#16: Brandon Bryant (Harlem Capital)

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Brandon Bryant (Harlem Capital) [00:00:00]: We want to be as close as we can to investing in 1,000 diverse entrepreneurs over the next 20 years. I mean, we want to change the typical face that comes into your mind when you hear investor or when you hear a Stern up entrepreneur. So it's gonna take some time to get that done. So we just wanna make sure that we're supporting founders, Land, also, we're building in public. We have a mantra that you can't be what you can't see. So we want to be in public. We want to have a big, hairy, audacious goal. We want to champion other people who have the same missions and initiatives as us.

Brandon Bryant (Harlem Capital) [00:00:34]: And we wanna make sure that there are more people who can build funds like ours.

Jeffrey Stern [00:00:40]: Let's discover the Cleveland entrepreneurial ecosystem. We are telling the stories of its entrepreneurs and those supporting them. Welcome to The Lay of the Land podcast, where we're exploring what people are building in Cleveland. I'm your host, Jeffrey Stern, and coming to you live today from Ohio City. So on the show, we talk a fair amount about investing and about funding. And today, we're going to talk about those again, but we're going to look at space through an important and different lens. Of the thousands of VC partners out there, only 18% are female. And of the VC backed founders out there, only 9% are female.

Jeffrey Stern [00:01:16]: And when you cut these statistics by race, the picture gets even more grim. Only 1% of venture backed founders are black. And these statistics really just scratch the surface of the dearth of diversity in the The of funding and founding companies. Today's guest is Brandon Bryant, and he's working to solve this problem. Brandon is a managing partner and cofounder of Harlem Capital Partners, a minority owned early stage investment firm on a mission to change the face of entrepreneurship By investing in 1,000 diverse entrepreneurs over the next 20 years. Brandon is also a content creator with hundreds of thousands of followers who tells the stories about business and culture Through an entrepreneurial lens of his brand Wall Street paper. And also worth noting, Brandon recently moved back home to Cleveland from New York City. This was truly an enlightening conversation, and I I learned a great deal from Brandon through it.

Jeffrey Stern [00:02:02]: And I really hope that you all enjoyed this conversation as well. I'll start with a a warm welcome to the show and a and a welcome Back to Cleveland. I'm very excited to have you on, Brendon.

Brandon Bryant (Harlem Capital) [00:02:17]: Thanks, man. Appreciate you inviting me on Land looking forward to answering any questions you may have. Yeah.

Jeffrey Stern [00:02:23]: I think a a great place to start would would be your your actual journey, you know, Land personal path from and ultimately back to Cleveland, and understanding a little bit about about your Your background The.

Brandon Bryant (Harlem Capital) [00:02:33]: Yeah. So originally from Cleveland, grew up in Bedford, and Twinsburg area, went to Bowling Green originally Land then transferred to Lay house Stern. Steady economics The. Eventually, of moved to New York and worked in investment banking for a few years. And after that, went into photography and video, scaled a business as a solo entrepreneur, and that company is called Wall Street Paper. Worked with great brands like Uber and Microsoft, Gillette, in Bank of America, actually, who became one of my biggest clients. And while I was doing that, me and a few colleagues from investment banking started to AngelMS. And we wanted to focus on people who look like us since we had a hung up a shingle in Harlem.

Brandon Bryant (Harlem Capital) [00:03:19]: And looked at small business, look at real estate Land then found these amazing founders in the tech Stern up of. And so The this was so interesting after doing 6 angel investments we wanted to do it full time. So now I just spend my time mostly focusing on Harlem Capital, investing in founders of color Land women. And on the side, I still do some photography and video.

Jeffrey Stern [00:03:42]: Awesome. Yeah. I think we'll we'll come back to the the photography and video and then also the paper in a little bit. But I'd love to Start with just, you know, a real deep dive on on Harlem Capital. Thank you for sharing a little bit about the, you know, the founding story there, and and kind of the The vision and goal that that you have for for the company. Can you just give us a little bit of an overview of, you know, the the current state of of Harlem Capital what and what your what your guys focus is right right now?

Brandon Bryant (Harlem Capital) [00:04:07]: Yeah. And I'll I'll I'll go and tell you a little bit more about that that founding story. So when I was a sophomore in college at Ohio State in studying economics. I wanted to get into business, so I joined this national diversity program call it MLT, management leadership for tomorrow. And it's a diversity program for black and Latinx students to meet folks who look like them at other universities. And I actually met my business partners from Harlem Capital in that program. So on re from Detroit and went to Northeast. Jared is from New Jersey and went to Wharton, and we became great friends.

Brandon Bryant (Harlem Capital) [00:04:45]: Then eventually, we end up interning together as sophomores and juniors in finance in New York. And then we went full time and lived in New York, lived in Harlem. Henri and I were roommates for 4 years, and we worked at Bank of America for 2 of those years. And Jeffrey lived across the street the entire time. Land so it was safe to say we knew each other quite well personally and professionally. And Harlem Capital really started through a group chat. We had a group text thread where we shared where to go hang out, new music, news. And then eventually, over the years, we started sharing opportunities to start to invest.

