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The Tech Industry and Being the Role Model You Needed as a Kid
144 Plays1 month ago
Kendrick Trotter joins the show to talk about going from Uber driver to a major account executive at a public cybersecurity company, then founding his own business that created over $70 million in annualized salaries for underrepresented professionals.
George K and George A talk to Kendrick about:
- How a Division I football scholarship and one life-changing Uber ride with an Amazon VP changed everything
- His game-changing approach to calling CISOs
- Building Us and Technology - training 13,000+ people for free and placing them at companies like Zscaler and Airtable
- The harsh reality of what happened to DEI initiatives and why diversity of thought drives 30% more revenue
The bottom line: Kendrick's story proves that with the right mindset, genuine human connection, and "unreasonable hospitality," you can break barriers and create opportunities for others.
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Transcript
Diversity and Production Statistics
00:00:00
Speaker
But when you hear the word diversity, there will never be a negative statistic related to production associated with the word diversity. Right. And I think diversity, a lot of times people assume like black and white, but like diversity is defined as variety.
00:00:14
Speaker
And so what I would try to do when I would disarm people is I would make sports analogies. I would make ah military analogies. I'd say like, hey, like Tom Brady is a great quarterback, but would you want him to play running back too?
00:00:25
Speaker
Or do you want them to also be a receiver? Like, no, you wouldn't. And so on a championship team, you have different people with different skill sets, one common goal, and those are the most productive teams.
Podcast Introduction and Guest Overview
00:00:41
Speaker
Yo, this is your favorite technology podcast is Bare Knuckles and Brass Tacks. And I am George K. on the vendor side. And I'm George A., Chief Information Security Officer. And today we have my friend Kendrick Trotter, longtime successful account executive on the sales side, but he was also a founder of an incredible company called Austin Technology.
00:01:01
Speaker
That company has since folded, and I think we have a lot of mythology and tech about up and to the right for all founders, but there are lessons to be learned um in every experience. And so it was a ah great pleasure to have him on.
00:01:14
Speaker
Yeah, I really had a lot of fun with this because this is the kind of personality that um I think folks should kind of emulate. You know, he has a completely non-traditional, non-tech background. He's really taken the industry by storm, being an individual, allowing his creativity to take hold, being a leader and a community builder.
00:01:34
Speaker
um I think, you know, Kendrick, more so than a lot of our guests, and we have great guests. This is not a knock on our guests. But if I was to think of a model who embodies all the different principles and ideas that you and I have talked about these last couple years, Kendrick is that guy.
00:01:50
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. Ah, enough of us. Let's leave it to Kendrick.
00:01:56
Speaker
Kendrick Trotter, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. Excited to be here.
Kendrick Trotter's Background and Journey
00:02:01
Speaker
Let's get this rolling. Let's do it. My man, it's been a minute. I have interviewed you twice before. so on different podcasts, glad to have you on this one, because I think this story needs to reach a bigger audience. And it's a good one. So I know your origin story. But for the sake of our listeners, let's do the five minute heroes journey.
00:02:20
Speaker
um How you got into tech, where you've been and what you're doing now. Yes, of course. Yes, of course. So um My name is Kendrick Trotter, a Bay Area native from the East Bay, raised by a single mom, lived all over the Bay Area.
00:02:35
Speaker
And I quickly realized as a young kid that my way to get out of the environments I grew up in was mostly by either playing sports, you know, becoming an entertainer or unfortunately getting into the streets. My mom was super strict. She's a Libra.
00:02:50
Speaker
So thank God this this this streets were not an option. I was fortunate enough to get a Division I football scholarship to play at the University of Idaho. My first year, we won four games. The last year was voted by a captain, by the coaches and players.
00:03:06
Speaker
And we only lost four games. We won a championship. um And right after that, I returned right back home to some of the environments my mom tried so hard to keep me out of. And I became an Uber driver just to make money in a positive way.
00:03:18
Speaker
And I was a horrible Uber driver because I talked a lot. I took a lot of breaks. ah My overhead was ridiculous. I'd make $15, spend $12 at In-N-Out. But nonetheless, I was interviewing with Gallowine and Mercedes-Benz.
00:03:33
Speaker
And so I was asking all my Uber riders who looked like they had a profession, you know, which one they thought I should pursue. And the conservative people said, do Gallowine. It's a great company. And everyone else said, if you could sell a car, sell a bins.
