Do Go On - Earnings Season: Episode 17 - Seeking to Understand w/@Kalilahrey

Episode Date: December 4, 2019

This week @HDabhai & @RTRowe sit with the one and only Kalilah Reynolds; Executive Producer of Taking Stock & #MoneyMondaysJa, Business Editor at Nationwide News Network. Listen as sh...e details a little bit of her journey so far and paints the picture for the road ahead. Bonus you can hear @RTRowe being a man and realizing how much women go through while pregnant and building an empire🤦🏾‍♂️. Not sure if that counts as gems, but it certainly was a slap upside his head 🤣. Enjoy! Follow Kalilah on Instagram here https://www.instagram.com/kalilahrey/ And on Twitter here! https://twitter.com/kalilahrey For Taking Stock, MoneyMondays and everything else Kalilah puts out on Youtube 👉🏾 http://bit.ly/2re9LCq "Seek first to understand, and then seek to be understood." Links and Shoutouts are below...👇🏾👇🏾👇🏾 Nationwide This Morning - http://bit.ly/2DJwkl3 Kalilah Reporting on the Tivoli Uprising - http://bit.ly/2rdgOLD The Belize Oil Story - http://bit.ly/38fTv4C Belize Natural Energy - http://bit.ly/2YgLffR Shout Outs @CliffNationwide, @OwenJamesJa ★ Support this podcast ★

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Hi guys welcome to earning season i'm randy ro at rt ro and i'm h and i i'm denny at h and i and this week we have a wonderful guest the one and only kalila kalila always calling you enriquez and your full name is kalila enriquez reynolds i don't use the enriquez you know i don't know i am doing it because i'm only put it in there for people who remember me as enriquez that's why i because i know you from Hype TV so it's always Khalil Enriquez in my life from Hype TV
Starting point is 00:00:27 oh my god like you know me from way back then he's a proper fan then I just knew her she was on Hype TV well Hype TV was one of the first channels
Starting point is 00:00:36 you were involved with Hype TV or you no I just just knew from TV oh you actually were that was like one of my first jobs in Jamaica
Starting point is 00:00:43 my second job here really that's just why I know you from Hype TV? Yeah, that was like one of my first jobs in Jamaica. And my second job here. Really? Mm-hmm. That's just where I know you from. Hype TV was the first thing of its kind. It was kind of like Dancehall TV without being truly Dancehall TV. I was more thinking about the generation difference between you and I now. I know what's funny.
Starting point is 00:00:56 Watching, you know. That has come full circle. Because with the work I've been doing now, I've been using Yohan, who's the owner of Hype TV, Yohan Daw Dawes to do my video work. He was at the launch right? He was at the launch yeah. It's so funny because I went through a little struggle when I was just starting I had just gotten a contract with Exim to do Money Moves and I was at another company and they were doing the production so that's that's part of the reason
Starting point is 00:01:25 that was able to happen and then that company kind of went through some management issues and structural changes that I don't want to get into but it left me without a production team and studio and I happened to run into Johan like right when i needed a studio the next day i'm like fate yeah i just came together i've been working with him since oh congrats to johan is he on anything social i like to be good people proper if they're on social media i know he's hype tv i'm not sure what the twitter handle is but he's always retweeting my stuff oh so well he's probably hype tv on twitter so big up hype tv on twitter i should redo what i should have just done properly so let me introduce my guest kalila reynolds of i don't know what to
Starting point is 00:02:12 say you're of kalila what should i say you're up because you have money mondays you have obviously all the times he's on the radio every morning on nationwide what's his segment called you have multiple segments nationwide this morning nationwide this morning that's my that's the show that i do every day monday to friday 6 to 8 30 a.m and i'm the business editor at nationwide as well all right but you see so that's so funny because i so i don't listen to the radio me neither yeah i'm the but i like radio i don't want to say i'm young because i guess i'm young but i know you so when i think of you i think of segments i think of kalila from money mondays from taking stock if it's business business related reporting then i think of kalila beyond that i didn't i didn't know what you did it was quite on the monday morning monday to friday um nationwide this morning yes this morning we talk
Starting point is 00:03:02 about the diverse holy person yeah but politics social issues crime and business everything that's why people at you and other stuff that are not business related all the time all the time and then people going along to you go and say whatever whatever yeah okay i know yeah so i do post what's on my mind so again that's the next thing i'm going to say that when i think of you i think of what's on my mind it's so funny how the new digital age is i literally don't think of you as being ready i think of those things as individual like i think kalila what's on my mind to me that's a show because i well and i don't listen that's a segment on radio so all i do is i just take my phone are you doing while you record it record my radio segment yeah that's proper content you know because
Starting point is 00:03:41 in my mind i think what's on my mind for Kalila. But that's like when you speak about current affairs. As you'll see me with the headphones and in front of a mic like this, it's in the radio studio. Yeah, you've gone way ahead of everybody else. You launch out the online content before anybody else can do it. That's smart. I like that. I like that. So let me jump back.
Starting point is 00:04:01 I like to start off with people's personal lives so we can get it out of the way early. Tell us about yourself, Kalilah. We recorded the episode of Taking Stock that I was on. And then it was like a few days before you had the launch. At the launch, I was like, there's no way she was that pregnant. But I saw her like three days before. Literally, I was so surprised. I was like, there's no way because
Starting point is 00:04:26 i think i would know you were sitting behind the desk and it depends on what i wear too so the dress that i had on for the launch was like so it really shows everything i don't remember what i had on for our episode but it wasn't as obvious i was surprised i was like did you get like more pregnancy it's like there's something i don't get it well that's good the congrats on the pregnancy thank you which is always i don't know if you said congrats or say congrats that you have continued i think something that i think is a big deal locally people don't talk about continued putting out heavy content yeah and hasn't slowed it down in my if anything is sped up because you launched a show in the midst of it did slow me
Starting point is 00:05:09 down remember we had this conversation true but remember you and i have had a conversation privately but in terms of looking on it's just more and more and more and more content you're still there i don't use ig much when i check ig still there seeing what's on my mind still doing the money mondays every day and a new show taking stuff and well that's a lot of work okay i know it's like a full-time job on its own oh my lord well with all things i do on social media it's like a full-time job and then some you need a you need a second you need a you need a you need an assistant i have an assistant who i'm training okay and i know this baby's coming in February. So she needs to know to produce this whole show from top to bottom by the time I go off.
Starting point is 00:05:50 Wow. Yeah. Good luck to you. You know when you're training somebody, it's like doing double work. Yes. You have to do it. That's an entire job to train them. It would be much faster if I just do it myself.
Starting point is 00:06:01 But if I do it myself, then she never learns and I have to do it myself forever. So I'm teaching her segment by segment how to produce the show and what my standards are. So that by February, she can do it all. You can take a break. I like that. The leaning in, Kalila.
Starting point is 00:06:19 The new corporate. No, I'm not. I'm impressed by it because it's literally just you and Kimala. I've never seen it the kimala did the same thing because kimala for that when kimala was pregnant before lab launch but i mean her child is a little over one or going to so i saw her working heavy the ceo of lab working every day and she's pregnant same way and no slow down there are many many women who do it randy no no i don't doubt that i'm about to die online it's not that a lot of women don't do it but i'm used to seeing a certain sort of just naturally nothing like it's a bad thing it's just a natural sort of slow down and okay i need to assess it i'm not used to seeing almost a speeding up that's what i'm seeing because
Starting point is 00:06:59 if you look externally you launch an entire show and she's trying to show is really hard like i know this podcast is difficult but it's not really difficult because we have bam big up bam but when you go to the set like i got there late i don't think you guys even knew because she had already taped like three or four other segments entire crew working big up you men men could not be pregnant because i couldn't do what she could going to do. I could not do it. My assistant is a little bit overwhelmed right now because she's, it's a very steep learning curve when she realized what, because she's somebody who I work with in radio, but she's never done TV. So I'm showing her the ropes of what all goes into TV that you have to always be thinking of what's going to be on screen while you hear somebody. what's going to be on screen while you hear somebody so we're here now we're talking and we also have to think about what will accompany this voice will i always be on camera will i be
Starting point is 00:07:53 showing footage well what's gonna come and that in itself is a whole nother thing it's like tv production directing while you're actually presenting So you have to be thinking ahead. That's rough. So you're going to be an actor directing your own movie, basically. Pretty much, yeah. Well, let me dial back like I tried to before. Let me dial back and go as early in life.
Starting point is 00:08:16 So you started... You jumped the gun, bro. Yeah. We mentioned starting a hype TV. How did your journey start in media? All right. Actually, I'm from Belize. And that's where I grew up.
Starting point is 00:08:25 And I wanted to be, when I was young, I wanted to be a writer, like a big novelist. Write the next big piece of creative fiction. And, you know, that's what I wanted to do. And as a child, everybody always said, you'll never make any money being a writer. You'll never be profitable. How are you going to sustain yourself in Belize, of all places? That's a writer. We have one internationally known novelist, Z. Ejo, out of Belize.
Starting point is 00:08:56 She now lives in the States. I mean, there's no reason you can't be the next one. She wrote Bekalam, which some of you may have read in high school. I think we all read Bekalam. Yeah. But apart from her, there's no major well-known Belizean novelist. So people were just, it's kind of dream crushing, but it's also practical, you know? So I started thinking about, well, how am I going to be able to make money writing?
Starting point is 00:09:22 And I came up with journalism because I also have an interest. I've always had an interest in current affairs, politics, and so on. I grew up in a trade union household. My dad was a trade union leader, president of the public service union. My mom is also involved in her union, teacher's union, veteran educator. And so I've always had that social consciousness. I grew up around that. And so I'd listen to talk shows, watch the news, and have an interest in it. So I said, okay, let's marry these two interests, politics and current affairs, and writing. I'm going to get paid to write stuff about politics. So I studied towards that. I did my bachelor's at Fordham University in New York, which was different because it really
Starting point is 00:10:08 forced you. I grew up at CXC and some A-levels standard. When I was doing A-levels, you used to get points for every big word that you use, vocabulary points, because they're trying to build your vocabulary. You need to write in a certain type of structure a certain type of way i went to journalism school i have to unlearn all of that starts all over apa you really have to unlearn no not apa you have to the essence of journalism is communication is making it simple to understand so you see where i'm going with this now making it simple. So I had to unlearn all these structures, all these big words, all these however and therefore and hithertofore or whatever, you know, unlearn all of that structure
Starting point is 00:10:54 in journalism school. It's like starting to write from scratch again. And my professor, Professor Hall, had this, he used to make us use this thing called readability statistics. It's in Microsoft Word. And you'd have to put your story through readability statistics. And readability statistics tells you what grade level can read your work.
