Generating Income for Tomorrow (GIFT) has been prolific since their founding in 2020 — and their impact on black-owned businesses has been strong. In this week’s show, Co-Founder and CEO Brandon Calloway talks with us about growing GIFT and changing lives. In this week’s marketing tip, is your company telling a story worth re-telling?
Transcript:
Welcome to the Small Business Miracles Podcast. I’m Jeff Randolph.
This small business podcast is brought to you by EAG Advertising and Marketing.
We’re going to talk about marketing. We’re also here to celebrate entrepreneurs.
We have marketing news and advice that business owners can use to keep moving forward.
This week we’re talking with Brandon Calloway. He’s the CEO and co-founder of Generating Income for Tomorrow.
You know, GIFT. But first, we’ve got another small business marketing tip to talk about.
We’re getting into your business
In today’s marketing tip, make sure your company is telling a story that’s worth retelling.
There are a lot of digital technologies out there that will help tell a great story for you.
Like the people who leave reviews on Google or on social media sites or on Yelp.
And algorithms for popular sites like those will boost you up or down in the ratings as a result of what they’re saying.
Now, even if you’re paying to advertise on Google in a paid search environment,
your ratings still come into play as a waiting factor because Google wants to make sure that they’re giving a potential customer the best information.
And that’s even when you’re paying for placement. Your reviews matter.
Now, then we bring AI into the picture and AI starts to read about your website story and the review sites give people a narrative about your company.
And AI factors that in. So much technology out there trying to tell a story about you.
And that’s good or bad. But no matter how good those technologies are at making recommendations,
you will still turn to family and friends for recommendations and advice.
So we have to make sure that the product or service or the experience that you’re creating for your customers is worthy of great storytelling by them.
You want them to tell your story. So focus on the experience you provide.
And that is going to have a downstream impact on what the technologies are telling people about you.
But more importantly, it gives the people surrounding your next customer a reason to sing your praises and tell your story.
Make that worthwhile. And that is our marketing tip for this week.
All right, we’re here in our featured interview section.
I am here with Brandon Calloway. Brandon is the CEO and co-founder of Generating Income for Tomorrow.
Brandon, welcome to the show. Hey, thanks for having me. We’re happy to have you here.
So gift is what that shortens down to generating income for tomorrow.
Why don’t you tell us give us a sense of what gift is if this is the first time people are hearing about it.
Tell us tell us all about it. Yeah. Yeah.
We are a nonprofit organization, Flapple Cpublic charity.
We raise money, obviously, and we provide grants as well as all types of technical support to black owned businesses on the east side of Kansas City,
specifically to help them grow, scale and create jobs so that those jobs have an economic impact on the east side,
reducing Kansas City’s racial wealth gap. Right.
Kansas City is one of hyper segregated cities.
And that was the result of redlining the longstanding systemic racist practices.
And so we take the approach of that.
We need to be aggressive and intentional about putting money back into the community because years ago, decades ago,
they were aggressive and intentional about draining money from the community. Oh, for sure.
Yeah. And decades ago is like that’s not very far away.
That was decades ago. Yeah.
So let’s let’s see if we can’t be intentional about that.
Right. Still tell me about some of the the impact from gift because you have helped a number of black owned businesses with grants so far.
Tell us a little bit about that.
Like maybe even name names like give us give us a sense of who we’re talking about and what you’ve been able to do.
Yeah, absolutely. So we’re relatively young organization.
Right. So we were founded in May May th of
And so we’re coming up on five being five years old.
Yeah. So in that time frame, we have given out one point eight million dollars to around seventy five different black owned businesses on the east side of Kansas City.
We have spent another about one point five million on the technical assistance that goes along with those grants.
And those businesses have seen growth of around an average growth of two hundred and nine percent average revenue growth.
But they’ve also created one hundred and thirty five new jobs on the east side of Kansas City.
Outstanding. Right. Yeah. And and then that half of our program, you know, we have a business center, which is another really big part of our program.
And so the idea there being that we can’t give it grants out to everybody, but the technical assistance is so valuable.
Yeah, right. And so we have a seventy five hundred square foot business center on th and Prospect,
which provides free legal accounting, marketing, business coaching in a one on one setting completely for free.
And we’ve had that’s been around for two years.
And so we’ve had one thousand five hundred and ten different individuals come through that business center made up around forty eight hundred appointments at the other business center.
