing Motivation – with Carl Brown

Curt Anderson 0:00
Intro Hey guys, man Happy Monday. Welcome to Manufacturing Monday motivation. Damon, good morning to you on the west side of the world. We’re over here on the east side. How are you man? I’m awesome. laughing so hard. I’m crying man. We’ve got to dig right in. So, Damon we’re blessed with once again another celebrity. I’m not gonna pretend that I’m not starstruck because I come to know. I’ve been found this dude for a long time. Huge respect. Massive admiration for our dear friend Carl Brown, Carl, how are you? Dude?

Carl Brown 0:35
Hey, I’m great. No, happy Monday. Is money making Monday? Get a better day let’s let’s have some fun and make some money

Curt Anderson 0:46
at dude. Man. I liked that one money money making Monday may only make money making money Monday. So all right. Daymond. We have like the entrepreneurs Entrepreneur on the program today. So let’s do a deep dive. I know like, you know, I this intro might run a little mic. I’ll try to make it quick. But this guy is accomplished so much. It’s hard to keep it short. So, cow, you are the executive director of the Small Business Development Center in the District of Columbia covering DC our nation’s capital. You are you’re on the History Channel, Damon niver a huge history channel fans around the food that built America. You have another fun program that you’re on that we were just dying before we went live here. So we’re going to talk about that today. You have a great radio show now I believe is your radio shows on Sirius right?

Carl Brown 1:34
Sirius XM channel. 141, seven years, seven

Curt Anderson 1:39
years, this man’s dead seven years of business report. He’s on Sirius radio channel 141. Live on Thursdays 12 o’clock Eastern. So we’re going to take a deep dive into this. Now, Carl, you know that now did you go to Howard University? Do

Carl Brown 1:55
I? Absolutely. Graduate of Howard University. And that’s

Curt Anderson 2:00
well, huh. Is that the SBDC that you’re at?

Carl Brown 2:04
Yes, I am. I’m sitting in school of business right now.

Curt Anderson 2:08
How dude, how cool is that? So a couple things. I want to take a deep dive into. So when you look at guys, first off connect with Kyle here on LinkedIn, he is a rockstar you’ll thank them and I later for introducing you to Carl, just entrepreneurs entrepreneur, his passion, energy expertise off the charts. Now, Carl, you’ve had fortune 500 background I believe Verizon. Let’s see what else I had this year at Pepsi, right? And in government with Department of Transportation. We’re going to talk about some of that. But now you’re at the Small Business Development Center. So my question for you my friend, you were just talking about growing up in Queens. You’re a New York City guy. Yeah. When you were growing up? Who was your hero? Dude, you are you happen so much as we’d love to hear? Who is your hero growing up that really inspired you today?

Carl Brown 2:57
Well, let me let me tell you, I’m gonna surprise the hell out of you play it on my dad. My dad was I mean,

Curt Anderson 3:06
what’s dad’s name? On Jr. So? Yeah, let’s hear about Carl Sr. But

Carl Brown 3:14
when my dad graduated high school at the age of 15. Wow. And then when it you know, you went to the army spent a little time in the army. And they came out and had his own business for for many years and then, you know, became a Skycap at JFK and raised four boys. My oldest brother was a lawyer he passed on but he was the he was the lawyer and he was the highest ranking unelected government employee in New York State or New York City. He was the clerk of the courts for New York City. Nice Wow. All the courts want to his jurisdiction. And then my my next brother is us in law enforcement before he retired and then it was me and then my youngest brother is a lawyer as well intellectual property. One of the science type guys who studies cells and all this other craziness. stuff down even I’m Stan but he’s a lawyer doing that so so not bad for Skycap at JFK, huh?

Curt Anderson 4:30
Hey, how about good run applause all tomorrow senior man our hat’s off to you know, producing for I’m sure it wasn’t. He had a lot of tough days raising you for Oh, yeah.

Carl Brown 4:39
Oh my god. He’s talking about ballroom fights. We used to have him in the house break furniture up. I mean, he was crazy. But other than my dad was, you know, Martin Luther King John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy because he you know, understand, you know, when you got four guys As in, you know, I have a master’s in government. I mean, so far I’ve always preached that you can make change inside. You know, it’s not always outside that you make changes, you have to beat it and I’m staying the policy. And so they talked about, you know, democracy in my house all the time. They’d see my uncles and my daddy’s get together all the time. My house was like, we used to have all the family gatherings, you know, Thanksgiving, Christmas and all that. And then it flowed down to us because when after school our house was like, we all the kids hung out. Yeah, walk home with us a bunch of kids in the house and I’m gone. Who these kids

Curt Anderson 5:46
had Grand Central right at the house right at the brown.