Starting point is 00:11:18 Yeah, I do that when I write. Yeah. And so it goes from grade one to grade 12, American grade system. And every time you'd put it in you'd get like grade 12 or higher like the entire class i always said this is impossible like howdy and he wants us to submit something that a grade 6 level can read i'm like oh my god this is impossible but bit by bit after learning the principles you start to realize okay the trick is short sentences small words shorter paragraphs and you you start getting the flow of it and
Starting point is 00:11:53 learning how to communicate in a much simpler way and so that was my foundation in learning to write for journalism learning to write for a broader audience that anybody on the street listening can understand and then I've also done training for journalists as well over the years and I pick up a lot of things I've been in this industry now almost 20 years did you believe it because I started in basically high school I started high school newspaper when I was in in high school in like third or fourth form I think in Belize yeah in Belize which high school newspaper when I was in high school, in fourth form, I think. In Belize. Yeah, in Belize.
Starting point is 00:12:28 Which high school? Belmopan Comprehensive School. I'm from Belmopan. Belmopan Comprehensive. You're from where? Belmopan. Belmopan. So Belmopan Comprehensive School.
Starting point is 00:12:37 Yeah. And I went to St. John's Sixth Form. And then Fordham. And then eventually my studies brought me here came to UWE to do my master's in communications as well and ended up being recruited for work right around the same time I met my to-be husband so there are many reasons to stay it's professional and personal reasons okay so it's a personal you bignolds yeah dr reynolds every day that man must hate me no actually few people if you don't know him personally you wouldn't know
Starting point is 00:13:12 he doesn't make a big deal up of it right ah that's right you know him no he doesn't like some people make a big deal if you miss off the doctor yeah he doesn't make a big deal as a matter of fact most people know him as a photographer or from sports ah so he doesn't he literally doesn't talk about he doesn't really unless you know him from that field oh that's that's i mean i read that definitely big up doctor and i'll say yeah i just know him as richie yeah i like that i like that yeah so that was in 08 that I came here. Okay. So that's when you moved to, that's the Hype TV move or that's before Hype TV? I think I went to Hype TV 09.
Starting point is 00:13:50 Okay. Because I started at, my first job was at RE TV, which lasted. That's where I know her from. Which lasted three months as a producer at RE TV. I guess I'm wrong then. I was a producer at RE TV. Not exactly what I wanted to do, but it was a foot in the door. And at the three-month mark, you know, that's your probationary period.
Starting point is 00:14:14 And they said they were going to keep me on probation. I was like, what? They're going to keep me on probation? And I've been doing, everybody's been praising my work up to now. And they said they're going to keep me on probation. And probation meant half salary and yeah i literally could not afford to work for another three months on half salary yeah because it was the summer that was coming up i was in as doing my master's at ua still and so scholarship money doesn't cover summer so summer i need to sustain myself and summer this
Starting point is 00:14:47 was in june this was the day michael jackson died june 25th i believe wow yeah it's the day michael jackson died because google will tell me i don't know that's why i remember because i remember posting it on facebook like something like it's big announcement oh i quit my job and nobody it just nobody like no comments no one is paying attention to oh my god when i say you quit so what did you quit and i had met johan before when i was like shopping around my resume and stuff and And I gave him a call. And he's like, oh, thank goodness. Yeah, cool.
Starting point is 00:15:28 Come through. And so I started as a presenter at Hype TV. And that's how I managed to sustain myself that summer. And then a few months later, ended up at CVM TV. So I worked at CVM for a couple of years and then moved on to Scene TV, which was brand new, which is a subsidiary of Sportsmax, the sister company to Sportsmax.
Starting point is 00:15:52 But Scene is a Caribbean-based, so they broadcasted that to the diaspora. You don't see Scene in Jamaica, although they record here and everything is- You see it in Florida and New York. Right, right. They broadcasted Diaspora. So that's Scene for a while.
Starting point is 00:16:06 And then Cliff Hughes recruited me because he had some type of contract with scene where he was, I guess, kind of overseeing since it was a new station. And so he saw me there and he recruited me for Nationwide. I've been at Nationwide since six years now. I've been at Nationwide. Like it? Love nationwide like it love it i love it this is the longest job i've ever had usually when i reach the two-year mark is like oh time to move on i get antsy you know it's new generation we don't work at one place forever anymore 40-year career now before this is two years out and i'm here six years now, so. Nationwide seems to be pulling.
Starting point is 00:16:45 I do like it a lot. Pull talent. In a weird, weird way in the industry because it's literally pure stellar people that you see. And he's great at developing talent. At identifying it,
Starting point is 00:17:02 nurturing it, developing it. That is true. He's really good at that. I give him mad props for that because he saw something in me when I wasn't there yet. When I first started at Nationwide, listeners, they're very, very, very critical. It's a tough place to work. It's a sink or swim type of place to work. I can imagine.
Starting point is 00:17:26 The reporters are very competitive. Shout to abga fits headly he was cultural reporter this side of anywhere yeah it's a very competitive environment to work george davis talking dennis brooks talking lots of big names have come through nationwide yeah and it's it can and the listeners if you make the minute you make a mistake they call they call and correct you and you have to you just have to take it so it's a very demanding place but it's been my most rewarding job so up until up until taking stock because taking stock is like a new career trajectory no well i like that segue so so we've got life you've naturally moved through your personal your professional life and into taking stock um that's that's a weird start because that's not
Starting point is 00:18:17 really starting a financial space you were doing um well i think maybe the the biggest well you can tell me what's the biggest thing you've done before taking stock in the business because i know money monday independently you mean or independent or either because to me i just i really am coming at you as a fan so you're just to be a trusted voice so when i hear when i hear money mondays and you say something money mondays it's like i hear it on the business news. You're like, I think, you know who read a big episode? I was going to say Oral Tracy,
Starting point is 00:18:49 but it's not Oral Tracy. It's Owen James. So you're like Owen James, but. I should show you a message that Owen James sent me, but that's not for air. That's not for broadcast. Well,
Starting point is 00:18:59 you're like Owen James, except like. You're broken down. You get more actual info. Exactly. About what's happening in the market. Remind me after the podcast. To say?
Starting point is 00:19:08 Yeah. This is a good one. So to me, you're a trusted voice. You like the business news, but not in the old business news way. And then again, as I said, I interact with you via IG. So when I go in IG, you see it. So you've literally taken what was an older lane
Starting point is 00:19:27 on, you know, radio, TV, so on, the business space and you brought it to a new space where everybody is.
Starting point is 00:19:32 But before this, probably what I was most known for was coverage of Dodos. 2010? 2010. I can almost hear
Starting point is 00:19:41 the voice, to be honest. 2010. Who are you in Spanish Town? People remember me from Dod's covering Tivoli. I was on Spanish Town Road. Okay.
Starting point is 00:19:50 You remember it now? You're remembering it now? I was on Spanish Town Road and I was doing a live link and gunshots started firing. And you started to duck. No, I didn't duck. Your cameraman got the actual gunman on camera? This is why people remember me because the day before Nadine McLeod was downtown, TVJ, I was at CVM. The day before Nadine McLeod was downtown and gunshots started firing and she ran.
Starting point is 00:20:16 And this was caught on camera and they used it in the footage. She told the cameraman, get in the car, get in the car. So I remember watching that and thinking my god if this happens to me just be calm finish your sentence and then get out of there you don't want to do what she i'm big up to nadine it's my friend still but if you're not mentally prepared i had a chance to be mentally prepared for that eventuality okay so i was on spanish town road i was covering encouraging militaries they're going in and shots are firing and a lady got shot like like right next to me like right where that black chair is and she got shot in her side and realized how quickly it
Starting point is 00:20:59 happened and i'm standing there my bulletproof vest and I was doing a live link. It was around midday and that's probably for the midday news. She got shot and there's gunshots firing. And I just said, and there you go again, another barrage of gunshots. And then I just wrapped up my thing and just calmly left. And then people were like my god you said I reported it she brave me and this is who reports on business and ever since then like people to this day people remember me
Starting point is 00:21:38 for that for being that calm under pressure that's's good. I like that. Yeah. Oh my God. Sorry. Did I live in Spain? So to us, that's a very real thing. I'll show you the video. I'll show you the video. It's on YouTube. It's on my YouTube channel.
Starting point is 00:21:55 Oh, definitely send me. I'm definitely putting that in the show notes. You'll see like I flinch a little bit. Like I just kind of jump slightly. My eyes open
Starting point is 00:22:03 and then I just finish my thoughts and wrapped it up. That good people check the show notes right now if you don't see the video you're at me oh wow so you came from that and you went into business you should be a walk in the park for you not necessarily because the business news that we're all used to that we know is just kind of up there on a intellectual like you have to be into finance to really understand it and that's the challenge that i identified now how i ended up doing business news is because nobody else at my work ever wanted to do it business and most economics news i started reporting on the economy before business.
Starting point is 00:22:45 So anytime it's like budget time, nobody wants to do budget stories. It's boring. You ever seen the budget book? It's a book like this. It's like thicker than a phone book. At least phone book thick. A big yellow book full of numbers. It's like barely any words in it.
Starting point is 00:23:00 It's just numbers, numbers, numbers. A phone book size book with numbers, numbers, numbers. And I love numbers grade three sorry grade one in in cxc in third form really yeah then again our school system is different the third form is really fourth form here still that's still good yeah i've always loved math i've been good math. So taking number stories and translating them into actual stories that people can understand, I like that challenge. So people always at my work, budget stuff, anything numbers related, give Khalilah. I should do it because many journalists get into journalism because they hate math. Yeah, they hate math.
Starting point is 00:23:42 They like English. That's true so so that's how i kind of started reporting on numbers related things which tend to be economics news and then started getting into the business side of things as well over time i like that it's a natural progression but you do a really really good job of it if i say so myself and then my training came in from portum yeah yeah because i'm like i'm trying to write this story but i don't understand the story and when i do when i do training one of my key principles that i'd have the students report repeat is seek first to understand then to be understood because if you don't understand what's going on how are you gonna
Starting point is 00:24:26 make other people understand say that again kalila say that again kalila just say that one more time repeat after me class seek first to understand then to be understood if you don't understand it you can't teach somebody else you can't report on it you're and when you're reporting you're teaching the nation you cannot report on something that you yourself don't understand and so a lot of times when it comes to business news and economics news the reporters don't have a clue yes myself included back in well now i do yeah but when i was starting i didn't understand this stuff and so what most reporters do is just copy and paste the press release and you just read it
Starting point is 00:25:10 right back the way how they sent it to you you don't understand it your listeners your viewers your readers don't understand it yeah or some do and then the some that do might be angry because it says the wrong thing right or yeah it says. And the some that do is a few. But our job is to communicate to the masses, to let majority of people know. And so I felt like it's been a disservice, especially in this particular economics and business news. We've been doing a disservice to the public.
Starting point is 00:25:40 But when I'm writing a story, if I don't understand, I'm going to take the time to understand before i write my story which might mean google investopedia wikipedia calling people who do know i'm like okay i have resources i'm a journalist i have so-and-so's number i can call up dennis chung who's an accountant like dennis what does it mean and then it will explain it to me i can call up business leaders and they will take my call because i'm kalila reynolds from nationwide and they're gonna take my call i can call up keith duncan or richard biles when he was chairing
Starting point is 00:26:14 co-chairing epoch i know he's the boj i know he's the boj governor and they would take the time to explain stuff to me and once i understood, then I can write my story. It takes extra time, but it's absolutely worth it. So in terms of going through, getting to understand it and then translating it into a style that's easy to understand
Starting point is 00:26:38 and easy to follow. And that's how I've been able to generate a following on social media. And I came up with the tagline, I make business and finance easy to understand. Which is perfect. Because that's essentially what my mission is. Just people. And people do want the knowledge.