So we get a lot of traffic and then those businesses have grown, increased their revenue.
And so we have one business is a therapy business.
So she’s an individual where she was an individual therapist.
And she came in and was going through a lot of the business coaching and by taking what she learned through business coaching and implementing that plan,
she grew her revenue from fifteen hundred a month to ten thousand dollars a month.
And that’s that’s solely without a grant from us.
That’s just the education part.
Yeah, the education portion that she got completely for free at the business center.
And I think she had somewhere between four or five different business coaching appointments.
And so it was completely open and accessible for anybody to come in.
And then what our grant program, you know, we are a great example of what we are trying to do and what we are around for as a business called Hall Pros Hall Pros.
They got a twenty five thousand dollar grant from GIFT back in January of twenty twenty one.
And it was really, really good business.
You know, they trucking and moving company, they had magnificent word of mouth.
And so they were they were getting calls and calls and calls, but they only had one truck.
Oh, yeah. There’s there’s there’s a limitation.
Exactly. That’s right. There’s a constraint. Exactly.
So they were turning away a whole bunch of business.
Oh, yeah. And even though they had good, good business,
they also didn’t have good back office system and structures in place.
Right. So he was cash out on all his employees because, you know, he had a bunch of jobs and he had, you know, people that he needed to help him do these jobs.
But he didn’t understand how to do a payroll system.
And so we gave him twenty five thousand dollars to buy it by another truck, hire a couple more employees so he can start immediately taking away, taking those jobs that he was turning away.
The other thing that we do is when we give them a grant, we give them a year’s worth of business coaching.
So we pay somebody on our staff to actually be a business coach for them for a year.
We pay our bookkeeper to do their books for a year.
We provide them with a lawyer. We also give them a small business marketing package.
And so we we were able to help him get a payroll set up, get an accounting system set up.
And he grew from having eight thousand dollars in revenue per quarter to one hundred and one thousand dollars in revenue per quarter.
And that was that was within months.
And so now he’s up to over a half a million dollars a year in revenue.
He has he’s hired new full time employees and he’s actually started doing free moves for residents of the new house domestic violence shelter.
And so not like not only he’s been able to access other microloan money now,
so where he wasn’t able to get that access to capital prior prior to us,
we actually helped him grow, scale, provide the infrastructure so that he is able to get that and having even a bigger impact.
I know he’s done some moves for some of the constituents of Casey Tenants,
just being able to to see how just the investment in this business grows,
scales, creates those jobs on the East Side that we’re trying to create so we can directly facilitate a close of the racial wealth gap
while also having all of these other positive ripple effects throughout the city.
Yeah, this everything you’ve said sounds to me like it’s working like that’s that spectacular.
It’s not just the right infusion of cash when you need it.
It’s the coaching. It’s being able to give them the baseline, that foundation that will serve them forever.
That sounds outstanding. Yeah, absolutely.
You know, when it comes to the access to capital, you know, just in black businesses in general,
we’re often over mentored and under capitalized.
And so the mentorship is great. The mentorship is important.
But when we launched GIF, we launched with we need to lead with money.
We can’t teach people how to manage fictional money. Fictional money.
Right. That doesn’t do any good. No, it does not.
No, it does not. Right.
And so by providing them with the resources to actually launch their plans and not launch the business,
the business is already up and going, but they have a revenue generating plan just like Hall Pros did.
Well, if we just have this other truck, we could do this, this, this and we need to increase revenue.
So help them launch in a plan like that while also providing them all of the support necessary.
Those two things together.
We know that we can’t just provide the money without the support, but too often people try to provide just the support without the money.
And so those two things together are really the things that move the needle.
And our business center is an example of how we can provide support without the grant funding to help businesses grow.
But our business center success stories aren’t at the same scale of our grant receiving success stories.
And we have a strong model of when we raise more money, we do we do more good, right?
We give out more grants. So so, yeah, we really, really excited about the program.
We always tweaking and fine tuning the program to ways that continue to provide most benefit.
Yeah. Well, and it sounds like, though, you know, if if you if you’re a business and you don’t if if the grant isn’t ready,
isn’t right for you this year or if, you know, it’s just not available yet for you,
the business center is is still a great resource to have. Absolutely. Absolutely.
We have a ton of resources at the business center. OK.
