'It's About Damn Time' You Get to Know Arlan Hamilton

Note: Text has been edited and may not match audio exactly.

Abby West: Hi. I'm your Audible editor Abby West. I have the pleasure of talking today with Arlan Hamilton, the Founder and Managing Partner of Backstage Capital, the author of It's About Damn Time, and as described in her groundbreaking 2018 Fast Company cover story, “the only Black queer woman to have ever built a venture capital firm from scratch.” Welcome, Arlan.

Arlan Hamilton: Hey, thanks for having me. 

AW: I am particularly happy to have some of your time because I did listen to your book, and I know how valuable your time is and how much that you do value your time. [Laughter]

AH: [Laughter] Right. All of our time. All of our time is valuable.

AW: All of our time. Yes. We're going to talk some more about that because I have so many wonderful takeaways and so many ways that your book resonated for me, and I think it will for others. Across different demographics and different backgrounds, I think this is going to resonate. 

The title comes from the fact that you went from being broke and homeless and sleeping on the floor of San Francisco's airport to launching a $36 million fund that was exclusively earmarked for black women's businesses. And in a speech announcing it, you said, “they like to call it a diversity fund. I call it the It's About Damn Time Fund.” That has stayed true. That was “about damn time” because of what you came to find about the whole industry as you were coming to learn more about venture capital. Why was it about damn time?

AH: Well, again, people were saying, "Oh, this is a nice diversity fund. You're doing this nice thing you're doing for the underrepresented." For me, I'm saying yes, they're underrepresented, but they're underestimated. People of color, women, et cetera, are underestimated and they're being overlooked. That's an opportunity that's being overlooked. That's not some sort of charity or Make a Wish Foundation. 

I think it's about damn time for many things. I think it's about damn time that we get what has already and has always been ours. I have this very Pollyanna view that we are all created equal and we all have an equal part in this world. The few years we're given on this Earth, we should all be sharing in the same amount. 

To me, we are making up for lost time right now. Venture capital itself has been around for 70, 75 years and has looked and felt very homogenous for so long. The fact that I am the first of so many things is really astonishing to me. I mean, I'm proud of things, of course, but the first in all of these years, someone who came from outside of the industry, just sort of knocked my way in, and somehow this is radical to them. This shouldn't be radical to them. This should have been happening the whole time. People should have been seen for what they are the entire time. Yeah. Then, ultimately, I think it's about damn time for us individually to get our rightful piece of the throne if you will.

AW: That really speaks a lot to the subhead of your title, How to Turn Being Underestimated Into Your Greatest Advantage. That these are things that just had not been allowed at the table. All these different voices and backgrounds were not allowed to the table but are actually things that can bring even greater riches or wealth or diversity of ideas onto the playing field. 

Think about something that was really difficult to get through. If you're listening to this, you've gotten through it, and so you have the capacity to get through things like this.

AH: Yes, exactly. Exactly. There have been multiple studies that show that more diversity in your company yields more lucrative outcomes. That's just a fact that at this point. But I even go as far as to say just a higher quality of life can come from that. We only have these precious years. I just feel like people are missing out by not really branching out.

Again, I think some investors when I first got to Silicon Valley and to that world, it just seemed like every time I would mention a certain demographic I would get this look, this “bless your heart” look. This sort of, "Oh, you're doing such a great thing." I was like, "No. I'm a shark. I'm a shark, but these are opportunities." There are founders who are simply not as resourced as others, but they're creating amazing things. Wouldn't you want a piece of that? Wouldn't you want some equity in that? And so grateful now that I've been able to meet so many founders and be allowed to invest in so many of them.

AW: That's great and just having to sell people on the idea that, "No, I'm not just being altruistic. This is a business. This is moneymaking."

AH: Exactly. Exactly. 

AW: I love that. This is a memoir/self-help book. I don't care how it's being marketed. It's a memoir/self-help book. You're revealing. You are vulnerable in a very measured way. You say in different parts of the book that you decide what you share and as everyone should. But you do share a lot of yourself. Why was it important for you to write this and share your story in a deeper way than articles and interviews may have done before?

