Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of McCum plugged in this episode. It's very touching for me on many ways. I'm talking to the queen. She turned a $900 loan into a billion dollar enterprise, becoming the first African American woman to own and operate a billion dollar business. She's a trailblazer and staffing a fierce advocate for equity and a leadership icon who's redefined what's possible. She's really
as bold legendary. She is the queen. We're talking to none other. Ms. Janice Bryant. Alroy. JBH, how you doing today?
Dear wonderful, make what an introduction. Wow. Thank you. It's a revisit for me actually. You mentioned staffing. You
mentioned a billion dollars and I think about what that meant when I first realized that was happening in the company. By the way, it wasn't just me. It was an incredible team of people who worked within the Antoine group. And here we are now at a multi-billion dollar company operating in over 43 countries. And we're primarily providing technology solutions and the technology itself to enable companies to plan to hire and to retain workforces they desire. And we're also delivering
agentics solutions as part of that how work gets done environment that we operate within. So thank you for the revisit as well as an incredible introduction, Nick. Absolutely. So innovative, so cutting edge and everything that you do. And you know, I've been a huge fan of you all of my life.
Studied you. I became an entrepreneur a lot based on some of the wisdom and teaching that you were showing, not just telling. And that's why I love you with all of my soul. And I know that entrepreneurship for you didn't start in 1978 when you started the company. I know that you had a moment in the 11th grade when you realized there was something for you. I'd love for you to
just talk to us a little bit about those beginnings. But in particular, when you knew that there's something bigger. You know, earlier I was talking with the gentleman who has had an amazing transformation in his life and by doing so has transformed the lives of others. And transformation is a big word right now. All companies are doing it. AI is encouraging it sometimes for us and get,
but always providing a support to it for us now. It's not a new thing. All those people talk about it. It's new. It's been around for a while. And that's how I
look at my security of entrepreneurship. Well, I really became inspired that I would do something with my life that would be a light about who we are as a people. At that time who we are always referring to us as Black people in the South today, it refers to us as entrepreneurial people who want to do good. I'm sitting right now in Conclave in Mexico with entrepreneurs who are looking at how we build democracy forward in an ethical and inclusive way. And so my journey though to entrepreneurship started before I was born. And I didn't realize it make until much later in talking with my mom.
I didn't value back that when my grandma Dora and my grandpa Dan were running barbecue house over off the nose street in Tawberry, North Carolina. And they served white people at their dining room table and they delivered plates to black people based on what the black people's income was not based on what the food cost because they knew they'd get around to making it up somehow. I saw them practicing their version of ethical entrepreneurship. I saw them practicing their version of building forward for their family and taking care of their community in ways that certainly became a part of my emotional mindset. My academic mindset didn't capture it all until I was later sitting in a class at North Carolina A&T State University. Let's go.
The instructor gave some data that referenced what poverty line was. And just as you're doing, I tilted my head back and I thought, oh my, according to this data, we are poor. Yet in my community, I actually thought we were rich. We certainly were enriched by what mom and dad were teaching and giving to us. And we ate better than many wealthy people do now because we were growing food. We figured out how to grow stuff for seasons out of the year back there in the deep south and
we might have said, often publicly, you know, my mom was planting these gardens in her yard long before Michelle planted at the White House. And so, you know, I just really thought about life differently sitting in that class. And that was an epic moment for me that again, as you mentioned, fed back to the 11th grade. And when I was, and for your listeners who are not familiar with what you're referencing, my 11th grade year, I was one of the few students who participated in the integration of the schools in my hometown. And so, I was it for the 11th grade. And it was probably the worst
year of my life, aside from the year that people who I've loved have years, people who I loved have transcended. But it was worse even than that in ways because it was the killing of dreams and my soul that occurred in that room. And my dad was so brilliant at building me back up. And dad had this incredible way. I think it was a blessing actually that he had a gift, not just with me, but in particular me in this moment, building a person up from a really low and sad place by painting the picture of their potential and giving them the evidence of how they could move forward. And that's what he did for me that year. It was one of the most building years of my life
as a human. And I think it impacted how I look at humanity today. My dad taught me to love people who were actively, physically, socially hating me. And I learned something from him that later was epitomized in a couple of lines out of a book called As a Man Thinking. I gave the right to rewrite that book into As a Person Thinking. And what those two lines say is we think in secret
and it comes to pass, environment is but our looking class. And he taught me that if I didn't like what I was seeing around me, that it was within my capacity and my responsibility. And we were very vital based and Christian then as I remained today. And so he taught us that it was a responsibility as well as an ability to build forward and to be inclusive and don't hate people because you hate them because that's a sickness and that's an illness they have. Now there was no push over mind you. You didn't want to get on the wrong side of Mr. Donner Brian. He didn't do
what he needed to do. I think importantly he loved his family and he taught us to be together. One of the main themes in my company throughout the years has been together. We went that started. That was formulated in my home. They were 11 kids. One mom, one dad. That's how we did it back then. And
together we went was kind of a Bryant household theme. And that meant that if your if your siblings weren't getting the grades in school, then you couldn't write about the grades you got until you helped them get it. If somebody didn't finish cleaning the kitchen properly, then you had to get in there and help them. And each of the older ones had a younger one who we were responsible for. And it wasn't just about getting over done. It was about making sure they were clean. They
were properly practicing hygiene that they were completing their chores. And primarily they were holding a positive attitude toward life. Never did I imagine how mom and dad so so absolutely fanatical about us keeping a positive attitude would impact my life as I journeyed away from that small hometown. And now as I said, have opened in over four, I said 43 countries were actually in over 47 47. That's amazing.
