The Ride that Confirmed the Assignment

This morning, I was driving rideshare.

Yes. Rideshare.

Because while I’m building what I’m building, consistent money still has to come from somewhere.

And actually, I like driving.

It puts a little money in my pocket while I build my business, but more than that, I meet people I probably never would’ve met otherwise.

This morning, my rider was a Black woman in her seventies.

We started the way you start most rides.

“Good morning.”

“How you doing?”

“How’s your morning going?”

Nothing deep.

Until somehow it got deep.

I told her I actually liked driving because it gave me flexibility while I built my business.

She asked what I did.

I told her brand marketing.

But then I told her what I really wanted to build.

A creative network.

Not another Facebook group.

Not another place where everybody swaps Instagram handles and says, “We should work together,” then nobody ever calls anybody.

I mean a real network.

Designers.

Photographers.

Filmmakers.

Writers.

Strategists.

Artists.

Fashion people.

Attorneys.

Accountants.

Business owners.

People with ideas and people who know how to turn those ideas into something sustainable.

A network where we could actually make money together.

I told her what had been sitting with me:

New Orleans does not have a creativity problem.

Lord knows we don’t have a creativity problem

We have the music.

The art.

The fashion.

The storytelling.

The food.

The culture.

We have people who can make something out of almost nothing.

What we don’t have enough of is the infrastructure around all that creativity.

We don’t have enough pipelines connecting talented people to good jobs.

And when I said that, she said, "Both of my sons are creatives.”

One son was in filmmaking.

The other was in fashion.

And then she casually mentioned the one in fashion had a law degree.

I said, “Wait. What?”

A law degree?

And fashion?

Now I really wanted to hear more.

We kept talking all the way to her destination.

By then, we'd moved way past rideshare pleasantries.

She asked me if I could come back and pick her up later.

And the funny thing is, I wanted to.

I wanted to keep talking to her.

So about an hour later, she texted and I picked her up.

And somehow my rideshare trip turned into a coffee date.

We sat down at a coffee shop and talked.

That's when she told me about The Ella Project.

She started naming organizations.

The Urban League.

The Council of Jewish Women.

The Cutting Edge Conference.

Networks.

People.

Places I needed to know.

Rooms I should be in.

And I'm sitting there listening to this woman I didn't know two hours earlier pour information into me like we'd scheduled some kind of business consultation.

Except we hadn't.

We'd just met.

After coffee, I drove her back home.

And she asked me what she owed me.

Nothing.

Because she had already paid me.

Not with money.

With information.

Connections.

Perspective.

Encouragement.

She poured into me. And she didn’t have to. But she did.

And after I dropped her off, I kept thinking about that conversation.

Because here's the part.

She wasn't really telling me anything the people who love me haven't been telling me.

My family. My friends.

People have been encouraging me.

Connecting dots.

Sending names.

Making introductions.

Telling me, “You need to do this.”

“You need to talk to them.”

“You need to build this.”

Maybe I wasn't ready to hear all of it yet. Maybe I wasn’t willing to do the work yet.

Sometimes a stranger says something your people have been telling you for years, and suddenly you're like...

Oh.

Okay.

I hear it now.

And I appreciate that woman.

I don't even know if she understands what that conversation did for me.

But I also appreciate my family.

My friends.

Everybody who has been pouring into me while I was still trying to figure out exactly what all these pieces were supposed to become.

Now I know.

It's time to build the network.

It's time to build the pipeline.

Because I keep hearing people tell young folks—especially creative young folks—that they need experience.

“Get an internship.”

“Build your portfolio.”

“Pay your dues.”

Okay.

But what nobody likes to say out loud is that a lot of internships don't pay.

And working for free is a privilege that we don’t talk about.

I said what I said.

Because if your mama and daddy can cover your rent, keep groceries in the house, put gas in your car and slide you a little money when things get tight, then maybe you can spend a summer working somewhere for “experience.”

But what about the kid whose mama is already stretched?

What about the student helping with the light bill?

The one paying their own phone bill?

The one working nights because tuition doesn't care about their dreams?

The one helping raise a little brother or sister?

What exactly are we telling them?

That if you can afford to work for free, you get access to the career.

And if you can't?

Good luck.

That's not a pipeline.

That's a gate.