Brandon Bryant (Harlem Capital) [00:05:21]: What we saw was, it typically was a $25,000 check minimum. So we thought, since we don't have $25,000 ours, like ourselves personally, we can pull that capital together and start to make these investments. And so that's how we really started angel investing. And we did like I mentioned, we did small business Land real estate, but then we saw this huge opportunity in early stage Stern ups where we thought it was the next industrial revolution. And we saw that there weren't investors who prioritizing people of color Land women despite them being 70 plus percent of the population. They were getting about 4% total of all the venture capital funding each year, which is a $100,000,000,000 with a b. So you have a 100,000,000,000 times 4%, but that only goes to, and that and that goes to almost 70% of of population. So it's just that that delta between 4% Land 70 plus percent.

Brandon Bryant (Harlem Capital) [00:06:20]: We thought that was an opportunity for us to do good Land to do well financially at the same time. And then that led to us, after doing 6 investments as angel investors to fundraising for our 1st fund. Target for that was 25,000,000. We thought that that was the most viable size for a fund for us. We end up raising 40,000,000. So we were oversubscribed and hit our cap. And now we do check size between 500,000 to a1000000 into seed rounds. Typically, folks are raising any between 1 to $3,000,000 in capital.

Brandon Bryant (Harlem Capital) [00:06:52]: We're looking for 7 to 10% ownership in that check. We've done 21 investments so far, out of this fund, plan is to do 30. So about 2 thirds of the way through. Land of those 21 investments plus the 6 angel investments that we did, we're in 12 different cities across US, New York, LA, Chicago, and Boston tend to be hubs for us. But we do have 4 investments out of the Midwest. Live 1 in Columbus, 2 in Chicago, 1 in Indianapolis, and we're hoping to get 1 in Cleveland.

Jeffrey Stern [00:07:22]: Yeah. We'll we'll make that happen. When when you say, you know, raise a fund, it it's this Land of high level concept that I I feel from the outside kind of abstract Lay almost everything that goes into fundraising from LPs Land recruiting and setting up the back office and dealing with governance Land, Ultimately, a very entrepreneurial endeavor in and of itself. And so I'd love to hear from your perspective. You know, what what does that actually entail?

Brandon Bryant (Harlem Capital) [00:07:47]: Man, raising a fund is extremely hard. Like, if you ever were a a founder and we're looking to start a business and fundraise from investors, it could take anywhere between 3 to 6 months, 6 months if it's long. For our 1st fund, it took us 18 months to fundraise. So we were investing in a cohort of founders. Right? People of color and women, specifically men who are black or Latinx or women of any race. And people 5 years ago thought this was somewhat laughable. But we had we were lucky to find an amazing anchor investor who believed in diversity investing, and they Lay that it was gonna be similar to what impact investing was. 15 years ago 15 years ago, people would laugh add someone raising funds to do impact investing and thinking that you can have returns.

Brandon Bryant (Harlem Capital) [00:08:37]: But now every large firm has $1,000,000,000 impact investing firms. So we're excited to kinda be behind folks who who really believe in us. And then in terms of the the typical process is, Land you're spending anywhere between 10 to 15 hours with folks who are institutions. So those are endowments. Those are you you can call them foundations. You can also think about high enough worth individuals, family office, etcetera. Those folks write check size between one anywhere to 10 plus $1,000,000, but to even get traction to get in front of those folks, you gotta do a friends and family round. It's hard to do friends and family round win your, when you're a person of color or woman, because not many of your friends are are are that wealthy.

Brandon Bryant (Harlem Capital) [00:09:23]: So for us, we reached out to all of our former managing directors, MDs, or anyone that we ever met who was wealthy. Like, we were asking friends, parents to jump on pause to

Jeffrey Stern [00:09:34]: Yeah. Yeah.

Brandon Bryant (Harlem Capital) [00:09:34]: To, connect with us. And long story short, we had a chance in the 1st 6 months. We had cobbled together about anywhere between 2 to $3,000,000. And we probably had, like, 20 or 30 people who who helped us out there. And then from that 2 to $3,000,000, the next 6 months, we're able to get our 1st Land of 7 figure checks, and we got our anchor investor. And usually, your anchor investor it's gonna be that backstop, that person who is always championing you, introducing you to new people. And whenever someone has, trouble getting up to speed and believing Land, why you why you are the right person to, manage this capital. They'll come in and do reference calls for you.