So, yeah, please don’t don’t don’t wait. Get get there.
Be in contact with them immediately.
Tell me a little bit about your fundraising model, because I’ve seen some communications from you to people asking for some cash at the same time.
You know, on the Web site, you’re you’re getting good corporate sponsorship.
You’re getting partners from from all different aspects of business.
But but those individual donations, I’m noticing that you’re asking for, you know, just ten dollars a month.
If you can commit to that, that that ten dollar amount and having that strategy of asking for smaller amounts on an ongoing basis from from donors seems very, very intentional.
Talk talk a little bit about that, that strategy. Yeah, absolutely.
You know, we we when we launched, we launched with no credibility.
Well, yeah, very much so. You didn’t have a grant from GIFT to be able to work with.
No, you had to build your own. Right.
And in fact, I mean, we we didn’t we had a grant from no one.
We launched with no corporate support, no foundation support.
And, you know, the story behind the creation and launch of GIFT is that me and my two co-founders are in this Facebook group, B.O.B.K.C.
specifically talking about support black owned businesses.
And one of my co-founders made a post in the group saying, man, it’s fifteen thousand of us right here in this group.
You know, I’m tired of hearing about, you know, all of the stuff that we don’t have.
If everybody puts in ten dollars a month, we can take that money and grow black businesses ourselves.
And so that was kind of the birth of the the initial idea of GIFT.
Right. And so we took that the three of us came together, you know, developed a plan
and developed a program and really led with the message of, you know,
we don’t we don’t have to we don’t have to be a millionaire.
You don’t have to, you know, donate five hundred, five thousand fifty thousand dollars in order to actually contribute to meaningful impact.
Right. And everybody puts in ten dollars a month.
If everybody, you know, joins in and we can have collective community impact.
And it also is true that if we did not get that collective community impact, we wouldn’t be sitting here talking.
No, no, we wouldn’t. We would be talking. We might be.
We’d be talking about something different. We’d be talking about something completely different.
But the individuals that signed up to donate ten dollars a month is what that’s what started GIFT.
That’s what got us to be able to grow to give out that one point eight million dollars to help those businesses create those one hundred and thirty five jobs.
And we know that there because the racial wealth gap is in Kansas City is vast.
We need to continue to grow to take a bigger chunk out of that.
And so we, you know, we are not at fifteen thousand people donating ten dollars a month yet.
And our goal is to get to that so that we are able to actually have that impact at scale.
And while we do have corporate support now, we do have foundation support now
that the individuals are the thing that drives us the most and allows us to do what we do.
They feel our work. Yeah, that’s that’s the backbone. That’s the foundation.
And, you know, getting if if I’ve put in ten dollars a month, the return on that seems to be very apparent.
Like it’s easy to see that your your gift is having a real impact and making something memorable happen.
So it’s it’s a great it’s a great way to start with that community involvement.
So bang up job. Well done. Well done. We say we love it.
We’d love to see that kind of thing in our community.
And speaking of of our community, you you have have given several grants to people that we’ve had on the podcast.
Oh, yeah. They’ve you know, I’ve talked to many people so far and each one of them on our podcast had to go through the lightning round.
Are you ready for the lightning round?
I’m absolutely ready for the light. See, there’s no no no fear, no fear at all.
They’ve had to answer these questions. We switch them up all the time.
But let me let me go into the lightning round.
You have no way to know what kind of thing we may ask.
It’s all designed to figure out who you are and get a different perspective on you.
So I am personally a big fan of lifelong learning.
You started an executive MBA program this summer.
Tell us about that decision to start start an executive MBA program and and what it’s done for you so far.
Yeah. So is this lightning round?
This lightning round. Yeah, you can.
Now you can. It’s shorter.
I don’t know how to do that in one word.
There is no way to do that in one word.
It’s been good. Yeah, it has.
It has been good. Good.
The so when we create a gift, we again, me and my co-founder was really just two of us.
We were volunteers.
We’ve grown. We’ve raised around seven million dollars in this first five years.
And we’ve put a whole bunch of money out into the community.
We’ve grown our staff to nine full time employees.
And so we grew from two volunteers to nine full time employees within five years, actually within four years.
And so I’ve always been really aware that the type of leader that it takes to run a two man volunteer organization
will not be the type of leader that it took to run a three person, you know, full time staff and five person full time staff and nine person.