AH: I really love the fact that I would have one place where a great deal of my thoughts would be and you wouldn't have to ask. People have made assumptions and kind of picked and chosen what they would take away from it, but I love that this is my first book, and so I could have it all in one place. I felt, I mean, the themes of the books ... authenticity and staying true to yourself and all of that ... I had to absolutely practice what I preach. I have seen the impact that happens when you share your vulnerabilities and your successes, and you share your game plan, the blueprint. You share those things. They see the impact. It gives so much more than it takes. It's not a liability to me to give up some of that transparency because the return on investment of doing so is so high when it comes to how people are impacted, how people see themselves reflected. 

If it were to go out and spend all this time and all this effort and write a book that was cookie-cutter, it would be doing a disservice to myself and to others because they can get that in another book. They can get something else in another book. That's why I say in the book you have to be yourself so that people looking for you can find you, and I wanted people to find me.

AW: Yeah, the conversation around authenticity and representation in owning all of that yourself is so important within your book as well. You have one of the chapter endings where [you say] “someone is looking for YOU.” There's someone out there waiting for you to show up exactly as you are. I think that's something that needs to be heard by so many people, women in particular, but people.

AH: Yes. Yes, across the board. I've had feedback from so many. You said earlier that you thought many demographics would get something from this. I have so far had feedback from so many different types of people, backgrounds, profiles. Because I think everyone has felt underestimated at some point for some reason. I think everyone can relate to that. There's a certain permission that many demographics feel like they have to wait for or feel like they'll never have. I'm here to bust that myth. We don't have time. We don't have time to shrink ourselves in that way, and so it's like, yeah, it's a call. It's a battle cry, I think.

AW: Well, you talked about practicing what you preach. None of it came easy, right? None of it came easy to you. You had to figure out, "Hey, what is this thing?" And create the love for it and understanding of it. No one just opened the door to let you in. You had a lot of doors closed to you and you kept at it. What was it you said? 

AH: It's “in order to become it, I had to be it.”

AW: Exactly. It's a version of hyping yourself, right? You had to do the self-hype that's based on fact. It's not a myth. You knew you could do this, and you had to maintain the belief that you could do it because in order to convince other people you could do it. That idea, that message of resiliency in the face of adversity in this disenfranchisement feels particularly relevant right now for the world we're living in where the floor has dropped out for so many people. Things that either they were already under way with or that they wanted to do now feels even further away. What kind of message or advice would you have for people like that right now?

AH: I think the hardest part of all of this that we're going through as a globe, globally, is that we don't know exactly how long this will be and what happens next. Any number of us can get through certain things with a finite amount of time. This certain adversity is going to only be for this amount of time or that amount of time. The uncertainty is the hardest part. I think that if we really tap into the fact that all of us have gone through things — like I talk about in the book, all of the ups and downs and the hundreds of “no's and the housing insecurity and food stamps and all of that — the hardest part was knowing that I didn't know how long it was going to be. But if we tap into the fact that we've already survived up until now as a person you've already gotten this far. Think about something that was really difficult to get through. If you're listening to this, you've gotten through it, and so you have the capacity to get through things like this. It's different. It's like no one has ever seen. But so many things have been that way that we've gotten through.

I had to tell [this to] my brother, who's just a few years younger than me. He's grown and he has children, but he's always had a little bit of trouble with like doomsday worries. He was actually feeling like it was happening. I had to let him know that by the time we get back to what will be a new normal but will be steadier, he will still be younger than I am today. He still has this time post-this. This is going to define a lot of people and show what you're worth in a lot of ways. But then you'll have that as that medal of armor that you have made it through. Now hopefully we'll all get a T-shirt that says we made it through this pandemic, the worst pandemic in history. But, yeah, you'll have that behind you.

