Entrepreneurial Appetite
Entrepreneurial Appetite is a series of events dedicated to building community, promoting intellectualism, and supporting Black businesses. This podcast will feature edited versions of Entrepreneurial Appetite’s Black book discussions, including live conversations between a virtual audience, authors, and Black entrepreneurs. In this community, we do not limit what it means to be an intellectual or entrepreneur. We recognize that the sisters and brothers who own and work in beauty salons or barbershops are intellectuals just as much as sisters and brothers who teach and research at universities. This podcast is unique because, as part of this community, you have the opportunity to participate in our monthly book discussion, suggest the book to be discussed, or even lead the conversation between the author and our community of intellectuals and entrepreneurs. For more information about participating in our monthly discussions, please follow Entrepreneurial_ Appetite on Instagram and Twitter. Please consider supporting the show as one of our Founding 55 patrons. For five dollars a month, you can access our live monthly conversations. See the link below:https://www.patreon.com/EA_BookClub
Entrepreneurial Appetite
Afripods a Platform for Podcasting on The Continent with Molly Jensen, CEO
Molly Jensen, CEO of Afropods, takes us on an exhilarating journey through her experience building the podcast industry in Africa. From her transition to Kenya to the establishment of Afropods, Molly shares her unique story, highlighting the ups and downs of her incredible journey.
In this lively chat, Molly dives into the nuances of leading a predominantly Black team in a culturally diverse continent. Drawing from her background as a student-athlete at George Washington University, she discusses how her athletic experiences have influenced her leadership style and the development of a productive work-life balance within her team. Through Molly's anecdotes and insights, you'll discover the sheer power of African storytelling and the importance of understanding the unique cultural expectations of work in Africa.
Beyond Molly's personal journey, we also discuss the wider African podcasting scene. From the evolution of the industry to the roles and responsibilities of leadership, Molly offers a refreshing perspective on this growing platform. With a keen understanding of her team's strengths and weaknesses, Molly brings a unique perspective to the role of CEO. Through her eyes, you'll gain a deeper understanding of the African podcasting scene, the power of African culture and storytelling, and the significance of Afropods in this burgeoning industry. So, sit back, relax, and let's explore the world of Afropods with Molly Jensen.
What's good everyone. I'm Langston Clark, founder and organizer of Entrepreneurial Appetite, series of events dedicated to building community, promoting intellectualism and supporting black businesses. Today we have a very special guest, molly Jensen, the CEO of Afropods. I first met Molly at podcast movement last year in Dallas, texas, and it was her. It was a brother by the name of Kevin and another sister by the name of Gathoni. Did I say her name correctly? I know names are important.
Speaker 2:Her name is Gathoni, but you were close.
Speaker 1:Gathoni assistant name Gathoni was there as part of her team of Afropods and might have been some other folks there as well, and basically they were on several panel discussions and sessions talking about along with others who don't work with Afropods but maybe affiliated through business connections and things like that about the state of the podcast industry on the continent of Africa. This is probably to me one of the most interesting conversations we're going to have for our special series featuring black podcasters for International Podcast. Month Molly, just tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey to becoming the CEO of Afropods.
Speaker 2:Well, first of all, thank you for having me on your podcast, langston. It's good to see you, it's good to hear from you and also I'm really excited to connect with your audience. So, hi, listeners, how are you guys? To answer your first question, how did I end up as CEO of Afropods? You and I are still trying to figure it out. I think that life is interesting, right.
Speaker 2:So I was living in Kenya. I had moved to Kenya now four years ago, I'm entering my fifth year and I was looking for the right opportunity. So I'm originally born and raised in New York. My mother is from Ghana, so she was there until she was about 18.
Speaker 2:And then I moved to East Africa because there's so much opportunity here, a chance to explore the continent and a really robust tech scene. I knew some investors and they were looking in the audio opportunity and my background of audio was really the exposure of the fabric of life here, whether it was listening to my grandparents or my family or engaging with an Uber driver or people I knew. I understood the impact of audio and I could see how the rise of podcasting was happening really quickly, and I believe AfricaPodFest has just released their first edition of research. So it felt like such an exciting time and I was in the right place at the right time. I knew the right people and, with a small investment, I stepped into leadership as CEO. So we developed the strategy, we started testing, we started talking to people and ultimately we started tinking around the space along with what I would consider our now pioneers in the African audio industry, and we've been growing and learning and making mistakes together.