Carl Brown 5:50
come through. And you know, my dad would cook in big pots. So everybody ate, you know, you think about Meals on Wheels. We did meals by walking. My dad would dish out plates and he would say take this over to Jim Jimmy white towels. Take this one over the meters house take this one over. He fed the community, elderly and sick and shut in my dad to kid him. You know, so I mean, you talked about heroes. It was right. My house? No.

Curt Anderson 6:22
Right under your roof. Well, that is an awesome answer. Thank you for sharing that. A couple of big hellos. We’ve got our dear friend Gail, Captain happy. Got another hat. Good afternoon coming at us here. So again, guys, we’re here with Kyle Brown, you want to connect with Kyle on LinkedIn here. So Kyle, let’s take a deep dive in. All right, so you graduated from Howard University master’s degree, and you find yourself in corporate. So I’d love to hear like what was the mindset going into corporate and then transitioning into government? And then

Carl Brown 6:49
actually actually listening to this, right. So I went back home to New York, after I graduated, got my BA in 83. Went back to New York. 83 women. Tough times in America recession. Yeah. So they weren’t really high rim folks. I was there two other partners of mine, and we grew up in grade school. All three of us had degrees, one from UVA, and one from Clark in out of Massachusetts, and myself. We were going job hunting every day. So I called up. When I was at Howard, I used to volunteer at the Urban League. And I called up the lady that ran the job placement office at the Urban League. And I told her, I said, Hey, I’m having a hard time finding a job. Can you help? And she said, Sure, can honey Take care? Bye in click that was it. I thought, Okay, well, that was easy. I’m probably never going to hear from her. A week later, I get a call from the undersecretary and Department of Commerce. Mrs. Fisher told me to hire you. When can you start? That was the whole interview. Oh, my goodness. That was the whole interview. It wasn’t oh, what’s your background? What do you want to do? Where you see yourself in five years? None of that baloney. It was I was told to hire you. When can you start? I was like, hey, two weeks, boom. I will say I started my career, the US Patent and Trademark Office and procurement and never looked back, left there went into the Maryland National Capital Park and Planning Commission, which is by county agency, and they handle all of the Parks, Recreation and planning. All right. So I handle all of the contracts for that. So a lot of construction, we will build them facilities. So we built the Equestrian Center. We built the College Park Airport museum, we did the redevelopment of downtown silver spring. These are some of the big projects that I was working on. Regional incense, local incense. All right. went from there was I got my Masters by now through at University of Maryland, and was recruited by Earl graves to work at his Pepsi plant here locally because remember Earl graves and Magic Johnson had a Pepsi plant. So I started working for them after I got out of grad school. So went back into corporate America because previous to coming to DC all of my jobs when in corporate America, so in the airlines as well because I live so close to Kennedy and LaGuardia airports. I’ve worked at many many different stations at the airport, web I was Scott capping, fueling the plane loading the plane with luggage cleaning the plane, working security did all that you know over the summers and stuff like that. So, very versed in travel, the travel industry, lot of people don’t know how to travel, when to travel. I can tell you listen to a guy that used to work there, you know. But anyway, so hey, I’m at Pepsi Cola was great run, we had great time named Pepsi Cola. Earl sold pet franchise back to corporate Pepsi. They offered me a job. I was like, now I think I’m gonna stick around because they wanted me to move out of state and I wanted to like stay here because my brothers were living in. So I wanted to be close to them. So I left it and went over to the Metro with the metro. So Oh, no, actually, I went to Verizon Verizon. Yeah, that’s right. Yeah. Yeah, this is this is interesting. Got to Verizon, and got to sign on bonus. Like I was a basketball, football. Just bring this to them. I was like, Hey, this is cool. I liked it. So had a great run. at Verizon. And you know, I love working in love the people, the corporate environment, destruction was wonderful. We worked in teams. I mean, I’m still friends with all of those folks love. But when they moved to Ashburn after they bought the Worldcom headquarters, and they moved out off as soon as 50 miles from my house, and my kids were like three years old. And so I said, do I drive 50 miles one way every day? Or do I look for a new job closer to home. So that’s when I went to Metro,

closer to home, got to get a bus pass again, hadn’t had one of those since high school. So get on a train bus for free, you know, do you think loved the job, but it wasn’t like corporate, you know, the it wasn’t a pleasant experience. But regardless of that, I was able to get like three, four promotions right away. After they realized who I was, I was now then a Acting Assistant General Manager. Not bad. I came in as a director and went on up up the food chain. Stayed there for a while said Hey, I gotta go. Then I went over to in this this like, a dream come true job. I was working for Milt Peterson and Prince George’s Community College, working with minority vendors to help them do work at the National Harbor that everyone loves. And we were working with them creating a pipeline, put together a bunch of classes, coursework, to help them understand how to do estimating and blueprint reading and all this. And then we were able to give them jobs. So there was a carrot at the end of the stick. So we were helping small businesses get opportunities out at the National Harbor. Then I got recruited again, to go back into the government and in the district. And I said had to say yes, I mean, when people recruit you, a look in to pay you a bunch of money. And I was like, okay, I can I can deal with that. So I came into the district, and then a couple of friends came to me and say call, there’s a job opening up at Howard University to run the Small Business Development Center. You need to apply. So I applied and I’d say it never looked back. And and I get, you know, people send me emails on a regular basis. Are you looking for a new job? Like, No way.

