Jan 17, 2023
00:00:00 Barney
So, I would just tell people
don't be afraid to start. It doesn't have to be perfect. Just start
with small, little tiny steps that at least you'll feel comfortable
with, and step out of your comfort zone and reach out to somebody
blindly.
00:00:11 Barney
Cold call somebody, send out an
email, like send a DM on Instagram or TikTok to somebody, and just
learn a little bit more about that situation. And before you know
it, you might figure out that, "Hey look, there's an actual
business here. Maybe I can get involved, maybe I can learn
something here."
00:00:30 Christina
The workforce landscape is
rapidly changing, and educators and their institutions need to keep
up. Preparing students before they enter the workforce to make our
communities and businesses stronger is at the core of getting an
education.
00:00:43 Christina
But we need to understand how to
change and adjust so that we can begin to project where things are
headed before we even get there. So, how do we begin to predict the
future?
00:00:55 Salvatrice
Hi, I'm Salvatrice Cummo, Vice
President of Economic and Workforce Development at Pasadena City
College, and host of this podcast.
00:01:03 Christina
And I'm Christina Barsi,
producer and co-host of this podcast.
00:01:07 Salvatrice
And we are starting the
conversation about the future of work. We'll explore topics like
how education can partner with industry, how to be more equitable,
and how to attain one of our highest goals; more internships, and
PCC students in the workforce.
00:01:21 Salvatrice
We at Pasadena City College want
to lead the charge in closing the gap between what our students are
learning and what the demands of the workforce will be once they
enter. This is a conversation that impacts all of us. You, the
employers, the policymakers, the educational institutions, and the
community as a whole.
00:01:41 Christina
We believe change happens when
we work together, and it all starts with having a conversation. I'm
Christina Barsi.
00:01:48 Salvatrice
And I'm Salvatrice Cummo. And
this is the Future of Work.
00:01:54 Salvatrice
Hi everyone, and welcome back to
the Future of Work Podcast. I am your host, Salvatrice
Cummo.
00:01:59 Salvatrice
Today, we will be talking about
Gentefy Incorporated and BLVD MRKT, and what their role is in the
community development within the Los Angeles area. We will also be
talking about the importance of innovation, entrepreneurship, and
how the field has truly evolved in recent years, and what we can do
better to support our entrepreneurs.
00:02:18 Salvatrice
With that said, I am truly
delighted to welcome Barney Santos, CEO, and Founder of Gentefy
Incorporated, and Founder and Managing Partner for the BLVD MRKT.
Barney has spent the last 15 years building and managing new
business ventures in the for-profit, nonprofit, academic, and
corporate sectors.
00:02:38 Salvatrice
His mission has been to truly
inspire and empower the entrepreneurial spirit, one person,
business, and community at a time. He believes that through the
platform of business, the use of creativity, and the strength of
human empathy, it is absolutely possible to accelerate innovation
in all aspects of life.
00:02:57 Salvatrice
Barney, welcome. Thank you so
much for being here with us today.
00:03:03 Barney
Thank you for that intro. I'm
excited. I'm ready to go after that. Damn, I'm fired
up.
00:03:09 Salvatrice
That's all you. That's all you,
Barney.
00:03:12 Barney
Thank you. Yeah, I appreciate
that.
00:03:14 Salvatrice
You're very, very welcome. You
and I have had the pleasure of knowing each other for a very long
time, and dating back years and years and years, and we won't give
everyone that date, because then, they'll know how old we are,
Barney. So, we're not going to do that.
00:03:29 Salvatrice
I know quite a bit about you and
I'm very excited for our listeners to know about your innovations,
your companies, truly what rooted the inspiration of where you are
now in your venture.
00:03:42 Salvatrice
And so, perhaps maybe, we start
with what led you to this work? What led you to the work of
innovation? What excites you about entrepreneurship and community
development, and how did those two things really connect for
you?
00:03:53 Barney
Yeah, interestingly enough, I've
always been an entrepreneur, I think, at heart. There's so many
studies that show that parents who are entrepreneurial essentially,
breed entrepreneur kids.
00:04:05 Barney
And so, I think my family, being
immigrants and hustling when they came to this country informally,
showed me what it was like to live in that world of like kind of
like sort of eating what you hunt as a business
person.