Speaker 1:One of the things that I noticed in your background doing the research for this was that you're a former student athlete at the George Washington University and, as we mentioned in the pre-show conversation, I have another podcast called the African Americans in Sport Pod Class. Can you talk a little bit about how your experiences as a student athlete prepared you to become the founding CEO of Afropods?
Speaker 2:Well, I will say I mean, being an athlete is such a deep part of my identity and I've actually never had a podcast conversation about it, so I'm really excited to dig into this with you. So at GW I was a goalkeeper, I played soccer, so we were a Division I team. There was obviously politics involved in that and it was very interesting for me, stepping in as a freshman, understanding the nuances of it. But athleticism is something that really resonates with me and I think it's because in life I've been challenged, as all of us have been, and I've noticed that that quality of resilience is really strong with me. So I have this lock-in mentality when things go wrong and my plan is we must make it through and as I've gotten older it's been okay, I'm in the net, I'm in the back.
Speaker 2:The person who I trust the most in a health situation it would be my doctor is my defender. They're my captain, I trust them, they know me. We've been working on a plan together. We are a team. I'm not just a complacent person coming into this place. I am an active part of my team and my healthcare. If we're using that example and if that captain or my doctor suggests another doctor or we need to do something different or a procedure, then that becomes like the striker or the attacker, and all of my friends and family are the other players in the game, on the sidelines in the arena or maybe they're in the parking lot and it's really helped to lock in. Because when I think about challenge I think about when it's a must-win game. It's the determination, it's the focus, it's the desire, it's the need to win, it's the dedication to it and all of that really drives me when I'm focused on hitting a target. And I've noticed that that's not so true with everyone else and the only way I can explain it is through that game analogy, which really does resonate with real-life athletic experience. I also feel very privileged to understand neuroplasticity so well, and I think a lot of that is due to my athletic background, whether it's thinking about muscle memory, that my body just can lift up weight so that I can just move and be grateful for it.
Speaker 2:Obviously, as you get older things get a little bit different, but I feel very in tune with myself. I feel very aware of the capabilities of my body and my spatial awareness of that, and I think a lot of that is due to the angling of being in goal. So the way they teach you that is if you're imagining that you're in a goal, you're in the net. If you were to put both of your arms and extend them wide to the post of the goal and then go, like a pizza, to where the ball is, if you're standing in the middle of that pizza, you are in the perfect angle.
Speaker 2:And something that people used to say to me was you're so hard to score on because you're always in the right place. So Hopefully that answers your question. It's very long winded, but athleticism and being a goalkeeper has tremendously impacted my life and especially how I handle challenge. I think that being in a startup in general is chaotic waters. It's changes every day and I'm learning a lot, but I also feel very confident in my ability to move through things when they're not so great, if that makes sense.
Speaker 1:When I think about sports, I think about strategy. Can you talk about how, being in the position that you've been in as the goalkeeper, my soccer terminology correctly. How has that but also in the other dynamic positions that exist on a soccer field play into your ability to develop strategy as a CEO? What you described was the individual responsibility, being able to triangulate where the ball is, but talk about how your relationship to the field of play, in existence with others, plays into your role now as CEO.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I think that leads into really saying that the most important piece of this is the team, and being in the back means you have to understand how to move the team as a playmaker Strategically. A lot of what you're doing in business, as a leader as well as in a sport, is understanding the assets that you have. In the case of business, it's understanding your people. If you have a employee or a colleague who doesn't respond well to yelling or responds very well to direct responsibility or needs more creative control, that's about knowing your team. That's knowing your players. That's knowing your colleagues. I think that that allows you to then put people in the best position to get the maximum amount of value out of them.