We have to repurpose. I talk a lot about repurposing emotion and thoughts in the book. That's the only way I know how to survive and to continue treating people well. You have to repurpose what this is to you. I've personally found that it has made me an even better entrepreneur because I've had to get super-creative. I had so many thoughts about what this year was going to be, just like most people. There was going to be a six-month book tour. My company was going to be doing this, this and that. It's celebrating its fifth year. All of these things were going to be in person. Everything changed overnight. 

After that mourning period, which I do believe we need to allow ourselves, those cries and the really sobering moments. After that and between that is just this drive in me to say, "Well, I just wrote a whole book about this. I just wrote a whole book about surviving. I'm going to survive this." I know that we can because I believe in all of our capacity to do so.

AW: I love that. I know that the whole concept of finding balance is super-fraught for us these days. But you just mentioned talking about to giving yourself a moment to grieve because we're going through a global grieving period. But in the book, you also talk about fighting that concept of the hustle game. Everybody has to be constantly hustling. You talk about focusing on a hobby, sort of diversifying your headspace to some degree. I think that plays, also, a role into where we are now, is coming out of the space where you felt like you couldn't be at the table if you were not an entrepreneur. You weren't doing life right.

AH: Right. I have this philosophy that you don't have to be doing anything to be an entrepreneur. I think you have to be kind of doing something to be a brain surgeon or for certain vocational things. But to be an entrepreneur a lot of times, the time you take in between action is some of the most important steps you will take. Sorry. Are some of the most important steps you'll take as an entrepreneur. The strategy, the reflection, I mean these things are so important. 

That's why hustling seven days a week, I really hate the phrase “sleep when you're dead.” I think that is just so, so dangerous to say because it's scientifically known that lack of sleep takes years off of your life. It's just a fact. I think that time and what some people may feel is that, "Oh, I'm not grinding, so if I'm not grinding the next person is going to take my spot." They may feel that because so many people have told them that. That's a thing that's out there. 

But my answer to that is what if you can execute better? You can save yourself time, save yourself heartache, save yourself a lot of money because you spent a certain amount of time that you weren't going to just grind and make sales calls and ask questions and do this and that. You just took it thinking. It's like with everything, there's a balance. If you only do the reflecting, you only do the day dreaming and thinking without action, you're not going to get anywhere. But if you only do the action, it is very unwieldy and it's not a strategic play. 

Instead of thinking of it as, "Oh, I'm not doing enough today. I'm not grinding hard enough today," think about it as, "Today my mind and my body need to rest, and so I'm going to take this day or these hours or this 30 minutes or whatever amount of time, and I'm going to simply think through my strategy. I'm going to find something deeper and brainstorm and do that while resting." I do it all the time. It's just a much more measured way of doing things. 

What helps is to make it part of your calendar if you can. Like part of your calendar as the entrepreneur that you are, whether it's your side hustle or your main gig, needs to be, "Okay, this part of the week is where I simply create. I simply create in my mind what I'm going to do next." It's almost like you owe it your company to do that. Especially if you have employees, you owe it them. 

AW: Right. That is almost the “pay yourself first” model, right?

AH: Mm-hmm.

AW: Where it's the only way it gets built upon is to invest in the right places. I love that section about how do you do the personal investment and breaking it out between education and travel and what was the third? You had a third one. But it was so special to see the acknowledgement that investing in yourself in both time, energy and money is worthwhile to a larger cause.

AH: I can only go by what I know and what I've observed. What has been the most productive for me for the last five years going into my 40th year has been to do exactly what I say in this book. That has yielded the most productivity, the most impact, and the most, frankly, capital of my entire life is doing the things that I am espousing in this book. 

AW: One of the things that you shared was how you dealt with the struggle with alcohol throughout your 20s and early-30s. You showed that the audiobook of This Naked Mind helped you.

AH: Yes.

AW: It helped you turn a corner. Were you an audiobook listener before that?