00:04:19 Barney
And so, yeah, that has always
been something that was caked into me. My examples, I won't go too
deep into sort of like all the stuff I've done as a kid. But I
think fast-forward to kind of like I'll always remember the person
who implanted in my brain that I could be someone in
entrepreneurship and innovation, and that I can use that as a
vehicle.
00:04:39 Barney
It was Dr. Virginia Green. I was
a student at Cal State Los Angeles and I remember I took an
innovation class and it was such an eye-opening experience because
she was talking about entrepreneurship and innovation, and the
expansion of my mind into places that like, wow - I always saw
myself as someone who questioned everything.
00:04:58 Barney
I was like always questioning
people, places, things, systems. I mean, I would get in trouble as
like a young Catholic boy because I would be like, "Why do I have
to confess to the priest when I can just talk to God?" So, I was
always questioning stuff.
00:05:10 Barney
And in college in this class, I
mean I'll always remember, I specifically asked her like, "Hey,
like do you think this is something that I can do or something ..."
And she just gave me the full like validation that I needed to kind
of think that, "Oh man, this is something for
me."
00:05:24 Barney
And so, using that as like a
force of inspiration, I just kind of dove into it. I mean, I've
always been entrepreneurial, but like it was that moment that I
thought of myself as someone who was an entrepreneur. I always saw
myself as like a side hustler or small business owner that just
kind of did things out of necessity.
00:05:41 Barney
Not necessarily out of like
mindfulness to want to be an entrepreneur or an innovator, or even
label yourself as that. And so, it wasn't until that moment and
now, taking my experience as an entrepreneur, thinking myself more
as like, "Okay, how does someone who thinks creatively about
opportunities and problems and solving them as an innovator," and
then also the idea of community, all those things
merged.
00:06:04 Barney
My mother was a community worker
in King/Drew Medical Center, always working with the community,
always helping people out. So, that love of the community was born
from my mother, entrepreneurship born from my family. And then this
idea of me being someone who could blend all that together, was
born out of my education and just experience. So, I just love
merging all three of those things because it's a beautiful thing
that I feel really comfortable in.
00:06:27 Salvatrice
For sure. And I've seen it and
I've witnessed it. And I think that now with what you're doing with
Gentefy and BLVD MRKT, like is it fair to say that that
encapsulates or it thumbs up kind of like your journey leading up
to this point? Like BLVD MRKT is truly what you've been working
through your entire life in kind of connecting community,
entrepreneurship, innovation, design thinking, and your
experiences.
00:06:51 Barney
Yeah, I never thought about it
until I was in school at USC when we were going to program
together. And I was interviewed by Lloyd Greif, the guy who
basically funded the Lloyd Greif Center. I remember him telling me
like ... because he sat down with me and was like, "Tell me about
your life story." I was like "From the beginning?" He was like,
"Yeah, tell me everything."
00:07:10 Barney
So, I explained my whole life to
the guy and he was just like, "Oh, I can see how this project is a
perfect marriage of who you are as a person and all the experiences
you've had from growing up in this neighborhood to working at Cal
State Los Angeles, working with entrepreneurs, and young
entrepreneurs, and innovation and seeing how entrepreneurship can
build you as a person and help build wealth and build economic
strength, and also community development."
00:07:33 Barney
And he nailed it. This company
that we're building, my wife and I, Gentefy, is a perfect sort of
force for us to push our values and beliefs as humans. So, it's a
perfect vehicle for that. And so, BLVD MRKT is one of the childs
that was born from that. Alchemy Craft is another that is born from
that. The incubator business is another one that's being born from
that consulting that we do.
00:07:55 Barney
Everything that we do is a
perfect like confluence of values and beliefs based on who we are
as people. So, I'm excited about like continuing to do all that in
business.
00:08:04 Salvatrice
Share with our listeners what
that looks like. You know, what does it look like for Gentefy
through the births of these other businesses? What does that
engagement with the community look like?
00:08:16 Barney
Yeah, well the mission for
Gentefy is to invest in people, places, and programs with the idea
of unlocking this creative energy within Latino entrepreneurs in
Latino communities to sort of meet the demands of those
neighborhoods.
00:08:31 Barney
And so, for us, knowing that
that's our North Star - we want to invest in people, places, and
programs, what does that look like? So, every business that we sort
of try to get involved with has to have some sort of lens of
community aspect or helping revitalize neighborhoods or partnering
with cities so that it's like a one plus one equals three
scenario.