Brandon Bryant (Harlem Capital) [00:10:15]: So TPG was that for us, a private equity shop out in New York. Mhmm. They were that for us. And then after that, we had many institutional investors introduce us to people in The network, and warm intros really go a long way. So that 6 months, we probably raised another, I don't know, maybe 15,000,000. So we're under 20,000,000 The the last 6 months to go for 18 total months. And in that last 6 months, we raised the rest of of $40,000,000 fund. It was just crazy to get that thing Cleveland Land, yeah, you have to have back office things going on.

Brandon Bryant (Harlem Capital) [00:10:49]: So we use folks like Carta. You have to have, tax team. You have to have legal team to legally start a fund that costs $100,000, plus to legally even have the paperwork to start fund. So there are a lot of potential barriers and challenges, especially for people of color and women to start funds. But I think the best way to get into it is to start either advising or even angel investing in. One thing about angel investing, you don't have to have large check sizes. You can aim to invest with your time. Right? Or you can aim to invest with a $1,000 check or a $5,000 check, which a lot of people are doing right now.

Brandon Bryant (Harlem Capital) [00:11:26]: So I'll stop there. That's kinda a little bit about our journey. We're hoping that for future vehicles that we fundraise, it'll be much less than 18 months.

Jeffrey Stern [00:11:36]: Yeah. I hope so. You introduced a lot of threads there that I I I would like to pull on a little bit. One of them is that, you know, this idea, both from Starting a fund itself, but also starting a company, it's kind of this idea that you need capital in order to take risk.

Brandon Bryant (Harlem Capital) [00:11:54]: To

Jeffrey Stern [00:11:55]: And Land it's this real chicken and egg problem of how do you make sure that there's enough capital to get started. And it it plays into this more macro idea that that you guys are are working on to address what is really a systemic inequity and access to to capital to get started for People of color for for women. I've definitely thought about this from my own perspective, how much just, you know, luck and privilege came into it that I'm in a position where I could even take risk in 1st place to try and start a company.

Brandon Bryant (Harlem Capital) [00:12:23]: Mhmm.

Jeffrey Stern [00:12:23]: So I'd love to hear from kind of a macro level how you think about that more systemically, that that challenge of You need capital to take risk, and, ultimately, there's been a huge lack of of access to capital for for so many of these entrepreneurs.

Brandon Bryant (Harlem Capital) [00:12:40]: Yeah. I totally agree. And I I might even take The vantage point of being a venture capitalist. Right? Eighty plus percent of VCs are white, and about 70 plus percent of founders are white. And then let's let's talk about, diverse folks. 4% of VCs our Land. 3% of founders are Latinx. And let's just talk about African American.

Brandon Bryant (Harlem Capital) [00:13:04]: 3% of VCs are black Land 2% founders are black. So we believe from, like, a venture perspective and an investment perspective The your race correlates directly to the amount of founders, but even think about it from agenda perspective, 86% of VCs are male, 87% of founders are male, and vice versa for for women. So you have 14% Land 13%. So we think it goes across the board that we just need more diverse cheque writers to create more diverse founders. So going to your chicken or egg problem, we said, how does one get The venture capital without having investing experience? Write chicken to get a venture capital. You need investing experience or tech experience. But how do you get tech experience or investing experience with never getting The first first we get The bat. So what we did was create an internship program.

Brandon Bryant (Harlem Capital) [00:13:57]: So we created a part time internship where you can work with us for 10 weeks and you get a chance to work on deals, sit on management calls, do deal memos, go to ICE committees, work on research Land be a part of, like, an ongoing cohort of people, or a network of people who are looking to get into venture capital. We've done that 10 quarters in a row. We've taken 5 to 6 people each quarter for a total of now 60 folks. We've had 5,000 people apply for these internship positions. So we Lay 5,000, we've only taken sixties. Sorry when you know this small team, which was only 5 people on our team. We've only managed so many.

Jeffrey Stern [00:14:38]: Write the

Brandon Bryant (Harlem Capital) [00:14:38]: point here is of those 58 to 60 people that we've taken on, 15 have gone on now to go on our venture capital Land private equity without having any hire experience, and then we end up hiring 3 of those folks. So what we think, we have to change the model. I would say typically part time internships have never worked in any space, especially in the finance space, like, you can't do investment banking part time. It doesn't make sense for private equity. But for venture capital, when it's more deal sourcing, more just getting up to speed really quickly, and making a decision within 6 or 7 days. You could spend some really quick time to get it to speed and make make it an opportunity. So from my vantage point, we need to figure out different structures Land ways to get people into that investor seat. And then what do people who have money use investing? Their friends, The family, their colleagues, the people they went to school with, the people that they hang out with with within different, like, social clubs and potentially professional clubs.

Brandon Bryant (Harlem Capital) [00:15:41]: And so if we can get more people into The investor seat, I think that can start to help solve the problem access the capital for, people of color and women at the founder level.

Jeffrey Stern [00:15:52]: Yeah. Birds of the feather.

Brandon Bryant (Harlem Capital) [00:15:54]: Fart together. No.

