Finding success and creating impact in black communities with Omi Bell

Transcript

* Transcript created by AI – may contain errors or omissions from original podcast audio

CLARE: Today, I chat to Omi Bell, the founder of Black Girl Ventures, about how she has been able to find success in a way that creates massive impact in black and brown communities by providing access to capital and For budding entrepreneurs. I really enjoyed today’s chat and we even went on a bit of a spiritual segue.

So I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I enjoyed recording it.

 Omi, it’s so fantastic to have you here. Thanks for joining me. Before we dive in, I told you off air, I’ve got a story that I want to share with you, but before we dive into that, let’s start for any of the listeners that don’t know who you or Black Girl Ventures are. If you could start by sharing a little bit about your journey and how you come to be doing what it is that you do today.

OMI: Oh my goodness. And like now you’ve given me the teaser and I like, I so want to hear the thing you have to tell me. We’ll get that. We’ll get that. So how did I get here? Well I, about seven years ago I got laid off twice back to back. And so prior to that, like I’m a career switcher. If I have a career, it is switching careers. And so I have been working many jobs or just living many lives. I’ve been a K 12 educator. I worked in workforce development. I have been a patent examiner for the Patent and Trademark Office. And I never felt like I was the best employee.

I’m always the person that wanted to change things that nobody wanted to, you know, fix things that nobody wanted to fix. Raising my hand to remind the leadership of how they told us that we was going to do that one thing that we never did. Like I wasn’t that person. And I, I think it’s just because entrepreneurship was for me.

So fast forward, I get laid off twice and I did the only thing that somebody who’s been laid off twice could probably do. I went home and I called this psychic hotline. And I was like, what is going on with my life? Somebody tell me something. And so the woman, this nice woman who listened to me do all my venting said that when you find the thing you want to do, the money will come.

And I was engaged at the time and she told me you’re not going to be with that guy. Crazy. So within two months, my life flipped upside down. I’m like, you know what? I’m going to start a business. I got unengaged to that person. And so I’m like, I’m going to do whatever I, whatever skill I have, I’m going to make it work.

So one of the first things I did was I built a tent in my living room and I rented it out on Airbnb. I love this story. Everybody thought, everybody thought I was crazy. They were like, you’re going to do what? I told them I’m going to build this tent in my living room and I’m going to rent it out on Airbnb.

I didn’t even know how to drill a hole. I’m at like. Home Depot and Lowe’s gathering wood, they’re looking at me like, Ma’am, you are tripping, nobody’s going to sleep in your living room in a tent. And my mom was, you know, just crazy enough to take the journey with me. So she helped me put the bedding together.

We staged this thing, it actually came out pretty beautiful. And after letting one person come and stay, I quickly realized I didn’t want anybody sleeping in my living room either. But my thought was, if you’re a single parent, And you can’t make money off of Airbnb. What could you do? Like my, like my, my vision for it was big, but it just wasn’t going to be the thing that worked at that time.

So I said, okay, scrap that. I learned how to do t shirts at a previous job. And so I lost a t shirt company got made by a black woman. My mom invested 10, 000 of her retirement into the company. I took my tax returns and bought my own machine. And there I was on my way to my, what then it was my pathway out of poverty.

I built my own business. I went out and got big contracts with like Google and Amazon and did orders for them and for a print shop for like print merchandise, hats, cups, mugs, backpacks, that kind of thing for events. And really I was rocking and rolling. And then the news came out that black women were starting businesses at six times the national average, yet 1 percent of venture capital.

And you know, again, just like that person who builds a tent in their living room. I’m like, Oh, I think I could do something about this. I don’t know what I was thinking. So, but, but I started a branch. In a house in Southeast D. C. 30 women came together, 4 women pitched their business. We voted with marbles and coffee mugs.

If you like their pitch, you put a marble in their coffee mug. And I gave the money that I raised at the door back out to the person who won in cash. And my only thought was, Oh, this is kind of cool. People like it. And so I just started on this journey of including the community in funding businesses.

So putting women on the stage, having a diverse audience come together, and now the way it works is you vote for the founder that you favor, for the pitch that you favor with your dollars, and then we grant that capital back out to the founder. And that’s one of our core programs. Seven years we’ve been doing this work and we have now funded over 450 women owned companies.