00:08:52 Barney
So, every venture we're trying
to get to get involved with has some sort of like connection to
that thesis of investing in people, places and programs. So, it's
been great for us to kind of use it as a North Star to guide
us.
00:09:04 Salvatrice
And I think it's also really
important for our listeners to really know your work with higher
education as it relates to entrepreneurship, and being the head of
the Center of Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Cal State. Did I
get that right?
00:09:18 Barney
Yeah.
00:09:18 Salvatrice
And you know, your time there
prior to really kind of launch - it was it prior to launching
Gentefy or had you already launched Gentefy?
00:09:26 Barney
We had formalized Gentefy like
in 2013 as an idea. Like we were like, "Oh, you know what this put
this like S-corp together." And we formed it in 2015, actually,
sorry. I had graduated in 2013. They had asked me to come back and
part-time help with the center, and then formally, asked me to run
the center like in 2016, 17 around there.
00:09:47 Barney
So, it was around that time. So,
all this was kind of happening at the same time. Like the ideas
from Gentefy were born while I was an undergraduate student at Cal
State LA. So, yeah, I mean essentially to answer your question,
yeah.
00:09:58 Salvatrice
For sure. So, I'm jumping around
only because I know you so well and I'm trying to connect the dots
for our listener too. Our role as community college is really to
develop these ecosystems that really support our community college
student. There's a plethora of ecosystems that we try to
create.
00:10:13 Salvatrice
And the reason why I asked you
that question was because I think there's a lot of room for us to
evolve our entrepreneurship ecosystem at a community college. Just
like looking at our CT programs, entrepreneurship is threaded
amongst all of those CT programs. Entrepreneurship is not a single
track, it's not linear. It's very fluid. It's embedded amongst,
across multiple disciplines.
00:10:36 Salvatrice
And I think that one of the
opportunities that we have as a community college is to really hone
in on putting concentrated effort. I'm going to say that; a
concentrated effort in supporting the entrepreneurs, the
entrepreneur in health, the entrepreneur in automotive, the
entrepreneur - and fill in the blank.
00:10:52 Salvatrice
So, thinking about like your
role - you've had some time to work in many different areas with
Cal State, with community college, with universities, with your own
ventures - where do you see might be an opportunity for community
colleges to kind of develop their programs a little tighter with
entrepreneurship?
00:11:12 Barney
That's a great question. You
know, it's funny because while I was at Cal State Los Angeles
running their program, I spent a year doing massive amounts of
research to try to propose a solution that was cohesive. I'm one of
those people that likes to spend time on the problem significantly
before trying to come up with some sort of
solution.
00:11:30 Barney
And I think a lot of times, a
lot of universities, colleges sometimes will just sort of duplicate
efforts and just say, "Oh, that's what they're doing. Let's do
that. Let's do this." So, one thing I know for sure, and I've had a
lot of time to think about this afterward, but like if you think
about entrepreneurship as a whole, every entrepreneur starts off
with the same toolkit, the same framework; which is who we know,
what we know, and what we have.
00:11:51 Barney
Who we know being our network,
what we know being our experience and our knowledge. And then what
we have in relation to resources like capital or some skill set or
a high-powered computer or whatever that looks like
maybe.
00:12:06 Barney
So, even though our toolboxes
are all the same, the tools inside those toolboxes vary
tremendously because some people like Kylie Jenner starts off with
more tools in the capital that look like capital or has a bigger
network.
00:12:21 Barney
And then on top of that, you're
talking about these toolboxes that essentially, everyone has the
same toolbox but different tools. And then in addition to that, you
have barriers. You have like sort of the standard set of things
that are holding entrepreneurs back from using those toolboxes to
build something. And so, that's cultural, economic, psychological,
socioeconomic.
00:12:42 Barney
Sometimes, Latino entrepreneurs
or people of color culturally are not able to build a company
because they're too busy taking care of their family. So, they have
to have a job that makes money or two jobs to just pay the bills.
Or socioeconomically, they live in an area that maybe, it's hard
for them to start a business because their environment's not
supportive, or psychologically, they're dealing with
traumas.
00:13:02 Barney
So, like I think as a university
or as a community college, what colleges do really well from a
framework perspective is they understand the education part
component of it. So, they do really decent job of like trying to
train people like, okay, this is how you think and act like an
entrepreneur from workshops and education.
