Economic inclusion is the civil rights issue of our time. When Black-owned media companies are excluded from advertising budgets, it is not a business decision. It is discrimination.
Everyone said linear TV was dead. I said: The Weather Channel has 100 million households, decades of trust, and meteorological data that every airline and government needs. That is not dead. That is infrastructure.
I was 14 years old on The Tonight Show. Johnny Carson looked at me and said I was going to be a star. I never forgot that. But I also knew the business behind the curtain was where the real power lived.
Own the real estate. Do not rent it. That is true in property, in media, in your career. If you are performing on someone else's platform, you are enriching them.
You do not wait for opportunity in this business. You build the machine that creates opportunity. Then you invite others in.