Black Wealth Renaissance was started to normalize black wealth and share resources and financial education to help attain and maintain generational wealth. It was started by four college friends Kelly Rhodes, Jalen Clark, David Bellard, and Jared Spiller. After becoming more interested in personal finance, they noticed a lack of basic financial education in their communities and set out to address the issue by creating a platform dedicated to highlighting positive relatable examples and spreading useful information.
Tell us about who you are and what you do.
We are Black Wealth Renaissance, a group of four friends from college (David Bellard, Jared Spiller, Jalen Clark, & Kelly Rhodes). We are on a mission to educate our people about financial literacy while providing the tools and resources needed to build and maintain wealth. The way we go about educating the masses is through our social media platforms and podcasts. We have been able to build an organic social media following of 300K at the time of this interview. Our team has been able to transform complex topics such as real estate investing, stock investing, and personal credit into simple concepts that can be understood on all levels. You can check out our social media pages on Instagram @blackwealthrenaissance or twitter @bwr_movement. In addition to the pages, we also have the Black Wealth Renaissance Podcast (@bwrpodcast). Our podcast has been able to consistently rank in the Top 50 Apple Business Podcast charts. We share the stories of successful African American Entrepreneurs providing our community with positive examples of excellence and success. You can listen to our podcast (Black Wealth Renaissance) on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Youtube, and many more platforms.
Tell us how you created this brand and what was the sole idea behind it.
Black Wealth Renaissance started as a passion project back in October of 2018. One day while conversing about the new information they learned that day, Jared and David decided to create an Instagram page that would be different from what we were seeing on our timelines.
Earlier that year, we were exposed to the world of financial literacy and we immersed ourselves in the information. We began to do our research and learned of the many advantages of ownership, the concept of cash flow, and other personal finance lessons that we were never taught in school.
It was truly mind-boggling — it took for all of us to graduate college for us to learn something so integral to our everyday lives. From that point, we were immediately convinced that we needed to find a way to share this information with our people and felt like social media was our best avenue.
We noticed that a lot of people were posting about financial literacy & generational wealth, but there weren’t enough people sharing helpful examples. Too often African Americans are overrepresented in the media in a negative light. This can lead many of our people to believe that it’s impossible for us to reach our goals. For that reason, it is important to us that we take control of this narrative. Our solution to this problem was to create our own positive media outlet to share the stories of successful African American business owners & investors and educate the black masses on the many lessons that we wish we were taught in school.
We started out on Instagram by making sure to post 4 times a day placing an emphasis on community and providing value and we were able to grow our following to over 200k before the end of last year. Our goal is to normalize black wealth by providing the content & sharing the tools needed to help on your journey to building and maintaining generational wealth.
Currently, we are building out a webinar series designed to help people get started on their individual journey to financial freedom, our initial 8-week series will be the beginning of our BWR Academy platform that we intend to roll out later this year.
In addition to the webinar series, we are also launching an initiative to help ease the strain of families affected during the COVID-19 pandemic by supplying students in need with access to the technology they need for distance learning. We understand that this pandemic has affected everyone differently and we wanted to use our platform to show how we can make a positive impact on those around us together.
Jalen Clark, Chris Williams, Jared Spiller, Kelly Rhodes, David Bellard
Go in detail and tell us about how your brand works.
Many view Black Wealth Renaissance as an educational media outlet. The way we curate our content has been one of our biggest reasons for our success and organic growth. Our content strategy is built around providing valuable and actionable information surrounding finance and entrepreneurship in a relevant way that isn’t boring or difficult to understand. We often find video content of celebrities speaking about their investments and business endeavors showing their fans a side of them they may not be famous for. Showing celebrities on our platform is what catches most attention, but the real value on our page comes from your everyday Black Entrepreneur. We have been able to share the stories of countless successful African-American entrepreneurs, real estate investors, and stock market gurus on our platform. This type of content shows our followers that you do not have to be a celebrity, athlete, dope boy, or whatever else that may be glamorized in today’s society to be considered successful as a Black person in this society.
