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[upbeat calm music] [upbeat calm music continues] - You know, I always say you gotta do three things if you want to be successful in life, you've gotta work hard, you gotta have great relationships, and you have to have powerful self-discipline, and you have to lock in on all three of those things to be successful.

But those were all things I saw my grandparents do.

Like my grandmother knew everybody on Liberty Street.

She knew everybody in town, and whenever she would go out, people would always yell, "Miss Irene" and I just thought that was incredible that she had really great relationships.

My grandfather was the hardest working man I've ever seen in my life.

He'd wake up every morning at four or 5:00 AM, made sure I had a hot bath, he would get out and go pick up cans and take 'em to the recycling center.

He would pick up people from the grocery store, he would cut grass, he would work on cars, he'd paint houses.

I mean, he would do any and everything he had to do to take care of his family and so that was where I got the work ethic.

He said, "If you wanna make God laugh, tell Him your plans."

- [Derrick] Hello and welcome to "Making North Carolina," a series exploring entrepreneurs as they pursue invention, creation and impact in their communities.

This episode features Algenon Cash.

Among many things, Algenon is the founder of Wharton Gladden, an investment firm dedicated to cultivating new businesses in Winston-Salem with a focus on diverse entrepreneurs.

Algenon grew up on Liberty Street on the east side of Winston.

We joined him here to ask a few questions about his journey.

My name is Derrick Minor, join me as I explore a small part of what brought Algenon to where he is today and where he hopes to go.

- You know, we're on Liberty Street at the 12th block, sort of where I grew up at, 1224 North Ridge Avenue, I still know the address, I even still remember my phone number.

But here where you see this building, this actually used to be three shotgun houses.

And my grandmother actually started out at the one there and literally over time moved all the way here to the third one.

So this is where I grew up, man.

I mean, for 18 years of my life, this is literally the spot that I grew up in.

And then right across the alley there was Zesto and a fish market.

That's where I would eat all the time.

Jim Shaw had his break wall there.

He's probably one of the first Black men I ever met in my life that owned his own business.

This is like a little community, man.

And I could always see downtown from here.

And I used to always tell myself that's where I wanted to live, I wanted to live downtown.

And so finally when I did move downtown, and in fact, you could see the penthouse from here that I had on the 18th floor at the Reynolds building right there.

And when I would stand out at the penthouse, I would look back over here and remember where I came from.

Yeah.

Let's walk around and I'll show you a little more here.

Back here, man, this is where I would play all the time.

This is really where I learned to use my imagination.

And I say that because imagination is one of those things that's really important.

Like you have to be able to imagine what you want to do different in life.

And that's where I learned that here, just being here at my grandmother's house.

But if you would've met my grandmother back then at this little house on Liberty Street, literally everybody around here knew who she was.

And what I learned from her was that relationships matter and that it's important to build relationships, not build, I think too often we say "Networking matters".

Networking will help you build connections, but I think if you want to be successful in life, you gotta have relationships.

You gotta have people that will do something to help you, people that respect you and people that will help support you.

And that's what I learned from my grandmother.

And I think in terms of building community, that's absolutely critical.

- Where did your entrepreneurial journey begin?

Is there an inception point that you can point back to to say, "Hey, this is actually what was the catalyst to propel me forward in my life as an entrepreneur?"

- I can.

Sixth grade, 11 years old, selling candy at Hanes Middle School.

Phil, who used to run the store right outside my house, he would give me a box of Now and Laters on consignment, and he would say, "Hey, you could take this box, just bring me back the money later today or later in the week or whatever."

And I started out doing Now and Laters, then I added Blow Pops, then I had bubblegum.

But yeah, I would literally, I was the candy guy.

I was the guy walking around school with a book bag full of candy.

And what was so interesting was like Phil was supporting it and he was like my supplier.

You know, where I would go get restocked.

And what was so interesting about it is I ended up, when the school found out I was selling candy, they called my grandmother.

And she got me home and I thought she was gonna be really, really upset about it.

But the thing she was most upset about is she said, "Why was you buying it from Phil?"

She said, "I could've took you down here to Angelo's and you could've gotten a lot cheaper."