00:03:46
Speaker
And then I was taking a gentleman to purchase a home in Blackhawk. And he said, Kendrick, you should get into tech. And I said, i don't know anything about tech. And he said, if you could study a playbook for football that changes every week, you could study a product.
00:03:58
Speaker
And I said, yeah, sounds cool, but I want to make six figures.
Career Progression and CEO Role
00:04:01
Speaker
Yeah, I was like, I want to make six figures by the time I'm 25. And he I was 22 at the time. He laughed at me. And he's like, kids make this in entry-level positions.
00:04:10
Speaker
Um, so I pulled over, popped my trunk, gave him my resume, which is horrible. he told me about this weird website called LinkedIn. He helped me create a profile. And, um, within, I think I've been in the industry maybe seven or eight years now.
00:04:25
Speaker
I went from an entry level sales rep at an email security company called Agari to becoming a major account executive for a public cybersecurity company, Radware. Um, and then eventually becoming a CEO and founder of my own business, which I was able to do that.
00:04:40
Speaker
independently full time for think three or four years. And now I am back in the saddle as an independent contributor, uh, working for a cybersecurity company again. Nice man. And wasn't that cat that clued you in the tech? Wasn't he like some sort of Amazon VP?
00:04:55
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Josh bears in he's the, um, the vb VP of sales at Amazon, AWS. He's constantly getting promoted. So it's hard for me to keep up with him.
00:05:06
Speaker
Yeah. Well, I mean, that's hell of an Uber ride. um Well, cool, man. I love that story. Not least which because I try to, if I don't have headphones in, I usually try to make conversation with Uber drivers because they got interesting stories.
00:05:20
Speaker
um But George, I'll kick it over to you and let's let's take it from there. Yeah, it's pretty cool. I mean, I appreciate the background.
Us and Technology's Mission and Challenges
00:05:27
Speaker
um i like that you went at it so young and kind of took like a solid direction.
00:05:32
Speaker
um You know, like I played like a little bit of rugby university and stuff and then kind of like was military college and just went to the military thing. And it's like, it's a whole other thing. then you get it dropped into cyber and and practitioner world. Yeah.
00:05:48
Speaker
envy the entrepreneurial spirit that you clearly had like from the start. I only wish like I had that kind of vision when I was in like my early to mid 20s. So that's like cool man. My respect to that. Yeah. um I gotta ask so to start off how do you find like going from trying to build and scale any kind of organization to like being an individual contributor with your own quotas, with your own KPIs. Yeah. Like, do you find an approach or a difference in the approach to having to take on like those types of roles? I mean, I noticed too, that you were running some of them pretty concurrently.
00:06:23
Speaker
So you're having to shift your brain quite a bit on any given day. How do you manage, man? Yeah. think that's a great question. um So for those who may not know the business that I found, it was called Us and Technology.
00:06:37
Speaker
And it was focused on helping underrepresented professionals transition into the tech industry, mostly by entry level soft skill positions where we would train people for free and place them with companies like Zscaler, Airtable, um Seismic, just really credible companies.
00:06:57
Speaker
And I think for me, you know, two things changed in a world. ah One was like there was massive layoffs. And then also the reality is that the the desire to prioritize DEI slowed down significantly as well in the last two years.
00:07:12
Speaker
And what we really monetized off of was the placement of people. The people paid us nothing, the companies paid us everything. And I say that all to say is like my company, we had investment from Pharrell Williams, from Sonya Richard Ross, from um corporations like Chanel. We raised over a million dollars.
00:07:31
Speaker
um Our community was over 13,000 people. So we had a lot of success. We created more than $70 million dollars in annualized salaries. But the last year and a half was like a really slow death um where it was like a lot of slow layoffs.
00:07:47
Speaker
um It was really stretching, extreme financial cuts for me personally a lifestyle that I had to live for about for like one, one and a half years at least.
00:07:59
Speaker
And so it got to the point that I felt like I exerted all I had. I kind of flipped over every coin and, you know, did everything I could to try to keep the business alive. But ultimately it was starting to just become more of a negative than a positive.
00:08:14
Speaker
So when I went to transition to be interviewing, um you know, most of my investors are actually CISOs, CISOs from a lot of top companies.
00:08:25
Speaker
And they recommended me into several cybersecurity companies to re-interview. And what I learned in my interview process was like, most people were actually intimidated by my experience because their interpretation when they heard the word entrepreneur is like, there's no way this guy's going to come in and want to follow instructions.