00:13:19 Barney
But I think what colleges can do
really well is if you think of it holistically. Think of like,
okay, well how do I expand the toolkit of the who? How do we have
networking functions? How do we have opportunities where students
can meet other entrepreneurs or support groups or meet founders to
expand what they think and know.
00:13:37 Barney
And then from the access, what
they have, what kind of resources are they missing? And how do we
provide that like access to capital, free computer usages or you
guys have a 3D printer lab that's really phenomenal for building
prototypes that provide the what.
00:13:49 Barney
And then you think about can you
also provide solutions to help alleviate some of the barriers. Like
we talked about cultural, economic, psychological, and
socioeconomic. Like how do you solve for those things. Some people
can't have their basic needs not even met. So, how do you expect
someone who's basic needs are not met to be able to think about
like launching a venture that's VC-backable. They're just trying to
survive.
00:14:11 Barney
So, I think from a program out
of university or a community college, the best thing to think about
is like what capabilities do we have currently at the school and
how can you best leverage them to fill those boxes, the tool boxes
that need to be addressed. And also, address some of those barriers
that we talked about.
00:14:29 Barney
Or if it's that important, how
do you build out those capabilities. Like ecosystems are important.
But perhaps access to capital is something that needs to be thought
about. Having a microfund or developing a program where students
can work at a startup for a year and they have their living
expenses paid for or they can intern - a paid internship for 12
weeks at a startup and it's paid for.
00:14:52 Barney
So, stuff like that is always
helpful in my opinion. Whatever real-world experience that students
can get where they can build out their knowledge, their experience,
expand on their resources, expand their network, while also
addressing some of those socioeconomic, cultural and economic
things, that's beautiful. And that's a thing a lot of times these
programs don't think about.
00:15:10 Barney
They think about again, oh,
we'll have a business pitch competition. You know, they'll have
performative things that make it seem like they have an actual
program, but in reality, it's not a robust program unless you have
teachers that are willing to integrate their education component to
programs that activate tactical learning lessons, hands-on
approaches.
00:15:28 Barney
If it's all cohesively working
together, I think that makes a really robust program. And I haven't
seen a lot of those. And I think at the community college levels
where the biggest impact would be versus like USC - which don't get
me wrong, I went to USC, we both did. But the student that goes to
a community college doesn't always end up at
USC.
00:15:44 Barney
They might end up working right
after. And so, how do you take those skill sets, those trade
skills, and then help them develop that entrepreneurial path? That
would be tremendous. Because I think a lot of students want that
and they're curious about it. They just don't know what they don't
know. And it's a difficult environment for them to be a part
of.
00:16:02 Barney
And it's hard. Launching a
business is super hard. I mean, look at us. Like if I think about
our cohort, we went to school together, there were how many people
in that cohort - in the twenties? Something like
that.
00:16:11 Salvatrice
Yeah, something like that. Super
small.
00:16:12 Barney
Yeah, small cohort. How many of
them actually launched a business after? Yeah, maybe a handful. So,
that tells you right there. And that's one of the best
entrepreneurship programs in the country. It's difficult. It's
difficult. You really have to set the pace for creating an
environment where that kind of thinking is supported, the feeling
is supported, and then all the tools and resources are provided,
while also addressing the barriers that keep people from moving
forward.
00:16:32 Barney
That's how to think about it. At
least from the place of like, okay, how do we address these things?
Now, let's create actual tangible capacity-building capabilities to
be able to address these things in real ways.
00:16:42 Salvatrice
And I think there's a level of
culture involvement too within community colleges and shifting
mindset around entrepreneurship. I think that still in 2022, like
there's still this negative mindset around the value of
entrepreneurship at a community college. Because traditionally,
community colleges, we're very focused on kind of like the
technical or transfer.
00:17:07 Salvatrice
It's either transfer track,
career technical education track, and then you do have like this
entrepreneurship track that is quite frankly, threaded through
both. I feel sometimes that we don't really know how to even wrap
our head around like the toolkit that you just
mentioned.
00:17:22 Salvatrice
As you're talking, I'm thinking
this person has to be at this table, this person, that group, that
group, that group, that group. Because it's not a single entity.
It's not just one faculty member in the business division, two
faculty members. I mean, those faculty members need to be supported
holistically because entrepreneurship is very like this holistic -
I don't even know how to explain it.
00:17:43 Barney
But I think one of the
challenges we have (and I want to unpack that with you in your time
with higher ed), the mindset shift. How do we shift the mindset so
that our community within our four walls of academia learn to or
understand the value of entrepreneurship, and how it's threaded
throughout disciplines?