Jeffrey Stern [00:15:56]: That's right. That is really exciting, though. It feels like kind of the beginning of a flywheel potentially. You know, if if How do you go about producing more diverse investors very deliberately? What you guys are doing at Harlem Capital as kind of a lever to to break that cycle and bring diversity into the investor community and kind of build up a a network of of people given that, Right. People are investing in in who they who they are of most similar to.

Brandon Bryant (Harlem Capital) [00:16:23]: Yeah. And and we we kind of, we have a big thing about building in public a Harlem Capital standpoint, where each analyst or I I guess, each intern class, we share the statistics of, like, how many people have applied with the the diversity metrics, with the gender metrics. And then at the end of this blog post, we say, we continue to find an amazing amount of diverse talent who can do great things in this space. You know, we really suggest and highly submit to folks to continue to look and do do their their their deep diving into finding these great talented folks.

Jeffrey Stern [00:17:02]: Yeah. One of the things that I've thought a little bit more about from the the company building side Land less from the investing side, but it's really the same issue that applies From the company building side when when you're thinking about recruiting. And I'd love to get your take on, you know, what The right approaches to diversity, inclusion, and retention are on the team building side rather than on the the founding Land, funding side.

Brandon Bryant (Harlem Capital) [00:17:27]: Yeah. So what we do luckily, we don't have that much of a problem with our founders because as we mentioned before, birds of a feather flock together. So luckily, a lot of our founders are hiring, super diverse folks. But what I would say to founders or Stern ups out there now who are 5 people or less. I mean, number 1 thing you have to do, especially after you're going after roughly 5 folks is hire diverse people. You have to hire diverse leaders because diverse leaders will show representation. They will create access Land hopefully, they will educate the new diverse people who are gonna be coming into that pipeline. I think that was actually one of the main reasons why we started Harlem Capital our sell.

Brandon Bryant (Harlem Capital) [00:18:11]: So Andre and Jerry, when they were in business school, maybe we were doing this part time, we came back to ourselves and say, hey. Why are we recruiting at firms that don't have any people who are who look like us, who are partners, who are leadership roles, who are this Northeast or another? Why don't we just do this for ourselves? Why don't we take this seriously and put our own shingle up and embed on ourselves? We're young. We're under 30. Why don't we take a bet on ourselves and take this risk fairly early? And let me be very clear. We had debt on our books across. The so we were definitely taking a risk, and we definitely didn't have all the financial stability, but we had we were naive enough to believe in ourselves. So so I think with that being said, like, those are gonna be great people who could potentially work at your company, but they don't wanna work there because there's no clear path for them to have any type of leadership role, to participate in Land upside, to be someone who could be a change maker, to be someone who can be seen as as a point person at your company. So for me, like, hiring diverse folks as early as possible is the best thing that you can do.

Brandon Bryant (Harlem Capital) [00:19:18]: And then putting in strategic processes and measures to have diverse people, come Land teach Land educate and share about best practices in the industry, could be really helpful for you as well.

Jeffrey Stern [00:19:31]: One of the things you mentioned that I wanted to to come back to was how, you know, maybe 10 years ago or so, the the idea of these diversity initiatives were maybe of of brushed off, and the you know, more more broadly, the The social impact approach to company building and investing, may have been more brushed off. In your mind, you know, why is it That people are are taking it more seriously now. It's it's kind of unfortunate you have to even ask that question given how it seems very clear that Diversity can generate better business results

Brandon Bryant (Harlem Capital) [00:20:04]: Mhmm.

Jeffrey Stern [00:20:04]: At the end of the day. But but what do you think is, like, the the catalyst for the the change in perception in people and and the proliferation of a lot of these initiatives.

Brandon Bryant (Harlem Capital) [00:20:13]: Yeah. This is this is a good point here. I mean, we had looked at research from the Kaufman Fellows that show that ethnically diverse founders tend to have, like, 3.2 x more, exits compared to 2.5 x of just, like, all white founding teams. And we're like, alright. Cool. Let's so it's been proven that diverse teams tend to perform better. Why hasn't this happened yet? And for us, we think people of color Land women are just now getting educated and getting into this market. And it takes about 7 to 10 years to see real clear breakout wins and examples.

Brandon Bryant (Harlem Capital) [00:20:50]: So you have folks like Calendly. How long has Calendly been around? Roughly since 2013, and they're just now hitting that real kind of technically not a liquidity event, but they're unicorn status now. Same thing with Compass. So and then also same thing with folks like Squire, which is, which is a software for barbershops. They just they raised over $100,000,000 for software for barbershops in the last 7 years. So I think we're starting to see a lot of these companies hit their hit their stride. And now that folks are hitting their stride on top of, some of the racial equity initiatives, you're gonna see in the next in the 2020, so are gonna be, in my opinion, a lot of examples of people of color and women really winning. And then even shout out to Whitney Hurd from Bumble, who is, you know, the youngest person or sorry, youngest woman to have IPO on the Nasdaq.