00:08:42
Speaker
There's no way this guy's going to want to come in. Yeah. And like work eight to 10 hours. And so for me, what they didn't really understand is like, this was a blessing. I couldn't wait.
00:08:52
Speaker
to be able to clock in and out. You know, like I couldn't wait. I couldn't wait. Like, oh, all I have to worry about is my number. Like, I don't have to talk to a board. I don't have to talk to investors. Like, I'm going to be the best employee ever.
00:09:06
Speaker
And so when I was interviewing with these
Importance of Soft Skills in Tech
00:09:09
Speaker
organizations, I felt like a lot of people didn't believe my accomplishments. When I told them that I was a major account manager at a public cybersecurity company, when I told them I founded this company,
00:09:21
Speaker
When I had offered references from you know leaders of all these top companies, I felt like it was almost too good to be true. And when I met my founder and my sales leader at the company that I'm at now, um it was appreciation for my different experiences and skill sets, which I feel like is affirmation to like the value of diversity of thought.
00:09:46
Speaker
yeah um Because their perspective of my experience is like, oh, this is awesome. You're going to crush it. So that was a really long answer to you, George. But I would say like for me, it wasn't much of a shift because I was so exhausted from being a founder full time for four years that when it was time to transition to being an IC, i was like, oh, this is going to be easy. Like this is to be a breeze. I can't wait.
00:10:09
Speaker
Yeah, i mean, the operative word was clock out. And founder life, there is no out. Sleep, eat, breathe, wake up. You only eat what you hunt.
00:10:21
Speaker
Yeah. yeah Yeah. And um so let's talk about, so you said the word soft skills. We've been trying to rebrand them as vital skills. Yeah. um But...
00:10:34
Speaker
You talked about – clearly you had those when you made the jump from Uber driver into sales and should have that meteoric rise in sales. and And there takes a lot of that especially. I think a lot of people don't understand how much of that is in founding, right? I think – Yeah. And cyber especially. We have a bias towards technical founders. Yeah.
00:10:54
Speaker
Sandhill road ain't going to give you money if you can't tell a good story. Right. So you got to have those communication skills, stuff like that. So I guess what are the standout things that you were trying to teach people at us in technology and that you clearly have leveraged yourself?
00:11:08
Speaker
um Because we've talked about it here for practitioners. we've talked about it for sales, but I know you as a guy who is not going to just like cold call people and just ram yeah down their throat. So why don't you talk a little bit about that approach?
00:11:22
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Good question. So, What we realized pretty early with us in technology is that there was a huge desire for underrepresented people to get into tech.
00:11:33
Speaker
And at the time there was a also a big desire for companies and organizations to hire underrepresented people. And the misalignment was like, Hey, when we interview underrepresented people, they're just not qualified.
00:11:45
Speaker
And so when I looked into more of the other bootcamps that were focused on helping underrepresented people, the cost was like 10 to $20,000. to get training, to get prepared, to interview for jobs, but it didn't guarantee you an actual job.
00:12:00
Speaker
And then I personally felt like it's kind of like an oxymoron that you're telling people who need help and need money, they need to spend money in order to get that. So I understood the business model, but I also understood like if i was in that situation and and that was a barrier, I probably would give up.
00:12:15
Speaker
So when we were with us in tech, what was really good about us is that our training was mostly focused on how to interview. um And we did a lot of combination of like self-paced learning, but we also did a lot of like virtual training classes where we always led with transparency, always direct coaching.
00:12:37
Speaker
And I think we coached a lot on like emotional intelligence and social awareness, social awareness being like your interviewer um who may not identify the same as you likely won't interpret your answers the same as someone who may Right.
00:12:53
Speaker
And these are the things that like typically in corporate America, you can't talk about. And even when you want to pull someone to the side and you want to give them the tip, you you kind of stay away from it.
00:13:04
Speaker
And so for us at US in tech, like we were very open and transparent and direct about like, hey, like if you're not three times as good, you're not going to get the job.
Training Success and Candidate Performance
00:13:13
Speaker
Like you can believe me or you can look up the statistics like that's just what it is.
00:13:16
Speaker
So let's focus on what we can control. So a lot of interview coaching, combination of self-paced and live coaching sessions. And then what else was really good was when our candidates got into these interviews, they outperformed people who didn't to the point to where people were like, oh, like you're giving them a script and you're doing this. And I used to have to train the hiring managers on how to interview our candidates.
