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Leaha Crawford and Rhonda Nolen are business consultants that discuss the current struggles of small business owners and entrepreneurs. Each episode covers steps necessary for smaller businesses and business owners to grow and prosper.
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You're listening to locally produced programming created in
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KUNV Studios on public radio. KUNV 91.5.
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The following is a paid program sponsored by Crawford Management Group and Smart Time Consultants. Please be advised that the voices and opinions you may hear do not necessarily represent the views of KUNV Las Vegas, the University of Nevada Las Vegas, or the Board of Regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education.
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Nevada system of higher education.
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Hi this is Leah Crawford and I'm Rhonda Nolan.
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Welcome to the Let's Talk with Leah and Rhonda show. We're here for you and we're
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ready to go. Let's do it!
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Good morning Las Vegas. Leah how are you feeling this fine Saturday morning? I'm so happy the sun is out.
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It's Saturday. That's all I can say. And it's almost tax season is almost over. But is it really ever over? You want to know what? Technically, no. But we're just gonna go with it. And we're gonna say that it's almost over. A lot of people have come in a lot of people are coming in. But this is when it gets good. Okay, this is when it gets good. This is good.
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So I'm excited.
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You know how you get to that good part. Yeah.
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Yeah, this is the good part.
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That's fantastic. Extensions are being filed now. Okay. Because it's too much and you got to pull. Everybody has to have all of their documents. So extensions, extensions, extensions. That's cool.
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That's my new word for the next couple of weeks.
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Extensions. Like my hair.
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Extensions.
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Extensions. Well, Las Vegas, we have some very exciting people in the studio with us today. Leah, I'm going to let you introduce our first guest.
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All right. So this gentleman, actually, I have admired him for years from afar. And up close, I've always told him how he's the ultimate entrepreneur, but he has a new venture that's going on. It's the Life Legacy venue. And what I love is that, you know, he is creative. He is kind, you know, I love working with him. Non-profits, he's a man with a vision and people follow him. But Mr. Devin Brooks, I want to welcome you to the show.
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Welcome Devin.
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I appreciate the introduction.
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I appreciate the introduction.
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Yeah, you know, you know, you know, you one of my faves because you, when you call and I'll give you a quick story. So Devin does a spelling bee. Has done a spelling bee for years
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for third and fourth graders. Is that called the Native Son Spelling Bee? The Native Son Spelling Bee. He called me one day, I'm sitting at home, and he said, hey Leah, what you doing? I was like nothing Devon, what's going on? He said, do you want to be on the board for the Spelling Bee? Yep. He was like, just that easy? I said, just because you asked. Just that easy. I said, when is the meeting? He said, in about two hours. I said, really? I said, really? And he said, yeah, two hours. And that was two hours. That was probably about maybe seven years ago. Wow. And he had been doing a spelling bee at that time for about three years. And just to tell you how this man had a vision, and he was able to take that vision and turn it into something. Because I think now we're on our eighth annual spelling bee. Yeah, we only missed one, I think.
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So we only missed one.
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I think nine, almost 10 of them under our belt now.
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Oh, so it's more.
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Yeah, yeah.
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And only one week.
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And actually, the year COVID, we had our spelling bee in February.
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Right.
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So we missed it. So we missed actually shutting down.
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We didn't do it in 2021.
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Right.
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Because of the pandemic. But we picked back up.
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Yeah, then 2022, we did third, fourth, and fifth grade.
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Because we missed those babies.
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Because we missed it.
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And this year, we're doing third and fourth graders, but we can talk about that on another show. Let's, Life Legacy Venues.
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Life Legacy Venues, it's my newest business venture. I'm getting a lot of enjoyment out of it. It's a new challenge for me. Pretty much with the venue business, I got a whole, you know, I'm always coming up with a billion dollar idea. Yes he does. What I would like to do or what's gonna happen is I'm gonna be the Airbnb of the venue business. Nice. When in the future you'll be able to say I want to do a baby shower I want to do a wedding or I want to do whatever you'll be able to go online whatever state you in hopefully around the world at one point and you can book it, book your date, your key, you come in and everything's already set up and ready for you to go. And yeah, that's the vision. Right now I'm just working with a lot of CMR systems, trying to go through and understand and eventually try to link up my AI information to it. And after that, then, you know, we're off to the races. So right now it's just a lot of the footwork and understanding marketing and you know like a conversation I have with Leah at one point in time is you know being in a private sector and really having the opportunity to be your own contractor is always been something I always wanted to do. So I've worked a lot with government and county and different industries in the past. So going fully into the private sector was like something I wanted to accomplish. So now I'm here, I just feel like, you know, all chains are off and I'm ready to go.