Starting point is 00:26:55 It's not that. And I've known people who said, oh, when business news come on, that's when they change the channel because the news done. Because this is not for me. And now they're tuning in they're paying attention because now they have some of the knowledge they're able to understand and they're interested because of what's going on on the stock market people are interested when my thing really took off was after wigton you know yeah when everybody jumped in because you'll be one of the few people talking about wigton talking about stocks in a regular, understandable way.
Starting point is 00:27:26 Yeah, Wigtown is one of my things really bust. My first episode of Money Mondays was about the budget. So I was more focused on the economic side. Yeah. The first episode was about the budget because they had tax cuts and all kind of stuff was going on. Yeah, it was the first time they had that sort of tax package. Yeah, it was interesting to me. So I said, you know what?
Starting point is 00:27:43 Let me just jump on IG, do a little video and explain what's going on. And I call it Money Mondays, which means I had to commit to every Monday after that. If you call something Money Mondays, people expect something every Monday. But I'm that type of person. I have an idea. I do it. I don't like to hold on to ideas for too long. I'll just do it at the same time.
Starting point is 00:28:06 So I had the idea and five minutes later, I was recording the video. Because you call it money mondays, you locked in. Yeah, and that was that. And so I kind of lost my train of thought now. But that's how I ended up doing business and finance news. And making it simple because it's not, like you're saying, we started talking about like because it's not making it simple talking about
Starting point is 00:28:25 like the complicated i was talking about wigton yes so wigton was my big boss yeah they have 30,000 people buying into wigton and now they've bought into wigton and they don't understand the stock market i had somebody call me nine o'clock one night franticantic. Kalila, I hear Wigton is trading at negative three cents. I'm like, huh? Is that even possible? That means you owe the company. It's not possible. The lowest I can drop is zero.
Starting point is 00:28:57 I don't know that that's even possible. Negative three cents. And he was panicking because he had money in Wigton. I said, I have my suspicions what happened, but let me check the JSC app. And sure enough, Wigton had lost three cents that day. And he thought,
Starting point is 00:29:12 he said negative three in red. He thought that was the price. And so I had to keep putting out information and letting people understand. You have all these new investors who don't really know what's going on. There's this select fund dropping. I go, oh my God, I'm scared.
Starting point is 00:29:29 This is my first investment. I don't know. And so you just have to try to help people out. And it's been a learning curve for me too because I haven't even been investing that long. It's only been like two years since me and my husband started investing. It's a good amount of time to start.
Starting point is 00:29:44 It's only been about a couple of time to start it's only been about yeah a couple of years and it's and it was for the same reason that i heard jamaica had the best performing stock market in the world and i'm here as a reporter reporting on this stuff but then i'm not taking advantage of it partly because i didn't fully understand the stock market i didn't really understand it at all he's just talking reporting numbers but it meant nothing to me personally copy and pasting the press release like everybody else and then we started getting into it and i said but if i don't understand i have a master's degree most people don't understand so i use myself as the first test even though people i have i'm more educated than the masses I
Starting point is 00:30:26 still use my if I can't understand chances are most people 90% of people don't understand so anything I read I don't understand it I say just make a good morning one is more than yeah this would make a good topic to talk about to break it down. And that's how I started doing that. Yeah, I like that. I like that. Kalila does a lot of the same stuff.
Starting point is 00:30:55 So I started every Mikko after the very same thing. I wanted people, just naturally. I'm always explaining things to people. People are always asking me. I guess I always knew about it because I did pay attention to Owen James and I wanted to know what he was talking about right so i understood it but i didn't know that people didn't understand it and it's the exact same thing i started writing just because why can't i keep explaining to people if i write it somewhere i can just say this link i'll say yeah and then they'll read it and i'll find out why most people don't like to read so no which is why it's even
Starting point is 00:31:21 greater because when i hear what you do i'm like it's like she's saying what i used to type which is even better it's much easier than ig it's a better thing yeah nobody reads a book everybody check them ig right so that to me is amazing because you're probably the only person i don't want someone to talk to my own horn but literally other than me you're the only person i know who is bringing finance to the masses in a way that the masses can understand and appreciate consistently
Starting point is 00:31:49 because there are people who've done a couple of things here and there but you're not consistent and that's another challenge it's about the approach the consistency and the approach when I hear how you speak about how you approach it with the want to understand it and then you use what you learn in journalism to simplify it and bring it. Right.
Starting point is 00:32:07 Literally. People don't get it. I complain all the time that we alienate people in how we speak in finance and how general finance speaks is alienating. And the people in finance don't seem to know. Yeah. Or care. So if you watch Taking Stock, like whenever people start using the jargon, I'm like, okay.
Starting point is 00:32:28 Like the last episode we taped, one of the panelists was talking about the NAV, the NAV, so I have to say, okay, the net asset value is what that is. Because not everybody understands what the NAV is. Most people don't understand what the NAV is. And you find that, I've learned from this, even if you say it one time,
Starting point is 00:32:46 almost have to say it every single time because there's always somebody new. Yep, exactly. But I want to give props to you for being consistent with the podcast because people don't realize what type of effort goes into it and what type of effort goes into maintaining consistency. If you dedicate dedicate if you say you're gonna do this every week or even if it's every month not missing a month or not missing a week that takes real dedication and effort and so i have to bring up my first sponsor proven wealth
Starting point is 00:33:18 proven wealth came on very early no let me tell you why let me tell you why provenalth came on very early. I'm so sorry. No, let me tell you why. Let me tell you why. Proven Wealth came on very early on Money Mondays. I had only done like maybe three episodes. And I pitched the idea to Belinda Williams at Proven Wealth. At Proven Wealth, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it was like an immediate yes. And let me tell you, having a sponsor has kept me consistent. Because you have to deliver.
Starting point is 00:33:45 Because there's money on top of it. Yeah. You can't just say, oh, I'm not going to do this week. I'm tired. I want to go to a party or whatever reason. I'm not going to do it. You can't do that when you have a sponsor on board because they're expecting you to deliver. That's right.
Starting point is 00:34:00 And you don't deliver, your credibility is shot. That's right. So the sponsorship has made a difference in keeping me consistent and additional motivation. I really like that. And I like tying the point in. So if you're consistently putting something out there and the content that you're putting out there is great
Starting point is 00:34:18 and the masses can understand it, that's literally just an easy recipe for success. Yep. Yeah. Everybody I know knows it. And that IG push, you use IG as almost a forward,
Starting point is 00:34:33 it's like it bears the brunt of breaking into people's minds because because it's on IG, everybody uses IG. Everybody uses it. It's really nice. Yeah. IG is easier than Twitter.
Starting point is 00:34:41 Yeah. Yeah, Twitter has a level of difficulty to it. IG is fun. It's easy. You understand a level of difficulty to it. IG is fun. It's easy. You understand it. It's my favorite platform. I'm on IG all the time,
Starting point is 00:34:51 so that's where I want to put my stuff. It only makes sense. It only makes sense. That's a good reason. Yeah. It sounds simple, but to me, I can tell simple doesn't mean easy.
Starting point is 00:35:03 I think that's what people... Not necessarily. No. A lot of work goes into it. Because simple doesn't mean easy i think that's what people necessarily because my most popular videos are the prospectus reviews yeah first of all that requires reading the prospectus which are long yeah when you take that burden off even my girlfriend asks me every time she gets frustrated when she gets as frustrated as to read she can do it to her
Starting point is 00:35:26 but there's a lot of stuff in there that you can skip through there's stuff that's repetitive true but you have to read it
Starting point is 00:35:32 and know it like okay i can skip through this part and get to the next part and then sometimes then you have to make your notes
Starting point is 00:35:40 sometimes there's stuff in that part that's always the same sometimes i'm saying it differently with the the way they did the allotment where they could Sometimes there's stuff in that part that's always the same. Sometimes they say it differently.
Starting point is 00:35:48 But Fontana, with the way they did the allotment, where they could exclude you if you had more than one account. That happened with Fontana, where if I had two accounts and applied to Fontana. Through both. Through both. Then they could choose which one of them they could allot the shares to. And every project was really the same way. A little change in Fontana and I let them do that
Starting point is 00:36:06 and people got blocked up because of it and there's a lot of problems with people doing that so so read the full thing
Starting point is 00:36:12 and a lot of people that skid past that and then after the fact they came and said oh Fontana do this and I point and say I said I said
Starting point is 00:36:18 I'll switch to that little part and say see it there damn it man now I have to go read the whole thing well you know what you read the whole thing so that other people know so we now I have to go read the whole thing read the whole thing well you know what
Starting point is 00:36:25 you read the whole thing so that other people don't know you read the whole thing because the same pressure is also the social pressure at this point and I get it wrong
Starting point is 00:36:34 yeah it's heavy it's heavy and then the turnaround time because sometimes they put out the prospectus today and then they're opening
Starting point is 00:36:42 the IPO in like three days from now which puts pressure on us or seven yeah yeah you get it and it opens within a week now i have to read it make notes write my script because everything i do is fully scripted one in one there's a full script yeah and then i then i have to record which means as a woman i have to do makeup and to get proper lighting. I started out doing it on my phone, but I've been consistently improving the quality,
Starting point is 00:37:10 which you probably would have noticed. So I have to do makeup. I have to organize all that stuff within maybe two days to turn it around so that I can post it on Monday. Yeah. It's a lot. Plus I have my full-time job and I have a baby and I have a teen, a family. You see why I was impressed earlier when I said that she's pregnant? Because the level of work and output that you're putting out, I know how hard it is.
Starting point is 00:37:39 And she works every day. I wake up at four o'clock every morning. To be on the radio at? To be at work for five and on the radio to be at work for five and on the radio at six yeah better than me couldn't be me i really respect that i'm at my full-time job until 2 p.m i pick up my teenager from school and whatever i can between then and five and then it's baby time to deal with the toddler at home. I like that you meant that time. Yeah, when she goes to bed at eight
Starting point is 00:38:10 then I get to work on money mondays, taking stock, all that stuff and in between. So you just never stop working basically. Right? The past couple months, especially with taking stock, has just been go, go, go, go, go, go, go. It really has been.