Brandon Bryant (Harlem Capital) [00:21:44]: Her being able to be to represent folks like that is huge because now people are gonna grow up and think that they can do that, which is great. So we need a lot of representation. We need The. And all those things are working in our favor right now.

Jeffrey Stern [00:21:58]: Yeah. We definitely need more of that. Given the the rise of so many of these diversity initiatives, what in in your, you know, research and, you know, diving Into The space what have emerged as Land of the consistent patterns across what a successful diversity initiative looks like?

Brandon Bryant (Harlem Capital) [00:22:16]: I think this is a good one. I mean, a strong diversity initiative has it has capital behind it. It has structure behind it, and it has autonomy. Those are the 3 things you need, whether that's at JPMorgan or whether that's at your Stern. If folks have the autonomy Land ownership add the capital behind them and the right structure. And then lastly, support of allies. I mean, this is something that might be a little bit underrated. For us, we have support about it.

Brandon Bryant (Harlem Capital) [00:22:42]: Right? Like, our 1st anchor investor really helped introduce us to the next 4 to 5 institutions that got our fund off ground Land that would turn into a flyover world. Now we have 6 institutions that can introduce us to folks as we fundraise and build things in the future. And so you have to really be cognizant of that when you're building that out internally The well, in actually, 7 back just for example, think about chief diversity officers. I would say, a lot of them right now may not have as much power, as much budgets, and as much structure as they would like Land as much allyship from, the powers of p to folks who are running the company, if you will, as they would like to be. So right now, their hands are a little bit tied Land and not many initiatives getting done. So if you can have someone who is, who's really empowered, who has that autonomy, who could put capital behind things and run it as if it's a small operation or a small almost like Land Entreprenuership you Land really have opportunities for folks The do things that are a little bit outside of the scope, but they're gonna be impactful in the long run.

Jeffrey Stern [00:23:48]: Yeah. Thinking towards the the future, I kinda wanna tie it back to to Cleveland and, you know, kinda your your outlook a little bit. You know, 10:10 years from now, what is the the kind of impact that you know, both from a a Land of broader Harlem Capital perspective that that you that you hope to have, with the firm. And then I'd also love to to get your take on, you know, what you are most excited about, with your presence here in Cleveland and and expanding the the scope to less of a geographic focus and and more of the opportunity here in in Cleveland and in the Midwest more generally.

Brandon Bryant (Harlem Capital) [00:24:21]: Yeah. This is a this is an awesome question. Thinking from a Harlem Capital perspective, I think it's simple. We want to be as close as we can to investing in 1,000 diverse entrepreneurs over the next 20 years. I mean, we want to change the typical face that comes into your mind when you hear investor or when you hear a startup entrepreneur. So it's going to take some time to get that done. So we just wanna make sure that we're supporting founders, and also we're building it public. We have a mantra that you can't be what you can't see.

Brandon Bryant (Harlem Capital) [00:24:53]: So we want to be in public. We want to have a big, hairy, audacious goal. We want to champion other people who have the same missions and initiatives as us. And we wanna make sure that there are more people who can build funds like ours. We can't invest in every diverse person in the country. Right? We wanna Northeast set the platform and the foundation for every diverse person in the country to get funding, to get the funding that they deserve, get the treatment and the support that they deserve. And from a Cleveland standpoint, and then I'll go to the Midwest and broader. I think Cleveland is a uncut gem.

Brandon Bryant (Harlem Capital) [00:25:29]: I think there's a lot of opportunity here. There's, decent capital sources, good colleges. And then I also think that there's entrepreneurs or folks who are entrepreneurial minded that might just need the education, that might just need someone who looks like them or someone who's in their network to be successful, to give them that that itch Land that confidence to take a risk. And I hope that I can be helpful to to be an example to be a positive catalyst for folks to do that. And then you have in the middle west in general, I think I like to call it of of my favorite emerging markets. There's so many of the Fortune 500 or Fortune 1,000 here who can be great customers for companies that are building here and can be great partners Land can be great people who educate. And I think there's there's there's just needs to be a lot more connectivity, a lot more overlap, a lot more people sharing learnings, and kinda getting together Land putting their not only their money where their mouths are, but their relationships, allyship structures, and even power. The autonomy that they may have or the influence that they have towards democratizing access for people to create new technology and new companies to scale here.

Brandon Bryant (Harlem Capital) [00:26:45]: I think there are clear examples of that with the folks in Columbus with Root Insurance. Olive of my meds, etcetera. And there's no reason why that can't happen. In Cleveland, there's no reason why that can't happen in Indianapolis, in Detroit, and all these other places in the Midwest. So I I'm truly, truly big time excited about what the future is going. And with COVID, I think there's so many super talented people who left the Midwest to go to the coast or to go to some tier one city Land are now back home enter enjoying the affordable living Land enjoying the lifestyle being closer to home, closer to old friends. But they're also seeing the opportunity to take what they learned in those coastal cities Land to leverage those relationships as well to really build something that the The hasn't seen Land solve these these different problems at the Midwest companies or consumers have Land do it in a really impactful way.