Evolution needs to happen. Yeah. Right.
And so I’ve always been really intentional about my professional personal professional development
so that the organization does not outgrow me because I still need to be there to help shape the future of the organization.
And so the the EMBA, you know, is actually providing a lot of really quality leadership development for me.
And as we continue to grow and fine tune our programs, it’s also helping me see things from a different perspective
in how we can continue to provide benefits, specifically at our business center to the the businesses that come in looking for that business support.
And so while I don’t I’m not on the ground anymore, directly providing coaching to the to the businesses,
I am still able to, you know, I’m learning a lot of stuff in this EMBA program that I’m actually able to take back to my program team
so that we can increase the quality of our curriculum as well. Outstanding. Yeah. Big, big fan.
Let’s as you think back in in your your past, do you did you have a mentor or a teacher who taught you a lesson
that that sticks with you to this day that you keep coming back to this advice over and over again?
A mentor or teacher that taught me a lesson that sticks with me, I would say, you know,
so my my degree is exercise physiology and I graduated from Avila University.
We should pause for a shout out for Avila University right there.
Yeah. Yeah. And so Dr. Larson was is actually the head of the kinesiology program
over at Avila. And, you know, one of the things Dr. Larson taught me a lot of stuff.
And when I’m running into challenges, he’s actually one of the main people that I can reach out to
and I can call and just sit down with and and get some advice and feedback from from from him.
But Dr. Larson in the in the kinesiology field, we really dealing with the scientific method.
Right. And we’re talking. So one of the things that he’s he drilled into me was that if you’re not testing,
then you’re guessing. Right. That’s good advice.
That is that is solid advice right there. Right.
And so that that really is pertaining to personal training and actually clinical exercise of,
well, if I got pain here, you know, really testing and seeing what the root cause of that pain is.
I’m not testing that and I’m just trying to fix it.
Then I’m making a guess. And then I’m actually guessing what’s going to work.
And I might be I might be making that worse.
And so when it comes to program development, when it comes to the you know,
our fundraising metrics, when it comes to how I operate a business or an organization,
you know, I’ve said to my staff a couple of times if we’re not testing, then we’re guessing.
And that that is a it’s a prevalent thing throughout my life that that caused me to stop
and think really critically and analytically.
Gotcha. No, that is that is that is solid advice that you would get and very applicable across the board.
If if we pop back into gift for a second, what part of the business do you wish you knew more about?
You mean currently? Yeah. Yeah.
What part of the business do I wish I knew more about?
So I think every every founder probably wishes they actually if if not, then you know,
shout out to them because they got a great great handle on it.
Marketing and customer acquisition. Oh, sure.
Mainly because you know, so our customer acquisition is donor acquisition.
And if if we’re not getting new donors and we’re not having any impact on anybody at all.
And so we we have we have been invited to some people in Miami have said
people in like the Miami-Dade County government have said,
oh, well, we would love for gift to come down to Miami and same thing in Maryland and in DC and in St.
Louis. And we we’re prepared. We are planning on on expanding.
But we got to make sure Kansas City is good and stable first.
Yeah. And continuing to grow and gain new donors.
Like I said, we’re not at that fifteen thousand.
Donors, fifteen thousand people donating ten dollars a month.
And that’s a critical, critical point for us.
And so I am always looking and actively seeking to understand that part better.
If you talk to people, they would probably tell you I’m a pretty decent fundraiser.
Yeah. Or they might think I’m a good fundraiser.
And that might be true, but I can always be better.
You can. Yeah, there’s there’s always something more you can you can learn and develop yourself in that in that direction.
And nonprofit organizations historically have had that kind of challenge where here’s my primary target audience.
Here’s here’s the here are the people that I serve.
These are the this this is my audience.
But my donor audience that is critical to serve this one may be totally separate, may be totally different.
And I have to talk to them in a different way. I have to go reach them.
They’re not in the same place. So I can’t reach them with the same communications vehicles.
It’s a it’s a split that happens, you know, pretty frequently.
So, yeah, it’s a that’s that is that is certainly an area to pick up on and see if you can dive in more on.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, marketing. I know a guy we we can talk anyway.
You’re not just a nonprofit executive providing resources to black owned businesses.
You’re also a fan, writer and creator of a number of comic titles through Dark Moon Comics.
Talk about Dark Moon Comics on the role that comics and anime play in your life.