Let's go. Let's go. Tarboro stand up. JVH, you don't know this, but you're probably the most quoted person in my household. I have looked up to you, like I said, as a business leader as entrepreneur for quite a long time. And you have something that's a core pillar in not just my household,
but the four companies that I run to, you have this quote and you say, never compromise who you are personally for who you want to be professional. And that's a pillar for who we are in my businesses as well. Because I need all of my teammates. I don't call them employees. I need all of my teammates to understand. I want you to be the best human being that you can be first and
foremost, because that's a part of our culture. And culture runs our business, not me, not you, it's who you are as a human being. And I would love for you to elaborate on that quote, because it changed my life. It made me, when I started my first company, it made me understand, you have dreams, you have visions, but don't compromise who you are. And then who I am is who my business is. You're so important there. And you know, thank you and thank God that you find
something that I do that is worthy of expressing that forward in how you living your home and how you living your business that examples a lot about your own personal culture. May I in preface to talking about that statement because that is my life mantra. Just talk a little bit about culture. Culture is often referred to as something we can get around to or something we can have a marketing team designed for us when we're in business is often referred to as a very social singular thing, where we're talking about communities or individuals, when in fact it encompasses everything about us. It is how we live, you know. And so culture is important because it also is a very
threatable and a very expanding thing for us. And you try to sell something into a community without understanding its culture, you're going to go black broke, you try to sell an idea, you try to sell a relationship into someone's home or someone's person without understanding their culture, and you're going to get closed down. And chances are you'll be closed down long before you realize that your trying is in vain. And so how that leads into who we are personally is about making certain that we don't you know, there's a lot of conversation about appropriating as well. And we can get so granular in how we look at relationships. What I found in my life, Meg, is that we need to
get in touch with who we are. That's where all the strength, that's where all the growth, that's where all the pain can be healed is where we understand who we are. And so I came to I'm sitting in Mexico right now. I left the East Coast or the West Coast in the 70s and the 1970s. And I arrived in Los Angeles in the middle of what was very exciting time for my sister and her husband. They were in
the entertainment industry and I met so many stars people who I read about in Jet Magazine and seen on the cover of Ebony magazine, the scene on TV. I was meeting these people and I was meeting people who were mixing, marrying, working, building across races as well as well as across their talents. So it was an exotic time for me as well. And I look at them and I felt so different than them because here on the lines as I mentioned earlier, and now they had a cut of a girl from talk, we're in North Carolina talking very southerly. And my husband used to say he could tell when I'd been on the phone with my mom, because it took me two or three hours to get my my standard American English back in place. And I look at them and I realize I'm not going to be these people. I am me.