Speaker 2:My whole personal philosophy is to go the path of least resistance. Get people to do what they're good at. Do yourself what you're good at. Obviously, not everyone has the ability to only do what they're good at, but definitely make sure the things that you're good at that you're doing and that you're outsourcing for things that you're not, or you're leaning on people who have the skill sets that you currently don't have as developed From a strategy perspective.
Speaker 2:I'm very aware of the strengths and the weaknesses of everyone on my team. I understand how to engage with them to get the best results. I've ultimately been very proud of the fact that I'm able to foster a dynamic where people are able to tell me when they feel uncomfortable or when they're able to tell me when something is going wrong, because that impacts the output of what you're getting from people. A lot of what I believe is that people are paramount In my job as CEO. My job is to sell the vision of this business and to take care of my team. I take that last bit very seriously. People are fundamental and important to our experience, and connection needs to be fostered. So strategy to me is about understanding the tools you have at play, primarily through the assets you have in people.
Speaker 1:I think about. When I was a high school football player I'll never forget we had to vote for captains. My high school football coach was old school, so the only people could be captains were seniors, that's it. It was only seniors. So there were two people One was Rich and one was Rob Rich. He was the quarterback, but he didn't play junior year, so people weren't as familiar with him. But Rich was a great leader. He didn't have the politics on the team to be voted captain. Rich was even killed. He understood people's personalities and their dynamics and all that. Rob was like the rowdy guy. He just yelled you know what I'm saying let's go, let's go. And everybody thought that that is what made him a good captain. But that's not what makes a good captain. You know what I'm saying your ability to understand and discern the different people around you is what really, I think, makes someone a good CEO, a good leader, and so that's what I hear a little bit in your story of understanding the people in the group, in the group around you.
Speaker 2:So yeah, Well, I'll tell you something interesting in that story of Rich and Rob, there's obviously a lot of things that I'm not good at, and one thing I think I'm good at is knowing that I'm not good at everything.
Speaker 2:But the big thing that comes to mind, being in a position of leadership, is that I think fundamentally I'm a good leader, but I have a lot to learn about being a boss.
Speaker 2:So I think I'm able to impact people and make them feel in a way that helps them foster growth and professional development and understand their problems and be part of their dynamic of life the largest dynamic right Eight hours a day or so.
Speaker 2:But at the same time, I have a lot to learn about the effectiveness of being a boss, whether it's moving the needle from a bottom line perspective in terms of cash, whether it's the organization and operational tasks that I'm learning, whether it's dealing with different currencies and the nuances of business in a country I didn't grow up in. But even with all of those things, I fundamentally believe that I can learn them. Those are skills I know that I can become a good boss. I have no doubt, because right now, what I hear from people as a leader is that I inspire them, that they feel heard, that they feel understood, that they feel like they can reach out to me, that I'm accessible, and I feel incredibly proud of that. I feel like that's the golden goose when you're looking at leadership. You can't be missing the other side completely, but if you have the ability to learn and know what you don't know, I think I'm on the right path.
Speaker 1:And you tell me what's the difference between being a boss and a leader.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, I'm not sure if my definition is what everyone else is going to say. So let's hope not, because I don't want to get roasted by your class.
Speaker 2:I think that being a boss is really laser focused on the work. I think it's quantifiable in the outputs, whether it's we grew 3% or we raised our target spend from $110 to $145. I think that being a really good boss is just in that workspace and I think being a leader is being someone that people believe in, being someone that people are inspired by being able to move the needle through your, your truth and being and values. I think that you can have a leader in work who is also tied to the quantitative outputs, but I also think that a lot of showing up how you do as a person does show up in work. Some people are cut out to lead and some people have to learn it, and some people are great bosses and some people have to learn that.
Speaker 2:But going back to that athlete question you asked earlier, I've always been in the back right, I've always been playmaking, I've always been watching. I'm not the one scoring the goal. I've actually never scored a goal. I might save the game, but even the best save is not being as highlighted as the best goal and I think that that has given me the opportunity to look and assess what I have to figure out who needs to be where, to understand what this person has the capacity to do and not do, and ultimately show up for my team as the backbone. So I think being a leader is about being that backbone. It's about being strong, it's about understanding what you have. It's about being human first.