00:13:40
Speaker
And i was I told them, like, if you ask them emotional, yeah. Oh, sorry. I was saying that that surprised me that the situation to say more, say more. Yeah. Yeah. So um some of the things that we would teach is like star methodology, always acknowledge before you respond.
00:13:59
Speaker
And in our responses, it's like you tell a story and the end of your interview, you should make them smile, laugh and cry. Right. And when we would get into these interviews and our candidates were performing so good, they're like, oh like they're scripted, they're this and that. and I was like, well why are they scripted? Give me a specific example.
00:14:15
Speaker
And they couldn't really give specific examples. And so I had to train them on asking open-ended questions, emotionally evoking questions, things that people can't really BS, you know? um And so that was a little bit of a challenge. And then the other thing that we did is once our candidates got hired, then they got added to a second bootcamp that they were required to complete.
00:14:36
Speaker
And that was intended to teach them on how to be good at the job, how to social sell, how to run a first call, how to prospect. And so ultimately what would happen is our candidates got hired more often than a candidate from a different organization.
00:14:51
Speaker
When our candidates got hired, they performed better. And because they performed better and they had support in their onboarding, they wouldn't last longer. um So that was kind of like our secret sauce.
00:15:03
Speaker
to say Let me just drill in there, right? Because we've talked about this a lot on the show. Walk us through what you're teaching them about those first calls, right? Like how how are we doing this? Because George here is the CISO, right? He's on the yeah blunt end of this all the time.
00:15:21
Speaker
He's got a lot to say about it. I was laughing because like I literally right before we started the show, I was actually just telling George the start of like a seller that was like texting me and annoying me.
00:15:32
Speaker
So it's just funny that like this all happened to kind of come this way and you you're teaching people how to do proper outreach. I think the best thing is like understanding, like be the person you want to buy from.
00:15:46
Speaker
Right. And I think that I had, uh, I'm, I'm very fortunate to where like, I have had the opportunity to build friendships with CISOs like Nicole Darden Ford and, and, um, people like Devon and people, you know, all, all these really Savio, like all of, of allo, like all these credible CISOs.
00:16:07
Speaker
And what I learned from these CISOs is that like the first way you lose credibility is by over-promising, right? There is no product that can do everything. Um, and then the other thing is just like, you know, just leading with transparency and trying to understand. So when I cold call a CISO, I always ask for permission.
00:16:26
Speaker
always try to establish credibility and I ask for permission and I'll say, Hey George, um, first and foremost, I know I probably caught you out of the blue. The purpose of my call is like today we're helping six of the world's top 10 banks with XYZ.
00:16:39
Speaker
And in your recent LinkedIn posts, I noticed that you shared something relative to this. would you be interested in learning more or would you rather me reach out to you by email? So George is like, okay, like, well, tell me more or how are you doing that? It's okay. And now it's conversation.
00:16:56
Speaker
And when George, if he responds like, hey, like, why are you calling me? Instead of trying to shove something down his throat, like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Like, hey, George, you're right. My apologies. Like what I'll do is if it makes you feel more comfortable, is it okay if I send an email instead? Because ah I didn't mean to catch you off guard.
00:17:14
Speaker
right? Like unreasonable hospitality, like just being human. And so what what has worked for me with CISOs is like, I'm not the most technical person in a room by any means, so but I will be honest about the things we can do.
DEI Challenges and Broader Societal Issues
00:17:29
Speaker
And more importantly, I will be honest about the things we can't do.
00:17:32
Speaker
And my focus is going to be like trying to understand like, where what are you trying to accomplish? And what happens when you accomplish that? And then i can educate you on how our product can be the vehicle to help you get there.
00:17:46
Speaker
So i think that when I was teaching sales, it's like, it was a high emphasis on like, um you know, be the person you'd want to buy from unreasonable hospitality and just like being genuine, you know?
00:18:02
Speaker
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00:18:24
Speaker
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00:18:41
Speaker
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00:18:56
Speaker
Yeah, no, that's, I was i was listening to him say that. was like that's that's so disarming. Like I'm like visualizing myself in this scenario. I'm like, yeah, like, you know, like, unless it was like really a heated moment and you called me like four five, six times in like a very short period, which that that does happen. And that's super frustrating.