I realized just how much of an impact it has on so many people when I come to the table authentically myself. Because there's never been a day where I was not proud to be a lesbian. There's never been a day where I was not proud to be Black or a woman...

AH: Yes, absolutely. I can't remember what year I just really got into audiobooks. But before as advanced as my reading was and as much as I would take in every bit of magazine, this, this, and that, and trade paper, I just couldn't curl up with a good book. It wasn't the way my mind worked. I discovered two things along the way. One is I'm a big, big fan of nonfiction. It's just going to be more of where I can stay with the story because it's something practical that I can work with.

The second thing is that with the schedule that I have and all sorts of things, if I listen to the book, I can go through several books in a month rather than missing out on all the books that were sitting collecting on my shelf. I had definitely been listening for at least a while at that point. But This Naked Mind, again, you have to see a doctor and you can't just rely on a book. But for me, in my experience, listening to it, and I don't know if it would have happened, honestly, if I had read it. It was something about the woman's voice and something about the fact that it felt very human because it was being read to me and I was able to do it back-to-back days because it was being read to me. 

In my experience, I went from having a strong addiction to alcohol, a physical addiction to alcohol, emotional addiction for 15 years and only having stopped for a year and half and all of that.  Ten percent of that having stopped, very begrudgingly, very much so torture every day the first time I tried. I went from all of that to five days listening to This Naked Mind and having not had a drink since. That's been more than a thousand days. 

I honestly, I don't necessarily want to meet Annie Grace even though she changed my life because I think I would scare her with how excited I would be to meet her. I think she would be like, "Oh, no." Because I honestly thought I was going to have to go to rehab. I was going to have to disrupt my entire life. It was always going to be a struggle, and I was always going to hate being sober and all of those things. I mean, it was really, really deep and real. 

Then for a book, for over five days, to change all of that was just astonishing, still astonishing. It still does. Again, I've been able to be so productive since then. I talk more about it in the book, but it has changed everything, really.

AW: I love that. I also love your joy and enthusiasm about people you're excited to meet. Was it Alanis Morissette that you got to meet after a concert?

AH: Yeah. Yeah, well, it wasn't a concert. It was a magazine event. It was a Variety event that I was speaking at, and she was speaking there separately. There was this whole greenroom area. It was just teeming with all these different executives from Disney and Uber and this and that. But, Alanis walked in the room. I mean, she's Alanis Morissette. I'm very proud of myself. I kept it cool. I kept it really cool. 

I'll tell you who I didn't keep it cool for. I don't think I mentioned this in the book. But years prior, I did not keep it cool for Jasmine Guy, which we knew her from …

AW: A Different World.

AH: I'm getting old. A Different World. I lost my mind when I saw her. I was like, "Cool it." My friend, Diane, had to push me against the wall because we were in another greenroom. She had to push me against the wall. She had to slap my face a little bit and say, "Get it together." She had to really do that because I was like, "There's Jasmine." I was like freaking out, and I don't normally do that. 

I was like, "It's Jasmine Guy." She's like, "Arlan, get it together." It's definitely a scene for some TV show or something. It was so funny. Yeah, that-

AW: Yeah. There was those touchpoints for us. Those touchpoints. Oh, yeah.

AH: There are certain people that I can be smooth, smooth, smooth. But, man, there are certain people. It also happens with members of the General Hospital cast. I love General Hospital. 

AW: Really? Okay.

AH: I live in L.A. Yes. 

AW: I'm a General Hospital person, too, and I've had the opportunity to interview a bunch of them. One of my prized possessions is a photo with me and Maurice Benard, and it's makes me very happy.

AH: Yeah?

AW: Yep.

AH: There you go. See, and his book is amazing, isn't it?

AW: It really is.

AH: His book is so, so good. It's the only reason I think I was able to hear it, to read it, is because it was on Audible. His rendition of it, his reading of it-

AW: Stunning.