Speaker 1:You know you could be a leader and not be the boss. There are so many. You know people have been in workplaces where they maybe don't look to the person who has the boss authority as the leader they look to maybe the person right under them, the associate, whatever, the vice president, whatever, and not the president. I think it's important that you made that distinction. I want to pivot a little bit now and have you tell us a little bit about the history of Afropods, but first tell us what Afropods is, what the company does and what it means to the podcasting industry on the continent.
Speaker 2:Absolutely so. Afropods is a free Pan-African podcast hosting platform. Essentially, what that means is that we're the technical home of podcasting in Africa, so you could think of us as a competitor to Anchor or Spotify for Podcasters now Libsyn, red Circle, podbean whatever you may use and we host content and distribute that content so people can listen to it on the Spotify's Apple Podcast, google Podcast, deezer and Hummy etc.
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Speaker 2:So when creators host their podcasts on Afropods, we give them their statistics, their analytics, their data, and we also distribute it to the listening sources for free. That's what we do. And what was that second part of the question? I'm sorry.
Speaker 1:How is it shaping the podcast industry on the continent?
Speaker 2:That's a great question. I think that we are still in a space where podcasting is growing in Africa. Before I would use to say podcasting is in its podcasting is in its infancy, but I don't believe that's so true anymore. We've seen significant growth on the continent. It is still very early. People are still very curious about it and becoming interested, but I believe that, as they technical solution, afropods is really paramount to building that ecosystem, and something I say a lot to people is that it's not about taking a piece of the pie, it's about making the pie bigger. We're in a position where African creators need to take up space. They ultimately need to be recognized and they need to be paid for their content.
Speaker 2:We're looking at the largest Gen Z in the world being on this continent, and the GDPs of a lot of the countries here are fairly low considered to the West. That means that people who are creators have a chance to make money off of following their dreams. Whether it's being an Instagram or a podcast or a TikToker musician, someone can follow their creative outlet and potentially get money from it, and I feel like that's so important. And as a host, you're putting yourself in the position to pay people through monetization through advertising. There are podcasters right now making money directly with advertisers or hosting live events or selling merch, but what Afropods is doing now is giving a technical home to the industry while building out that advertising funnel for audio on demand. When you have data, you can ultimately sell that data to advertisers, help people make money and quantify the space.
Speaker 2:When you're looking at a continent that is audio first and comfortable, with radio and the fastest digital growing market in the world, why wouldn't you bet on the fastest new media that's digital growing in the world, on the fastest digital continent in the world? It feels like that risk is worth taking when there's such a strong audio culture. So I'm really excited to help move the needle for these creators. My North Star always remains people and the creators and I'm excited to be helping to build, with the input of podcasters and editors and producers and different houses here, an industry that I think is viable and sustainable. I think that everyone in the business of podcasting in Africa right now is a pioneer and I'm inspired every day by the people I get to call colleagues.
Speaker 1:One of the things I want people to realize is that when we look at creative industries, when we look at movies, we sometimes only focus on the actor, but we don't think about movies all the time as an industry. And it's the same thing with podcasts. There are people who edit, there are people who produce, there are people who are writing the stories, there are people who have companies that do hosting, and so we think about the industry. There's essentially an economy of podcasting that's being built on a continent, and Afropods has a huge, huge role in that.
Speaker 2:I'm excited to see what happens. You know, we're all figuring it out together.
Speaker 1:What I appreciated about seeing you all at podcast movement is that my bias as someone who is an African American, the descendant of slaves here in the United States we sometimes only think about our experience here and we don't always think about what's happening, you know, at home on the continent, and so I appreciated all the things that you all said there, and one of them, as you said here, was that you know, africa is the youngest continent in the world, so why wouldn't you want to do business in Africa? That's something that made a lot of sense to me. We're going to come back to that. Tell us the story of Afropods. I hear the cliched story. We were in a restaurant one day, we wrote it on a napkin and that's how everything started. Or, you know, I got a vision from God. Did you get visited from the ancestors? Whatever, what's the story of Afropods? How did it come to be what it is today?