00:18:04 Barney
And how do we start shifting or
building that community that you were just talking about with the
who, the what, and the resources.
00:18:11 Barney
I love this conversation by the
way. Yeah, it's great. You nailed it. Like in my opinion, I'm
thinking about what's needed, but you're looking at it from a very
pragmatic approach. It's just like, yeah, but we have this
bureaucratic beast that it's like there's a lot of people,
stakeholders involved, and you're a thousand percent
correct.
00:18:26 Barney
Like when I was at Cal State Los
Angeles, my philosophy was like, you know what? And I got in
trouble because they didn't agree with me, but I was like, let me
go talk to engineering school and the dean. Let me go talk to
sociology, literature, communications.
00:18:39 Barney
I wanted to bring everybody to
the table to have a robust conversation about what
entrepreneurship, innovation looks like in their colleges. Because
entrepreneurship isn't a discipline, it's a way of thinking. It's
really, it's about creating value by looking at something and then
saying, okay, let's figure something because you can do that in all
kinds of ways.
00:18:58 Barney
But to your point, the problem
with entrepreneurship in schools, unless the school itself is
saying, okay, this is a priority for us. Like if you look at like
Arizona State University who's - and maybe things have changed, but
when I was at Cal State, I always admired them because their
university pledge was like innovation.
00:19:15 Barney
So, the entire school was saying
innovation is the way to go forward. So, they built innovation
centers, they built like tech transfer centers. So, they built all
these infrastructure and capabilities as a university to address
this idea of like, "Oh, how do we create the next generation of
innovators and entrepreneurs from Arizona
State."
00:19:35 Barney
Now, I think in any large
organization, it has to start from the top. If you don't get
collective buy-in from the top, you're never going to get the
buy-in from the colleges and the deans. And forget about the
professors - there's a lot of professors who put themselves through
developing programs, and they're not even judged on
that.
00:19:51 Barney
Like they're in tenured track,
they're taking on because they care about the students, but they're
not getting paid more essentially for running these programs. So,
it's difficult, but you're right. I think the key is to get the
collective buy-in and change the perspective. Because look, if you
think about community colleges, you're positioned perfectly for
this.
00:20:06 Barney
Community colleges are teaching
young adults or even older adults, they're teaching people the
skills needed to apply them in a real-world setting. It's like you
want to be a programmer, here's the certificate in the associate's
degree. Go get this job. You want a JPL certificate? Get this job
right here. You want cybersecurity certificate, here's the wave of
the future.
00:20:27 Barney
But like they put all the value
in the metric that's associated with how many people are placed in
jobs. And we know that another metric that really is as equally
important, if not in my opinion, more important because it's
exponential growth, is how many jobs you create.
00:20:43 Barney
If you can take the same skill
set that someone's learning at a university, but then teach them
not just to think about it as you're trying to get a job, but
you're trying to create jobs, the exponential factor is greater
because now, they give opportunities to people in their school,
their classmates, their colleagues, people that they want to work
with.
00:20:59 Barney
And that is huge because those
are their peers. That's their net worth. That's an amazing shift
that could happen. And I think it could happen better at a
community college and faster than it would like at a larger
university, in my opinion. Because you guys are already thinking
about tangible skill sets more so than the universities
are.
00:21:17 Barney
Like a lot big universities,
people graduate and they're like, "I don't even know what I learned
when I graduated from here." I remember graduating from undergrad
and my friends were like, "What did you learn skill-wise?" And she
was like, "I don't even know. Like I know how to read a P&L
sheet." Really? So, it's just like, so what are you really
learning?
00:21:33 Barney
Community colleges are teaching
skills. Like so all it is, is just a matter of like taking the
skill, turning that around, teaching people how to create jobs. And
think about it, like small businesses, you've got storefronts,
you've got this massive group of people who are retiring and
they're about to sell their business. Also, you have all these
people that are selling their businesses.
00:21:51 Barney
Community college students learn
how to buy a business without any money down. Could they,
potentially - could they buy a laundromat? Could they buy a
barbershop? You could have this massive wave of people learning
skills to buy businesses that actually like thrive in that
environment. But it's got to come from a perspective, a mindset
shift in these universities and colleges. But I think community
colleges are set for it honestly.