Starting point is 00:38:25 I remember when you and I were talking about when I had the idea months ago for taking stock, I had this great idea and then, bam, I'm pregnant. You should say it to me. I was like, should I just wait until after this baby is born? I don't know. Because I like the first trimester of pregnancy is rough is that's when you have all the morning sickness and i work
Starting point is 00:38:54 in morning radio you see the thing you see what i'm talking about i just i'm sorry to me it's impressive because if i get that flu everything shut down. You have the morning sickness your body is making a human so you're tired like I was fatigued like I just wanted to sleep all day you're exhausted like you feel sick
Starting point is 00:39:17 when I say sick and tired literally sick and tired and so there's even some mild depression which a lot of women go through as tired and so there's some even some mild depression with which a lot of women go through as well and so i was like i'm not gonna do this again i told randy i'll do it next year and he's like no you should do it no it's a really good idea launch i can't do it i can't do it and then first trimester blues passed i hit the three month mark and i started feeling better and now i have energy again i'm like you know what i'm gonna do it yeah there we go and the
Starting point is 00:39:50 quiz was good yeah and a couple months later i was able to to launch the show yeah i mean the show has been amazing people you haven't seen the show yet i mean hit the show notes there's a link in there uh or go straight to youtube right now and it's kalila ray's taking stock clearly i need to give you like a nice link that's easy you can say kalila ray.com slash youtube.com slash kalila ray there we go youtube on my social media is the same kalila ray k-a-l-i-l-a-h-r-e-y so twitter that's my handle ig that's my handle facebook is facebook.com slash kalila ray youtube.com yeah it's all the same so that's perfect. Yeah. It's all the same. So that's good. You already said.
Starting point is 00:40:27 So you have it. You've actually started investing. I like that though. Cause you'd be very surprised. Well, you'd have learned by now. I don't know if you've asked, but I suspect you'd see by now that not many people, even people who comment on the industry and in the industry,
Starting point is 00:40:38 not many of them actually invest. So to hear you say that you have been investing two years. Two years is good. Yeah. Let me tell you how we started. So me and Richie, Dr. Reynolds. Dr. Reynolds. Me and Richie got married four years, 2015?
Starting point is 00:40:53 Yeah, almost four years. Four years ago, we got married in Belize. And so we asked friends and family, rather than giving us traditional wedding presents, just give us some money. Because we can't take all these things on the plane. You can travel with it so we got a nice little amount of money a nice little nest egg and we just had that there sitting in the bank for until two years ago so for half
Starting point is 00:41:16 that time about two years just sitting in the bank because that's what you're taught you grow up thinking you work hard and you save your money. You work hard, you save your money. It's in the banks. And it's safe. It's safe there. And you earn interest. Quote, unquote, earn interest.
Starting point is 00:41:38 So we just had it there in the bank for those two years. And I'm reporting on these things about this best performing stock exchange and all this stuff that's going on. And IPOs and people making money hand over fist and so i said to him i said you know we should start investing we should look into this thing and around the same time i guess he and his brethren were having the same kind of conversations and you know young people like us having the same types of talks saying you know they're starting to invest as well and so we were having the same types of talks saying, you know, they're starting to invest as well. And so we were on the same page. And so an IPO was coming up. I'm not going to say which one. Which year was it?
Starting point is 00:42:12 An IPO was coming up. He was trying to show us as he figured out which year it was. An IPO was coming up. There have been so many. So even if I said a year, you wouldn't know which one. You probably know which one it is already based on the year. ipo is coming up and i didn't read the prospectus i just hear ipo 2017 i know which one okay i just hear ipo so we're gonna put our money in this he read
Starting point is 00:42:39 it he said he did read it and i guess he thought it was a good investment i didn't read it i just said ipo let's put some money in it and it didn't do that well it didn't lose money but it didn't fly it didn't it didn't not even take off it just stayed flat okay it just stayed flat the entire you probably figure it out figuring it out yeah flat yeah they're not that many that did that yeah it just didn't lose money it didn't it didn't lose money it just stayed flat and we were disappointed and so after that first experience i said okay i need to start reading these prospectus okay and seeing but you didn't lose money so that's good it's a good thing that we didn't thank goodness we didn't lose money yeah right now depending on when people hearing this everybody who's in qw is either going boy me too or it couldn't be me
Starting point is 00:43:25 yeah so it wasn't qw people by the way she's not talking about qw it's just recent yeah this was a couple years ago and so after that i said okay we're gonna start actually reading the stuff and paying more attention and you know following the business news more keenly and so our next investment did very very very well 2017 that's probably jet con look at you doing some yeah yeah we can't help it it wasn't it wasn't jet con no our next investment wasn't an ipo but it still did well it doubled and then our our third investment did extremely well that's nice that's ncd nope that's not ncd you want to tell us which one it is it was fontana it was fontana oh yeah everybody eat off that so six or eight times i think
Starting point is 00:44:16 it's 188 188 yeah so you did very very well yeah I love that now we're really into it yeah not quite like it in that first one that first one that blow up here you go
Starting point is 00:44:31 wait this is possible so now now we're really into it and Fontana was what February February of last year
Starting point is 00:44:38 yeah yeah thereabouts and it had by like three months and it would have gone I think it was February and I had interviewed Kevin O'Brien Chang about it at a time I was doing On Point for Business Access TV.
Starting point is 00:44:49 And Dennis Chong was saying like, yeah, it's a good one. And everybody I was listening to was saying, yeah, it's a good one. So we did it. And we're very happy with that investment. And that's when I really, really started paying attention and saying, okay. I started feeling like I need to go tell it on the mountain. Like I need to be an evangelist for this thing because this is what is possible. Like if we can make this thing work, other people need to be doing this as well. But the barrier is most people don't understand it.
Starting point is 00:45:22 That's right. And so I need to be like Moses and spread the word and talk the people's understand it that's right and so i need to be like moses and spread the word and talk the people's language that's right yeah i'm not gonna do it in latin yes right that's right do it in a way that people can understand yeah and bring it down i like that have you gotten any pushback on that like on i don't know how much i don't want to personalize the journey but like so finance the way they speak is also loved within the industry so they're thrown on people who don't speak like that about financing and you don't it's almost like because they don't speak like them is you're not intelligent yeah or it comes off that way
Starting point is 00:46:05 we're talking like that yeah so i'm like even though you get it right and you're saying the right thing if you're not using the right words oftentimes occasionally there'll be people who will because i like to round numbers too rather than saying specific because Because in radio, podcasting, broadcasting, you're not going to say 5,756,000. 0.687. You're just going to round it to 6 million.
Starting point is 00:46:33 Or like when I was doing the wig turn thing and I said $1,000 and somebody pointed out, you know, it's actually $1,168. $63. Because you have to pay
Starting point is 00:46:41 the GCSB fees. I'm like, yeah, I'm rounding it off. Yeah, that sort of thing. That sort of thing. I don't know. Maybe it's because you're already in media.
Starting point is 00:46:50 So it's Kalila from Nationwide. It's Kalila from Business Access TV. So I guess maybe you come with that prestige and not necessarily argue with it. I get it, but I don't pay much attention to it. Probably because I am in media and people will criticize and I'm used to it. Used to the visibility.
Starting point is 00:47:07 I'm used to criticism. Like I said, at Nationwide, the minute you get something wrong, they call. People will be quick to call. And I don't really trouble myself with criticism too much.
Starting point is 00:47:21 I will listen. If you have a valid point, I might need to change something next time. But I will listen. Like if it's, if you have a valid point, I might need to change something next time. But I don't really stress about it. Like I saw when they, how you took that one
Starting point is 00:47:31 personal the other day, Randy. I told my feelings about some of these things. I started leaving it alone. And they didn't even at you. They were just,
Starting point is 00:47:38 they were just in general. It was just a general privilege. It was a general comment and Randy take it personal. Yeah, because I know better. I know better. What was the comment? You remember what the comment was
Starting point is 00:47:46 That night Yeah Privilege Randomly privileged Or was it the People with privilege People under Encouraging people
Starting point is 00:47:52 To get into the market To understand that Not everybody has the same They burn me Not everybody has the same They burn me I saw the same comment And you know what my reaction was
Starting point is 00:48:01 That's ruined my eyes That's good That's good Whatever I like that you're more You're more mature let's roll my eyes that's good that's good whatever i like that you're more you're more i need to train because it hurts it hurt me bad man because you know it really hurt me because that's literally what i do everything i do is geared around having people that don't have a lot of money getting because that's what i like to hear
Starting point is 00:48:21 it doesn't mean much to me if somebody have 10 million dollars turn it into 20 right as opposed to somebody have 10 grand turn it into 100 grand i know how life-changing that can be so that's always where i've been focused yeah it's deeply gratifying doing what we do and i i get the messages in my dms all the time kalila i opened my brokerage account today um i got my daughter start investing you know it's deeply deeply gratifying it really is it really is i was telling danai i saved them like i screenshot them and i saved them in a special folder me too i actually go back to them i look at it because i have people because also i did the workshops the girl workshops i showed danai like i did an advanced one just yesterday i did my first advanced girl so it would have been people
Starting point is 00:49:05 who have gone to grow classes before only those people have been invited and a very small group i think about 20 people not a lot and we spoke about like the journey of our and with more advanced things that we do are you getting into it and i thought maybe it's not applicable to them or not but when them start showing their portfolios i won't say anybody's name but like one girl showed me she's over eight million dollars wow she started with five hundred thousand dollars a year and a half ago yeah yeah that to me means a whole lot more than than maybe the earnings from ncb not that those aren't impressive but you know more money makes money naturally but when you have a little bit of money you get a little bit more that's so impressive to me so
Starting point is 00:49:44 to hear comments against that always pisses me off but they're not too sensitive i need to adopt more of what you have done yeah when when you get more seasoned in this industry as a podcaster you learn to let it roll i think so yeah because the criticism do come and and what's nice is that like you said the praise a lot of praise does come out so yeah and the praise really is good i like that you you're evangelizing you're right because i know that feeling you're talking actually talking to my soul like when you see that i'm thinking yo i shouldn't be the only one doing this yeah because you can't you know you can literally do exactly what she did make you money you hasn't made the money by yourself and oh this is working let's just keep doing it but i feel like other people
Starting point is 00:50:20 need to know exactly that and i need to know that you don't have to be rich to do it. Exactly. This is how you get rich. Yes. People always, after the fact, oh, you get rich and then they assume that, boy, you had it the whole time. Yeah. I'm not rich. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:50:37 Exactly. We're going to get there. Yes. But I feel like I unlocked the key to to adulthood the key to adulting the key to life because before this before we started investing it's just you just work work work work for money you just work you work and between my husband and i and i've been saying he's a medical doctor he's a surgeon i've been working two jobs he's a surgeon doing surgeon works i have lots of work and we both earn decent salaries
Starting point is 00:51:05 but between the two of us when we calculate a mortgage for a house still it's still not really making it you know and you still is off i wouldn't say hand to mouth because we're still doing better than most people but the type of house that we would want to live in we wouldn't be able to afford type of house that we currently live in now that we rent that we've been renting for the past 10 years you know and we're still our landlord hadn't raised the rent that much over the past 10 years it's a good landlord because the landlord a little bit but what we would pay for that house if we were trying to move somewhere else it would be way way more yeah and so we can't afford to move out of that house housing costs are crazy nobody talks
Starting point is 00:51:51 about the reality of that we can't afford to move out of that house and our mortgage would be more than twice what we pay in rent yes so it doesn't make sense for us right now and you don't want to move out and you don't want to lower your standard of living just to say you own a house. Preach again. I can tell she's not Jamaican. You're very Jamaican. You're like Jamaican adopted. But I can tell at the court, because we have this buy a house thing at our court.
