The Exchanges

Q whether, you know, now there's this sort of this notion that silence is taking a position, that you can't be silent. We're seeing corporations, I mean, I went on Amazon today, and, you know, Amazon's got a statement about racial injustice, and it's all over the place, and I wonder, I mean, do you, do you worry that it's just, once again, kind of, you know, corporations paying lip service?

A Absolutely, absolutely. How dare the NFL commissioner talk about how they support diversity, and they, Literally blackball Colin Kaepernick. All right, until he gets a job, their apology is not legitimate in a lot of black folks' mind, including mine. Professional football is black talent. All right, there are no question about that, and they were going to call them SOBs that fire them. Blackball Colin Kaepernick, and now they're holier than thou. Oh, we are so sorry. We were so wrong. That's not what should have been coming out of his freaking mouth. What he should have been saying was, I've got 10 teams all vying to offer Colin Kaepernick. A contract. That's what's different, Guy, when you ask what's different. See, before we would have been, oh, well, you know, they gave Jay-Z a contract, uh, to do the entertainment, which Jay-Z should not have taken, which is not going to be a popular opinion, ok, but we should have stood strong behind Colin Kaepernick, and he's one of the greatest quarterbacks alive today, still, ok? No question about that, and he's still sitting on the sideline, and you're going to act like you're so concerned. Plus, two hundred and fifty million dollars spent over a 10 year period is equivalent to the celebrations that they finance when they win the Super Bowl. That's no money for the NFL. Ok, again, you gotta really follow the dollar. It's almost as if …

AI assessment note: “Absolutely, absolutely. How dare the NFL commissioner talk about how they support diversity”

Q But I mean, you must have been under a lot of financial pressure, right? So how did you deal with that?

A When you have overwhelming financial obligations, the first natural human impulse is to hide, to recoil, not return the call. Well, what I have been trained to do is play offense, not defense, so I would call my lenders, and I would say, I know I owe you 10,000 dollars this month. All I have is 1250 dollars. I'm sending it to you as a token of good faith that I will repay you every cent that I owe you, but right now this is all I have. And most of them said that they had never, ever interacted with anyone who let them know up front that they could not make their payment. I think that it's the reason I've never been foreclosed on, I've never had to file for bankruptcy, and Thank God I have never had a paycheck bounce. I've never had a business check nor personal check bounce because I tried to stay ahead of the issue of not being able to pay the debt.

AI assessment note: “play offense, not defense, so I would call my lenders”

Q You know, here, here's the thing that I just like, I still, I'm still trying to wrap my head around, which is, you faced all of these challenges, and you kept going. Like, what, what was it that kept you going?

A A belief in God. Because when you really believe in God, you can believe in yourself. As I said, that day I quit my job, not knowing where the next piece of money was going to come from, where the next check was going to come from. I knew that I would be sitting here today talking to you. I believed it because I believed in the power of the Creator, and I used to never, ever, um, give a speech or accept an award where I didn't first thank God, and I still do, but back then when I first started, They said to me, ain't nobody's interested in all that religion. I said, that's not religion. That's spirituality. There's a big difference in my book between being loyal and understanding yourself in relationship to creation.

AI assessment note: “A belief in God. Because when you really believe in God, you can believe in yourself.”

Q How are you able to do all of that?

A Because it was exciting. But that's, and when you said the stress of the debt, it wasn't stress. I had no doubt that I was going to pay them. I used to brag. I used to brag to my, um, lead investor syndicated communications. I used to say, I will be the most profitable company in your portfolio one day. And they were like, yeah, Kathy. Okay, good. Okay, great. Keep that dream alive, Kathy. I used to tell them, You will make more money off me and my company than you've made off anyone, and now this is when I'm also telling them, now I can't make my payment this month. If you think, oh, it's overwhelming, I've got all this debt, I can't sell anything, I'm working 18, 20 hours a day, then it's too hard. You can't do it. But when you know that the day is going to arrive, when you're going to have enough money to pay everyone, That's what you have to see in your mind's eye. That's what you have to believe, and I saw that.

AI assessment note: “Because it was exciting... I had no doubt that I was going to pay them.”

Q So these owners, they, they bought this station and they hired you to run it?