00:22:12 Salvatrice
I also wonder just kind of being
in the system and working within the system, is it higher than just
a single college or is it enough for a single college to start
shifting the mindset and setting the pace? Or do we need some kind
of legislation or advocacy? Like a while back ago, and I'm still
kind of on it, but for a moment, I was really on this
kick.
00:22:32 Salvatrice
And I firmly believe about
incentivizing our employers. I'll bring it back to this
conversation, but really incentivizing employers to hire community
college students. And how do we create legislation to support that.
So, I was on this kick for quite some time.
00:22:48 Salvatrice
But along the same thread, it's
like how do we incentivize our practitioners, our community college
system of practitioners to do what you just said, which is it's
actually shifting the skill set in a more tangible way. Is that
even fair to say? Or just in a way that embodies the value of
entrepreneurship?
00:23:07 Salvatrice
I don't know, but I think that
there's certainly room for that, and I just don't know where to
start. Does it have to start at the chancellor's office or is it
just a single college can start that shift? I don't know. But we
have the bureaucratic stuff that we deal with.
00:23:21 Salvatrice
But as entrepreneurs, the other
part of me says we're entrepreneurs, so we learn to work around the
bureaucratic levels that we need to deal with. And that's how we
solve the problem. Because we're saying, yeah, there's these
barriers. But as entrepreneurs, we find the solution even though
there's barriers.
00:23:37 Salvatrice
I guess what I'm trying to say
is yes, there is certainly a need to shift the mindset, but how do
we do it in a way that is digestible or that is in a way that's not
threatening, or is in a way that really incentivizes our
practitioners?
00:23:54 Barney
Well, think about it. So, like I
think it might be as simple as redefining what entrepreneurship
means In the academic standpoint. A lot of times what happens is we
think about entrepreneurship, we limit it to just like, okay,
venture creation.
00:24:07 Barney
But the reality is, if you look
at it like Europeans do, or like even Babson University - Babson
College is the best entrepreneurship program in the entire country
year over year. And the reason why is because they take a holistic
approach to entrepreneurship and they think of it as a way of
thinking. And I think that is the best way.
00:24:23 Barney
So, like for instance, it's like
almost rebranding. Like I always think of like what the government
did with UFOs. Nobody cared about UFOs. Like it was a joke. No
researcher would touch it. You changed the word from UFOs to, what
do they call it now?
00:24:35 Barney
UAP, which is identified aerial
phenomena. And yeah, of course. I mean I got a tattoo of an UFO.
But so they changed the word to UAP and they said we need to study
these because it's a threat to national security. So, they altered
the brand and now, you have people researching it, they have money
allocated towards it.
00:24:53 Barney
So, if you think about that from
a university perspective or a community college perspective, how do
you say, okay, well how do we prepare our students to think
entrepreneurially, wherever they go? Whether that's getting a job
at our mechanic shop, or becoming a culinary chef, or launching
your own venture, whatever. That could be a byproduct of
that.
00:25:14 Barney
But if you teach people how to
think about problems in creative thinking, using the lens of
entrepreneurship, the chances that someone will be opening up a
venture down the road is a greater chance.
00:25:25 Barney
In addition to that, you create
the programming to support those people who are saying like, "I am
taking a ... let's just take culinary; I'm taking a culinary
program. But you know what? I'm learning the skills and I really
think I can make a go out of opening up a pop-up or opening up a
food truck." These are resources, programs here that will support
that.
00:25:42 Barney
Then you have the catch that
sort of builds that up. But I think using the idea of like
entrepreneurship as a way of thinking to better prepare students to
like create value wherever they go, whether it's at a job, whether
it's for themselves, it's a great way to sort of like, I guess, put
peas in mashed potatoes and feed them to your kids so they don't
know, I guess.
00:26:03 Salvatrice
That's right. And for our
student who's listening; we've been talking, we're spending some
time about the system and us, like what we could do as a body of
practitioners to kind of shift the mindset about entrepreneurship
and create the support.
00:26:16 Salvatrice
But while that's happening and
while that's on our agenda to fulfill - if I'm a student and I'm an
entrepreneur and I'm in the system right now where I don't feel
like I have the support or I don't feel like I have the network or
the who - as a fellow entrepreneur, like where do you think that
they should start? How do they start conceptualizing and putting
their concept furthermore into implementation? What would be your
advice?
00:26:40 Barney
This is my advice I give to
everybody, regardless of where you're at and what resources you
have. I just say start very small. Like look at small, tiny little
steps that can get you closer to where you think you need to be.