Starting point is 00:52:15 Where people will, I know people will break themselves. Our family is expanding. We need more space, not less. We're not going to go move into a two-bedroom with three kids paying more less space just so that we own the house that doesn't make sense i don't really own the house until another 30 35 years no we're not gonna do that so so between a medical doctor and a well-known journalist who's working two jobs. Yes.
Starting point is 00:52:46 And we can't afford the standard that we would like to, which is a middle-class standard. We live in a townhouse. You can't say middle-class these days, Kalila. It's not in Italy. It's too soon. It's too soon. Oh, the lattes. The lattes, boss.
Starting point is 00:53:00 The lattes. Random big up to Chris Williams. Big up ECL also. I like like your twitter handle by the way it's not too latte to apologize i love the entire thing i thought it was fun from top to bottom i don't know people got hurt right usual yeah but i'm saying we're not we just want to maintain the standard of living that way i don't know and between the two of us like we're just it's to own a house and our salaries it wouldn't have made sense it wouldn't it wasn't possible but once we started investing and we started seeing the returns there we go we're like oh so this is how people do it oh i'm so happy i still have to hear somebody wait wait no the joke it's not necessarily just working the 9 to 5
Starting point is 00:53:45 it's or breaking your back getting a second and third job no there's another way people a lot of people
Starting point is 00:53:53 don't do it that way and they say break them back to get the holes you're doing it the right way make the money and they make the money make some money
Starting point is 00:53:59 and then you go back do it you know what they want to do with the money yeah because I've been wondering like how people do it yeah
Starting point is 00:54:04 and nobody talks about it even now even now at the point where we are we've brought it i have to think about how we thought then i you and i we still don't really talk about some of the very real things because oh yeah just even culture with it's uncultured to really talk about money like i've heard what you're saying earlier saying that you know like i'm not rich yet you're not rich yet i thought the thing yeah i agree with you and i because i said the same thing about myself too but i don't have any kids or wife or anything and i've made a nice little change and i honestly think i'm not rich yet so i have to start thinking you know at what point am i actually rich because it's a mindset you know because you're really doing the right thing think about it you got a
Starting point is 00:54:40 nice if you bought fontana at least at ipo let's assume you put a hundred not even a hundred let's assume you put one thousand jamaican dollars in there you know what i've gotten what eight nine thousand jamaican dollars off it right so whatever you put in there is eight times that money in not three years hasn't been three years yet that to me is not when i think of that like i think of what happens if a company makes an investment and within the financial year that they made the investment the investment triples that company i consider to be impressive yeah but if you do it as a regular person i think i'm not rich i'm not saying that you're rich i'm not saying i'm rich either but i think that
Starting point is 00:55:17 we there is still more you're proving how much more of the journey has to be explained because we really are changing how people think like we see how much made off the journey has to be explained because we really are changing how people think like we see how much made off of for example fontana or whatever i start seeing okay home ownership is in sight yes yes okay and this is how you can afford this is almost only way to afford it if you don't have it before you say okay these particular goals that we have my daughter is in sixth form and she wants to study in the united states she can't understand mommy well you're going to for them i got a full scholarship so i i don't know how we're gonna pay for it if she's gonna get a scholarship to i'll have her doing sat classes hopefully she does get one but they're still living expenses there's still a lot
Starting point is 00:56:01 to pay for and that's gonna she's in lower six so we have like a year and a half to plan yeah to figure out how we're gonna pay for that it's like oh this is how people okay okay you know that's a good question for the session how long you say you have before she before like ideally she'd have to go a year and a half two years yeah two year two years a little bit less than two years so so we have goals and we can't we're finally starting to figure out okay this is the key it's not necessarily about breaking your back working extra and then the other so i'm talking about we started with stocks and then one of the goal is to use some of that money to go into real estate, buy a house. And then I'm now launching the business. Yes.
Starting point is 00:56:49 Tell us about the business. The three keys to wealth creation. Oh, you've been speaking to Mr. Leach and you're speaking to Uncle Mikey. I read a lot too. I like that. Audiobooks. Audiobooks. I do audiobooks a lot because I don't have as much time to read anymore.
Starting point is 00:57:04 But driving in Kingston traffic can take you an hour and change. The audiobooks, the podcasts. So three keys, stock market, investing, real estate, entrepreneurship. So I've started the stock market. Next goal is real estate. But then the entrepreneurship is coming before the real estate because that's starting now too. And they feed each other. And they feed each other
Starting point is 00:57:25 so launching Kalila Ray Media that's all we need to talk about yeah and that's all I want to hear have you said that anywhere else before
Starting point is 00:57:31 publicly well I have my logo on everything that says Kalila Ray Media true but you know people are until you throw it out I just
Starting point is 00:57:39 I really can excuse to say you heard it here first so it's kind of out there and i'm working on the whole process of getting the company formalized and registering and all of that and so that's that's where i'm going now and being executive producer of taking stock is a whole whole thing which is got to big up cliff hughes too because he he's a he's been my media mentor for the past five, six years. But I also greatly respect what he has done making that transition from journalist to businessman. Now launching Nationwide News Network.
Starting point is 00:58:15 How long has Nationwide been on? Like 13 years? Yeah, because I remember Nationwide. Because he started out as a young journalist too. He started out at JBC, then RJR. He was the youngest news editor at the time. Then he launched his own show on Power. An amazing show.
Starting point is 00:58:33 I have to say that myself. Big up Cliff Hughes for that because I was a young boy, I guess I was in high school then. And that's how I started paying attention to politics and economy. Launched his own show and then eventually his own media house, Nationwide News Network. And that's not an easy transition to make. At all. It's a completely different ballgame.
Starting point is 00:58:51 And so now around the office, I feel like I see him giving me some weird looks. I don't know if it's just my mind. He probably just sees you on the same journey. But he's told, like when I came to him
Starting point is 00:59:00 because Taking Stock airs on Nationwide as well. And I told him the idea and I said, you know, I want this on Nationwide and I'm interested in purchasing airtime on Nationwide. And he kind of like, oh, I see you. He said, I see Mrs. Reynolds.
Starting point is 00:59:18 Mrs. Reynolds, I see the entrepreneurial bug has bitten. You do a very good computer. Oh. Yeah. entrepreneurial bug has bitten you do a very good oh so did you mean that the contracts were not signed before they were paid up and then he wears glasses so he'll look over his glasses yeah i should give him just a random shout out he has in my opinion the best interview i've ever heard locally from a local journalist to a local person just a weird random interview he did years ago he interviewed philip paulwell i guess he'd have to go in his archives to dig up that one i don't even know if i'll ever be able to find that's his longtime friend you know yeah yeah well if you listen to the interview here yeah they know each other from
Starting point is 01:00:07 school but that's probably one of the best interviews i've ever heard from a local media personality to a person i guess they're because they knew each other there's stuff there's rapport it's the first time i saw philip paulo in a different light as a human being because cliff really humanized in that interview so there's a a random point I remember from Cliff. Big up to Cliff for that. He's the best. That's why I've been there six years. I haven't felt the urge to leave because the personal development has just been so great under his leadership.
Starting point is 01:00:34 And he really has a way about doing that. And then now that I'm embarking on this new venture, I'm looking at him differently now as a businessman because I've come to him for leadership advice on being in the newsroom. And he's been able to nurture my talent and grow me to where I'm much more confident than when I first started. A few years ago when the callers were saying, who's this Belizean? Why is she commenting on Jamaican politics and tell her go back to Belize? All kind of foolishness.
Starting point is 01:01:03 Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're quietly racist. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're quietly racist and red-eating. Yeah, not even quietly. Yeah, we are pretty xenophobic in Jamaica. And now they've come to accept me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I see you as Jamaican. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:01:15 Even though I know you're from Belize, I still see you as Jamaican. I didn't know she was from Belize. She talks very Jamaican. You know, our cultures are very similar. Yes. Belize and Jamaica, very, very similar in our histories. But that's another conversation.
Starting point is 01:01:29 No, you can have it. If you don't mind, I mean, we're not whenever I ever press for time. Because I'm so interested in that. I've never really, like, for example, Belize, they speak English. Yeah, Belize is the only country in Central America that's English speaking. Because we were colonized by the British. Same as Jamaica. And the British got lots of, back in the day,
Starting point is 01:01:46 lots of the public servants and police officers and teachers came from Jamaica. Back and forth, yeah. Back and forth. It is the same slave master. It's the same system. The same colonial laws. The same, a lot of the same structures. Even the food.
Starting point is 01:02:00 We eat rice and beans. You guys call it rice and peas, but it's the same thing. It is called rice and peas. And you eat rice and beans. You guys call it rice and peas, but it's the same thing. It is called rice and peas and you eat rice and beans. But it's exactly the same dish. It's the same meal. You guys have breadfruit? Yeah, breadfruit.
Starting point is 01:02:13 That's the British. Yeah. We have, it's so, even the language we speak, Belizean Creole and Jamaican Patois or Jamaican Creole.
Starting point is 01:02:21 Very similar. Very, very similar. I posted a video on my IG last week reading the Jamaican Pican patois the official standardized version it got a whole heap of comments ah yeah why what do you feel about that patois business i have strong opinion i do think it should be a language a language and declared so that's i'm gonna talk about it and what's on my mind tomorrow actually well this will almost definitely not drop before that so if you want you can oh i forgot don't use the time dates you can if you want i mean we're pretty open on monday november 11th there we go
Starting point is 01:02:55 so and it will be on my ig so you can see that and you know you said our countries are very similar are we very similar business wise you find do i mean specifically all right so like you'd have seen how the business culture in jamaica i don't think maybe you don't know the business culture in jamaica has changed heavily over the last few years especially with the stock market if i could simplify it i'd say that um those typical business as you think of business jamaica very small group of people understand it the money's in a small circle and things happen the circle grows but very slowly and then maybe over the last 10 years the circle has started to grow a lot quicker and a lot of that is from the
Starting point is 01:03:34 junior stock exchange and the stock exchange and then when the stock exchange started it was kind of frowned upon you know jamaican people anything, we're thrown on. And within the business circles, it's almost like, huh, I'm listing people. But you cannot avoid a competitor that lists because they now have a lot of money to do whatever they want with. And usually, they're your competitor, but now they just have $100 million more. They can cut prices for six months and flood the market and kill you because you have $100 million to lean on. And so more and more people now have sat to lean on it jamaica is way way way advanced than belize but that's good because like light years ahead but we're a much smaller country our land mass is bigger than jamaica but our population is just like 350 000 people why that's just
Starting point is 01:04:20 opportunity i'm hearing yeah because you just described Guyana. Yeah. Yeah. But they just found oil. Yeah. We have oil, but not as much as Guyana. Guyana is next to Venezuela. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Between Venezuela and Trinidad, which both have oil. Yeah, Guyana. Belize has a smaller quantity of oil.
Starting point is 01:04:38 Does it help? Like, does it trickle down to the population? A smaller quantity. There was much hope when it was discovered in 2005. I remember the big headline was oil. I went to a press conference where they announced it and literally three letters and an exclamation point was the headline, oil.