 We have also efforts across about 15 cities. We work with some pretty amazing partners like PIMCO and PayPal and Nike to get the, to get this work done. It’s been an amazing journey. Our founders represent about 3, 000 jobs and about 10 million in revenue for the U. S. economy. And we’re now just looking at what does it mean to scale bigger, wider, what part of what we do, do we scale?

We now have an HBCU program and an Emerging Leaders Fellowship Program.

CLARE: Oh, amazing. Okay. Let me backtrack a bit because I want to dive into this story a little bit more. So let’s go back to the t shirt company. Did that become your first successful business after the tent business? So do you mind sharing a little bit about like the journey of, how obviously you recovered the cost of the capital that was invested? Were you able to pay back your mom?

OMI: Yes. And now my mom works for me, so I paid her back two and three times over. But so I love that you asked me that because I don’t get to delve into this part of learning the journey. Right? And there, there’s actually a a couple of like small influences that I helped launch. their, their brands to where they are now. And it’s been, you know, them watching me grow this and being like, I remember when we was in your living room. And I’m like, yes. I really turned my life into that business, right?

It was t shirts all over the living room, print. Shop. I actually started to try to do the printing in the house, but at that time I had a one year old. And then two other children were older and it wasn’t working. She was trying to, I didn’t want her to touch the paint. And so I actually went out and got a partnership with the local print shop that then that person became sort of a mentor for me and taught me the business in different ways.

 And so people that I met through that business taught me more of the business too and how to do the, the merchandise printing, which is then what led to me working with Google and working with Amazon to print the different like print merchandise items that they were using. So supplier diversity is a huge part of my journey in that sense.

That’s why I’m such an advocate for supplier diversity because It’s one thing to get like a bunch of customers, but it’s another thing to get a like bigger customer. And that really is the way you can level up your business. And how did you crack into some of these bigger companies? Networking. So funny story, the, and this is, you know, I tell entrepreneurs out of time, like showing up is half the battle.

Even sometimes you have to sacrifice to show up and sometimes you have to pay for proximity or you have to sacrifice your time for proximity. Yeah, so I was, there was this all women’s group called Femex, a friend of mine, she was like, I think that’s still around, but it’s like a, like a 15 week program where you meet with a group of women every week and you just talk about everything related to being a woman.

Everything from, you know, sexual activity to body parts to having kids to marriage, like everything. And it was an amazing experience. And one of the women that I met that honestly, I don’t think we got along that well during the program, but she said, you should be my friend. She works, she works in with small businesses at Google.

And I’m like, okay, I didn’t even know there was a Google office in the D. C. area. So she connects me to her, I go to Google to meet with her, and I’m like, oh my god, I’m going to Google, right? So, but it was really dry, like she was just like, okay, here’s a pamphlet, here’s what we do, here’s how you sign up for Supply Diversity, that’s it.

I took the pamphlet and I left. Well, she put me on an email list that she had of a bunch of other business owners. Every opportunity that she put out, I showed up. And not only did I show up, but if they said, anybody in the audience, you got questions? I do. Anybody want to make a comment and help out? I do.

I was that person who, I was not only going to just be there physically, but I wanted, I was really curious at the time. I think like the key to a lot of this is just curiosity. I really wanted to know more. I really wanted to like be a business owner for my life, you know, I really was at such a hunger at that time for what I was doing.

So after that, she started to really notice me and then we started talking and we became friends essentially in the long run. But at that time, she’s like, Hey, I got other opportunities. And she started to like, Every time something would come up, she would send me the opportunity, she connected me to other people.

With Amazon, I had done printing for a small festival. And one of the festival owners said, Hey, I got somebody that you should talk to. I had no idea it was going to be Amazon. I’m like, Oh, they need some print stuff. And it connected me to Amazon. The very first engagement we did with them, and it was their diversity efforts.

We did AWS conferences. The AWS conference, we pitched to them that we would do live t-shirts on site. Now, on the back end. This was crazy. Okay. Like, so I remember me and my oldest son, who’s now 24, you know, we put on t-shirts with our, with the company name on it. We went to the A to the Amazon office, which we gave ’em three options for printing live, but we knew which, which one we wanted them to choose.

So the way it will work is like. You basically choose the word so as we power tech was the effort, we made a menu of all the speakers with the sign them signing the word week so you can walk up to the table, choose one of the speakers from the menu, and then we will put the we on the pre designed template of the speaker that you chose.