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Now let's talk about it because the venue is absolutely gorgeous, right? Where the venue
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located? So the venue is given the address.
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It's located in North Las Vegas, right next to the North Las Vegas airport off of Cheyenne and Simmons. Okay. 3040 West Cheyenne to be exact. Okay.
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And when you stand outside in the parking lot of the venue, you can see the whole strip.
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Oh wow.
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Didn't realize, it was funny because we were sitting in his office and I turned around, I said, Devon, he said, what? I said, you can see the people. And he was like, Lee, I know, you know, so that's something to consider because it has
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a back, it's a beautiful background.
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Okay.
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I actually ended up buying the two buildings back in 2017. And I originally was gonna turn them into an adult daycare center. And in 2020, March of 2020 is when we had, when we opened in the pandemic, just kind of destroyed everything. And we turned back around and opened up again in January of 2021. And the governor put us at 25% capacity and that killed us. And then from there, I'll try one more time in October, the 2021 Omicron variants came out. So, you know, healthcare as a whole, even though that's been my background since I was, you know, even with my mother, she had healthcare. The reason I actually got into the venue business is a friend of mine's grandmother passed away and then he's Hispanic and in their culture, they pray for the body all night and during that time I said to myself like okay you know if y'all need a spot don't worry y'all helped me a million times so long story short they came back the next day and they had gave me a bag full of money Wow that's when I said wait a minute well your pivot was smooth yeah I can't say it was smooth but it was God sent. I prayed for an opportunity such as this and he works in such amazing ways. So you know this direction, I played around with it, did a couple of events and then I said okay we're gonna take it serious. This was like last year around September. So we went through the whole process. It took us a couple months to get licensed and we officially opened in
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October of last year. Nice! And that's huge right because I know I didn't know was going to an event with the Urban Chamber didn't read the address. You know me as always. So I'm thinking they're having the event because I see Cheyenne I'm thinking they're having the event at CSN. Right. Not realizing it's all the way across town and then when I put it together I said that's Devin's place. Right because I didn't know that Devin had done I mean I'm used to the adult I thought the adult daycare right right but when I got there it is absolutely gorgeous this is the place where we used to meet for us this place I went for the spelling bee meeting right mm-hmm so now it's this venue and just what he's done to the the all night this was an office and now it's a dressing room mm-hmm right and then I'm like well we used to sit in here and meet that's the foot that's the place where they take the photographs right and he just repurposed everything and he took us on a tour of the place I want to say you are the I mean you're that entrepreneur because you turn lemons into lemonade. Hey, got you. Turn lemons into lemonade and I want to say congratulations. I appreciate that. How do we contact you if we want to host something in your venue?
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Absolutely, you can reach us at www.lifevenues.net. If you're looking for a wedding, if you're looking for baby showers, we do family reunions, repasses of celebration of life, corporate events, it's a perfect, it's a homey venue. We're actually getting ready to, the venue next door, we're going to be turning that into a wedding chapel. So, for anyone who's looking for what we always say is the best space for the best rate. You'll get the quality, you'll get the customer service, you get the love over at Life.
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And you know what type of taste that well you know okay so Devin has amazing taste. Yes he does.
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He does.
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For all you entrepreneurs out there listening. So when he says it just the attention to detail that's there the hardwood floors he showed us his um you know how they go when you can pick your plates and stuff for you for your venue And I was sitting I was like, I need to have Devin come to my house and decorate That's the first thing I thought I was like he can he can go pick out the plates I'm sending the napkins and and and and the glassware and stuff like that. It is absolutely And you it's in North Las Vegas, which is which is huge because the neighborhoods are changing But it is a nice venue Safe venue. Mm-hmm. So if you're looking to do that wedding. Absolutely. Plenty of parking too if I remember. A lot of parking.
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And I think y'all even did
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ballet service at one time. Yeah, we do. Whatever you want a spaceship to come in there, we'll make it happen for you. Okay, alright. Is there a phone number or did you have to go through the website?