Yeah, I’m huge nerd. Right.
And we treat nerd as a tremendous word.
This is a badge of honor. So please. Yeah, it is.
It is. It absolutely is.
You know, I mean, I grew up watching, you know, Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh, Dragon Ball Z,
Yu-Gi-Oh, Haka show, Inuyasha, like all of all of those kind of classic anime.
And, you know, I if I’m if I’m not doing anything,
the thing that I would prefer to do on most days is sit on my couch,
be left alone and watch anime.
It sounds like a good day. I know it sounds like a solid day.
I know. And I also am somewhat of a workaholic.
And so I often combine the things that I like with business and stuff.
And so, you know, a buddy in my work,
we were just talking one day about how cool it would be if we had our own anime.
And then there are a bunch of online communities.
And so there’s there’s a pretty large community of blurs, right? Black nerds.
And one of the most prevalent things that is a topic of conversation
is the lack of representation in comics and anime for black people.
Right. And so it’s a growing segment of the of the audience.
And the representation is not growing in proportion to the audience.
And so in looking into it, I’m like, man, I can probably write a comic.
And so I actually spent a year learning
how to how to write comics before I actually did it,
because I was so terrified that I was going to write like
he threw the ball like that. Nobody’s going to want to read.
Well, you have to like if and if you love the genre, right?
If this is something that you have passion around, if this is something you love,
you want to do it service, right?
You want to make sure you’re not just going in there and putting some trash out there.
This is this is important. Right. Right. Right.
And so so, yeah, I developed the first one under Darkmoon Comics called Black Spartans.
And so I actually have Black Spartans one, two, three and four that are that are out.
And then just a bunch of other ones.
So Reign of Chaos is the second one, which is some part of this nerddom is video games.
And so you familiar with like Dark Souls or Elden Ring?
A little. A little.
It’s not it’s not my total genre, but a little. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. So that those are the games that I love.
Right. The super hard, you know, frustrating.
It takes you an hour or to beat this one boss.
Yeah. And so I was like, how cool would it be to have a comic book
where a story where a guy gets sucked into a video game world
and happens to be one of those kind of games?
Oh, man, I was hoping it would be something easy.
No. Yeah. Yeah. Good concept.
Right. And so so, yeah, the writing of the comics is is fun.
It’s a it’s a fun experience to sit down and build a world
and come up with a story and create the characters and create the power system
and, you know, figure out the interactions and write the scripts.
It’s a it’s a fun thing. And then to so I’m not an artist.
And so I work with artists.
And so they they they, you know, I’ll give them the script
and then they’ll give me the sketches and then they’ll give me the line art.
Then I’ll give me the colors and then I add the words.
I’m like this, you know, if nobody buys this, it doesn’t matter.
I’m happy. I’m having fun myself. Yeah.
Just well, they say if you, you know, do something you love,
you’ll never work a day in your life.
This is this definitely qualifies you and blurred TV.
You know, there’s YouTube like you’ve got four thousand followers
on on that channel for YouTube as well. Yeah.
And so that that was the evolution kind of a dark of Darkmoon Comics.
You know, like I said, I’m working on it. Yeah.
And so in diving into the indie comic space,
actually found that there are a ton of black comic
readers all around the country. Right.
One of the most famous is
David Crownson. I don’t know if you Harriet Tubman Demon Slayer.
Oh, yeah.
Like same vein as Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter kind of thing.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
So Harriet Tubman Demon Slayer, I think it just got picked up for an anime.
Oh, OK. OK.
And so my point being is that this is a pretty huge space.
Yeah. A whole bunch of people in there.
So I started talking to all of the indie comic creators
and they all have the same goal of like, let’s get this IP
picked up and turned into, you know, an animation or turned into live action.
And then, you know, the best way to sell comics is that comic book convention.
And so in going to the comic book conventions, a lot of people would come
come by the tables of me and other just other creators and say, well,
oh, that looks great.
Let me know when that gets animated.
And, you know, the thing is, if you don’t buy it, it won’t ever get animated.
Yeah. You need to support this so that I can do this.
And so, you know, I took that as OK, the the the producers of this genre,
this medium in this space all have the same goal.
The consumers of it, there’s a there’s a large consumer market
that are interested in it, but won’t act upon it until it actually gets turned
into visual media.
And then the word blurred is also in the urban dictionary.