Oh, it was so cool. We had a line wrapped around the arena. Okay. Like we’re at the DC convention center and people were like, why so many people in line just for t shirts? And we’re like, no, like we were running out of t shirts. We had had the printer that I was working with to print more and bring more because people were like, Oh, I want this one.

Oh, I want that one. It was wild. And it was amazing. It was a hit. And so from there. Up until the pandemic hit, actually, we would do their every year do a batch of t shirts, you know, a board of bottles or something for that conference.

CLARE: How incredible. And do you still do them to this day?

OMI: It’s so funny, you should ask me that.

A venture capital friend of mine hit me up the other day, like, Hey, I’m about to have a conference and I need 100 bags and 60 shirts and I’m like, bruh. It’s like two days before the conference. I don’t do any printing honestly at this point, but because he’s a friend of mine and he needed it, I pulled some strings, contacted some printers, got the blanks and made it happen.

That is not my normal life.

CLARE: That might be an idea that you could pass on to one of your you know, one of your potential business owner recipients. You could say, Hey, I’ve got this business. It’s a really cool concept. You can run with it.

OMI: I think so. I really wanted my kids to take it, but they’re like, ma, no.

But yeah, no, I think it’s something I do think about a lot because it’s a moneymaker. I mean, like the t shirt business, it is the print business. It’s like a pizza shop. You know how you can open up a pizza shop like two blocks from a pizza shop and everybody’s going to eat pizza, especially like if you’re near bars.

It’s a similar thing where like so many people need print materials on all different levels. You really make a decent living out of it.

CLARE: This is so inspiring. So that was your first, like, that was your first taste of business success. Like you, you got the bug. I was the same. I was a terrible employee, jumped around all the time and you kind of know that you’re meant to do something else.

And then the first thing, the tent business. Not a hit. The t shirt business, you were suddenly like, holy smokes, like I can make money and like basically learn how to print money. And so that kind of got you excited and inspired, which then was the portal into what you’re doing now, which is supporting other black women to get, be able to access funding so that they can start and grow their businesses.

OMI: 100%. And I mean, like, it’s funny you said print money, but the print shop business definitely felt like that. And you know, it’s funny because I wanted, my goal was like, I wanted this to be a faucet, you know, like I want to be able to like, Hey, I need to make money, turn it on. Oh, I’m tired of doing this, turn it off.

Cause it can be a hard business. And you, it’s, it’s so tedious in the print. Like I used to actually physically do some of the printing and later years, I stopped doing that. Like, But I used to actually physically do some of the printing and that is a headache in and of itself. So yeah, I mean, and, and I knew the access to capital journey firsthand because my mom gave me her retirement money.

Like, so my retirement and a lot of times for women and underrepresented founders, it’s earned money that you’re using, right? Retirement, your paycheck. You know, I didn’t have an uncle with 20, 000 and say, Hey, go try something out and let me know how it works. You know? No inheritance or any of that.

CLARE: And so to where is the, the, the business or do you call it like a foundation or a business or like, are you creating a profit off the top of it as well?

OMI: For Black Girl Ventures? Yeah. Oh, yeah. So it is a, we do got a Black Girl Ventures foundation. It is a nonprofit. And, and with the mechanism of the funding. We do have a percentage that we get from the race. So they crowdfund, similar to like a iFundWomen or Kickstarter. So it’s similar to that in that in that regard.

 But we’re a non profit, so the donations are coming to Black Revengers and we’re granting, essentially. We’re not, we’re, so that, the fees that we take off are more like to help with the event itself, you know, to help our general operations go and that kind of thing. I mean, I am a, an employee of what I built, so I get a paycheck, so I’m not, like, making any, like, it’s not, like, profit in that way.

But Business, you know, nonprofit doesn’t mean non revenue, you know, it’s a different designation on business, but we still have to continuously raise still have to, you know, think of partnerships and things like that. We do have a donor advised fund. That we are investing out of, but it’s an evergreen fund.

It’s a nonprofit vehicle still. So when you invest out of a donor advised fund, if there are any returns from that investment, which that’s what you’d want fingers crossed as we open for those returns go back into the donor advised fund. And essentially it becomes a long term sustainability play for Black Girl Ventures because the donor advised fund can grant.

Out to Black Girl Ventures. So I created that vehicle so that we can look at longevity and being able to de risk and invest in more of our founders.