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702-444-7624. All right, I love it. Fantastic. Is there anything else you want to share about the meeting? No, I want to just tell you guys, Rhonda, Leah, how much I appreciate you guys. I appreciate the invite. You mentioned the Native Son Spelling Bee. You guys have been a significant part of that. Both you guys are part of our board. I couldn't have done any of this without you guys' support, love, and the connections, and the resources, and just ultimately just the grace that you guys come in. Shout out to Dena, Senator Dena Neal, and our girl Nina, our women on the board, and of course my guys, Rally AK, Stacks, Pastor Wes, Ken Evans. The team has been going strong for many years. We focus on third and fourth graders because of the prison school pipeline. It's a legacy that we took on because of Sam Smith and to see where it's grown into, you know, I just want to tell you both thank you so much and you always got me. Let me know
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whenever you need me. You know what, I appreciate you because I know the Spelling Bee is one of my, you know, it's one of my favorite events every year. It's our pleasure. It's our pleasure. It's my pleasure. No, it is because watching, I mean, watching the babies. Yeah. Watching the kids and then following them because we also do scholarships and everything else. But tell them about the spelling.
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Let's talk just for a few minutes about the spelling bee before we talk to our next guest.
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I put it like this, when I remember speaking to Rhonda when she first joined and I was telling her, we can't really explain it, it's something that you got to experience. We work with, we always have different hosts every year and when I try to tell people the feeling you get when you see these kids on stage, it's unexplainable. There's a lot of work that goes on behind the scenes and the roles that everyone plays is just, you know, it's one of those feel good events. You know, at the end of the day, we got to take care of business and you got to put on your business cap, you got to get out there and go to battle. But we know when we take on this battle, it's something bigger and better and deeper than us and, you know, it gives us an opportunity just to be honorable. You know, it's been a lot of you know Tough decision-making it's been a lot of Sacrificing to still keep this going it's been times where I didn't leaned on y'all around my man look I came I got I got so much I got more stuff to do and they they you know push me up and keep me going and you know I really can't wait to see I actually want to grow more and become more resourceful because I want that to be bigger. At this point with the Spelling Bee, I want to expand out. I want to be able to take it from just spelling to the challenges that I'm facing like in marketing and AI and robotics for the future. What can we do to prepare our young kids for the future. We deal with the kids from the inner city, even though it's welcome to everyone, but we focus in on a specific group of kids that we nurture in the inner city. The prime, what they call them, the prime six schools. Those are our major focuses. We have a large African-American and a large Hispanic group of kids, but we got kids from all, you know, all nationalities and levels of, you know, wherever they come from. But ultimately, it's our gift of what we have to sacrifice to give back to the community. And you know, there's no better reward than to look at us you know I love my best part of the spelling bee is one seeing all the kids on the stage at the end and to being able to link up with the team and go out to eat wherever we go most of times Applebee's.
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I always miss the after party.
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That's the best part. I know I miss it every year. I'm always running around like a crazy person.
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Let me tell you what I miss though. I miss the Friday meetings. Because what you guys don't know is that we met for years. Every Friday night at 5 o'clock. During happy hour. During happy hour. We did. And the meeting would go to 7, 8. I remember one time I had to leave because I had something to do. They're like, where are you going? Can I, just one night y'all. I just need one night. Just one night. I'm going to leave early. I mean, and I would drag Nas. Nasir, you know, and I remember a quick story. Nasir was in the second grade at the time and Devin, you know, him and Nasir have a good relationship and Nasir said, mom, can I be in a spelling bee? I said, no. He said, well, you're not the boss. I'm going to ask Devin. I said, you're not. I said, because you're in a second grade and it's for third and fourth graders but what I love even more is that it's a monetary prize when they win third and fourth grade so they get 500 for third place 750 for second place and a thousand dollars for the first place yes and you get your checks that day so once you win you say not only do you get that they get they get proclamations they get trophies they get shirts. If you come in there, you don't have, because you have to wear a certain, we want you to have on a certain bottom. If you don't have the bottom, we go to Walmart, go get the bottoms because we want, and it is, yeah, he's right, the feeling you get. So, and the spelling bee this year is April 8th.
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April 8th.
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April 8th.
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April 8th, so.
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Right, right.
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It's April 8th.
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And we will be there. I guess we'll talk about it more. We'll probably bring, I'll probably see if I can get Pastor West to come on and to talk about it a little bit. People just show up. The families that are in there just show up because it is, it's huge. And it's fun. We get support from the 100 Black men. And of course our committee. So we, you know, it's good.