Starting point is 01:04:57 And since then, it's just, I don't know. I don't know that it's really trickled down to the population because what happened was, like in Jamaica where they've been prospecting for decades and never found anything worth noting worth never yeah minor things here and there so when they did find oil the agreement with the company was very very beneficial to the company and not to the country because you need to give an incentive for them to keep looking so since they're the prospects weren't that great other people would argue otherwise that there are good prospects but the agreement with that the production sharing agreement was very beneficial to the company. And this was 2005.
Starting point is 01:05:46 I remember 2008 where oil prices were. Were flying. Yeah. Oh, so this is before that. $100 a barrel. A barrel, yes. So we found oil right when the world was moving into these record high oil prices.
Starting point is 01:06:01 And the country wasn't really getting anything much out of it anything out of it barely anything barely anything outside like hundred and something dollars barrel of oil and companies just profiting profiting profiting because they just found it at the right time and the country you're not getting much because the production sharing agreement was such that they get the lion's share of everything so they ended up changing the law so that there was this windfall tax. And if oil rises above $70 a barrel, then the tax goes up. And if it goes above $90 a barrel, then the tax goes up. But by the time they passed the law, the prices had started going back down.
Starting point is 01:06:42 Oh, wow. So no real benefit. So we ended up with that. And then it wasn't a huge huge it was commercial quantities but from what i'm hearing now and i since i've been in jamaica 10 years now i haven't been following news back home as closely what i'm hearing now it's you know i guess it's kind of running out it's not oh wow i need to find new wells and stuff and yeah i mean show talk to people like ran ran yeah i mean you can mention you can say it's cool man go ahead no people hear me talk all the time ran ran we love this one a big up five so on twitter customer shows but yeah he really had a one because on twitter he was talking about the our situation in guyana
Starting point is 01:07:21 about the trickling down to the population so when when I heard Randy mention it I knew you were thinking about that. Where the company will come in and they'll do the mining and all that but the population will not see the benefit more than increased taxes tax income. People in Guyana won't be getting up on mining oil and selling the barrels.
Starting point is 01:07:40 I don't know but Guyana's situation is different from Belize because they have do you hear how much oil they have yeah it's vast reserves I mean after that after a point it was just silly because like they kept discovering it I think I stopped paying attention at either the 11th or the 13th discovery if you find one it's good some conversation when you heard about that yeah 11 and they only have like 100,000 people ghana has like 700 000 like sorry like a mill they have i run it at a lot of them are informal like yeah but it's just in some weird
Starting point is 01:08:12 areas if if you they're at a point where the population is so small and they found so much oil that you can still mismanage screw up and there's still just so much money that some must go but there's one factor that she mentioned which is the same company so like i asked you she said the british colonized belize so they have the same things like they have breadfruit for the same reason jamaica has bread the british carried it here because they need to feed the slaves it's the same oil company those oil companies find all over the world they know how to deal with every country yeah so really actually is is just the european countries who countries who don't mind for it, even when they find it.
Starting point is 01:08:49 They don't ruin their countries like that. And the Saudis, the Middle Eastern countries, who really were thinking about Dubai and the countries in the United Arab Emirates. It's them alone who really make money. Everybody else don't do it. Who found oil in Ghana? BP? It's a big company. The one that found in belize was a really small one yeah yeah and they were doing like some holistic meditation kind of thing and
Starting point is 01:09:13 they said like that led them to discovery and what why can't i remember the name of the company now I should know this I'll look it up and put it in the show notes and send you so you'll see it there for the Belizean oil fine
Starting point is 01:09:31 so it's not similar I just think in terms of I always think in terms of building it here and in where in the region we can go in the region I consider Belize
Starting point is 01:09:39 to be part of the region in Central America it's also in California but whatever they did worked because they struck oil when oil was way up there yeah and after nobody had found commercial quantities in decades yeah so maybe their system works maybe they need to come to jamaica but with different different set of rules right i wonder if it's the same guys who found oil in jamaica
Starting point is 01:09:58 that would be that would be quite quite the the coincidence all right. But I really like how, I don't know if it's deliberate on your part, I always assume it is, but you take all the things that you use in the different areas of your life, and I see them come out in the things that you put out. Because that quality is what, you mentioned consistency as one of the things that is always good in what you do, and it does bring the crowds, but also the quality of what you do i think is great and that quality has led to you're just a trusted voice in the news yeah literally a trusted voice thank you and it's few you don't have to explain it i remember when i was working with a lab and kimala was saying um there's this girl and she wants to do this interview she knows i know i think kimala would have known you don't know you are known of you from before like it makes sense it's still talking
Starting point is 01:10:47 so you're the cali lawyer yeah do it it only makes sense because that's an easy way to put to get publicity all digital also i mean now you're on the radar so that's good that i should tell you officially congrats for and you say you bought the you mean the show taking stock yeah but putting the show also on nationwide. How is that going to work though? I mean. Like in my mind, well, I guess there isn't much
Starting point is 01:11:10 in the show that's actually visual. The visual helps, but there is no dead air. There's nothing that's only visual that there's only like music underneath or so it moves. It works on radio. Just take the audio from the from the show
Starting point is 01:11:26 there's like no extra production cost to put it on the radio you just rip the audio from the video and give it to radio how much how much have you booked how much to book your time i can borrow cliff use well maybe i can buy your, I have a relationship with Cliff. Well, it's fine. I'll pay full price. I just want to know because you can throw the podcast on at night. We can talk off air. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:11:51 Oh, of course. You know, just making money now, you know. Well, I like that. So you tell us, what's next? Because you mentioned Kalila Ray Media. Yeah. Kalila. Am I saying that right? Yeah.
Starting point is 01:12:01 Kalila Ray Media. I'm so worried every time I say Ray now, you know. Why? Ray is just for rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey rey because it's a username because it was kalila e kalili yeah that's true kalili and then i changed and that was another struggle i was like should i change it should i just keep my maiden name people already know me as kalila enriquez and my social media is kalila e i was like i remember the day that i came back off um vacation after we got married like after honeymoon, I'm back to work now. It's in January. I'm like, what do I say on the radio? Do I say Enriquez? Do I say Reynolds?
Starting point is 01:12:50 Do I say Enriquez? I hadn't decided. I'm like, good morning. I'm Kalila Reynolds. And for like the first week or so, because I decided, you know what? what i'm just gonna go on the radio and whatever comes out comes out and that's gonna be it is that where the enriquez reynolds came from i don't introduce myself as enriquez reynolds only as kalila reynolds but on social
Starting point is 01:13:18 media i keep the enriquez because when people are searching on google you might type you might type kalila and ricas so so just in case you're searching on google it still comes up but when i introduce myself to people i don't use enriquez you know what you're saying is like a huge advertising thing that's like people pay thousands to learn what you just said to keep to keep the online presence linked if you're doing it for more than a year, you can stop using it and it will still link to you. But that's what they call SM...
Starting point is 01:13:50 I'm losing it. It's a good SEO move. Search engine optimization. That literally is it. But online is a good digital marketing move to keep all of your presence in one go. Yeah, that's the only reason I still see Enriquez on my YouTube channel
Starting point is 01:14:02 and social media. But in person, I don't use Enriquez anymore. That's good. People have gotten used to it on the radio. All right. So we heard about your family, your life, your business is the last thing I want you to press on more. As much as you're willing to tell.
Starting point is 01:14:16 Oh, Kaleelah Ray Media. Yes. Okay. So the vision I have for the comfort. Wow. This could be a whole nother podcast. There we go. There we go.
Starting point is 01:14:22 We've spoken about this as well. Yeah, we have. Yeah. be a whole nother podcast there we go there we probably about this as well yeah we have yeah i see content creation for digital as specifically for digital as the new way of doing things and it's coming from somebody who's spent my entire career in traditional media but i see all these opportunities for digital because people want to access their content on their phone, on their laptop, on whatever device they prefer, on their tablet. And people want to just watch stuff on YouTube and get the notification. They don't necessarily want to go pay extra for TVJ's one spot media or whatever it is.
Starting point is 01:15:04 Yeah, that's true. Nationwide's app is free, free by the way it is free it is free you can get you can enter your phone and that's also a good move there that they had the app i thought it was unnecessary but when you find in america having an app yeah that really works but video production cost is expensive video production is expensive when i had the idea for taking stock i wanted to be a tv show i really wanted i said this is a great idea for a tv show and i pitched the idea to tvj and cvm and then i kind of lukewarm on the idea and it told me do the pilot so i took my own money spent like $200,000 to produce the pilot at the quality that I wanted the show to be. And so working out the maths, working out the numbers, I said, this can only work.
Starting point is 01:15:53 And I met this unimportant part of the story. I met with some independent producers, independent television producers. So I met with Winford Williams on stage. I met with Zara Burton, 18 Degrees North. I met with Sadiqa Dharam, the Sadiqa Dharam show. She does entertainment. And they all have shows that are or have been on television. And I wanted to pick their brains. And I know these people in the industry, my friends too. Sadiqa and I worked together at CVM. the industry with my friends too sadika and i worked together at cvm and i said okay so what are challenges what do i need to know about venturing into this space and all three were
Starting point is 01:16:32 very gracious and we had long meetings and they all three have different business models so zara rents studio space sadika has a small studio that it was a bar that she converted into a studio and winford has a big studio a really nice studio winford's background is actually in sales when i met with him that came out oh i didn't know that yeah he his background is in production it was sales so he's very business minded from the jump and they gave me three different perspectives, very good advice on how to proceed. And I asked all three the same question. I said, do you think I can do this without TV? And all three of them are kind of like, I think you need TV because the advertisers pay more for TV.
Starting point is 01:17:21 For TV, that's true. And the production cost, you need to cover your production cost or you need to partner with a TV station so that they will at least partly cover the production cost or you could maybe even shoot it there
Starting point is 01:17:32 at their station. At their studio which cuts the cost. At their studio which cuts the cost but you might still have to pay or you do some type of revenue share
Starting point is 01:17:39 and so it's gung-ho on the TV idea. It's like, okay, to make this work I need to have it on TV and then I can also put it on YouTube and perhaps make additional revenue off YouTube.
Starting point is 01:17:50 But when the TV stations weren't really into it, I said I did my pilot and then crickets, spent my 200 grand out of my pocket, which I didn't even know how I was going to pay for it at the time. But you know what I say said when you really want something the universe conspires to make it happen i've heard it's like the money literally came right when i needed it if it had come anytime sooner i would have spent it on foolishness yeah i spent it on foolishness. It came right when I needed the money for that show.
Starting point is 01:18:27 And so that's how that happened. And then did the pilot, got some traction online. Lots of people were talking about it. There was buzz. But I never heard anything back from the stations. I was calling them like, did you see the show? The show's out. You seen it?
Starting point is 01:18:43 Sent you the link. They're like, oh, I haven't watched it yet or whatever and weeks pass and nothing so i said let me start approaching the sponsors and so what they say and they were on board as you guys came to the launch i have four sponsors to start four strong sponsors yeah And they were gung-ho. Crunched the numbers again. I'm like, okay, this can work. Even without TV, even without traditional media. And so I just went ahead and did it.