Jeffrey Stern [00:27:45]: I I know it's been, not too long since since you've been you've been back. But,

Brandon Bryant (Harlem Capital) [00:27:51]: you know,

Jeffrey Stern [00:27:51]: what what is kind of the reception been Do the the work that you're doing here locally? How is it resonating with people?

Brandon Bryant (Harlem Capital) [00:27:58]: Man, I think folks are exciting or excited by me being here. I'm excited. There's there's Folks

Jeffrey Stern [00:28:04]: are excited. It's all very exciting.

Brandon Bryant (Harlem Capital) [00:28:07]: I think it's exciting. I'm glad The, Harlem Capital and in the brand that we've been able fortunate enough to to work on is is shedding some positive light of what can happen here. But I want to build, and I wanna partner with the folks here to build a recruitment team to bring all these boomerangs back home. And on top of that, I wanna build a recruitment team to just attract great talent. And then lastly, after you have great talent, we think The, all the investors and and all those folks would definitely follow after soon. So, if you hear The, you're one of those folks who wanna be a part of that recruitment team to bring all these boomerangs home, and then eventually get all these these transplants here to really invest in this community Land make it even more thriving than it is right now. I would love to to lock arms together on that.

Jeffrey Stern [00:28:58]: Yeah. I think I think there's a Land handful that that we can We can make it happen for. Speaking of brand Mhmm. Both from the Harlem Capital perspective, because it I think you've been able to to leverage, You know, you're pretty extraordinary on personal, you know, experience and and journey with with Wall Street Paper in in the building of Harlem Capital as a brand as well. But, Yeah. I would love to to get your your perspective, maybe transitioning a little bit to to Wall Street Paper and and the work that, you've been able to to do The. How you think about, You know, the importance of of brand and The that perspective, you know, personal Land.

Brandon Bryant (Harlem Capital) [00:29:33]: Yeah. So personal brand I mean, brand and culture are really big, especially in today's world, because if you're virtual, how are you gonna be able to win opportunities whether it be from your your own personal business or from an investment side without being in a room and then making that real strong impact. So when I mentioned earlier about building in public, I learned a lot of that from my days in Wall Street paper. So I was an investment banker some odd years ago in my cubicle. I was on Instagram. This is right when Instagram was starting to take off. And I had always been a person who really of fashion, love content, all these things. And Monday, I'm on Instagram, and I'm scrolling.

Brandon Bryant (Harlem Capital) [00:30:15]: And I was like, you know what? I would love to tell the story about what my life's about. And I'm sure a lot of other people on Instagram always wanted to do that. So I took it a little bit serious. I started to reach out to brands that I like to to see if they Lay give me free stuff. I end up having to buy a lot of it myself. So, rags of riches story, if you will, of just, like, really never getting any reception back from the folks that I reached out to. But over the next 9 to 12 months my 1st year of doing content creation. I put it on myself to shoot photography every Saturday Land every Sunday Land just to build muscle memory.

Brandon Bryant (Harlem Capital) [00:30:55]: The after I build The muscle memory, I started to build my own Land of, like, sales process to reach out to Land, to start to get some of that free stuff to, promote. The after I started promoting, I would start pitching some of the stuff I promoted to brands to pay. So Bank of America work with me. I might pitch it to chase to pay me. And then I started The flywheel of halo effect. And I just realized that, alright. Cool. If you can actually have a FOMO type of moment Land you can leverage previous work to get new work and to actually increase your earning power, then that's how you create a flywheel for your company.

Brandon Bryant (Harlem Capital) [00:31:31]: And so that was, like, the mental state of, like, alright. Cool. Once I get this project, I'm going to pitch it to another company or another competitor to get a higher price. And then after that, I got to a place where people started to reach out to meet because I was building this brand, for example. So GQ wants to work with me, then Esquire wondered why why they're not working with me. Genesis. The car company wants to work with me. Cadillac's wondering why they don't work with me.

Brandon Bryant (Harlem Capital) [00:31:56]: And so being able to leverage people against each other in a positive way, from a professional standpoint, was really the best way for me to kinda get washer paper off the off the ground. Now now how do we think about The from a hard capital perspective? We wanted to tap into having a a a very big audacious goal Land then going after that in public. So from also paper, it was more of creating content through an Entreprenuership in culture Cleveland, like, having people be a part of that throw out in catalyst like, Lay. How do we empower this super disenfranchised community to actually participate in the biggest opportunity for love creation of our lifetime, and everyone of that. Everyone wanted to jump on it. It was it was super amazing. And so what we did after that, we said, Lay. Cool.