Through building our large audience we have been able to monetize our social media platforms in a few ways, one of the most impactful being running ads on our page. We give black entrepreneurs a way to advertise their products and services to a larger audience allowing them to increase their brand awareness & boost their sales. We try to give tips and pointers on how to increase post engagement and activity to our clients that book with us. We want to provide as much value as we can to anyone who comes in contact with our platform.
Our brand has also grown through our podcast that we launched in March 2019. On our podcast, we interview successful Black entrepreneurs and investors across various sectors of business to share their knowledge and experience with the everyday Black entrepreneur. Our previous guests include Hope Wiseman (the youngest woman to own a dispensary in the US), Josh Childress (former NBA star turned Team Owner & Serial Investor), & former NCAA football phenom Ryan Broyles who has since turned his NFL paycheck into a significant real estate portfolio.
What is your giveaway idea through this interview?
We want the readers to know that Black Wealth Renaissance is here to show and express the mindset shift that needs to happen in the African American community. We believe that in order to see the change you have to be the change and that’s exactly what our motive is. We want to normalize wealth in the black community through teaching, and showing individuals that have succeeded in creating generational wealth. We want to show everyone that it’s possible to be black and wealthy, no matter what route you take in life. We want to inspire our followers and listeners to be the change in their communities. First, listen and understand the knowledge that we are spreading through our platform then teach others financial literacy. We want to spark change in this world and to do that we need the help of our followers to spark the change in not only themselves but also their communities.
David Bellard, Kelly Rhodes, Ronsanto Cole, Jalen Clark, Jared Spiller
Explain the challenges you went through while you were working on brand creation. What are the challenges you go through on an everyday basis?
Creating Black Wealth Renaissance was not an easy task, to say the least. It took a lot of time and effort to create a platform that many see as influential in the online community. On top of just creating the platform, 2 of the founders (Jared, Kelly) live hundreds of miles apart. Running a business with partners living so far apart can create a lot of hurdles to get over. This challenge has ultimately created strength in our business because now with COVID 19 becoming a serious pandemic we didn’t have to change anything in our business regarding social distancing. This has helped us tremendously in this tough time and we want to continue showing other businesses how they can continue to strive in these times with everyone working from home.
Another challenge that presents itself in our business is making tough decisions. Having 4 owners is great for ideas, strategic planning, and delegating operations, but can be difficult when everyone is not in agreement with decisions. As we continue on our entrepreneur journey we have learned that this is part of business, not everyone is going to agree, its human nature. This challenge has allowed us to learn how to work together and has made our bond as friends and as business partners stronger. Black Wealth Renaissance approaches challenges as a way for us to grow as a business and as a unit. A Lot of times entrepreneurs believe they will go from point A to point Z in a smooth transition but truth be told there’s a lot of ups and downs that allow you and your business to grow and we feel Black Wealth Renaissance has been a great benefactor of this type of growth.
How do you manage your finances through the services you offer? Any fundings etc received?
Everything about Black Wealth Renaissance was boot-strapped. This journey to spread financial literacy started as a passion project and was monetized later, so any upstart cost came from us. We’re also strategically placed to be able to benefit from social media and monetize it without a need for many physical products or much overhead. This allowed us to build a genuine relationship with our audience with information rather than sales pitches.
In addition to being boot-strapped, BWR also has been reinvesting 100% of our profits to help grow and scale our business. This all money in the mentality of the group is based on the concept of delayed gratification in order to achieve a greater goal. While it has been challenging, we all understand the importance of sacrificing in the short term so that we can scale the business faster without injecting outside capital.
Tell us your future vision about the brand. How far do you want to take it? What is your dream about taking it to the next level?
We want to be a household name/network when you think finance, entrepreneurship, and black excellence. We want you to think Black Wealth Renaissance anytime those topics are mentioned. In the future, we would like to see Black Wealth Renaissance become a hub of various education and entertainment products and services. A network you can watch or listen to and find actionable information to change your life and examples of people that look like us teaching you how.
What message would you like to give to anybody who has a plan of creating something of their own and making a living through it?
Self-education is the first step. No one is coming to save you from financial ruin. You alone are responsible for your future success or failure. Once you understand what you want to do and how to do it the rest is just getting it done.
Company name: Black Wealth Renaissance
Website URL : www.blackwealthrenaissance.com
Instagram URL : www.instagram.com/blackwealthrenaissance