And so she was very supportive of it.

But yeah, man, in middle school, 11 years old, I'm making 20, 25 bucks a day selling Now and Laters and Blow Pops and just hustling, man.

- And your journey right after high school, did you make the decision to go into college, was it?

- Yeah, man, well, I almost didn't go to college.

I almost didn't graduate from high school.

As I've shared with you, we were very poor growing up and so, I ended up getting a job when I was about 17 or 18.

I got a job at Olive Garden and I was the bus boy.

And when you're a busboy, you get paid minimum wage, but you're also make making $30, $40 a day in tips.

And I enjoyed making that $30 or $40 more than I enjoyed going to high school.

And so I stopped going to school.

I actually dropped outta high school.

I stopped gonna school, and I was busing tables out at Olive Garden.

And my grandfather actually found out about it.

And he was very emotional because it was really important to him that I graduate high school.

Education was always critical to my grandparents.

And he sat with me right here when our house was here, we sat on that porch and he made me promise that I was gonna at least finish high school.

I took that serious, I finished high school.

I actually ended up graduating number two in my class, went to North Carolina State University.

Prior, when I was going through high school, was the '90s.

And so again, I grew up poor.

I want money.

So I saw all these people making money in technology.

And so I said, "Okay, I wanna be like Michael Dell, I wanna be like Bill Gates, I'm gonna go learn and figure out how to build computers or write programs or whatever."

But I was never passionate about it.

Like I was just doing it because I was motivated by money.

And so when I got outta college, I was wildly unsuccessful with my own degree.

And long story short, I ended up getting into business, which is something I'm very much more passionate about.

- You decided to come back.

Can you tell us a little bit about that decision and how it's really just accelerated Wharton Gladden in this market as well and driving the Triad forward?

- I love Winston-Salem.

I love East Winston-Salem.

I love the people of Winston-Salem.

I think people in Winston-Salem have done a lot to support me, done a lot to support my grandparents and so many other people.

And it was just important for me to come back here and do something to make an impact.

To be honest with you, I, at the time when I came back here, I had no idea why I was coming back here.

I had no idea what the impact was gonna be or any of that.

I just knew that I wanted to be here and I wanted to make an impact and I wanted to build some kind of legacy, not necessarily for me, but for my grandparents who had done so much to support me.

- [Derrick] Then Algenon took me over to a location he is currently focused on developing.

It's a stone's throw away from where he grew up and a section of Winston that seems somewhat forgotten.

- When I was a kid, all of this was vibrant, there was actual real businesses here.

But just over the years as the community over here has transformed, these things have not been, there's been no investment.

Our idea is to try to take this block and really revitalize it.

Of course, we'll have to demo everything that you see, but the idea is to try to get some life back over here, some jobs back on this side of town.

But you look at this, I mean, this whole stretch has just been void of any kind of investment.

- [Derrick] And what do you see as being the biggest impeding factor, the biggest impediment to revitalization?

- Yeah, I don't think you can revitalize a community and a neighborhood without also helping to revitalize people.

So you can't just come over here and say you're gonna change the buildings and re-engineer everything.

You actually have to care about the people who live over here.

And right now we have people in this community that need jobs, they need higher wages, they need more education.

And I think because of the lack of investment around those three things, you've also seen the buildings in this area deteriorate.

You don't want to come over here and just pretend that you know what this community wants.

You want them to be able to add some of their own input into it.

It also takes help from government.

So it's a all-hands-on-deck approach, right?

Like you gotta have private sector working with public sector, working with the neighborhood to come over here and actually cause some change.

I mean, look at this.

Why would anybody want this in their neighborhood?

This is what's happened to our neighborhood and our community.

This is a public safety hazard.

For all I know, it could be somebody dead in there and we wouldn't even know about it.

So who wants to live in this type of a community and neighborhood?

And that's what I wanna work to change.

I don't want to just do redevelopment in East Winston just to be doing redevelopment.

I wanna do redevelopment with a purpose, redevelopment that leads to job creation, redevelopment that starts to lift the median income and the median wage in this community.