Starting point is 01:19:17 But in coming to this process, I realized that other content creators out there have the same struggles that I do. You want to create quality content consistently, but how do you generate revenue? And then because like Sadiqa, for example, told me, she said that the advertisers don't want to spend on digital media. They'll spend the money, they'll spend the big money on traditional media but they don't want to spend on digital and so that really had cemented my mind that I needed TV but when I started making my pitches and advertisers were saying yes
Starting point is 01:19:55 and then is another yes and then another yes I'm like maybe she was wrong or maybe this was two years ago thinking and not 2019 thinking and they're coming on board now and so i see other shows like i met with dotty berry as well more recently because i like his show he has a youtube channel he has a hundred is it a hundred or two hundred thousand subscribers on youtube on youtube and his videos are regularly getting tens of thousands even hundreds of thousands of views I noticed he doesn't have any sponsors on it but I know that he's making decent revenue from YouTube alone with those type of viewership but I said why aren't people sponsoring the show is it that he's not pitching to them they're not nobody's approached him what's
Starting point is 01:20:43 going on so I met with him I wanted to talk the business side. So I'm like, you know, what's going on? And they were saying that him and his business manager, they're saying that, well, the advertisers, I don't know if it's that thing with the entertainment industry, that they don't want to fund entertainment. I said, when last have you pitched? And they couldn't really answer me when
Starting point is 01:21:05 last they'd pitched because maybe the last time they pitched things have changed between then and now yeah so i started thinking about it and i said okay i'm coming up with the structure for my show i see where a sponsorship is willing to be there i see where production cost is high and i see another challenge being that us as content producers, we might not know the business end. Or even if you know it, you don't want to be bogged on doing both. Because I can tell you doing everything for my show is a lot of work. Having to be the producer, coming up with the content, writing the script, makeup.
Starting point is 01:21:44 I can do everything i can produce my show from top to bottom as in every role as in every role i can shoot my show if i need to i know this industry very very very well and then also having to go out and sell the show is also yeah and then you have to actually create the show as as in the content that the show is. I can produce the show in my sleep. I can edit. I can film if I need to. I can do makeup. I can write the script.
Starting point is 01:22:12 I can host the show. I can do all of that easily. But the business end now, that's another kettle of fish. I've never run my own business before. And I find this challenge with a lot of other content creators too so you can create the content you can create great content but when it comes but now you have to
Starting point is 01:22:29 sell the show and that's a different thing now now you're a marketer you're a ceo you have to be thinking differently about how are you going to sell this show how much do i charge for ads how do i negotiate these contracts? Who do I approach? You might be timid about approaching a certain sponsor. Who do I even call? There are many things. Where to start.
Starting point is 01:22:54 Where do you even start? For creatives, it's a hell of a... Where do you even start? And you have to take on this role by yourself while spending time to produce the content. And the content itself takes a lot of time to produce. That's a full-time job on its own, which is why in media houses, you have your business manager
Starting point is 01:23:11 and you have your news editor separate. So Cliff Hughes is executive producer and CEO, but he also has his business manager. He's not managing the business day to day. It's impossible to do both at the same time yeah for a company of that size it's too much work but for us just starting we have to do it all and even though so i said early on okay i'm gonna bring in some people in sales and pay them on a commission basis to get some sales for the show try sell this show but the four sponsors that i've had
Starting point is 01:23:42 so far is me bring them in the sales people haven't brought yet and i don't think it has anything to do with their ability to sell is just that especially for a new show people want to talk to me yes because i'm the face behind it yes yeah so even if i have to be the one to make the initial call you know make the pitch and then have them follow up with it then that's how it's gonna work but that's your time but it's still my time i still have to make sure i have a hold on all the contracts which i'm behind on by the way the show has going into episode three and not everybody is on it yeah i'm not saying too much but because i've been spending
Starting point is 01:24:23 so much time making sure the show gets done yeah the business end hasn't been as tight as I would want it to be and as it needs to be, which I need to really work on and just spend some extra hours doing that. But like I said, the bigger point that I was trying to make is that other content creators have this challenge too. And so I see Kalila Ray Media in the future being able to help other people with this type of challenge. So you have a company and whether it's on a salary basis
Starting point is 01:24:59 or whatever, you buy out other people's shows maybe. That might not be the model but it's an idea and you take care of the business end for these particular creators and studio space is a
Starting point is 01:25:14 challenge like I said production cost is heavy we could have a situation where we are able to have one studio and different sets in the studio and we essentially share the production cost that way where i take care of kalila and media takes care of the production cost and you we find out some type of way to to balance it but that's where i see the company going and
Starting point is 01:25:37 that's how i see the company scaling as well so that we were able to meet those challenges for other creators build a space and we're gonna see bomb content coming out at Jamaica and we already have some Jamaicans who are doing big things on YouTube like the Dirty Berry there's this girl who has like 500,000 subscribers she has a hair channel YouTube she does the hair review products you know her name i'm trying to remember her name somebody recommended her it's her and i like i'm into hair stuff and the hair and makeup industry is huge and they tend to be that they tend to mix up hair and makeup
Starting point is 01:26:17 huge so if we can if we can have a studio space or i could even build out like a really posh looking bathroom so she can do her hair videos in there with great lighting, you know? Yeah, I like that. I like that. Can have a green screen in one corner and Barry can do his show. Just other day. I have my taking stock set in another corner and we use the same staff because then when I was thinking, when I was coming up with the idea for the show too
Starting point is 01:26:45 I had different models in mind so one was owning my own studio versus renting studio space you own your own studio now what am I gonna do I'm gonna be paying light and water AC bill all these things to shoot one show a week so the space just wastes for the rest of the time yeah that don't make sense yeah so four days out of five work days or six days out of seven in a week the space just wastes for the rest of the time that don't make sense yeah so four days out of five work days or six days out of seven in a week the space is not being used and the meter is still running on jps that would be a waste so why not have a company where we do this for different people and different shows and then we also take care of the marketing end because that takes some of the uncertainty out of it but people who are uncomfortable approaching
Starting point is 01:27:30 sponsors don't know how to negotiate sponsorship contracts it's something i have to been have to be teaching myself which is not my forte it's not what i want to be spending my time doing i'd rather be spending my time producing taking stock because that's where my passion lies i'm gonna be the evangelist for this industry and have somebody else deal with that stuff but for right now i have to deal with it and i think in another couple of years maybe maybe as soon as next year randall wants me to push it up and do it faster well tell the people what it is i'd like you to do faster because the ideas are strong i like them i like yeah this is where this company could be this is what we could be doing and i don't see anybody in that space right now not yet and there is huge potential there yeah i think you're going to do it
Starting point is 01:28:19 and then suddenly people are going to discover that wow this was possible all along and then suddenly you'll see people start doing it start suddenly um there are so many things that will just start happening yeah as a result of the fact that you have chosen to do something that was just obvious to you yeah so i'm proud of you doing that i really want to then yeah i want you to push it up but i guess i know you're having the baby in february yeah so this this one definitely has to wait till after the baby yeah after my two babies because taking stock is a baby too yeah that one is harder to deal with yeah but you can i would say you can leave that one alone sometime but you know how you're going in the middle of it you almost can't yeah you think about it all the time trust me you have these nights i just can't sleep
Starting point is 01:29:04 i just wake up in the middle of the night with an idea. And then I can't fall back asleep because it's just like, I need to do it. It's that compelling. That's a burning passion. I get that. I love that. I like it.
Starting point is 01:29:18 I hope people can hear the same thing I hear. That's why I want you to push the ideas out. Because I think good ideas deserve to go out into the world. And I think good ideas find their funny. you say you found the money when you just needed to get the very first pilot off and you got the money just appeared the same thing will keep happening but you know I've been encouraging and I'm really happy to see that I just want to see more yeah she can't have her IPO soon I would laugh but that's what should happen right that's what should happen sky's the limit yeah's what should happen. The sky's the limit.
Starting point is 01:29:46 Yeah, that really is true. Because when I started thinking about it, my mind will run away, you know. I'm like, oh, I'm going to open a branch in Trinidad. I'm going to open a branch in Belize. I've done the research on that stuff. It's very, very cheap. We can't talk about that off air. It is very, very... You know, since iCreate has opened a Trinidad branch?
Starting point is 01:30:03 Yeah? I didn't know that. Yeah, it's very, very cheap You know, since iCreator has opened a Trinidad ranch? Yeah? I didn't know that. Yeah, it's very, very cheap to franchise out in those areas. It's not that iCreator is franchised out, but it's easy to do that, especially when you've already established it in one country. Within the Caribbean, going regional is very easy. It's also, I asked about Belize.
Starting point is 01:30:19 Yeah, I think you're in a great state. I am impressed with what you're building and how you're building it. You're building it in a new media space. You're living, you are, people look back on this hopefully and they'll go, oh yeah, great, yeah. This is really when she said what she's going to do
Starting point is 01:30:34 and now we're seeing it here. Unearning season. First is where you heard it. So the easiest stuff first, we always joke around afterwards and ask people simple stuff. I like that you guys have been, you say you and your husband have been investing for about two years now. So we can ask you the hard part, the taking stock host gets to tell us about her stock.
Starting point is 01:30:55 Not what you have, none of your actual business, but we always ask the general questions about what you like. But I think we can put a twist on it this time. You said, what was it that night? She said you were going to have- Two years. Yeah, because you have your daughter going to college in about a year and a half. Two years.
Starting point is 01:31:11 So you were investing for your daughter, so the investment has to pay off then. In two years. Yeah. What are you picking? How many stocks are you giving her? I prepared for this question. You did?
Starting point is 01:31:21 Oh! Because I listened to the last episode just before I came here. That's smart. So you can't pick anything that Tyrone picked. No, no, no. So I'm like, oh, they're probably going to ask me this. No, definitely. Let me think about what are my picks.