AH: I mean, I've been watching this show for 20 years, but his reading of it made me understand him and appreciate him in such a different way, and it's so good. It reminded me of Bruce Springsteen, who has an amazing autobiography, of course, Born to Run. It's like, I don't know, 40 hours long. [Editor’s note: it’s 18 hours long] You have to really dedicate some time to it. But his reading of it makes it what it is. It's that textured voice and that really getting into it. I've listened to both on Audible, the Born to Run, Bruce Springsteen, and the Maurice Benard, Nothing General About It. I think he did exactly the right tone.

AW: Yeah. Are you listening to anything right now that you're loving?

AH: Yes, I am. Let me look at it really quick because I want to make sure that the last thing I have ... Let's give me a second.

Oh, yeah, so the last things I downloaded were a lot of Chris Guillebeau’s books. He wrote The $100 Dollar Startup and 100. And The. Money Tree is his new book, and so I interviewed him for something else and learned all about him. I was like, "I want to get all of your books physically, and I'm going to listen to all of your books on Audible." Then Contagious, which is like a marketing book that I just downloaded. I think Leah Remini, her book was so well written. 

AW: Oh, yes.

AH: Is there a category for awards for the reading of books? Because I think there's so many that are being overlooked. I don't know. Is there like a Grammy or something?

AW: Well, there's definitely a Grammys for spoken word that these can fall into.

AH: Oh, good.

AW: But there's also the Audie Awards, which are just all audiobooks across different genres and narrations, so, yeah. 

AH: Oh, that's awesome. I always go back to Oprah's What I Know of Sure. I listen to that. Oprah's another one where I have to listen to it rather than read it because it's Oprah. It's Oprah's voice and makes it totally different.

AW: All the intonations. Yes.

AH: Yes. It's Oprahhhh! Yes. That What I Know For Sure book, it just inspires me every time I listen to certain chapters. I listen to the whole thing, and then I go back and just listen to certain chapters that'll resonate with me. I'm downloading probably once a week at least, at least. I have a lot of things on preorder so I'll just get these great surprises like, "Oh, look at that."

AW: It's up. I love that. I'm almost tempted, I want to take it on as a challenge to find a fiction book that you would also love in audio. I know that's not your jam.

AH: Oh, you know? Yeah. Well, it's not that I don't listen to any. What I loved, The Kite Runner.

AW: Oh, yes.

AH: Someone gave that to me. I read The Kite Runner and then The Alchemist. Those two I liked a lot. I like things that have like a parable — even if it is sort of religious or has some sort of spirituality to it. That is not usually my jam. It's definitely, I like things that have a storyline through and help your resilience and help kind of inspire you. I'm good with those, so, yeah. I think The Kite Runner and The Alchemist were really great.

AW: Well, both great choices. I love it. What was it like for you to narrate your book? What was that process?

AH: Oh, to narrate it.  Well, I really wanted to do the narration. I was really glad that I was able to do it. First of all, I'll say that I don't know if this is vain or not, but I made sure that I recorded this in a studio that had my first name. There's a studio called Arlan Studios in Austin, Texas. It's like an old school studio. It's used for a lot of South by Southwest events and just Brené Brown, I know, has used it, and that's where I found out about it. 

I was super-comfortable because I was excited about the narrative of where I was recording. Their crew and my director was so great and so felt very comfortable. I had never done that before although I've had multiple podcast episodes that I've recorded, so I had a little bit understanding of how my voice comes across. But I've never read a book through audibly. It went well. I mean, we kind of stopped when I needed to. My voice tends to give out after a few hours just because I talk so much. 

But we knew when to stop and we'd pick back up the next day. The director and the engineer both said that I recorded really fast for what they were expecting. I don't want to brag, but the engineer said he had done 15 or so books and that mine was the top, was his favorite so far. But probably he was just saying it to everybody, but I believed him, and I will stick to that story.

AW: They do not bullshit you, so I think you can own that.

AH: Yeah, it's true. 

AW: I think you can own that.