00:19:14
Speaker
I would probably have a positive response to you because, you know, it's like you did some, you did your research about me and, you know, you're, you're being a human being who understands that I'm probably doing some shit here bad time and it's like, you give me the option for an out, which is really kind of what a person needs. So thank you for that.
00:19:33
Speaker
ah Really good advice. Sellers that are listening. um Yeah. Well, I was going to ask you about was kind of the DEI thing because you touched on that a couple of times already. And I'm trying to just think of, you I was thinking about this even before the episode. was like, how do I word this in a not so hostile way? i don't know. Sometimes we just are hostile.
00:19:55
Speaker
Yeah, I won't be offended. Given the political, the current political movement this year. which is in parallel with the economic climate that we're dealing with and the absolute turn against any sort of of progress for having a better kind of industry, a better workplace.
00:20:14
Speaker
um What have you been able to do to still keep the DEI fight alive? Because it's not only being walked away from, it's being hostilely combated against.
00:20:27
Speaker
And I think that's part of a greater political narrative that's way bigger than tech. But I think that's consequentially why we're seeing what's happening int tech with regards to DEI. How are you keeping up the fight?
00:20:41
Speaker
Yeah, so it it it hurts. um And it hurts because I've seen it first. um Being a leader of the DEI companies, I've seen it so much earlier, like three years ago.
00:20:56
Speaker
where I feel like the world has realized it the last six to eight months. Right. And the first time I really realized how bad it was, was i was at an investment. I was at a VC event with all um primarily minority um VCs.
00:21:16
Speaker
And they pulled me to the side and they're like, yo, you got to drop the word diversity. I was like, why would I do that? Like, and they're like, you need to drop it. And the reason why you need to drop it is because companies were become beginning to get sued for being like discriminated because they were focused on underrepresented groups. And they're like, Oh, like that's just as bad as, you know.
00:21:38
Speaker
And so once organizations started to get sued, it stopped the revenue from, stopped the investment from VCs because VCs don't, it's too much of a risk. And then companies also started to be sued for prioritizing investment. And two,
00:21:54
Speaker
um social groups like, you know, us and technology. So that, that was really hard. And it, it, it only bothers me because like, I feel like I'm pretty good at compartmentalization.
00:22:06
Speaker
And like, once you really understand people, like most people aren't really that different in between the things that make them smile, laugh and cry. But when you hear the word diversity, there will never be a negative statistic related to production associated with the word diversity.
00:22:20
Speaker
Right. And I think diversity, a lot of times people assume like black and white, but like diversity is defined as variety. And so what I would try to do when I would disarm people is I would make sports analogies. I would make ah military analogies. I'd say like, Hey, like Tom Brady's a great quarterback, but would you want him to play running back too?
00:22:37
Speaker
Would you want him to also be receiver? Like, no, you wouldn't. And so on a championship team, you have different people with different skill sets, one common goal. And those are the most productive teams.
00:22:48
Speaker
So what do I still do now? Like I would say I have a little bit of, ah I don't know the word would like PTSD, where like how things ended. um It's definitely like hard for me to swallow.
00:23:00
Speaker
I just try to help when I can. Like if there's a conversation here or there, somebody reaches out to me, I stay connected with other groups that are still operating. And I recommend people to those groups. So yeah what i I have to say, though, because this is kind of my executive perspective on it, we've taken such a hard turn against diversity. And I don't i never looked at diversity as just a racial concept. I thought that wasn't nuanced enough.
00:23:25
Speaker
Diversity is diversity of thought. It's allowing us. Whether that's because they're racialized or whether that's because they come from different economic classes, that's that's what we need by diversity.
00:23:37
Speaker
I find that... It's not just the fear of being sued by a ah lot of ridiculous investor groups and that you know Target being an example of that and Costco and stuff. but I think because we are so heavily profit-driven now and we are in this new wave of returning to almost a a sickly steroided up version of Hustleboro culture where it's like like an ad, an actual job poster that says like 70 hours a week minimum or don't even bother applying.
00:24:10
Speaker
I don't think they, ownership type folks that we're talking about and their cultures that they drive around, I don't think they want diversity of thinking. I think they want soldiers who will march off the cliff and then they can be replaced by AI whenever they can be feasibly replaced by AI. They don't want to change the thinking.
Empowerment through Education and Opportunity
00:24:31
Speaker
How do we fight that? Because that's fighting a culture and it's a culture backed by greed. That's a great question. And that's where I think, um, When people talk about diversity and racism, I try to explain to people it's so different than that.