Starting point is 01:31:37 All right. So, and you're actually going to get me to say, because people ask me this all the time and I don't answer. I always say, I always give the the disclaimer i'm not a licensed financial advisor don't go pick because me say yeah that's what you're picking yeah yeah but one top on my list right now is jmmb yeah for two years this is not necessarily for two years okay i'm not going to answer two year part of the question i'm just gonna answer what i prepared for okay i mean i can i can say that i'm not a licensed
Starting point is 01:32:13 advisor either but i can say for two years jmmb is for two years yeah what all right so jmmb i'm looking at because i really like what they're first all, they have that stake in Sagicor, which is great. And I really like the passion of Keith Duncan in how he's approaching small business space, which is going to be the engine of growth for Jamaica. It is already the engine of growth, but the small business space, it's where it's really going to take off in the next couple of years. And they are really going after that space aggressively. And I can say that too because I am becoming a customer of JM&V for the same reason,
Starting point is 01:32:53 for the small business incubator that they're launching. And now it's after, hasn't even officially launched yet. That's true. For Kalila Ray Media, I've been asking around asking people on finance twitter JA shout out to Mark Gale because I met Mark at a PSOJ event that Keith Duncan remember they did that whole small business thing the market meeting the market and talking about small businesses we're gonna reach out to you and stuff and that's where I first met Mark in person and I heard him raise some concerns about you know his struggles and
Starting point is 01:33:25 getting his company off the ground and getting bank account for his business I'm like Mark who did you end up going with and he's like yeah and he strongly recommended them and I went there and they're off their their officer just really held my hand still holding my hand you need to do this this this and that and they have no i think that what they're offering is great service and it's really needed in this space and so it's a company that i believe in i believe in the product i always i said to my friends you know you can buy companies that you use yes that's a strong recommendation always buy what you know buy companies like I'm a Fontana customer so you go to Fontana
Starting point is 01:34:07 I love that they deliver to your house you can whatsapp your prescription they have lots of great services and they have products that I use
Starting point is 01:34:15 they have like the most diverse hair products for my type of hair so I'm a fan of Fontana so that was an easy stock pick for me
Starting point is 01:34:24 so that's another pick also. You could already make money. You already own it. That's strong. Yeah. That's strong. It's your company. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:34:33 And it's because I believe in what the company does and what they're doing. And JMMB, I see the vision for the company as well. I see where they're going to focus on small business to the point where I've become a client or I'm becoming a client and a stock owner. So JMMB is a pick for me. I see them doing big things, making moves in the industry and the financial sector is strong. Yes, and getting stronger with that buy that they're doing. And getting stronger.
Starting point is 01:35:00 Oh, what was the other one? I prepared for this question. No, I can't remember. You're gone too because You gave us fun time. Yeah. No, there was another one that I wanted to bring up. I know I can't remember it. But the lab, I see the lab doing big things, creative industry.
Starting point is 01:35:17 Another thing that, you know, I'm in this industry. So I see a lot of prospects for where the lab is going reading their about their regional push um was it the lab that i had on my list i should have written down the list you know oh you're driving it's fine yeah but i mean three already and that's three strong ones i think i like them um i like i like the reasons he mentioned jmB there. And JMNB, well, actually on the JMNB episode, we spoke to, yeah, yeah. And yeah, you're right, they're not launched yet, but they really are looking at that push.
Starting point is 01:35:55 Small business really is a way forward. Yeah, they're partnering with the Branson Center. Trust me. They might even see me. After I sat down with the man vincent vincent ald is his name big up vincent i was like thank you like somebody actually showing like a path this is what i needed the business plan i'm sure there are many many many other people out there who need the exact same thing to grow their business because i'm not trained in business i studied journalism
Starting point is 01:36:25 i went to journal i never took a business class in my life never took pob poa none of that stuff wow and it's so surprising you see the journey that you're going on it might turn out to be something like you doing with taking stock you might learn stuff because it's not hard stuff either you know it's just nobody has really brought it to the masses so you might find that bringing it to the masses might be something that you do that might be end up being another product line for you because people just don't think about especially with how we're going with the sme movement in jamaica a lot of business owners they are and it's not just in content creation you might make soap and you're passionate about making soap and high quality soap but you
Starting point is 01:37:07 don't know anything about running a business that's true yeah i i quietly help a lot of people and that's usually i look for people who have a passion about the thing that they're doing a true passion but they might just not know the business side and the business side i'm always willing to help and that's that's what's gonna make or break your product you might have the best product out there but if you don't have a solid business structure it's going to fail that is 100 true um especially in i've seen that happen so time so many times in media back back in the day magazines were the thing everybody wanted to do a magazine yes everybody had to have a magazine and so that you can get free backstage passes to places and get your picture in the magazine.
Starting point is 01:37:50 But you never think about how you're going to pay for the magazine, the advertising side of it, the business side of it. It's a difference. And media is no different than any other industry. Yeah. You've hit the nail on the head you really have it right so i think you you set for great things and you gave three strong picks yeah with one accidental that's all you know is good you know when it comes up naturally fontana because you use the products you get the thing that they have and fontana has a nice network of stores all
Starting point is 01:38:21 over jamaica i think everybody lives close enough to get to Aliso on most people. And then we had heard at the time that they were going to do Waterloo. I'm like, come on now. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
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Starting point is 01:38:34 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
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Starting point is 01:38:35 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
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Starting point is 01:38:44 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. oh well so you'd have known that they're doing waterloo but i said it from the prospectus i said it from the prospectus yeah yeah which if you read you'd have known that the people who were excited about waterloo square know are losing out because the gains from waterloo square is coming people like you kalila already got because you got in from early from before but he said like i said i had interviewed kevin o'brien chang when they were doing the ipo and he was in the he said that waterloo square was coming and i was like wow that's that's gonna be huge and look when they open right before christmas season yes yeah i'm very interested in seeing what it looks like yeah christmas is their best and it looks like they stay crowded ever since you know jamaican love new thing yeah escalator no oh yes yeah and they have like candy craze in there so
Starting point is 01:39:22 the kids want to come really i haven't been in there yet starbucks there's a starbucks i haven't been in there yet though so it's like a real saturday outing for the family yeah it's almost like a little mini mall yeah yeah yeah i really like that i like where we're going as a country and i like where all the elements of where we're going as a country are lining up together like i really in good stead i don't know if you want to tell people anything else i usually have people rap and tell whatever it is i want and their social media handles although you did that earlier you can say it again i think we kind of said it you know we've squeezed the point today so just watch take in stock that's right and share and share
Starting point is 01:39:59 yes share the video and leave a comment so some people will dm me i'm like please copy and paste this message put it on the comment section yeah because that does help it helps with the metrics it helps it helps youtube and instagram push the video more the more engagement there is on it watch it if you do if you can write a comment hit the just hit the like button everything helps everything pushes pushes the content forward really really happy that you did this kalila really happy to and i hope to see and also i should say this this is a good point the first lady that we've had on the podcast so thank you that's another thing too there's not many women in the space yeah because the language pushes women away that's why i know that women are interested because for my classes i is just
Starting point is 01:40:40 recently i started getting more men coming to the classes. My classes are maybe 80 odd percent women. It's not women who don't know things, women who know things, but I'm just, there's nobody really telling me. And the people telling me, coming at me in a way that I don't even know. And then I don't- Mansplaining. Yeah. A lot of mansplaining.
Starting point is 01:40:56 And then they do it in a way where women don't feel comfortable. I've been told, so I can't speak for women, but they don't feel comfortable even saying that I don't understand. Because it's like, you almost make me feel bad to say I don't understand because he's like he almost made me feel bad to say I don't understand your thought though yeah yeah
Starting point is 01:41:08 I hosted a Educom credit union had a discussion a couple weeks ago for their clients about investing
Starting point is 01:41:19 and so on a panel discussion and I told the audience because it was regular mom and pop people in the audience yeah and I said you guys if you have a question don't be afraid to ask the question there's no stupid question yeah no matter how basic it is don't feel intimidated don't feel like everybody else around me know and I don't know so I'm not gonna ask just ask the question
Starting point is 01:41:40 and I'm able to get people to ask very basic questions yeah so i started i started out by asking who in the room knows what stocks are yeah about three people raised their hands yeah i started the same way and when you ended it was a reaction people truly got it then they were starting to get it i think there's more much more needed yeah i'll give you a tip and to anybody else who is listening people especially if people have classes you want to simplify i think here's one thing I've started to do. Allow them to ask anonymous questions.
Starting point is 01:42:07 Because even if you tell Jamaicans, you drop the word, there's no stupid question. People hear about, I mean, you set up, but everybody knows
Starting point is 01:42:13 if there's questions or the truth is, I might feel weird about my questions. I think it's stupid. But you give them the opportunity to ask it anonymously,
Starting point is 01:42:20 then they'll ask you. And then you'll get all the questions. And what people think is a stupid question very often is not yeah I learned that in journalism too
Starting point is 01:42:27 yeah because you're a journalist you go to a press conference and you feel like you're supposed to know yeah you're supposed to ask the most grandiose thing
Starting point is 01:42:35 whatever it is I don't understand I will ask it and I will not feel embarrassed to ask and you shouldn't because you know what the truth is if you want to get around
Starting point is 01:42:42 business leaders especially they're very tricky when they want to be tricky i don't want to hide stuff the only way to cut through that is to ask the plain stupid question that sounds good what kind of profit are you expected to get from that then you'll see somebody start to trip up then you'll hear people say things like shareholders shouldn't worry about the profit they should worry about the benefit to jamaica or foolishness that's when you hear the foolishness coming out when you ask the very plain straight questions yeah so don't knock it
Starting point is 01:43:08 you're on a good stead Carilla thank you so very much for doing this it's my pleasure yeah thank you very much for blessing the podcast yeah man
Starting point is 01:43:15 as our first the first lady I come on and pushing other people I like I don't know if you see it but these are the same things this was about Cliff Hughes
Starting point is 01:43:23 and how he builds talent it's the same thing I hear you saying in terms of how you're building with yourself and even the things I get because I don't know if you see it now, but you see the same thing. This is about Cliff Hughes and how he builds talent. It's the same thing I hear you saying in terms of how you're building with yourself and even the things I get because I look at what you do and I see how you're aligning
Starting point is 01:43:32 all the ducks in a row and saying, this is how you get out to people. And I see it and I say, if Khalilah doing this after, it's a consistency. She's right. You see what she said?
Starting point is 01:43:40 It's no, even if I don't want to take a break a week off, I can't take it. Khalilah said, one of the good things you guys is that you're out every week and she's right but you guys know how hard that is thank you bam production students to make a podcast or pick them up for that because we need a lot of help with that and in the same way you mentioned us i say the same thing so i
Starting point is 01:43:56 know business very well i know i am pretty creative but i also know the struggle in doing both it is hell so having you can only do one fully or the other one fully so you you're in a great space with what you're doing i'm sure you're gonna get a whole podcast from this when people ask you to help sponsor your new um your new effort in terms of space or whatever also you're doing the right thing lots of people want to create they have the space for it they have the know-how they don't have anything and yeah connections yeah that also because we also have a lot of connections that has helped a lot because when i call up proven
Starting point is 01:44:31 wealth and ncb and jmmb that's true and it was the immediate the quick yes because because we already have a relationship that is a hundred percent true imagine me just call out of the blue call barita as a sponsorship Hi I'm Randy Hello Hello Which is why They want to talk to me Exactly
Starting point is 01:44:50 And my sales people Aren't getting anywhere Exactly At least not yet Exactly But big up that I love the effort And thank you for coming on
Starting point is 01:44:57 Anytime you're ready The door is always open Like I say Cool Thank you very very much This has been Earning Season I'm Randy at RT
Starting point is 01:45:04 You're on Twitter And I'm Danai at H&M Twitter And thatarnings Season. I'm Randy at RTU on Twitter. And I'm Danai at HLN on Twitter. And that's Kalila. And I'm Kalila. I was going to, but it's not my show. It's not your show. It's fine. Go ahead.
Starting point is 01:45:13 Give it to me one day. At Kalila Ray. K-A-L-I-L-A-H-R-E-Y. Everywhere. Everywhere. I love that. Especially YouTube. Especially YouTube.
Starting point is 01:45:23 Big up. Check out the show. Check the show notes this has been earning season thank you guys alright

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