And too many Black and Brown kids have been standing outside of it for too long.

Then we have the nerve to look around ten years later and ask why everybody in the room looks the same.

Bay-bee (in my New Orleans voice), look at how you built the room.

You told one group of kids, “Come in. Learn. Meet everybody.”

And you told another group, “Come back when you can afford not to eat.”

That's what we have to fix.

Especially here in New Orleans.

We talk all the time about wanting our young people to stay home.

Stay in New Orleans.

Build something here.

Raise your family here.

Okay.

Then give them a reason to believe they can make a living here.

Because you cannot tell a young filmmaker there is a future in film and then tell them the first three steps toward that future are unpaid.

You cannot tell a young designer they have talent and then expect them to work twenty hours a week for exposure while they're trying to figure out how they're getting to work tomorrow.

And please don't tell me exposure pays later.

The Entergy bill wants money now.

The landlord wants money now.

Rouses wants money now.

Life has a funny way of being very uninterested in your potential.

That's why paid internships matter.

Paid apprenticeships matter.

Fellowships matter.

Real entry-level jobs matter.

And the word I keep coming back to is paid.

Because a young person should not have to choose between getting experience and surviving.

They should be able to do both.

Imagine a kid from New Orleans who loves making videos.

Instead of us telling them, “That's cute,” somebody shows them:

Here's video production.

Here's editing.

Here's cinematography.

Here's advertising.

Here's social media.

Here's documentary work.

Here's film.

Here's the person already doing it in your city.

And here's a paid opportunity for you to learn from them.

Now that child sees a future.

That's what a pipeline is supposed to do.

It lets you see the next step before you're standing there wondering where to go.

And it cannot just be for kids whose parents already know somebody.

That's another thing I kept thinking about after that coffee conversation.

We need more rooms where our young creatives can meet Black business owners, attorneys, accountants, bankers, producers, agency owners and people who actually understand how money moves.

Not just other people looking for an opportunity.

People who can open a door.

People who can explain a contract.

People who can tell you what an LLC is before somebody talks you into signing something you don't understand.

People who can say, “You're good. Let me introduce you to somebody.”

Because that's what that woman did for me in one morning.

She said:

Here's an organization.

Here's a conference.

Here's a network.

Here's another room.

Go.

And imagine if we built that intentionally for our young people.

We already have pieces.

The Ella Project.

Cutting Edge.

StudioBE.

The Urban League.

Organizations, businesses and people who have already been doing the work.

We don't have to pretend nothing exists.

But we do have to connect it.

We have to make sure a 17-year-old artist knows those resources exist.

We have to make sure the 22-year-old filmmaker can get into the room.

We have to make sure the young designer meets the attorney.

We have to make sure the kid who wants to work in fashion understands there are designers, buyers, stylists, marketers, attorneys, photographers, manufacturers and business owners behind that industry.

And most importantly, we have to make sure getting through the door doesn't require them to work for free.

Because experience has value.

Their work has value.

Their time has value.

And their future has value.

I know what New Orleans does really well.

We make talented people.

We make them every day.

What we haven't figured out yet is how to make sure talent doesn't have to leave just to become a career. Or do something illegal to make ends meet.

And I'm not saying nobody should leave.

Shoot, go.

See something.

Learn something.

Get on a plane.

Get lost.

Come back different.

The world is bigger than New Orleans, no matter how much we hate admitting it.

But leaving should be a choice.

Not something you have to do because home couldn't figure out how to pay you.

That's the part that bothers me.

We tell these kids to dream.

Then we build a system where only some of them can afford to chase the dream.

Nah.

We can do better than that.

And maybe that woman getting into my car this morning was one more person reminding me that I've been talking about this long enough.

People have been pouring into me long enough.

Now it's my turn.

It's time to build the network.

Not just a network of creatives.

A network around creatives.

A pipeline where somebody can go from:

“I think I'm good at this.”

to

“Somebody is teaching me how to do this.”

to

“I'm getting paid to do this.”

to

“I can build a career doing this.”

to, eventually,

“I'm hiring somebody else to do this.”

That's the New Orleans I want.

A city where our young people can say:

“I can learn here.”

“I can work here.”

“I can get paid here.”

“I can build something here.”

And one day:

“I can create an opportunity for somebody else here.”

Now that's a pipeline.