Brandon Bryant (Harlem Capital) [00:32:46]: We're the only investors who are focused on this. We have to start creating thought leadership so that we can get other people involved. So we did research. We found over 200 people who were black or Latinx who raised $1,000,000. And then that end up being the largest research report of diverse people raising over $1,000,000. So that started a flywheel of Wall Street Journal Land Forbes in Crunchbase Land all these people reaching out to us Land then starting to cite us as research in their in a lot of their articles. Then that led to people wanting to reach out to us for investment. And then that started this whole initial flywheel over and over again of continue to just show that we're finding opportunities that meet our thesis Land that more people should be doing what we're doing.

Brandon Bryant (Harlem Capital) [00:33:35]: And then that created this really interesting kind of, FOMO factor where folks were like, Lay. We see what Howard Capital is doing. They're finding great people. Why can't we do that at our firm? And then eventually, you have COVID Land then you also have all the racial injustice happens. And it just happened to be that we were at the right time at the right place. Now everyone is really focused on racial equity. We just happen to be at the forefront of the entire movement right now. So it's it's it's a super exciting time.

Jeffrey Stern [00:34:04]: That's humble though. At the right time in the right place, but incredibly prepared. Know, what what Yeah. 5 years ago, we

Brandon Bryant (Harlem Capital) [00:34:10]: we were we looked we did not look like we didn't look as smart as we do right now.

Jeffrey Stern [00:34:16]: But what what strikes me about that what what really resonates is how much of the principles of How you kind of went about building your personal brand relates kind of perfectly into the the world of of company building and and kind of viewing yourself as a Stern up. And The The you described it, how the the market essentially starts pulling the product out of what you're doing, it's it's very much like you've achieved Product market fit for yourself.

Brandon Bryant (Harlem Capital) [00:34:44]: Yeah. Is this product led growth?

Jeffrey Stern [00:34:47]: Product led growth.

Brandon Bryant (Harlem Capital) [00:34:48]: And you see this in a lot of Entreprenuership answer. There's there's folks like Elon Musk who are outliers, right, where the the value of Tesla is not necessarily focused on the metrics Land The financials. It's more on the person at the at the helm of the company, but there are new startups that are being valued at the same same thing that one of the companies that we recently saw was Fast, which is The click to check out, which is, essentially Amazon buy now button before all companies or for all websites, and they raised their seed around it. And within 12 months, they Lay raised another round at $1,000,000,000 valuation, and a lot of that was from both of those founders of building in public on Twitter. Actually one of those founders is from Ohio. Allison, one of the founders. So it's it's it's definitely doable from the founder angle in The tech space as well.

Jeffrey Stern [00:35:41]: Yeah. From the the Wall Street paper perspective, you know, just I I kinda wanna do a a brief tangent on on fashion Land and just get your high level perspective. Because, you know, growing up, my, my grandmother always Said, you know, dress for the wall role that you want, which was kinda I

Brandon Bryant (Harlem Capital) [00:35:57]: love that.

Jeffrey Stern [00:35:58]: Drilled into me and growing up Stern internalized to mean that, like, out of the way that you carry yourself and present yourself, is actually important in how other people perceive you. And so fashion and presentation and the details are important kind of a reflection of of what is, to some degree, going on inside of you. And so I've never really, like, gotten into fashion, it's always been something that I think about as important. And as you Land of build in public, I guess, how do you think about it? Is it truly, at this point, still, you know, with More than 200,000 followers just an expression of yourself, or or how are you thinking about Wall Street Paper at this point?

Brandon Bryant (Harlem Capital) [00:36:33]: Well, first and foremost, I mean, perception is reality. And I think that a lot of people don't realize that the way you're perceived is just other people's reality to them. Even though you might be a nice person or you might be this, that or another, if you're not perceived that Lay, unfortunate that that's what just reality is Land look good, do good. That was one of my, one of my mantras way back when you gotta you gotta look good, to feel good, to perform good. Right? And to execute shoot at a high level. From a Wall Street paper perspective, I mean, the way I wanna use my platform now, I'm saying no almost 95% of the time now, and I'm being very kind of, selective and specific about the people that I work within. My platform now is just really to champion what people of color Land women are doing or champion business in culture and and try to educate and let people inside on what they can do, what services they can use, what products they can use, how can they scale themselves and then eventually hire people and scale their own business. So that's kind of the future for me from a a Wall Street paper perspective.

Brandon Bryant (Harlem Capital) [00:37:44]: And just trying to make sure I'm I'm sharing positivity. We need as much positivity and wellness as we can get going, especially in 2020. It's it's, it's starting off tough. This decade is starting off tough, so I'm just trying to put a lot of positivity into the space.

Jeffrey Stern [00:38:00]: Well, your positivity is appreciated for sure. As you kinda reflect on the last 5, 10 years now building Wall Street paper, building Harlem Capital, what are the biggest learnings that that you have taken away from that experience?