Curt Anderson 14:10
You’re in the perfect home. Found home.

Carl Brown 14:14
I’m where I want to be I live you can’t see. But I used to live right across the street when I went down that wall right there, right there. All fields on the other side of could call I mean, I’m in the middle of campus. That’s awesome. But the things that we are doing here are like historic, in a sense, because we just did our financial Friday kickoff last week. And what that entail was remember, when the pandemic first hit in the government put out the IDL, which is the economic injury, disaster loans, slash grants and the PP PETA payroll protection program. Well, a lot of our vendors weren’t qualifying. And so I had two powerhouses working for me at the time. Lisa Anderson CPA and Beverly Winstead is a tax attorney in state of Maryland, like the number one tax attorney, both of them working for me working with the clients, and they came back and said, call a lot of our clients and not qualifying for the PPP or the idle because they don’t have any financial infrastructure. They don’t have like a QuickBooks did not use an Excel, they don’t have receipts. They don’t have a business bank account, you know, they had some of them had you file taxes in years. And some were not in compliance, because in District of Columbia, you have to be in compliance with the Department of Consumer and regulatory agency with your basic business license, they hadn’t even paid for their basic business license. So they came to me and said, Look, we got to address this problem. So we put together a program to address that problem. And we kicked it off on on Friday. And so we’re going to have a series of webinars on Fridays, right around this time, called financial Fridays. And but but what I did was I segmented the market that so that we can go after it intelligently. So we’re looking from cradle to grave. Hey, through a I have a company that is developing for me right now, a comic book in animation series, to teach young kids in kindergarten through eighth grade, about saving money investing, putting together a budget, all little strategies on financial literacy, then I have another specialists working for me, that is dealing with high school and college kids on how to qualify for scholarships, fast food and all these other things that help you walk away from college with minimal debt, weapons, car college or trade school or whatever we have for you. We have someone to work directly with you. She’s written a couple of books on that. Her name is TISA Canadain. folks working with me on K through eight is the creator of junk food. And when you see this cartoon, you’d be going, Wow, these guys are not playing. And I tell you this cartoon series may take off, it might become a whole series onto itself. You never know. Right? You never know. Because we you know, we have written up some really good stuff. You know, using the treatment template that is been, you know, whatever. But what all other cartoons do. There’s not some garbage This is really good stuff. I’m telling you. The first the first one that we have, we just did it for the meeting is five pages long. When I read the last page, I was like, I was disappointed. I was disappointed. I didn’t have Page Six through 20. I was like, oh my god, man, I gotta wait to see this. Because I was it was so captivating. I was I mean, when you see this stuff, you’ll be going wow. Right? Where these guys come up with the stuff.

You know, people saying to me, oh, call you need to take the credit data. Yeah, yeah, I’m rolled up and I fought it is and I came up with concept. But I worked with people who have taken it to the next level. You know, you can come in, but you know, I’m not the one I can’t draw. I’ll draw you some stick figures. You know, that’s about the best I can do guys. I’m not this guy to get draw me, you know, but I can come up with some crazy stuff. You know, growing up in New York, I mean, hey, you know, taking the subway to school every day. I mean, yeah, you see a lot. So you can write down a whole bunch of crazy stuff. You see. You ever get on a train, you see a magician with the top hat, cape and doves and all that want to train going into the city and this guy comes in he’s, you know, got doves fine around the train and all this stuff. I mean, if you if you’re Seattle, Washington and you don’t believe that you go to this guy, you know, I mean, but if you go to New York, you’ll see this kind of

Curt Anderson 19:59
well, you little bit of everything. So hey, we got a few friends given a couple of hellos. We’ve got John, chopping the Hello, do Carl. We’ve got Christina Harrington Christina. She’s a CEO of Gen Alpha technologies, great e commerce company. We’ve got another great comment here. Financial literacy, love. It worked with middle school students, students, they love it. So this is a hot topic. So Carl, and you’re digging deep until you’re talking about your program, the financial Fridays, I saw that online. Again, guys connect with Carl on LinkedIn. If you go to your YouTube channel, I saw that financial Fridays right there. You also have all your financial your small, small business, you’re you’re finding your radio show your small business, couldn’t get that out. So what I’d like to dig into right now, Carl, is that you’re the executive director of the you mentioned like, Hey, you got recruited for the SBDC. And Damon, we had a great conversation with Dr. Now. On Friday, Carl, you and Dr. Natalie Nixon should connect. Her father was her hero as well. And he taught her when you pursue what you love, you will turn down opportunities. And that’s exactly what you just described. Here were the folks this SPDC for anybody that’s not familiar with a small business development center. Please share with everybody what is the SPDC