Like if you look at me, for instance, in my BLVD MRKT and building
BLVD MRKT, before I started BLVD MRKT, I had zero knowledge about
real estate development, let alone commercial real
estate.
00:27:06 Barney
So, I started with absolute
zero. I had maybe a little information about sort of residential
real estate, but they're just different things altogether. So, now,
I have a good network, great network. But if I think about that as
the same process for a student, you start with zero knowledge.
Okay, well then you have a desire to do something, just an idea.
There's a small inkling of like, oh, here's something that might be
something. Who knows? I'll explore that more.
00:27:30 Barney
It's a simple step. Maybe that
simple step is opening up a book or googling to get more
information to learn more. Maybe another simple step could be
calling some people who might be experiencing the pain point or the
problem and see what their perspective is, learning from what they
have to say.
00:27:45 Barney
Maybe another perspective is
there's a solution in another state or a city far away that they're
doing something. Reaching out to that person and learning a little
bit more from it. And in that process of learning and taking small
little steps that are achievable where you're not gambling or risky
too much, you actually start building out your means and your tools
a little bit more and more.
00:28:04 Barney
Before you know it, after a year
of doing those little small steps, you're further along than you
would ever think of being if you've never started to begin
with.
00:28:13 Barney
When I started doing BLVD MRKT,
I took these little small steps to achieve the same results. Before
I knew it, I knew investors, I knew family offices, I knew
developers, I knew like banks, and I had no previous knowledge of
who they were or what they did before that. But just through the
process, I learned so much.
00:28:31 Barney
So, I would just tell people,
don't be afraid to start. It doesn't have to be perfect. Just start
with small, little tiny steps that at least you'll feel comfortable
with and step out of your comfort zone and reach out to somebody
blindly.
00:28:42 Barney
Cold call somebody, send out an
email. You know, like send a DM on Instagram or TikTok to somebody
and just learn a little bit more about that situation. And before
you know it, you might figure out that, "Hey, look, there's an
actual business here. Maybe I can get involved, maybe I can learn
something here."
00:28:57 Salvatrice
You reminded me of one of our
professors, Tommy Knapp, when he says, get curious and make it
happen. Just get curious and make it happen. And I think there's a
lot of hesitation because naturally, as an entrepreneur, like you
face a lot of nos. You face a lot of door closes, but you also
experience so much more.
00:29:16 Salvatrice
So, if we allow just that fear
to just settle, it's almost like you can't acknowledge that. You've
got to do what you're just talking about. It's like just taking
small steps. Small steps lead to other larger steps that leads to
other networks. And it's really our duty. I genuinely feel it's our
duty as just kind of like tying it back as a community college to
allow that space, allow the space where not just our students, but
our faculty members who are entrepreneurs within their own
disciplines, how do we support them?
00:29:45 Salvatrice
There's so much room here to
just really shift the normal way of how we've been conducting
business around entrepreneurship, and really kind of change the
trajectory of our role as a community college within the support of
entrepreneurs. Which leads me to think about how do we as a system
support entrepreneurs like yourself who have done it obviously
outside of our system, like you're not a community college student,
you did it on your own.
00:30:12 Salvatrice
That's something else to unpack.
What are we doing for our startups that are already out there? How
are we engaging with them in a way that doesn't involve a ton of
steps, doesn't involve these very formalized approaches - because
they're moving fast, they're solving problems, they don't have time
for all of this nonsense that we have to deal with in a
bureaucratic environment.
00:30:32 Salvatrice
So, there's more to unpack there
that I would love to chat with you about, and probably not today,
but that's another subject matter that I would like to learn more
of from an entrepreneur.
00:30:43 Barney
I can keep going. I'm here if
you want to talk about it.
00:30:47 Salvatrice
For sure, for sure. Well, I'm
all about capitalizing on your time, Barney, because I really enjoy
chatting with you, but I also want to be mindful of ... you've got
stuff going on. You got a lot of stuff going on. And so , I
definitely want to have you back to kind of unpack that a little
bit more.
00:31:04 Salvatrice
Because employer engagement is a
huge part of what our community colleges do, but we're so focused
on employers that are already established. Like we're looking at
the big fish, we're not looking at the up and coming and emerging,
and there's room there, there's a lot of room.