It is a Webster’s dictionary.
And so it is a growing, I guess, a real growing community.
And so when I looked at it, I thought like, it makes sense from both sides
for there to be like a blurred TV type thing where the creators
can put their content on it and then the consumers can all come into one space
and watch it. Right. So kind of like the Netflix of black anime.
Yeah. Yeah.
It would take a lot of money to build to actually produce all of the anime,
but it would be a pretty profitable and successful thing,
especially because it’s early.
We’re early in the market.
Like the blur community is growing.
This is a demand that they’re asking for.
And there’s no current market like the market exists without a market leader.
And so I looked, I looked on YouTube and Facebook and online to see if there
was anything called blurred TV.com.
And I was like, I can’t believe that this doesn’t exist.
This is my idea now.
Yeah. And so I created it.
I snatched it up.
And I mean, I literally December of is when I created all the stuff.
And in early January of like I’ll run a couple of social ads
and see, see what, what happens in days, you know, followers on,
on Facebook. That’s crazy.
And so, you know, one of the other things of the benefit of being in this
EMBA program is actually giving me different ways of looking at the growth
and scale of a blurred TV.
The challenge is that it takes a, that will take a lot of time and energy in
and of itself. And I kind of got this other thing over here with, well,
sure, it’s a fun and great passion project for sure.
And, and, and something that, you know, I think is needed.
That’s a, it’s a great, it’s a great outlet.
Yeah. So I’m really excited about blurry TV.
It’s something that’s moving, you know, slower and on the side as a really,
you know, focus in on the growth and scale of gift, but, but, but still,
still moving blurry TV at the same time.
And, and is, I’ll make this the last lightning round question.
Is, is that the nerdiest thing we’re likely to find out about you?
Like, or is there something else that’s even nerdier that we don’t know yet?
I’m an open book.
So the nerdiest thing that people would probably say is, so I,
this past year I’ve learned Dungeons and Dragons pretty extensively.
We’re about to have a conversation.
We are about to have a conversation.
Yeah. And so I, you know, I started playing Dungeons and Dragons,
then I learned how to DM.
And then, you know, every quarter at GIF we do staff appreciation and we do team building.
And so I threw out in the staff meeting, like, Hey, wouldn’t it be cool if you guys,
you know, went through Dungeons and Dragons, did a Dungeons and Dragons game.
So I’ll lead it.
And, you know, as you know, the DM, I’m really just, I’m not really in the game.
It’s really, they’re a game.
And so none of them had ever, like they, hey, they didn’t know what Dungeons and Dragons were.
So they asked me, so are we going to be outside? Do I have to?
Do I have to wear a costume? Is this live? No, this is not live.
This is not live action role play. This is, this is theater of the mind.
Yeah. Yeah. Not it.
Right. That’s right. We just go sit at the table.
They said, we just go sit at the, like, do I need to bring a sword?
Like, no, no, you don’t need to do any of that.
Please do not bring weapons. Do not bring weapons.
But it was, it was great. Like they, you know, they, they had to deal with the challenges and problems.
Like there’s a, there’s this big fire giant over here and one of them was like, I’m going to go talk to him.
And everybody’s like, please don’t do that. Don’t go over that by yourself and do this.
So it was a good, like, you know, problem solving and team dynamic thing.
So, so it’s, you know, it’s nerdy, but I still figured out a way to incorporate it.
To work it in. Yes, absolutely.
And they, they, they now ask me when the next time we can play Dungeons and Dragons.
Oh, that’s, you’re just, you’re living the dream. You’re living the dream.
I can’t even, I, I never, I never talk about myself on, on the show really a whole lot because, you know, that gives away too much.
We’re not, we’re not here to talk about me. That’s all right.
I got to tell you. Yeah. I was, I was a player back in, back in the original first edition days of TSR in the s, that kind of thing.
Where, where Gary Gygax was still alive and writing a bunch of content.
And, you know, followed that along until, you know, I was through with, you know, college and everything.
And we’d play every once in a while, but then you take some time off and you work and you have, you know, a family and you do all kinds of other stuff.
And pandemic happened. And I used to play with my brothers and cousins and some other friends of ours from high school.
And, and I was always the DM. I was the, like, you know, lifelong, you know, game master kind of person.
And my cousin calls me during, during the pandemic at the beginning of it and says, you know, we’re all just sitting here.