I ain't gonna have straight water wave hair, I ain't gonna have bright white skin, I ain't gonna have light eyes and you don't keep the hips and boobs too. And so I just thought that was so surface about how I was looking at myself because that was how people got the opportunity to move forward in that industry, how you look matter a lot. And peaches and herd who went out on the roads thinking weren't peaches and herd who were singing in the studio. And so I got to myself, what am I gonna do? And my brother-in-law said to me, you owe it to yourself to prove yourself before you go back. Mind you, I come to the West Coast on a vacation, still on a vacation,
look at life, look at God. And so I determined that I could have valued myself out of opportunities because of how I look. I had to understand about who I was and not just who I was and the disrespect to my parents, to my ancestors, to my creator and to my opportunities by devaluing me and changing me to look a certain way or behave a certain way in order to get ahead in life. And I'm so glad that my sister and I had many evenings, many of them with tears, many of them with laughter, working on me, doing the work on me to help me to realize that that person who I was in talk or in North Carolina was the person I was designed to be. And it's how far I saw I could take her that made the difference, not how far someone else saw. And so I decided that I would never compromise
who I was personally on my value in order to become who I wish to be professionally. And it enabled me by doing that to let go of the hostage I held myself to around things like appearance, things like personal culture. I was able once I accepted my culture was good. And then once I celebrated that he came from a strong and enduring place to be able to identify who I was inside. And some people, that's a flip side journey for them. When I arrived in Los Angeles back in the mid 70s,
it was a very visually stimulating place. And so it threw me in the face and it gave me an opportunity to decide who am I? What do I stand for? And in my company today, we have a have a credo that we stand on these feet. And that's how we grow forward. And feet F E E T
is F freedom to innovate, e excellence and delivery, e because everyone and everything matters, T invest the time to understand F E T. Now when you give a person freedom to innovate, you are basically saying you have permission to make mistakes, make them fast, be transparent about them, and let's all learn how we grow from them. Sticking no past that many people used to this day, even in this digital age, we're an accident at one of the one of the national entities where we do exploration. And it was an attempt to look for how to put planes together with glue.
And some folks from 3M walked in and they said, wow, this we can commercialize, we can monetize it. They didn't see the value in it as scientists because it wasn't achieving what they looked at having it to solve. But 3M said this is exactly something we can innovate from and built a multi million dollar empire on somebody else's mistake. And so giving people the freedom to innovate and allowing everyone that opportunity is valuable, whether you're doing that in a personal or a business relationship, excellence in delivery that young man I talked with earlier today, Shaka said it better than I can I paraphrase him. But he said, why settle for good enough when excellence can be yours, you know. And so we look to deliver excellence by encouraging each other to be our best in our
company. And I think it works well in your personal life. And then everything and everyone and everything matters. It's in the details, Nick, isn't the details you think you rolling you think you're doing so great. But it can be that one little thing that you were thoughtless to unaware of or had no knowledge about that can paralyze the opportunity can hurt somebody can can lose you the deal. And
so everyone and everything matters years ago. And I would go into San Francisco on an early morning, you might have played from LA and then catch the United flight back that same day. You could do that in you know, a matter of a couple of hours now takes a couple of hours to get through security. Wow, those are the days make I go into the large buildings there. And I know the people rushing by and signing in they have receptionist at the front entry. And I never noticed people
saying hello or engaging well with the receptionist. And we'd always stop my team and I we'd take time how you doing, you know, how's Joe, you're little boy. Oh, last month you said he did he did he make it did he get make it on the team those kinds of things you know in one lady said oh you always smell so good. You're breath is so fresh. I never thought about the impact of people's breath on a receptionist right. And I had her packing up that I had I said this is what I use and she loved
it. And you know so when I came back she said, Oh, look at her chatting with it. She also told me everybody who been in before me to make a presentation what their energy was you know, etc. And I didn't ask her for that she felt that we were in a community. She felt we had a culture of shared experiences she brought it to read about me. She knew that I come from humble beginnings as
she and she knew that I was an example of who she could become but most importantly she knew she mattered. She knew she mattered in my life and boy did she prove it because actually we want to contract in large part because of that young lady being so thoughtful and so caring to help us to understand that one of the people we were going to be going in to present to got a particular crisis they were dealing with and we were able to be sensitive to that that show that company that we were going to be sensitive to how we demonstrated our expertise and not just going in and try to you know show them stuff and that kind of leans into time to understand you know time is the most precious commodity yet it is one that all of us have and we share that same amount by day depending on how we separate our days sometimes I think we work five day weeks and have longer hours in a day when we blur the lines of when we start and finish time is something that is so important we have but amount of it but a certain amount of it on earth and I think how we invest it is so important I no longer spend time I invest time when I talk with my employees I remind them you know it's okay if