Speaker 2:So I kind of touched on it a little bit earlier, but I think this is a really really good way to set a foundation to understand what's going on. With Afropods, the idea conceptually existed. It was actually baked in Sweden with some X, spotify, x, acast, X audio people. What's important to know is that Sweden has a really strong audio culture, specifically ACAST, spotify, pandora, etc. And I think they had identified a potential opportunity with that. The idea was kind of baking but nothing was really going on.
Speaker 2:I knew some investors who have some strong ties and media on the continent here as well as in the diaspora, who were looking to expand the portfolio and see what was going on in the continent. I was already living in Kenya and I was exploring this opportunity, looking at the viability of it, and ultimately I thought that, you know, with a small investment coming in, this puts us in a position to now attract visibility and credibility for this industry, as well as leverage the resources and access I have in the states, and I thought that that was really exciting and I also knew that none of it could be about me. I knew that ultimately, my job was not just a privilege, it's a responsibility to do right by the creators on the ground and continually talk to them and create a solution that ultimately works on the African continent. I think a lot of times people come in and they look for the black spend I was going to say dollar, but you know currencies are different and they look in the diaspora because people have more disposable income. But what's really interesting is that Africa has such an exciting place globally in terms of being taste makers and culture shakers. And you look at this moment, right now, whether it's Black Panther selling a billion dollars worth of tickets, or Burning Boy selling out Wembley and Madison Square Garden, or also Majimbo being signed to CAA, a creative artist agency in LA, or Beyonce having Black as King and being part of the Lion King Reef Reprise, I think that that's so exciting because the impact of the continent has a billion dollar multiplier, exponential multiplier in the diaspora.
Speaker 2:And so what you were saying earlier, I mean you look at something like Afrochella right or Afrofuture now, and you see how successful your return was in Ghana, and I did mention my mom's from Ghana, so I'm a little bit more aware of what's going on out West. But it's so smart when you think about what's happening in the state, specifically with the genealogy test the 23 and me. There's such a tie and curiosity to identity and so many people are now looking at their lineage and a lot of them are seeing it come out of West Africa due to the slave ports right, and with that, people want to explore more with the Internet and seeing what's everywhere in the world. There's a curiosity in Africa with the police brutality that's happening in the United States. People are looking for people who look like them and I feel like the continent is so rich and vibrant. And I actually heard I think it was a TED Talk where they said the most important person in Africa is the storyteller. Imagine that we're a continent of people who have a rich, oriated history, who have never told their stories before. Even when you learn history in schools, you learn the history of the colonizer and I'll speak specifically for Ghana and Kenya because I live in Kenya and my mom's from Ghana you learn British history. What's going on in these schools, like what's happening to the history? It's being passed down from word of mouth and now you have this medium that you can capture that, that you can memorialize mother tongue language, that you can connect with diasporas on a digital level. It's exciting and I think that we have such an incredible opportunity to do that with AfriPOD.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, started as an idea conceptually in Sweden. A lot of that had to do with the audio landscape and the fact that there was a strong tech solution there. With an investment, I came in as CEO and I'm proud to say that our entire team in Kenya is Kenyan. We have one other American, but we have boots on the ground in Uganda, rwanda, tanzania, south Sudan, sierra Leone, ghana and Nigeria. This is an African business for African people, and we're figuring out the ways to equitize our teams that they can also capture that value which is fundamentally important. Right, like, you have to have someone open the door, and if someone opened the door for me because they knew me or because of where I went to school, or because of what my accent is, or whatever it may be, you have to make sure that you remember it's not just a job. There's a responsibility to do, right by people. This is storytelling and I take that piece of my job very seriously because that North Star is people. I care about people.
Speaker 1:So you mentioned your team, right? The team in Kenya is mostly Kenyan, except for one other person who isn't. And then you met him, kevin, kevin, right, yeah, and all these other places around the continent where folks are promoting and doing the business of Afropods. Talk about what that team is like and how they're interacting and how you are leading and how maybe they're leading each other and maybe in some ways, they're inspiring and leading you when necessary.