CLARE: Oh, how awesome. So you are seeking both like corporate sponsorships as well as the people who come to the events and they pay to be part of it. And then that gets injected back into the community as well.

So you shared that you, that some of your founders have it. Well, the founders are making 10 million of revenue a year. Is that, that’s incredible. What’s one of the success stories, like what’s something that you can say, you know, someone came along and they had this idea and now they’re, you know, their business is up and running.

Like what’s some of the success stories that you can share with me?

OMI: So. I love that. So collectively, we represent them. They represent them and their revenue, not as one person. So I want to clarify that but they’re going to get there. Okay. We believe. One great success story is Ehime Egg Bay from Sweet Kiwi.

 They’re an organic yogurt company. We work with them through their getting their partnership with Walmart and getting into more Walmart stores. We also help facilitate them getting into Kroger. They were just on Shark Tank recently. And they got an investment from Robert. And they are just continuously growing.

They’re a rock star couple, husband and wife. Really rocking and rolling at this business with an amazing team. And they were my first investment. So they were my first investment from the donor advised fund into their company. And so it’s amazing to watch them grow. We have also have founders like Janet and Joe, which is Kendra Woolridge is an organic nail care company.

And through our competition, she received an anonymous donation of a hundred thousand dollars. 100, 000. Oh my gosh. We have no clue who it was. Wow. Yeah, that’s change of life money. And so now she’s like top 5 nail care brands in the wedding industry. Wow. And watching her be able to live off of her product that she created, I mean, It’s amazing to be able to watch the founders grow, but watch them gain a team.

Watch them actually support their families and essentially create legacy.

CLARE: Oh, I love that. I have to say, you know, I’m a coach as well. And watching people like years later, come back and be like, I’ve grown my business. I’ve now got five star. It is the most. rewarding feeling knowing that you are able to be part of that journey.

And I love that because it does, it becomes also that ripple effect because people in their world then say what they’ve done. I know that I had the courage or even the inkling to start a business because I met someone who ran his own business and I was like, that looks really cool. We’re in Croatia. We’re on a sailboat. He ducked downstairs, do a couple of hours work and come back up. And I, I was suddenly like, Oh my gosh, I want that kind of freedom and, and flexibility. Not that I’m spending my days on a sailboat in Croatia. But you know, maybe I could be absolutely. I love that you were able to help so many people like create this, this change in this ripple effect in in their life.

Now, I know that you, at the start of this call were like, just tell me what the thing is. So I want to share this story with you. So a while back I had a shaman come on my podcast and I was asking for a sign to, I’m like, give me a sign if I should work with this person. And so I put it out there to the universe and I picked like a random, I didn’t want to pick like a cup because it’s something you see every day.

So I picked a hot air balloon. Now, one week later, I opened a magazine and there’s a hot air balloon ad in there and I’m like, no, that’s just a coincidence. Then the next day I listened to your podcast episode, I’ve got goosebumps all over me with manifestation babe. I’m going to hand over to you now and you can share what significance.

A hot air balloon has to you because you spoke about it in the episode.

OMI: Oh my gosh. I love hot air balloons and I will show you, I have a tattoo about on my shoulder. And when I was little my mom used to read to me every night and there’s this book where hello kitty loses her kite and she saves some ambiguous looking animal. I have no idea what kind of animal this was. Somewhere between like a teddy bear and a panda. I don’t know. But she’s, this animal comes in a hot air balloon and like takes her to like get her kite. And in my mind as a child, This was the most beautiful, colorful hot air balloon I’d ever seen.

And that honestly what was in my head was like, Oh my God, like when I get old enough, I’m going to ride a hot air balloon. And I told myself like, I’m going to retire with like a hot air balloon fleet. Like that is where I want to be. Later in life, I found this book that my mom had read to me, and the hot air balloon did not at all have the colors that I thought.

It literally looked like a whoopie cushion. It was just one brown, pink bubble. And I thought, Wow, right? Like think about your imagination as a kid and like how for me, it had all the colors in the world when in reality, it did not. But that started my love of hot air balloons. Later on as an adult, I rode in a hot air balloon.

I went to the hot air balloon festival. Amazing. In Albuquerque, New Mexico. In fact, I want to take my door. I was just talking to somebody literally about it the other day. Like we should go this year. It’s always in October. Her birthday is in October.