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Absolutely, we get support from all throughout the community from developers to foundations. I guess it's legal, we get cannabis companies that support us. We get a little bit from everywhere because at the end of the day we give away thousands of dollars just in prize money not a long feeding them clothing them you know trophies
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every every and we're doing snacks you know because the spelling decent last December I'm in the back with the kids and you got to keep a motivated and damn the kids be crying cry you gotta console them afterwards and get them back together and console them and yeah parents at bay to write you know it's because it's a group photo at the end and they got to stay all the way to the I got to console them, feed them snacks. It's a lot but it's a good day. It is a great day. It's a great event. Devon, thank you again.
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It is www.lifevenues.net.
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That is www.lifevenues.net. His phone number, the phone number where you can contact him.
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Just if you are having that baby shower.
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Just contact him. 702-444-5111. That's all I have to say. I'm Devon. I'm out. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. baby shower. Just contact him. 702-444-7624. Again, 702-444-7624. And you can tell him when you call him that you heard him here with the Let's Talk with Leah and Rhonda show.
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So that he knows that he's here and people are listening.
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Yes, yes indeed. To all the listeners out there, love you much. Stay safe. Stay blessed. Fantastic. Thank you,
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Devin. I appreciate you. I appreciate it. Now on to our next wonderful guest of the day. Miss promise. Miss promise. How you doing? I am well, honey. I'm so happy to be here. That's wonderful. Thank you for joining us this beautiful Saturday morning. Oh, Jeff, I wanted to hype him up before he left. But just what he's doing is so amazing. I definitely enjoy every bit of that just because we don't see enough of our black men setting a good example for our young black men coming up. So, so I promise let me just take it another step. When I first got on this board, it was majority men. Yeah, it was majority men. And actually, they outweigh us. They outweigh us. They did. They outweighed us. And it was it was black men that wanted something different and they saw you know they you know because you hear the prisoner pipeline right you hear that and instead of just hearing it and we didn't get Devin to talk about Sam Smith and when we bring Pastor Weston we'll talk about more about Sam Smith and the native son spelling bee that's where we got so that's where the idea came from because Sam was talking to Devin and he said if you teach children how to read you can do something about their prison pipeline and the key grade is third grade. So Devin a couple years after Sam transitioned started the Spelling Bee and we've been going strong and going strong ever since. Ever since. And have no plans on stopping. That's one committee that I will always be a part of. I actually love, enjoy working with them. But let's talk about you because you're doing some amazing work. You're doing some amazing work here too. So, Miss Promise, tell us about, I mean, first of all, who are you? I am Rianna Patterson and I go by Promise. Promise was pretty much my industry name and I wanted to make it mean something else because I was getting into entrepreneurship I wanted to to just transform my life so the first thing was getting rid of toxic people getting around people get around people who are like-minded and that align with my goal and that's hard it's really hard oh that's hard but that's but that is step number one yeah you got to get rid of the toxicity
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and and and the bible say everybody can't go go with you everybody can't everybody can't go with you.
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Everybody can.
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Everybody can't go with you. So I wanted to get in line with the like-minded women who share the common goal, which is we want financial freedom for our families, and we want to be a part of the 1%. And we know you need support in order to do that. And that was the first thing. And the funny thing is that it's easier to duck 9th. Somebody told me if you want to be wealthy, they were like, think of it this way, is it easier to duck 99 cars or one car? I'm like, it's easy to duck just one car. He was like, right, so why are you not trying
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to be with the 1%?
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I was like, oh, wow. That was, you put that in perspective. So tell us how you're doing that.
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Tell me what you're doing.