Carl Brown 21:13
Oh, man, are you talking about something I love? So that’s really look, we are. At this point in time, we are America’s best kept secret. We are located in every state, Guam, Puerto Rico, American Samoa and US Virgin Islands. Oh, and the Marianas Islands is in Sapa. And so we are global. We are working with throughout the Caribbean teaching small islands like Turks and Caicos in Bermuda, Barbados, Jamaica with teaching them in and Central America, Peru, Colombia and all those countries with teaching them how to work with small businesses. So we work with small businesses. And like I said, we’re in all 50 states, you can drive five miles in any direction, you hit a Small Business Development Center. We’re usually on college campuses, like Howard University, to the north of me, University of Maryland, to the south of me, George Mason University in Virginia. So we have all of our services are free. Right. And so let me let me just dispel the myth about free. You see all that stuff behind me? Yep, all that stuff. Yep. All that costs money. Right. All that’s right up in here. So you think that we’re free? Because we suck. Let me tell you that we don’t

Curt Anderson 22:57
I you know, Carl, I caught you on I’m when you’re listening to a bunch of radio shows. And you have you made a comment. We are a team team of MBAs working for you for free for free. For free. We just, we just said Sarah, my low. She’s the associate director of the Penn State of Pennsylvania, the SBDC. In Pennsylvania, she was just one last Monday, same exact same thing. So let’s take a deep dive, free man, our favorite word cow, what does an entrepreneur and we’d sing our song that we sing as to manufacturers. So it doesn’t have to be a brand new startup, you could have been in business 2030 100 years. Oh, yeah. So dig deep into like, what are these free services that SPDC offers?

Carl Brown 23:38
Okay, well, you know, let us look over here. See, cybersecurity. Okay. Let’s talk about that real quick. Yep. Right. At Target City Bank, Wells Fargo, Liberty Mutual, all of them have departments, IT departments, you know, Amazon, all of them, right? They’re paying people six and seven figures to make sure that their data doesn’t get stolen. You go to the cleaners, how to use the cleaners. You go to the cleaners, they have your name, your address, and your phone number, right because they don’t want to give your clothes to somebody else. Right? Yeah. So they got all that data and your credit card. Right and who is their IT department? It’s them. And then let me push it even further. Before you think about this. When you bought a new computer last year 10 months into having this new computer you started getting from nor was it not Nortel but whatever, whatever cyber. Cyber wiz on your computer. Yes, God is sending you messages by out. Oh, your your, your is about to expire, you need to re up. Right? What do we do? We never re up. Okay, we never re up to say your computer is total can be hacked at any time. Wonderful. Right? Well, it’s very vulnerable. Right? Well, we are talking about how to not be in that position. Because if you get ransom weird, they will lock your stuff up. And if you don’t, you can forget about it. Yep. So you got to start over. And always ask people, How much do you think your social security numbers work? And they go, Oh, 10,000 5000 or go? Yeah, you on an ego trip? Say 15. Set, maybe. Because when they bind them on the black market, they bind like 40 and 50,000. Numbers, and they’re not paying 10,000 per number. Okay. So maybe, maybe, Bill Gates numbers were five pounds? I don’t know. Right. But the average, you know, you’ll make five 610 set.