A Yes. They hired me to get it on the air. Then they hired me to run it. Then they ran out of money, so they told me to shop a package for financing. And I said to them that that's not the responsibility of a general manager, that I will do that if you give me an equity position in your company. And one of the members said to me, if you think that you're smart enough to own a radio station, you should do it for yourself. We're not giving you any equity in our station. He was being facetious, but I took it verbatim seriously. I was like, oh my goodness. He was right. I should do it for myself. Guy, I'm not exaggerating. It was like a charge went through me. I said, oh my goodness, this person who's a multi-millionaire, who I've admired, who's now probably in their seventies, is saying to me, here I'm, you know, barely 30, that I'm smart enough to do this for them, and he's challenging me if I think I should own part of their station, do it for myself. I was like, thank you, Lord, I hear you, I hear you.

AI assessment note: “Yes. They hired me to get it on the air. Then they hired me”

Q How are you able to do all of that?

A Because it was exciting. But that's, and when you said the stress of the debt, it wasn't stress. I had no doubt that I was going to pay them. I used to brag. I used to brag to my, um, lead investor syndicated communications. I used to say, I will be the most profitable company in your portfolio one day. And they were like, yeah, Kathy. Okay, good. Okay, great. Keep that dream alive, Kathy. I used to tell them, You will make more money off me and my company than you've made off anyone, and now this is when I'm also telling them, now I can't make my payment this month. If you think, oh, it's overwhelming, I've got all this debt, I can't sell anything, uh, I'm working 18, 20 hours a day, then it's too hard. You can't do it. But when you know that the day is going to arrive, when you're going to have enough money to pay everyone, That's what you have to see in your mind's eye. That's what you have to believe, and I saw that.

AI assessment note: “Because it was exciting. But that's, and when you said the stress”

Q four years ago, and your company, you know, is as influential as ever in terms of its, its cultural impact and importance. If you think about five years from now, um, you think about Urban One, you think about your influence, you think about the conversations you're convening, what is it that you want to take away from this time? And really kind of apply to everything that you do?

A Well, number one, I think that all of us are going to come out with different business models. I think that, um, the whole issue of, um, uh, expansive, expensive office space. Okay, it's going to be an issue. Um, it took us, uh, you know, a minute to get our rhythm going. It took us a minute to really understand how do you supervise everyone in their homes while they're busy trying to help their child homeschool and make certain that they live up to the responsibility of that paycheck they're getting, but we are learning. I would hope my dream, my commitment would be that my company would be in a position to take that which we do now and multiply it A million times over to help that many more people. Uh, I've always felt that my company's, um, mission had to be, uh, to be of service to my community. Uh, being the first African-American woman of a publicly traded corporation, I know that my judiciary responsibility is to say that the number one priority is supposed to be to enhance shareholder value. Again, What we're going through now. I don't have to say that, okay, today. I said it almost, you know, in memory of when I used to have to say that, and I don't feel guilty about admitting that my whole purpose for being in business was to be a voice and an assistant to my community. I wanted to provide assistance to the people who listen to me or who now watch me on one of our two…

AI assessment note: “I think that all of us are going to come out with different business models.”

Q low point in our economy. Um, and when you sort of, given the conversations that, that we're having and the demonstrations that we're seeing around the country, I mean, do you, do you think in some ways that there, that this could also be a moment for young black entrepreneurs or, or First time black entrepreneurs to really break through? Like if you were the Kathy Hughes of 1981, 1980.

A Anytime there's a crisis. There are opportunities because people become more creative. They become more congenious, uh, ingenious. Um, necessity is the mother of invention is an old, old saying. The reality is, uh, a lot of people are going to suffer, uh, during the next few years, I think, not just months, but a lot of people are going to have opportunities that would not have been available, uh, who are going to come up with very Creative, ingenious ideas and business ventures that are going to make a difference. I'm excited for them, and so many of them are fearless because when you're young and You realize that you have an opportunity to do something that you only thought before was a vision or a dream, but circumstances, the situation allowed you the opportunity to do that. The excitement. Oh my goodness. It's almost, uh, unheralded ever before the opportunities that are going to come out of this in the medical field, in so many different fields in technology. One of the problems I think with, um, you know, a significant decrease In black businesses, so many of us are in businesses that are, um, classified as non-essential. And I think that some of those new businesses of the future are going to be ultra essential.

AI assessment note: “Anytime there's a crisis. There are opportunities because people become more creative.”