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Yeah, tell us about your nonprofit. Business Besties is now officially a nonprofit and I organized it in 2021. And at first it started as, you know, maybe just a group of girls going out for happy hour every now and then. And then pieces started to come together where this could really be something huge, you know, something where women can come together and get support that they need to grow their business because most businesses fail just based off the fact that they don't have enough support and it's not like enough like everybody has to go and buy my product but everyone around me should want to like comment and share what I have going on but usually if our friends and family aren't in the areas of business they don't understand how important that is like I don't need you to shop with me you have to buy nothing but if you share a post of mine every day you just do not know how monumental that can be to my business and my future so that was the main thing get around women who are like-minded great get them all together and let's utilize each other so we can grow our businesses so that's what exactly this is all right so what exactly are you guys doing so it's business besties what are you doing business besties we do we have a fitness course ran by one of my VIP besties. Her name is Cherie, Cherie Fitness. She runs Booty Band Camp. So we have a fitness program going. We have networking opportunities. We partner with Black Henderson. We partner with Business Women Bruncheon just to do networking events and bring more entrepreneurs together. I do a masterclass every month where I grab a connection that I may have and get them to give all the information of what they have and their expertise. So whatever it is that they do in their business, they go ahead and give us a master class on it. I did a voters literacy master class, network marketing, confidence in sales, anything that can give my girls the information they need to level up in their business. We also do a level up training every month where we come together and figure out what our next level in business looks like. How can someone get in contact with you to see these events so that they can go on and possibly and possibly participate? Absolutely yes we're on Facebook we have a Facebook group Business Besties Las Vegas on the Facebook group and on Instagram it's bizbestieslv and then on we just launched a business besties Los Angeles on Friday so now we have an extra branch and I want business besties to be something similar to a sorority you know we have building connections in major cities being able to travel and have connections wherever we do end up, and being able to keep up the consistency with growing our business, networking, and getting out and meeting new people. And that's funny because most sororities were built out of a need at a certain period of time. Really? Yeah, most of them were, I'm a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Incorporated, so I'm an AKA, and our sorority, Rhonda and I are both graduates of Howard University where a lot of this stuff started. And a lot of the sororities and fraternities started. And they started because there was a need in the community. And most of our mission statements talk about that, talking about a need and how do we address that need in our communities around the globe, having that experience. But I would love to work with you because again so Instagram so you don't have a website not no phone number yet you don't have the upset of the website up yet because we just got approved as a nonprofit so now we can organize it that way okay yes and then we have our two-year anniversary coming up in September that would be a masquerade ball last year we did the entrepreneur gala and it wasn't it was at the R&R event center.
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So where are you planning to do your event this year?
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This year, that's what we're working on right now.
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Okay, trying to find a venue for the event.
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Trying to find a venue. So when he said we started talking about event spaces, that's first. Because since everyone in my community has their own individual businesses, that's one thing we all look for is where can we host our event, promotion so we can get as many people to attend as possible. But yes, I'll be looking, I'll be tapping in with our brother here to get information about his venue because I would love to support. That's my main thing is supporting the local businesses here because these are pretty much our next leaders, you know, of the community we in so we have to invest in them and make sure they're in position so we got a nice community. So you said you have some events coming up next month. Do you have are those already ironed out for next month? Yeah I do a content party so that is April 29th it's $30 and we have four hours so this is organized so that all the women in our community can come together and get all the content they need. Okay. They bring their merch, their product, and we work as brand ambassadors for each other. Even if you didn't buy the product, I can go and model it for you. Where's that located? Where you want? This will be at Lilly's Content Studio. Lilly's Content Studio? Yes. And then I will have to go to Instagram or Facebook to sign up for the event? Yes. Okay. All right. That's cool. No, that's actually, you wanna know what? I love it because, so the nonprofit, what you're saying is that you want to bring these women together and in a different type of way and help them to build their businesses and to be around a bunch of like-minded people. Absolutely the community is is I'm I'm consistent with how I do my events and and do certain things and give back to the girls so I do a money pot grant every quarter of the year I pick two of my VIP besties. The VIP besties is my membership so it's $15 a month you get different discounts and promotion and and we do the money pot grant and just whatever to keep them consistent so the events come around and it makes them want to keep their business and growth at the front. Got it. All right so we are coming to the end of our show.
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Miss Promise, it was a pleasure.
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Yes, absolutely. A pleasure meeting you today.
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I am Leah Crawford.
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I am Rhonda Nolan and you've been listening to Let's Talk with Leah and Rhonda on KUNV Radio 91.5.
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Hey, Las Vegas. Hey, all you entrepreneurs. It's been fantastic. Thanks for listening to us this Saturday morning. Thank you, Miss Promise. It was fantastic. I love what you're doing in the community for the young entrepreneurs and if there are any young entrepreneurs out there listening, please look us up and come on down and join
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the party.
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Join the party.
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Join the party.
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For any young entrepreneurs, you want to be on the show, we host you, please contact us at 702-908-9577. 702-908-9577. And that ends our time for today, Rhonda. Until next week. Until next week. Until next week. Until next week because we have something special for you next week.
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We do.
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We do.
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We do.
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Alright then. Have a good one.
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Workout this Saturday.
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Oh yeah, don't forget to workout. Oh yeah, don't forget to workout. Bye.
Transcribed with Cockatoo