Aside, you know, hey, we’re great guys, but we got expensive. So cybersecurity is big thing. Next month, financial literacy. I just went through that. Yeah, we’re not qualifying for the loans that we need, because of the things that we’re not doing. So it’s a behavior thing that we need to focus on and change, right? Yep. And then Aesop’s, Aesop’s and coops right? employee stock ownership program and coops right? Now, people overlook this. But guess what? Baby Boomers are still retiring at 10 to 12,000 a month, and some have expedited their retirement because of the pandemic this way. Why should I wait? I’m gonna retire now. So they’re closing down in businesses, cutting off the lights, locking the doors, and leaving a ton of money on the table? Yeah, I just did a study. I have one by one of our law students started this study for me. What do you do? And I said, 50, and up and when she came back to me, she said call really is 45. If you get that tap on the shoulder at five o’clock on Friday, Hey, call, you know, we’re going in a different direction. You know, today’s your last day? Well, guess what? I still got to eat tomorrow. Yeah. What do I do? Well, we’re trying to focus folks on buying existing businesses. Like I just mentioned, baby boomers walking out 1010 12,000 a month, this revenue, these businesses are generating revenue. And so why start and 4550 years old, when you can buy a business that’s already generating revenue. Right. Okay. And we’re trying to convince the SBA to use money through the seven eight program to allow you to do that. Okay. So it’s about education, and, you know, enforcement and a little bit to say, Hey, this is a good way to help small businesses. And so that business owner that was just going to walk away and leave all that money on the table. Now you go to him and say, hey, you know, what, what about 250,000? You know, once you do your due diligence, and all that, yeah. So you got to know where the money where the contracts are, where the money’s coming in, and all that. You do your due diligence, you figure out, hey, this business is generating about 250 340,000 a year, blah, blah, blah, you know, you work out a deal with the owner. They were going to walk away anyway. And maybe you don’t even have to give them a download front. Right? You can pay them when the revenue comes in. Yeah. Okay. So now they have a bigger bag for retirement than they even thought about. They’re happy, you’re happy. Everybody’s happy. Your family’s happy because they get to go to the restaurant and get some neat. Everybody’s eaten. Everybody’s good, right? Yeah. Yes. That’s one of the things, Robert, intellectual property. Why is that important? Well, we know artists have been ripped off for 100 years. The guy that made the Supersoaker somebody else rip him off of the patent. He didn’t get any money, went to court got, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars, whatever it was, for, you know, for a supersoaker something as simple as that. But historically, people been writing music forever in in a day, never getting credit for putting recipes out there and never getting credit. So we’re teaching them in how University has a patent and trademark Resource Center right in School Business Library. Oh, nice. So we can work with you on getting your patent, doing your initial research. So you’re not spending 1000s of dollars in is really, you know, incumbent upon you to help us help you come in, we can do to research to librarians there. She’s a partner with us hand in glove we work together daily. So you know, one of the good things disabled businesses, let me tell you, folks,

disabled businesses are some of like, the heart hearing community, we have Gallaudet University wondered premier university serving hot hand and deaf community in the country. All right, right down the street from Howard University. All right, when I heard from them, because you know, I have a big tank, I don’t leave anyone. Unless you don’t want any partners. I don’t leave anyone alone. I’ve worked with any and everybody went over to Gallaudet. And they will tell me about the poverty rate of their students of their small business owners. I mean, it’s astronomical. And for us to leave that community and not service them, to help them the entire disabled community. You know, we work with them, we have a partnership with the disabled net, the National Disability Institute. They’re doing wonderful work, we’re partnering with them. Because this is, this is what we’re about. We’re about making everybody whole helping everybody out. You know, we don’t have any secrets. We don’t have any trade secrets. Hell, I’m more aligned with you guys. I want everybody to know about us, cuz we’re here to service you. And then you know, international trade. I mean, you know, people only even go even deeper than international trade. International trade is wonderful thing. You can go sell your products and services to Europe, Africa, Asia, all those wonderful places all throughout Caribbean. They need everything that we have, right? But guess what? sodas, the folks in Montana, and Minnesota and Miami and everywhere else. A lot of people they only look at that one community. And they are in the this is where they’re going to sell. This is where they’re going to service. And I’m saying wow, that’s so limited. Get out of the box. Go go to Jersey. Yeah, go to Jersey. You people that live there. Yeah.

Curt Anderson 33:04

We know our friend lives there. And we got another great time at random for work here. Carl Brown. Yeah, Diane, Byron, Chris Young are some of those comments. So Kyle, we’ve a lot of exciting things. And I want to slide into so again, SBDC. Guys, wherever you’re at, there’s nearly 1000 centers throughout the country. As cow just mentioned, I know here in New York alone, we have over 22 centers.

Carl Brown 33:29
I think y’all have like 75 Yeah,

Curt Anderson 33:32
it’s, you know, a lot of regional centers, you know, you have the main hubs, and then they have a lot of regional centers. So there’s a ton of opportunity here. You know, in Job, hey, we got to get John McLean. Oh says hey, come to New Jersey. So

Carl Brown 33:46
John rosin in New Jersey at Rutgers is doing a hell of a job.

Curt Anderson 33:51
That’s exactly so. So let’s tie it into this cow. So, you know, sliding into those topics. Now you’re doing a great job. So wherever those entrepreneurs out there, again, if you’re starting out brand new SPDs phenomenal. However, if you’ve been in business for 1020 30 years, and you’re thinking, man, SBDC. That’s for those startups, that is not correct you it doesn’t matter how long you’ve been in business, look at all those opportunities. And Carl was just talking about this is Damon’s expertise. Those succession planning exit strategy opportunity. Next year, connect with your SPDC. Now, Carl, let’s talk about your radio show. Dude, this is a phenomenal business report and what I’ve a lot of those topics that are right over your shoulder, you’re bringing other subject matter experts, other SPDC advisors, direct state directors, community directors, bankers, corporate, you’ve brought in all sorts of folks that you interview talking about, talk about your radio show, what are some of these topics and what do you enjoy about that?