We could be on zoom and we could get the band back together. And I went, if, oh man, if you can, and they’re on fifth edition at this point, right?
This is this we’ve gone from first edition to fifth. And we, I said, look, if you can get the band back together, I’ll, I’ll run that game.
You bet. Let’s do this. Yeah. And we have been playing every night for the last five years. Oh, I mean, sorry.
Every night, every, every weekend, every, every Saturday night, every Saturday night for the last five years, we, we have this game going and yeah, it’s a tremendous creative.
It’s a yeah. On zoom and, and, you know, use roll and use D and D beyond and everything else. I’ll just shout out all the nerd stuff.
I have a throw out FACO as a concept. No, anyway. Yeah. No, I have a roll account. I have a D and D beyond account.
I’m telling you, this is, I sure didn’t expect to talk about that. I was like, what are they talking about?
Like what are these people? What are these giant nerds over here? Yeah. Yeah. That’s me. I can, I can roll a D with the best of them. Spectacular.
I mean, the funny, the funny thing, you know, I mean, in, in high school, I say I was captain of the varsity football, I was a linebacker in high school. I’m, I’m army as well.
I do a lot of like fighting and like MMA boxing type training. And so there’s like there, there’s a potential to, to look at me and kind of see this really, you know, hyper masculine, right?
Like this bro culture kind of, kind of dude in the, the, you know, D and D and anime. And, you know, I mean, I wear, I have a, I have a D and D shirt with the, with the D on it.
So yeah, I don’t, I don’t hide it. I don’t. I, I stopped. I think I’ve stopped hiding it. I think I’ve really stopped hiding it.
Cause I, cause now you look back and you’ve got all that street cred for the people who like are into it and you go, Hey man, I started out, I can show you my first edition dungeon master’s guide.
Whatever. Let’s just, but, but I, we still feel that need. I think that like you just did to go, you know, but you know, I was in the army and you know, I was pretty cool. I was captain of the, like I was captain of the soccer team.
I’m, I’m not all nerd, but yeah, this is, it’s, it’s, it’s a great creative outlet, but also that you’ve been able to find a way to work that into business and get people to think differently because you know, in business think differently, right?
How do we, how do we go through this and, and you’re, you’re gaming things out. You’re, you’re running a simulation.
Yeah, I did. We did a session with a, with a group and we, we, this is really nerd. We can’t, we came upon a cave of goblins.
Sure. And as you do, we ended up, you know, I ended up negotiating with the goblins and we created a magical ore mining factory that provided us with an insane amount of money.
Yeah. So instead of going in and like killing all of the goblins, like we, you might normally do.
We actually went in and began to negotiate, got some really good roles.
And now, like I, so like you talk about the marrying the two, like even when playing D and D, I created a whole business.
You took your entire group of murder hobos and you said, you know, we’re going to get into, you’re just, you know, shout out to the new bastion rules. That’s what I’m saying. That’s, that’s outstanding.
You know, Brandon, I can’t, I can’t keep you in the lightning round anymore. We will, we will talk D and D nonstop. So let me, let me do this. I’ll close it out.
Where can people find you if they need more information about what you do? If they’re looking for a grant, if they’re looking for business center support, where do they go? What do they, what do they do?
Yeah, come, come to the website. So KansasCityGifts.org.
So it’s important to say that, you know, while our grants are specifically black businesses on the east side of Kansas City that are looking to grow and scale and create jobs, our business center is open for any and everybody period.
Right. And so we have business. So one-on-one business coaching, accounting, marketing, legal, we have website development, we have headshots, product photos, we have a bank inside of there.
And then we have a bunch of classes. I even teach a nonprofit one-on-one class. Right. All of that is a hundred percent free. You can book as many appointments as you want. And it is open to anybody.
So if you go onto our website right now on KansasCityGift.org, click on business center resources, you can book as many appointments. You don’t have to sign up. You know, there’s no login for you to create. We have no barriers.
Just get there. Exactly. Excellent. All right. Brandon Calloway, CEO and co-founder of Generating Income for Tomorrow Gift. Thanks for being with us on the show.
Oh, no problem. Thanks, man.
And that is our show. Thanks so much to our guest, Brandon Calloway, and thank you for listening to the Small Business Miracles podcast. Remember to subscribe, leave us a five star rating and review.
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All right.