Speaker 2:I'm glad you said that last bit because, honestly, I'm in a constant position of learning. There's a lot of mistakes that I've made and I mean I think of a very clear example. When I stepped into leadership, I treated it the way that I had previously in my jobs, and I was born and raised in New York. I worked in New York and in Florida and it's a much different dynamic with people here. So I think that you have to look at what the cultural expectations of work are here. You have to understand what's important to people and you also have to figure out how to move the objectives and needs you need of your business along while fitting into that. For instance, there's a much stronger work life balance in Kenya than I ever experienced in New York, and it's not just about taking time off, it's about when you're off. You're off Now, obviously, in a startup, I even dream of work. I can't get away from work of my dreams, but I think that understanding that there's more to life than my job is something that I never really experienced in the States and I have the luxury and flexibility to experience that with a group of people who are Black. It's amazing, I think, with my team every day on learning something different. Whether it's learning what breaking news is happening in Africa because there is breaking news happening every day in Africa Whether it's the cultural norms around funerals or births or weddings, whether it's seeing how people engage differently from a partnership perspective, because it's more relationship oriented than top down work oriented. All of that's been incredible and I feel like my measure of success as a leader and a leader of this business, has been tied to professional development.
Speaker 2:I'm not looking from step one to step five. I'm looking from step one to step two. I'm looking from step three to step four, and I'm so proud to say that I see impact there. I'm so proud to be with a group of people that see my value, and I think a lot of that is the fact that I'm able to inspire people, that people hear me and they hear the passion and they believe what I'm saying and they know that what I'm doing is because I believe it and I get to put people in positions that maybe they haven't been in before and let them know that it's okay to mess up, it's okay to fail. We're just looking to fail forward and I feel really, really privileged that it's this symbiotic relationship where we fail and we grow together, we make mistakes and we forgive each other, and we have this environment where you are safe to say your thoughts, and you're also safe to say when you're uncomfortable. And when someone says that latter, it's my responsibility to psychologically protect our team.
Speaker 1:And you know it's interesting, there are stereotypes about black folks in the United States that get ascribed to us without, without us wanting them. There are stereotypes of the continent being the dark continent, and the assumption is is that everybody on the continent is the same. People call the continent a country, and it's interesting to me again that you have all of these folks around the continent in different places and that perhaps there's a different type of diversity and inclusion. Or maybe I should say it this way we shouldn't negate the fact that diversity and inclusion is something that is necessary outside of the context of the United States, because people in Africa are probably are more diverse than what we see in the United States and, with that being said, one of the key things that you all talked about at podcast movement was leveraging podcasting for the maintenance of the indigenous languages on the country. So can you talk about how you see Afropods, or the industry of podcasting on the continent, really being foundational to maintaining the culture of the different peoples in Africa?
Speaker 2:Sure. So I think that that's probably one of the biggest opportunities in podcasting in Africa, and the reason being is, if you step away and look at Africa from a lens, you have 54 ish countries, 1500 plus languages, 1.4 billion people now, and I think that it is ridiculous to think that all of the podcast needs to be in English. People speak thousands of languages and dialects. People speak multiple languages themselves, even my colleagues here. They could speak English, their national language and their mother tongue. An example of that would be a colleague will speak English, they'll speak Swahili as the national Kenyan language and then they'll speak Kikuyu, which is their tribal language, and you'll see that across the continent, and I think that that's so interesting. Why would we think that everyone needs the podcast in English? There was actually a podcast.
Speaker 2:I went to their launch event and it was called Until Everybody is Free, or Until Everyone is Free, and the podcast was in Shang, which is a dialect of Swahili, and I don't speak Swahili, or I didn't at the time.
Speaker 2:I definitely am barely conversational at this point today, but they had three computers in the back playing the podcast with subtitles on YouTube, and so I sat myself in the back and read the subtitles, because I realized in that moment it wasn't really about me.