00:31:18 Barney
Well, I get why. Like you are
trying to hit numbers about how many jobs placed. Now, it's hard to
hit those numbers when you have 20 startups that only need one
person each, versus one giant company that can employ a hundred
people. So, there's a level of scale that you guys need to hit in
relation to numbers and impact as well. But there's a lot of small
businesses.
00:31:40 Salvatrice
Yeah, I was going to just say
that. Like we forget that 89% of the businesses, specifically in
California, are all small businesses. And so, then you go into this
whole thing about well, define small. Is it two employees or is it
50? But we won't get into that.
00:31:54 Salvatrice
But this is the Future of Work
Podcast and I have been, first of all, thankful that you agreed to
say yes to have a conversation with me and a dialogue, and
formalize it. We've had so much going on. It feels nice to be
connected back again.
00:32:08 Barney
A hundred
percent.
00:32:08 Salvatrice
And I think there's so much more
for us to explore, Barney, especially as you're continuing to build
these new ventures under Gentefy - we/I can learn so much from you.
I look forward to future dialogues.
00:32:21 Salvatrice
But as we kind of like sunset
this conversation, I think our listeners would be very curious
about if there's one thing that you really want them to learn or
understand from this conversation, what would be like one of the
biggest takeaways you think you want our listener ... who, by the
way, our listeners are made up of students, faculty, employers -
just a real nice eclectic group of listeners.
00:32:45 Barney
I would say, listen,
entrepreneurship is not some exclusive club that only a certain
people can participate in. Anybody can be an entrepreneur. The
question really becomes, are you willing to go down the journey, be
kind to yourself, because 80% of this game is
mental.
00:33:01 Barney
We psych ourselves out most of
the time. I can't even tell you how many entrepreneurs I work with
that if they just stop being in their head as much and being so
harsh on themselves, they would eventually have become successful.
But a lot of times, we are unkind to ourselves, and we stop
ourselves from continuing the journey.
00:33:19 Barney
So, what I would tell people is
just really, figure out the best way to be in an environment where
you're supported, where you can have peers that cheer you on. Don't
be so tied to the outcome. Fall in love with the journey of seeking
entrepreneurial ideas and pursuing them. Giving yourself the space
to be okay with failing too.
00:33:43 Barney
It doesn't have to be perfect,
just get started. As long as people follow that path and just start
with small little steps, keep going. And then be kind to yourself
in that process and surround yourself with people who support you -
you'll be in a good place. That's always my feedback, is just kind
of get going, really.
00:33:58 Salvatrice
Absolutely. Well, thank you so
much Barney. I really appreciated this conversation and like I
said, so much more from what you said that we can unpack, and we
will. Thank you very, very much.
00:34:09 Salvatrice
If one of our listeners wants to
connect with you, what would be the best way to connect with you?
Via LinkedIn or ...?
00:34:14 Barney
Yeah, no, I don't ever go on
LinkedIn. I have messages unread there for like years. So,
Instagram is the best way to hit me up. Just my name, Barney
Santos. So, @BarneySantos, it'll go straight to me. I'll answer as
quick as I can. I'm usually pretty good at it. So, yeah, if someone
wants to hit me ... or if they want to hit me up on Twitter, same
thing @BarneySantos as well too.
00:34:34 Salvatrice
Fantastic. We'll be sure to
enter that into the show notes. Thank you, Barney. Thank you, thank
you very much. Incredibly grateful for you. We'll chat soon. I
actually will see you soon. I'll see you soon. I'll definitely be
visiting BLVD MRKT. I'm ashamed that I have not - believe it or not
...
00:34:50 Barney
You should be very ashamed about
it.
00:34:52 Salvatrice
I actually very am, and I'm
being super vulnerable right now. Like I'm very ashamed about that.
My kids have, my mom has-
00:35:01 Barney
I know.
00:35:02 Salvatrice
My nieces have, but I have not.
But I'll be there soon.
00:35:06 Barney
I'm counting the days, honestly.
I can't wait.
00:35:09 Salvatrice
Alright, Barney, chat soon.
Thank you so much.
00:35:12 Barney
Alright. It's so good to see
you. Bye.
00:35:15 Salvatrice
Thank you for listening to the
Future of Work Podcast. Make sure you subscribed on your favorite
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Tuesday.
00:35:26 Salvatrice
You can reach out to us by
clicking on the website link below in the show notes to collaborate
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connect with you. All of us here at the Future of Work and Pasadena
City College wish you safety and wellness.