00:24:48
Speaker
And I explain it to like my friends of color. I'm like, okay, like let's say you're a king, right? And you have a son who's a prince. And it's the time for your son to become king. But George has a a son too.
00:25:01
Speaker
And his son is more handsome than my son, more athletic than my son, and more cool than my son. Do you think I'm voluntarily going to go to Georgia and say, hey, now your family deserves a chance? And so like what racism is more times than not is like a protection of power and a fear. just talking about this, right? Tribalism, right?
00:25:19
Speaker
Yeah. So like I feel like that's what it is. And it sucks because like when you look at a business, a business is supposed to have one intention to make more revenue.
00:25:30
Speaker
But when you look at teams that are more diverse, teams that are more diverse produce 30 percent more revenues than teams that lack diversity. So then it's like the only reason why you would not want diversity is because of personal reasons. It's not yeah because rational. It's not a rational argument. And when you say, George, like you're absolutely right. um My personal opinion is I think a lot of i think a lot of leaders are insecure.
00:25:55
Speaker
And when you have to, as a leader, change how you coach someone because they maybe operate a little differently, it takes a very secure leader to do that. And I think it was the founder of Apple who like, hey, like Steve Jobs, like I hire people who are smarter than me to tell me what to do, which is a great quote and everyone will agree with that.
00:26:15
Speaker
But if you look around like your work environment, I guarantee it's not what 90% of people do because that person who's smarter than you Sometimes they're going to say like, Hey, like, why don't we do it this way? Why don't we do it that way? yeah Are you comfortable being challenged?
00:26:28
Speaker
Yeah. And if you're not secure in yourself, like that's going to make you uncomfortable. So one of the reasons I really appreciate my boss is like, I don't look like, I don't look, I don't act, i don't talk like most traditional AEs. I just don't, but he understands my skillset.
00:26:47
Speaker
He trusts me. He doesn't micromanage me. Like He understands that like um you know sometimes emotional intelligence can be higher than some people that have IQ, right? like And he works with me. And I really appreciate that because for the same reasons that I think I'm special, I realize a lot of people assume that I'm like, quote unquote, less talented.
00:27:10
Speaker
And then when the results come out and the results like, oh my God, how'd you do that? you know We kind of laugh together, but- George, I don't know if we change people on that because they have to one, acknowledge it and they have to one, want to.
00:27:23
Speaker
And people in those positions, because what they have done or their way has got them to that point, they tend not to be open minded. Yeah. Yeah. It was always also used to undercut, right? It's the same thing that's leveled at women. It's like, oh, well, she hit her number because she's pretty or something yeah like that, you know?
00:27:43
Speaker
um So in your analogy of Kings, which I like a lot, there's also, yeah there's something that we have talked about offline before, which is generational wealth, essentially, right? Like,
00:27:57
Speaker
Where is the power concentrated? Where is the capital concentrated? Definitely, when you think about VCs, and you talked about having investment from Pharrell and those others, like where do you see that going in terms of like how we get equity and the ability to deploy capital in different hands? Because that's we really lack diversity at that end of the spectrum, right?
00:28:21
Speaker
yeah What ideas are getting funded? I'm not really sure what ideas are getting funded because I know there's so much fear right now to like publicly support DEI.
00:28:35
Speaker
Like I don't make a ton of public DEI posts. Cause you just, pretty but even, even like black founders of other companies, then you have to be cyber. It's just like, how do we, how do we, I guess spread the wealth is like the cliche, but like, we got to get more VCs of color. I mean I'm super excited about like, you know, Serena Williams having a VC fund. i was like, hell yes.
00:28:58
Speaker
I think it's just like, like ah education to me is freedom, not power. The more, you know, the less you can be controlled. The more, you know, the more you can take action on. And I think like my main goal with us in tech was like the only way to give a group more power is through education and through like wealth, you know?
00:29:19
Speaker
Um, and that is why I feel like a lot of these groups were pushed away is because we were starting to progress. I give you an example for us at us in tech, we placed over 300, over 200 people.
00:29:32
Speaker
And the average salary was $72,000 for year one. The average salary for a median household in the US, s I think it's $52,000.
Message of Hope and Role Models
00:29:44
Speaker
And 64% of the people we placed were actually women. you know So in my perspective, that is how we were creating the next angel investors.