Speaker 2:It was about communicating with your niche audience, and that's something that's so cool about podcasting that you're not just building an audience in a traditional sense, you're also building a hyper focused community, and the difference really between that is that a community has feedback. So you're building this really, really engaged nucleus and core of people who care about what you're saying, and I think that in mother tongue or vernacular, whatever you want to call it, I think that people feel sometimes more comfortable talking to the people in that way. What they speak at home is what they want to hear, and there is a huge dominance of English, especially across Anglophone Africa. But you can argue the same in Francophone Africa that there's a huge dominance in French. That doesn't mean that people aren't speaking Creole in Sierra Leone or Wolof in Senegal. I think that there's this rich vibrancy of language and being able to memorialize culture, content and language is such a privilege, especially as we kind of become more homogenized with the constant engagement of the internet.
Speaker 1:Okay, we're getting close on time. I'm going to ask three questions, right? So I'm going to ask you to do rapid fire answers to the questions, all right, and if you need me to repeat them, just ask me and I'll do that. So the first question is the importance of black platforms, right, I think it's important that Afropods, even though it has investors from around the world, it to me reads as if it is a black platform, so talk about the importance of having that right, or an African platform. The second one is what advice would you give to student athletes who were in your position in their journey to become leaders of industry or whatever, finding their dreams? And the third question is, because entrepreneurial appetite has roots as a book club, what books have you read, or are you reading that, that inspire you?
Speaker 2:Okay, rapid fire. So having a platform focused on black people or African people is important because ultimately, especially on the continent, you're not going to get people paid unless they see value in it or unless someone is screaming about it. So the more noise we make, the more the industry moves in this way, and I think that it's a win for all podcasters in general. The more that people scream about the viability and the excitement that's happening on the continent, it's even more exciting to make it able to quantify that and make sure that we're capturing this value and that the creators, ultimately, are capturing it. When it comes to being an athlete, and what you would tell an athlete who wants to be a leader, I mean, the great news is that you have the basis of already being a leader. You understand what it takes to be part of a team, you understand what it means to step into different responsibilities, and all those things are hugely transferable in the work environment, and I think that, in my opinion, a lot of athletes I've seen have been able to very successfully transfer themselves into leadership positions, and it is because of that deep understanding that you have to be focused, you have to win, you have to be good. You have to be trained, you have to do the work and that really resonates.
Speaker 2:And then that third bit about books. Well, currently I'm reading a book called Scaling People from Claire Johnson Hughes. She was the previous COO of Stripe. It's basically the golden guideline of how to build a business and what you need. Apparently, she's been working on that book for quite some time. It came out earlier this year and I have read the first two pieces of it. I haven't even been able to get through third, because I have to reread the first, the first two.
Speaker 2:Again. It has worksheets at the end of it. It's incredible, but it's to me a little bit dense. But it is definitely a game plan. So for the athletes that are listening, if you need a game plan, get that book. I think it was a little pricey when it came out maybe 40 bucks but I highly suggest it. But don't think that those are the type of books I only read. I am a big fiction reader. I like stories. I like to relax my mind. I'm not reading these self-help books. I'm not reading these nonfiction history books. I need a story. So I'm actually looking for some new stories and I might have to listen to your podcast to find some recommendations.
Speaker 1:You know what's interesting? I'm going to start asking people to talk about their nonfiction books because I think, because the context is entrepreneurship and things like that, it's always this book that helps me in my life, but it's not like a book blew my imagination away Children of Blood and Bone, children of Blood and Bone.
Speaker 2:I love that book.
Speaker 1:My wife likes that book too. Yeah, yeah, that's somewhere on that shelf back there, I'm sure of it. So, molly, I appreciate you joining us. I wish you continued success with Afropods and, yeah, and I will share this on both my podcast, the African-American in Sport Podcast, and Entrepreneurial Abilite, as well.
Speaker 2:So it's been my pleasure and thank you for having me. Thank you to your audience for listening and I hope to continue to build this library.
Speaker 1:Thank you for joining this edition of Entrepreneurial Appetite. If you liked the episode, you can support the show by becoming one of our founding 55 patrons, which gives you access to our live discussions and bonus materials, or you can subscribe to the show. Give us five stars and leave a comment.