Carl Brown 34:46
You hit the nail on the head. We have Max Barger from PNC, who is the secession planning C Vice President talks about secession planning Nice. We need to know what the end game is. We talked about the baby boomers leaving 10 to 12,000. You know, every month, right? Well guess what? Do they have a succession plan? Not when you leaving all that money on the table, you have to think about, okay, well, can I sell a business? And that’s something that a lot of people don’t understand. Well, it said the businesses called Brown. Why? Why would I want to buy call Browns business? Well, it’s called brown today. And after you buy, and you get to know the clients, then you can bring them in on this whole renaming rebranding process. Whoa, what a way to get closer to your clients. Yeah, having them be a part of choosing the colors in the name of the business that they’ve done business with for 1020 years. And now you’re saying, hey, you know what, you know, Dave was great guy, or Kurt was great guy. Damon was great guy. He retired, he moved on. It’s Sunday, my purview now, but I need you guys to help me rebrand and rename this business. And you throw some concepts out there. And I’m telling you, everybody wants to be a part of that. I watched small businesses grow, because they got their customers involved in everything that they would do it in the decisions they make. So like you’re saying, you’ve been around 1020 years, you might need to refresh on your branding on your color scheme on your logo. You know, I mean, not like you know, Munger, Coca Cola did all we’re going to change the hourglass and all that and backfired and it didn’t work. Something’s better left untouched. When they did that whole thing about the the zero and all that. Yeah. Rose sales. And yeah.

Curt Anderson 37:06
We’re the three of us were around in the 80s for remember New Coke, remember what it was?

Carl Brown 37:15
Like, you know, but this things that you can touch, you can change? Yeah, no one would get upset, you know. So, yeah, there’s a lot of things that can happen. I mean, you’ve been around 20 years, but you technology’s been around since 50 years, you still use a pen and pad. So let us come in and look at you. We’ve got no computer experts, they’ve worked with you. I mean, we must borrow. He’s got like 15 acronyms behind his name. Yeah, that’s one hour, guys. Okay, he’s doing cybersecurity for us. But he can look at your your whole system and come up with some new technology. There’s all kinds of software out here now that you can use, then is convergence on your, your phone, your laptop, your desktop, you know, are you using the cloud to store things or you still have a server in the basement of your office is somewhere where it could be flooded? Or better yet? Remember, when we all had to go on to house arrest two years ago, you know, pandemic and you know, it was like, overnight type thing. You know? Well, what if that happens again? You know, so everybody, you know, people are saying, oh, all my stuff was in office, but you can’t get to your office. Right, you know, so are you storing it in the cloud? I mean, so there’s a lot of things that we could do with a business that’s been around 2025 years. I mean, think about it, Ebony and Jet magazine went out of business, they were around for more than 50 years, right? Yeah, they needed to SBDC freshers refresher. I mean, maybe we could have prevented them from going out of business. I mean, there’s a lot of things that we could do, we could work with you on that. And like you said, Kurt, I got a whole team of MBAs, and lawyers, etc, etc. That can work with you on your business for free. These are your tax dollars at work. These are your tax dollars at work, the SBA and how university funds the DC SBDC. Right, the SBA and Howard University. So if people say why is free and ain’t for me, but guess what, the road is free, and you don’t have a problem driving on it. I’m looking out here out the window in his cars going up and down road antibotics saying, Well, it’s a free road. I’m gonna, I’m not going to drive on it. No, everybody’s driving on it. So take advantage of the things that are free, that are worth something. Right. All that Apr back there. All right,

Curt Anderson 40:02
I’ve got a I’ve got a I’ve got a hysterical quote about about Carl here Damon you’re right like man, guys 40 minutes I like I didn’t even look at the clock like, gone by and I know like we have so much more to talk about and I want to be mindful of your time, Carl, but you know, you’re great in the community, obviously, you know, you’ve been all over the place fortune 500 corporate, you’ve gone you know, into your community on government side now you’re just dedicating your time talent, you know, God given tools to the small business community in DC, blunt talking Brown, that’s a that’s a quote blunt. Brown will tell you the truth. Like it or not, you’re called a transformational leader, visionary. And I think what was the Entrepreneur Magazine had or black entrepreneur had had a great quote about you about how you’re dedicating yourself to your community. Carl, I want to I want to slide into because I know we’re starting run tight on time. Do a lot of our friends here are huge fans of the History Channel. And god dude, I’ve like I’ve watched every episode that you’ve been on apps, it’s the food that builds America, if you’ve caught this machines that built America, it’s a great series for our manufacturers or fans of manufacturing. Talk a little bit about your experience on the food at built America with the History Channel.