00:29:53
Speaker
And more importantly, we were empowering people to get health benefits. We were empowering people to get ah equity. Now what was happening from a lot of those people who went through us in tech, they bought houses, right? They, you know, have higher chances of getting married. Like, I think it really all starts like education and and opportunity.
00:30:15
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's ah that's kind of the tough part though, man. It's like education is one part of it, but getting people who are of the right mindset to be introspective, to you know Face the reality of truth of their situation.
00:30:28
Speaker
um you know Have the ability to to think of themselves in some kind of ambitious light because you have to visualize yourself being able to do better. talk to a lot of people, man. people are There is a loss of hope right now. People don't see the answer.
00:30:43
Speaker
People say whether it's like World War Three is coming or whether it's just like we're never going to be able to escape this. I'm never going to be able to buy this house. I'm never going out of this debt. No matter what the job, the cost of living is not.
00:30:57
Speaker
you know it's it's far exceeding the rate of our pay and and and our and our compensations are only going down, which is the wrong direction. As you mentioned, in the last like two, three years, things are reversed.
00:31:09
Speaker
So it's like, I guess what I what ah want to ask is my like last question. this is how do we How do we maintain hope? How do we keep up hope? like What's your message of hope for our listeners based on your experience and being on the front lines of fighting this fight?
00:31:27
Speaker
I think that for me, it's like, um,
00:31:34
Speaker
it's hard to intimidate somebody with the idea of going back to nothing or going back where nothing is where they have built their foundation, you know? So for me, hope is seeing more people who look similar to you and positions you aspire to be in.
00:31:48
Speaker
So ah for me, like I felt it was more realistic for me to become a professional athlete than tech employee. because I never saw tech employees in my community that would look like me.
00:32:00
Speaker
And the whole creation of us and technology was Kendrick traveling and getting bottle service and getting a nice Mercedes and driving around neighborhood and people like, what are you doing?
00:32:11
Speaker
And I was like Oh, I'm in tech. And people were like, what? Like, that's what it looks like. That's the result of it. So I think the, the hope is, um,
00:32:22
Speaker
um I think the hope is like trying to be the role model we needed as kids, you know, like whatever George, the Georges were like attracted to when they were kids, like we have to continue to show that so that the person that was us as a kid can interpret like what the possibilities are.
Closing Remarks and Call to Action
00:32:40
Speaker
And there's a lot of things we can't control, right? Like you said, the world and everything, but there are some things we we can't control. And like trying to focus on that part is is where I try to keep my mind set.
00:32:53
Speaker
Nice. Brilliant. Yeah. that well I'm i' not going to say anything after that. That's like the perfect place to end. so Kendrick, I've been trying to get you on the show forever. The stars have finally aligned. I'm really glad we could make this happen.
00:33:06
Speaker
And yeah, I wish you the best of luck. Thanks for coming dude. I just want to say thank you, George, for being like a sincere friend in every part of my journey when I was just becoming an AE and I was just helping people on the side. You were always like, how can I help? How can I help?
00:33:21
Speaker
Who are your friends that I can help mentor? Who are your friends I can help tutor? And then when I started my business, you helped me with like some of my pitching, you were introducing me to clients. And that was the growth of the business. Like 90% of our clients was referral based businesses.
00:33:34
Speaker
Right. And um even as I was raising funding, you were like, all right, like I want to be a part of that. Also, who else can I connect you with? And even as I transitioned away from the role,
00:33:47
Speaker
there was no guilt. There was no shame. There was just like always this kind of like this big brother feeling that I feel like you gave me that I truly appreciate, man, because the genuineness in the world and in this industry, it's very rare.
00:33:59
Speaker
And I'm not the type of person who, um, I'm not, I don't need to be popular. I'm not trying to make friends with with everyone. I just, you know, I just, but you have been so genuine and so intentional. And I just want to let you know, man, I,
00:34:12
Speaker
I appreciate it because it it means a lot. Yeah, I appreciate that, dude. we're here for the We're here for the long haul. We're here for the good fight. So, ah yeah. Thanks, man. I hope to run into you soon. And ah we'll see you around the come to be in person, man.
00:34:26
Speaker
Let's do it. i'm i'm in Arizona now. So if any of you are ever in the desert, you'd let me know. All right. we'llll We'll find you. All right, fellas. Thank you.
00:34:40
Speaker
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00:34:53
Speaker
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