you want to spend stuff but make sure you're only spending 10% of it 90% of it has to be invested you have to be thoughtful you have to be intentional you have to be caring about how you invest your time is your is one of your most precious gifts and I'm really grateful for the time that you're allowing me to share with you Nick this is a masterclass I'm over here taking notes on everything because again you you are like that mentor that you didn't know that you worked to me and so we're gonna have it one of my companies we're having a team meeting tomorrow and we're gonna talk about feet oh beautiful you know it's a measurable thing for us oftentimes you go into environments and you see things on the wall especially pre-COVID and you see how people brand themselves and you know it's it's kind of sad when those occurrences happen that they are purchased ideas but they're not practiced ideals and companies put logos and models up all around because they're catchy they catch the
attention they catch the niche that someone's looking for or you're giving it all to your external customers and never delivering it to your employees who are your internal customers world customers do each other you know and so we measure feet it's how we get paid it's not just what we tell clients about how we operate I love it I love it I mean again this is something I'm gonna incorporate because it's one of those must-have things if you if you really have a culture of trust if you have a culture transparency to me it starts with your feet no pun intended absolutely that's how you get each step of your growth is determined by your feet yes absolutely again this is a master class you know I normally ask this question at the beginning but I wanted to ask you this now you know I asked my guest what's your because that thing that's deeper than your why right Simon Sennick wrote a book start with why I think it became a phenomenon we talk about your why to me that's cute but your because to me is deeper your because is your purpose is that mission that drives you
right if I were to say you know what's your why people tell me their kids their spouse their family but when I say but why it usually starts with well because blah blah blah blah I care about the cause so if I were to say this Janice today why do you keep doing what you do what's your because what's that purpose that keeps you igniting and inspiring the millions that you do it's because I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me staying close to my basic belief we started our conversation make around my personal mantra never compromising who you are personally to become who you wish to be professionally the beauty the joy the freedom of shaka said to me earlier today you know I was in prison when there were no walls and I was free when the doors were locked I get to decide he learned from his studying of Mandela that his mind was so crucial
to how he saw himself and how he saw himself was crucial to how he elevated himself above the circumstances above the past and beyond the limitations and that's so important to know I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me that's my because that's my because me and when you do things through Christ you've got to study the whole text and the context yes okay I'm not saying I can't do all things because some things aren't proper for me to do as me you know but I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me when I speak to and and and and you know I'm Bible based and we're taught sticky verse the kingdom of God and all these things shall be added unto you people often will speak about me in terms of what they see I've done in my life I measure my success
by what I've done with my life and I do believe that it's so important for us no matter where we find ourselves whether that is in the context of society in the context of politics in the context of finance and business wherever we find ourselves seeking first the kingdom of Christ for me is important if that's not your measure find out what that thing is that is higher than you that is bigger than you and that is embracing of you that you can aspire to years ago a young man in my company Zia Islam shared something with me that I've kept her ever and Zia I asked Zia how do you find your strength Zia during certain circumstances and he shared with me his father had taught him Zia never chase the money let the money chase you and I thought on that for years
because people so it find it complimentary think it complimentary and find it so casual to speak about my success in terms of the billions of dollars that my company generates a year volumes out at a year or the billions of dollars that the entrepreneurs who I mentored aggregate over a year the truth is if those entrepreneurs aren't happy if they're not going home to families they treasure and who know they are treasured if my grand babies don't know me because my children don't want to know me if those things are occurring in my life then any measure of gold is not going to satisfy success for me success is the worthy realization of a worthy idea and I learned that through study that wasn't me you know who thought of that Earl Nightingale put that in front of me years ago and so when you when you live with that measurement make no mistake we got to do the finance we got to keep
the numbers if you're in business we're not talking about you know just working on faith faith without works is dead but if it's about finding that balance about where you are and who you are that allows you to continue to elevate and you come from an environment as I do if you say you grew up in Green ville, South Carolina and I'm in Tarver, North Carolina we both come from a community and a mind and a culture that taught us we can do well and do good at the same time and in my house it was if you're doing well be certain you're doing good at the same time so I don't know if I've answered you but I share it with you transparently my true. ABH again this has been a masterclass I have so many notes I have so many takeaways I know the viewers and listeners are receiving this as well too I also know you talk about time being your best asset you took time to to be with us today and again you have no idea what that means I just I owe you upon owing you upon owing you because you are one of those figures in my life that I've always tried to shape myself I owe you that gratitude.
Make thank you for this invitation and thank you for the work that you're doing living gratitude living grace you got it you got it where do you want people to find and follow you and ask JBH is one of my favorite podcasts out there so we're gonna have links to that out there as well too all right well if they're doing that they can follow me through that I'm on all the social platforms so they are very welcome to do that and if they're urgent to any communication they can DM me look at that JBH thank you so much and to all the viewers and listeners remember you're because is your superpower go unleash it you've been plugged into mikum plug don't just listen take action rate and subscribe follow me on social and get the full experience at mikrantofficial.com keep building keep leading and most importantly keep talking