Brandon Bryant (Harlem Capital) [00:38:13]: Number 1, work harder on yourself than you do on your job. So this is an amazing Jim Rome quote. Jim Rome was a mentor to Tony Robbins. And he always just talked about you have to work harder on yourself The you do in your job. Because if you work really hard of your job, you can get fired the next day. Right. The doesn't increase anything for you. But if you do work hard on yourself, you become a better person, a better listener, a better public speaker, a better friend a better brother, better, etcetera, etcetera.

Brandon Bryant (Harlem Capital) [00:38:45]: You could do that in those small things that you can do great in the big things, in the, in the personal and professional side of things. So that's that's number 1. You have to really be focused on that personal Land self development journey. Number 2, find your tribe. If you can't find your tribe and have people who have different mindsets Stern you, people who kind of sharpen you, people who kind of can of the gaps that you may have, then I think it's going to be really tough. You can go fast alone, but you can go much farther together. Land and I think that's something that I really learned with Harlem capital or even the team that I build with wall street paper. Really surrounding yourself with super strong, positive people who have the same type of level of excellence that you may hold yourself to and push each other to the next level.

Brandon Bryant (Harlem Capital) [00:39:37]: If you can do those 2 things, I think you won't really ever have to worry about earning power Land you can start to really enjoy self fulfilment because you'll be working on things that you want to work on, spending your time, how you want to spend it, spending it with whoever you want to spend it with. So those are kind of the things nothing happened Land none of that has to do with, investing or content Cleveland. It's more about pour you as an individual.

Jeffrey Stern [00:40:05]: Yeah. I think those those resonate a lot. As you made your way back to Cleveland, what has surprised you most about being back here in Cleveland?

Brandon Bryant (Harlem Capital) [00:40:13]: So I grew up in Bedford Land Twinsburg, spent my high school years in Twinsburg. So I didn't have it. Have that much of a chance to spend that much time downtown or on the West Side. So I am presently surprised that Land happy The. There is a Trader Joe's pretty close to me now. I live downtown. Trader Joe's has been a welcoming addition to my life. I think Edgewater Park.

Brandon Bryant (Harlem Capital) [00:40:38]: I live in The Midtown area. It is less than 10 minutes away from me. I never thought that I would move to Cleveland and be 10 minutes away from a beach. So that's been very exciting. And another thing that I was thinking about is the have a small business coalition of these young folks who are super excited about starting big goods companies, small real estate firms, dog daycare companies, all The small mom and shop folks who are really living Land thriving in a really find to bring something different to the ecosystem that has been warming my heart Land very welcoming. And then I guess, lastly, to your point earlier, The excite people are excited to have me home. I appreciate it. I appreciate the folks who bring the excitement.

Brandon Bryant (Harlem Capital) [00:41:27]: So I'm I have a ton of energy around Cleveland and what it can be in the future. I'm super excited about the vaccine and other things being done so that we can do things safely in person and hopefully when it's warm. And I'm just really looking forward to tasting more food and checking out more nature Land just different initiatives and experiences in Cleveland.

Jeffrey Stern [00:41:52]: Yeah. All things that are worth worth exploring and experiencing for sure. The the vibrancy and and the excitement is is very

Brandon Bryant (Harlem Capital) [00:42:00]: real. Yeah. Land and The quick note, funny enough, like my girlfriend's friend told her think you can go to Edgewater Park and walk on Lake Erie. So we went out there. We try to be as safe as possible. And The we're just walking on Lake Erie with a bunch of other people. Can't do that anyway. So appreciate you, Cleveland.

Jeffrey Stern [00:42:18]: Yeah. The the nature in the area is pretty extraordinary. Well, awesome. I, you know, Really appreciate you coming on and sharing your story. I've learned a ton, just from the past, you know, 40 minutes or so here. So I really appreciate it. If people have anything that they would like to follow-up with with you about, whether it be Harlem Capital or Wall Street Paper, Just excited about Cleveland. Where's the the best place for them to reach you, Brandon?

Brandon Bryant (Harlem Capital) [00:42:44]: Yeah. It's brandon@harlom Land capital. There is no .com. It's just parlam.capital, the website Land brandon@parlam.capital of feel free to give give me a follow on Twitter or Instagram at Wall Stern Paper.

Jeffrey Stern [00:43:05]: That's all for this week. Thanks for listening. We'd love to hear your thoughts on today's show. So shoot us an email at lay of the land at upside dot f m or find us on Twitter At podLayoftheLand or at @Sternjefe, j e f e. We'll be back here next week at the aim time to map more of the land. If you or someone you know would make a good guess for our show, please email us or find us on Twitter and let us know. And if you love our show, please leave a review, goes a long way in helping us spread the word and continue to help bring high quality guests to the show.