CLARE: There you go. It was the weirdest thing because I put this intention out there. And asked for the sign. And then I got, I kind of got it, but I was like, ah, it’s just, you know, it’s just not, and then you must’ve said hot air balloon in that episode. You said hot air balloon, hot air balloon. And you’re like, I got a hot air balloon tattooed on me. And I’m like, what the, like the universe is like, are you not getting this?

You didn’t just mention it once. You said it again and again and again. And then you said, I got it tattooed on me. And I was like, That is just, what are the odds of that? That’s, so did you, you ended up working with the person or no? Well, it’s funny that you should say that because I haven’t actually, I’m like having this conversation now and I’m like, I obviously need to reach out and have that conversation.

But you know, we were having conversations about, about working together in some form, but I know that it will happen. It’s just sort of finding, Yeah. Obviously, again, having this conversation again today might be a good little nudge in the right direction, but I love that you spoke about about going to the psychic as well.

And, and I find it so fascinating. I’ve recently been to see a psychic myself and I, and I struggle with the taking the, the spiritual guidance and also not. You know, like changing like things just going, well, the psychic said this, so I’ve got to go and do this. Do you, do you sometimes notice that as well?

OMI: We’re all guilty of it. Like the psychic says, so we start like in the background kind of shaping it ourselves. Like, Oh, yeah, you know, and I think that like it’s so interesting because I, I, I told you I’m very woo woo ing into all the things. In fact, I got a reading tonight after I get off of this with you, so, but what I’ve learned is that You know, similar to the woman saying, like, when the thing you want, when it comes, you’ll, the money will come.

I tell that story so much. And one day I said it and I thought, you know, Oh my God, we’re constantly fundraising. We need to get clear. And what I got from it is like, clarity is my tool of manifestation.

CLARE: Yeah.

OMI: Right. And so I think that what I would offer to you is that it’s like for you, it Is your maybe your tool of manifestation, right?

So when you get to a point where maybe you have a clear message, but you’re like, I don’t know about that. Or like, like it, once you have the full trust for it, it like then just automatically opens for you. I think learning what you’re like, one thing to get the reading and the, and the information, but then figuring out like, even through all of that information, What really is your key?

What unlocks the manifestation taking place? And for me, it’s, it’s like getting clear on what it is I want and where I’m trying to go. Then I could look at what the psychic is telling me at a totally different anger angle and see it happen almost what feels like more instantly. But then I had to come to the awareness that it’s my clarity.

CLARE: Yeah.

OMI: Right.

CLARE: Yeah. No, it’s interesting. Cause my, the, the recent psychic reading I had, he said, you know, you’ve always got free choice, but like, I’ll give you an example. He said to me, I see a pool and we really want to put a pool into our house. So we’ve been getting quotes. But one of the things he said is is it, is it down the side of the house? He goes, have you got a pool down the side of the house? He goes, I see it down the side of the house. And so then the other day I’m like, maybe we should put the pool down the side of there, even though we’d always had the vision to have it at the back. So I’m kind of always leaning into like, you know, yeah, absolutely. Like I hundred percent believe I’m like the pool is coming. But what way, shape or form it comes, I’m also like, you know, open to the direction that that goes.

Well, thank you so, so much. I, I love that we’ve wrapped up the story with that episode about, about psychics and the hot air balloon, because it feels like such a full circle moment to be having this conversation with you and maybe another little nudge to be going in and reaching out to work with this particular person.

But I just wanted to say a massive, massive, thank you. Amazing work that you’re doing. You know, these, the changes that you were creating in people’s lives, honestly, it’s just creating positive ripples across the country. If you ever wanting to expand into Australia, make sure you reach out to me and I can put you in touch with people. But for now, if the listeners are listening to this super inspired and want to be part of the journey and supporting your founders, what’s a way that they can do so?

OMI: Yeah, you can go to www. blackgirladventures. org and check out opportunities that we have there. You can follow us on Instagram, all the channels at Black Girl Ventures.

You can also check me out at omibell. com. That’s O M I B E L L. And I’m across all social media as well.

CLARE: Beautiful. Well, I’ll put all of those links in the show notes for today’s episode. Thank you so much for being part of this journey and I look forward to connecting with you soon.

* Transcript created by AI – may contain errors or omissions from original podcast audio