Carl Brown 41:17
Well, it was a lot of fun doing it. I learned a lot because believe me they give you a give you a topic and it’s up to you to do the research. So yeah, toys that built America. I didn’t I mean, I had a three ring binder full of data on the toy industry. Yeah, Matchbox Hot Wheels. Yeah, Barbie GI Joe, you name it. I went through it. I read about it, the history of it. I mean, because I didn’t want to get in and start asking you questions go, oh, I don’t know. I don’t know, I got a whole community that I represent. So I better know, you know, and you know, what about Barbie and then I can just rattle off, you know, all of the things about bargain, you know, the whole scuttled, but behind the scenes about well, you know, that that doll is the shin be, you know, young girl, she can play with it, you know, the whole story, inverted all that. But, you know, one of the one of the most interesting things that I learned during that whole process was about Dave Thomas. Yeah, that guy was phenomenal. Because remember, you were you probably don’t know, he was, you know, really an orphan and raised by other people. Yeah. And so his foundation is for kids that raised in orphanages and all that. So that’s one thing. Number two, he used to work for Kentucky Fried Chicken worked for the colonel. White bucket. That was his idea. The menu they had like 5000 things on the menu. Dave was like, What are you guys kidding me? Right, you should save down menu to make it you know, more palatable, and then increase sales, right? And then he came up with the concept of driving or driveway around through drive thru. So you order in one spot, you pay in another and you pick up at a third, right? So you constantly moving? because prior to that, guess what? You you pull up to the window, you order you pay and you wait and you wait. And you wait. You wait and then you get some bargains and you go, right. So this whole concept of you order over the pay over here you pick up over there. You constantly moving so it’s psychology. Yeah, I’m not waiting. I’m not wasting a whole lot of time. You know, his belief was it is genius. It was genius. You know, the other thing with Dave was fresh, never frozen. Yeah.

Curt Anderson 44:05

What a brilliant you know, and the thing is, like, you know, again, we’re we were around in the 80s during those commercials when Dave became the face of the business Yes, right. Oh, yeah. Humble like he was a guy you know, Grandfather type like you wanted to hang out with a guy like your I believe you’re heavy with like the scouts with your family with

Carl Brown 44:22
your big scouting family. Yeah.

Curt Anderson 44:25
You could just see Dave Thomas hanging out and just what an absolute brilliant mind he was in college. You’ve been on multiple your contributor and multiple of those programs. So I know a bunch of us are huge fans of the program. huge fans of yours. And thank you for your contributions to History Channel. Now before we went live, you had Damon knight in stitches talking about you’re on a new show on the History Channel. Can

Carl Brown 44:49
you share with quote Yeah, yeah, the fast history of the mob. I’d say you know, now now, you know

Curt Anderson 44:57
much business, right? It’s all about business. They are all

Carl Brown 45:01
always all about business.

Curt Anderson 45:05
Personal right not the personal it’s all business

Carl Brown 45:07
all business. But we you know, my wife said oh my god you’re gonna get us killed you’re talking to

the guy got they got mobsters talking to the police all day the media come on with Sammy the bull was just on Vlad TV. What do you mean? Hey, you know, they’re not looking at me. They don’t care about me. Yeah, you know, but no, it was, it was a lot of fun to talk about it. I mean, you know, growing up in Jamaica, Queens, and in fact, they got a movie on Showtime called the Supreme Team. And this is not this is like, not the mafia. But you know, like the mafia in the sense that these guys would sell them drugs and all that stuff. But the crazy part is, these will all my classmates in elementary and junior high school classmates, I’m looking at this thing. And I’m going oh, hey, yeah, that’s, that’s yeah. That’s all of them, you know, grew up with him, you know, see him in the community when I go back home, I see him those that are not in prison ones that out? Yeah. But it’s just amazing. You know, we still see the mob all the time. You know,

Curt Anderson 46:32
it was like, Yeah, you’re watching that thing. And you’re looking at your class yearbook, right? Like

Carl Brown 46:38
one one day open up Daily News. And they had the whole syndicate right now was like, from the top God to the bottom. I was like, Look, he’s all these guys are my classmates. Oh, no.

Curt Anderson 46:52
Right. Well, a lot of overachievers there, Carl. So why as we start writing again, I want to be first off, thank you. Thank you. I know you are Oh, my goodness, dude, I don’t know how you sleep you you’re doing 1000 things. And just how you’ve dedicated yourself, your your talents, your skill, set your energy, passion, expertise, your community, helping entrepreneurs and Daymond. That’s what we always love the premium plan. As an entrepreneur, you are not alone, you got the SBDC in your back pocket. A whole slew a team of MBAs for free at your beck and call. And like Carl said, if like you step into that center, and maybe they don’t have that area of expertise, guess what they can find somebody else at another center that’s going to help you out. Cause we wind down man, you know, you’ve got you mentioned your wife, I did a lot of cyber stalking. I think her name is Evelyn, I saw on your you’re finding on the website, your family, so shout out and God bless you and your family. Thank you, we wind down, we’re kind of maybe coming out of this pandemic, hopefully. And now, you know, now we’re taking another little change or transformation pivot if you will. Who in what inspires you moving forward? Who and What? Who or what? Fires you move? You’re a dude, you’re on TV. You’re, you’re on Sirius, you’re on the History Channel, you’re crushing it in DC helping out literally 1000s of entrepreneurs. I’d love to know who inspires you to accomplish all these things that you’re doing?