AH: Yeah, he made me feel very confident because I said to him after because he gave such great feedback. I said, "Do you think a lot of men would get a lot out of this book." He said, "Oh, anyone who wants to achieve something great will get something out of this." I was just like, "Oh, cool. Okay. That's really cool to hear." 

AW: That is great. It's got to be particularly gratifying because even with me, part of the intro talks about you being a black queer woman. That leads the narrative half of the time. Do you find that you have to be like, "Also, I'm a pretty damn good leader and I make money"?

AH: Other stuff. Yeah. I think I went through that period of time, a sort of angsty period of time where I was like, "Stop talking about me being homeless. Stop talking about this and quantifying this and that." Then I realized just how much of an impact it has on so many people when I, again, come to the table authentically myself. Because there's never been a day where I was not proud to be a lesbian. There's never been a day where I was not proud to be Black or a woman, so I've come to the conclusion that it's going to follow me everywhere and for as long as I can think into the future. As long as it is helping someone else to hear that or see themselves represented and reflected back to them, then I will do it. It's almost like it would be very precious of me to be too caught up on that. 

AW: I get that. I feel the frustration for you. I know. I can imagine. I just would want to lead with all my success, but I love that you get the impact because that representation is everything. I'm also continually floored that you had to work on your public speaking because it seems so natural for you. I know that you made a very concerted effort to make it that way, and so that is part of your story of getting to success.

AH: It definitely is. I spend a lot of time in the book talking about both to conquering stage fright after 36 years and making sure that I knew my worth when it came to speaking fees and how that has changed things as well. Because both things, I think, will apply to a lot of people. Fifty percent or so of the population is supposed to be apparently have stage fright, are afraid of speaking publicly. I definitely was one of them. 

That, I think, most people were surprised, too, back then. That was part of what was making it hard for me because I really did have debilitating stage fright. Everyone's feedback to me was, "Oh, well, you're just so well-spoken and you're so personable. You're going to be fine." That just triggered me more because it was like, but that's the expectation is I think what's causing the physical shakes and all of that. That's what's causing me to think that's a block, and it was this expectation of me being really good at it. Then it was like, "What if I'm not? What if I'm disappointing you, the person who came to see me, because you have these high, highs hopes?" Then it was what if I freeze because I am so nervous and I freeze, and it's embarrassing and that compounds on itself and dah, dah, dah. 

Back then I used to, I mean, it was just like deer in the headlights. Then it was just physically, I just physically would shake and my voice would shake, and I wouldn't be able to move correctly. It was just really bad. I talk about it in the book how step-by-step over, I guess it was a six-month period, that I went from, "I will not speak in front of 30 people. I will not introduce myself at this dinner party," because it's too nerve-racking. To, "Oh, great. I'm going to go ahead and keynote 150 events for the next couple of years, let’s say." I think the largest audience I spoke in front of so far has been 20,000.

AW: It's amazing.

AH: It's incredible. To me, it's almost like the drinking. It's like I never would have imagined that this would be going into my 40th year, I would have this freedom that I thought for sure would just be something that would be holding me back for the rest of my life and laid out in the book the exact ways that I conquered it. It started with it being my decision. That was the very first step, so you can get that right away. It had to be my decision. It had to be, "I can get this right." My steps in my book are like, "Okay, this is what you do. Start today and then day three do this." 

Because I know for sure that me telling you to do it is not going to help you. It can give you my experience and you can try. People have already written me to say that they have started with their public speaking different saying yes to things, and it's really cool. 

AW: I can literally talk to you endlessly about so many more things in this book. But I'm going to wrap on talking to you about money because it is such a fraught issue. So many of us don't understand even basic finance. Then looking at venture capitalist and saying that that is so beyond me. What is your advice for people who think, "I can't even see myself in this space in this world. Angel investor what?" What do you have for that person who needs to know that this is approachable?