Carl Brown 48:20
Well, the inspiration comes from my kids, you know, that’s our kids. I mean, you know, you know, at the end of the day, you know, they they’re starting to see what I’m doing. You know, now that they’re in college, and you know, your reach is pretty deep.

Curt Anderson 48:41
Yeah, maybe a little, maybe. Let’s see, Dad’s on TV. He’s on XM. And he’s on Sirius Radio. He’s like, looking at everywhere,

Carl Brown 48:50
but remote, and you got to see you got to go back. Because I had a TV show on a local cable channel. And I was on TV all the time. So they was they were sick and tired of seeing me on TV. They were like, Oh my God, he’s on TV again. In the newspaper or magazine or whatever. So they’ve been around this for a long time. And now they’re starting to see that you know what it means? Right? Yeah, because when they were younger, they didn’t know what it meant. You know, they were like, I don’t know you know, Stevie but it’s boring a rabbit watch. SpongeBob you know, they’re not dad, you know? But if you talk to celebrities, they they’ll tell you the same thing. Like, oh, I got a new film coming out. And Dad, I don’t want to see your movies. No more, you know, that kind of thing. So you know, your family’s but yeah, my kids inspire me. I got a buddy by the name of BK Fulton. He’s someone that inspires me from distance, you know, he’s doing similar things, but he’s doing at a much larger level grown up in Jamaica, Queens, a lot of inspiration from my former neighbors, that we still stay in touch thank God for different social media, that we stay in touch with each other. They inspired me and pushed me Believe it or not, to continue to do more and more. So yeah, it’s crazy, because I like to I like to read, I like to study I like to, I like to look at zombies on weekend. So after I do all of my studying, and my reading and watching my zombies, everybody knows that. That’s awesome. Excuse me, and go yo, this guy’s a zombie King. I think I’ve seen every zombie movie out there in every language. So if you got any point is for zombie movies friend me on LinkedIn and tell me about it, you know, because I sure loved Seto zombies, but anyway, because you know, zombies, cat, mouse, mouse thing, you know, that station, you gotta get away that kind of thing.

Curt Anderson 51:14
Zombies and we got another, you know, we’ve got a great note here. It’s all about your children and inspire us,

Carl Brown 51:20
you know, and in they themselves have, you know, wanted to go and scouting. My son came home in first grade. And, you know, we were sitting at the dinner table, and my daughter said, well tell him and cuz she’s always been more well, she’s like me, my twin. She’s like, tell him you sit near eating, he wouldn’t look up and she said, Wow, he wants to join this organization that goes boating, shoots arrows and guns and online gun what you know, and then oh, scouts, and I was like, oh, okay, scouting, okay. And so they both join scouting, he became an Eagle Scout, she became a Girl Scout Gold leaf were two of the highest awards, and get his scouting for both of them. They completed it, they’re going into their sophomore year college now what my son studying to be a psychiatrists daughter’s studying to be a veterinarian. So I’ll be working about another 10 years so yeah, you guys gonna see me so

Curt Anderson 52:36
we’ll have you back and we’ll see. More radio shows. We’ll have you back on here with us more time so cows will wind down let you get back on with your day. So dude, first off, thank you man. Thank you. God bless you, your family. You know, little kids. It’s all about successful parents man. So you and your wife have done an amazing job talk tell Evelyn hats off to her.

Carl Brown 52:59
Thanks. Well, thank you for

Curt Anderson 53:00
everything that you’re doing. Thank you for sharing your expertise about the SPP guys if you have any questions whatsoever, please connect with Kyle here on LinkedIn. Drop him a note give him a Hello Tom that you’re watching him on history channel I’m sure you’d love to hear that catch his radio show awesome topics great experts that he brings in

Carl Brown 53:19
let me know what you want to hear. Because you know we bring it well. We’d like to, you know, service you as well. Let me know what you want to hear.

Curt Anderson 53:28
Thursdays 12 o’clock Eastern channel. 141 on Sirius and again go to the History Channel. So Carl, hang out with us for one second. I’m gonna let you go. Guys go out have an absolutely amazing, incredible week. Daymond I know you’ve got your faces of business podcast Tuesdays and Thursdays six o’clock Eastern three o’clock Pacific Daymond has awesome guests. This Friday man on our manufacturing ecommerce success we’ve got Gail, Gail, you were here earlier. Thank you for joining us today is going to be with us. Chris Chris Young Chris Harrington. Diane, John. Buddy had dropped a note with us today. Thank you for joining us to hear more about Carl. His expertise. his axe is his passion and energy. So guys, have an amazing week. We’ll let you go Carl. Hang on one second. Thank you today. All right, man. Thanks, Damon. All right. Good