AH: Yeah. I don't think everyone necessarily needs to get into venture capital. It's a very specific place. I think there's more representation that needs to be there. If you're interested at all, I would encourage you to represent, but angel investing to me, I kind of half joke this all the time. But it's really serious. I say I became a venture capitalist so that I could become an angel investor. Because I was broke and I had no money and I wanted to have a career that afforded me the ability to one day have enough money to be an angel investor. That's what it's kind of come to at this point.

Angel investing doesn't have to be you put $10,000 or $100,000 behind a company that becomes Twitter. That is just the media version of it. Angel investing today because of so much work that was done by Obama and so much work that was done by thousands of people beyond Obama all through the Jobs Act and all sorts of regulations. Angel investing can be you put a hundred dollars behind a crowdfunding campaign that is similar to what you would understand with Kickstarter. But instead of getting a T-shirt or a tote bag, you would get equity in the company as part of the crowd. 

There's a portfolio company of ours who just closed on a million dollars against ... made history twice ... a million dollars crowdfunding to about 2,000 angels. It started at $250, and now if she takes this to where she wants it to go and it does well, they will have some sort of upside to it. They're not going to be billionaires off of a $250 investment, but along the way they're learning about all sorts of financial things that have given them the education. It's almost worth the price of admission for that, just to have the education that she's able to give them and being part of something and being part of pushing a black woman-led company, a hardware company and an AI company forward. How amazing is that feeling and that ability that we now have? 

You don't have to be rolling in it. If you are someone who's an accredited investor who makes $200,000 a year or $300,000 with your spouse in the U.S., you are able to invest more per year. There are regulations around like a cap of how much you can invest per year. You need to look that up. But you can invest now in the thousands. Maybe are someone who is in your 40s and you have worked at in a certain industry for 15 years, 20 years. You not only want to see some return on your investment, but you also want to be able to instill some of that experience and that insight into an up-and-coming company, or a lead executive team. Your angel investment, your $5,000, your $10,000, which is what I dabble in with my angel investments, that is that entrance into like, "Let me leave a little bit of legacy here. Let it not just be about a transaction." 

Those can happen locally, too, which I think a lot of people are into this regional [idea]. I know angel investors in Minneapolis and Miami and the North in the Carolinas and Texas and in Portland, Oregon. I know angel investors all over the country who get together, and maybe there are five or six of them in the same boat. Maybe they'll put, each of them, will put 2,000 to give an entrepreneur 10,000. Maybe it's not even someone who is younger necessarily than them. It could be someone who is the same age or older, but they just want empower them and give them the tools.

Because when it comes down to it, money is only part of the formula for success. At my fund, Backstage, we put in checks between $25,000, $100,000, still small in the venture space. But there's a company, for instance, that went from doing $10,000 in monthly recurring revenue to now they were able to turn down a $400,000 investment on Shark Tank because they knew their value.

AW: Wow.

AH: They have generated about six and a half million dollars in top-line revenue, in the last three years. We came in super-early. We were like you're mixing hair products out of your kitchen in Chicago. It was a black couple. But you have to have the $10,000. I just thought, "That's so interesting that you're able to do that. I really think that's something." What would probably be a great investment for an angel at that time because these larger funds are just not going to see it. They're just not going to be able to see it. 

Then imagine three years later, that company's doing millions of dollars where they can turn down a shark. It's just that impact is so much more important than the money. Because we took them under our wing and we introduced them to mentors and so on, and we opened our network to them. That's just fulfilling in a way that I just want more people to understand. 

Now, please do research, and please go into it with some sort of counsel. Don't throw all the money that you can afford away in one calendar year. Take it slow, and do a lot of research just like I tell our entrepreneurs.

AW: I love it. That's back to your idea of leaving legacy and having that impact.

AH: Yeah, absolutely.

AW: Which is something we need to do. Arlan, thank you so much for spending the time with us and talking about this. Again, there are topics I would love to get into. The adultification of young black girls, of the education system, all of these things. But I am going to just tease that out for the people who need to listen to this book, and I believe that's everybody, so thank you.

AH: Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.