And so to do that, you've gotta be purposeful and you gotta be intent-ful, but you've gotta do something that creates jobs.

So you're not gonna hear me saying a lot about creating more stores and restaurants and things that cause people to spend money.

I wanna bring things over here that cause people to make money.

I think you have to look at what's going on in the world now, right?

We have so many companies that are doing online sales and e-commerce and selling through Amazon.

I've got a good friend of mine who has a $5 million company, does $5 million a year and does everything online.

It's all online sales.

And so all those small e-commerce companies need small industrial space.

And so what my vision is for this building is industrial coworking space for small companies that just need small amount of square footage for assembly, storage, distribution and then creating jobs over in this community with those small companies.

So I remember back in the day when this was like a active rail line.

This is a old RJR tobacco warehouse.

And when this line was active, trains would pull up, they load up tobacco or load it off or whatever they were doing, and take off to wherever they had to go.

And so again, that was the types of jobs that you would've seen over in this community back in the day.

And these were like good paying jobs.

I mean, that's how we created the sort of middle income area that we have over here, was with good paying jobs.

But those jobs are all gone now.

But I mean, there's these cases all over the country where you take either old expired railroad tracks like this, or you create greenways or bike paths and you'll see development pop up on both sides of it.

And Greenville is a great example of that.

And so we've had some of that happen downtown Winston in Innovation Quarter, where they created the Long Branch Trail, and now I'm pushing and advocating to have the Long Branch Trail extended all the way down here to 27th Street.

And I think that it may lead to more revitalization and development and redevelopment happening along the pathway.

And so again, I think that provides some connectivity for this neighborhood back to Wake Forest University, if you've got this path coming in here that also connects back to downtown.

So, a big part about revitalization and redevelopment is about creating connectivity so that different types of people are able to just be more mobile.

And it's through that mobility that you start to revitalize the area and it doesn't cost as much as people would say.

I mean, Norfolk Southern has already donated the railroad to DOT.

So it's just a matter of working with DOT to actually do the improvements to make this an actual active greenway and an extension of the trail and the more accessible your project is, the greater the mobility.

And then it's also the, what I like to call the social capital aspect of it, so everything isn't just about physical financial capital.

Some of it is about the actual social capital you create when you do these kind of projects.

- [Derrick] After walking around the development area, we decided to get out of the heat and head downtown to Foothills Brewery, so we could grab a beer.

While there, we got to talking about Algenon's deep connection with food.

Algenon had even opened a burger joint called Zesto, named after the hot dog place his grandmother had managed when he was growing up.

Although he sold the restaurant during the pandemic, he is still highly involved in supporting local.

I asked Algenon about his investment in local restaurants and the immense support he offers through social media.

- When you think about locally owned, small businesses, at the center and core of that, it's restaurants.

It's the burger and the hot dog stand that's on the corner of Main and Main.

But a lot of times we don't really understand the story behind the restaurant, the passion of the owner and what he or she had to do to be able to create that business and the adversity they had to overcome to stay in business and the inspiration behind the menu that they might have created.

So there's so many moving parts to these businesses and I just simply wanted to tell those stories.

And so when COVID-19 happened, we created the Triad Food and Beverage Coalition.

We've now created a marketing program called "Eat Drink Triad."

And so "Eat Drink Triad" has a radio show, a podcast, a YouTube channel, heavy online social media presence, as you mentioned, and all of it is engineered around telling the stories of these restaurants.

And yeah, I go in and out and I'm eating the food and I'm trying the food, but the food is just a byproduct of a much larger narrative.

I'd say 80% of what I do on any given day is just connecting people and helping people to understand how to work together, how to build win-win relationships and a lot of negotiation.

And it took me a long time to realize that that was even a strength or a talent.

You go through life, I think, a lot of times believing that whatever your particular strength or talent is, that everyone knows how to do that.

So like, why in the world would somebody pay me money to negotiate their deal or help them to have a conversation with someone when they could just have that conversation on their own?

But I will be honest with you, that's really how I've built my entire professional career is knowing the right people and understanding how to cause two things to connect with one another.

And whether I benefit off of that immediately or at some point down the road or whatever the case may be, that's just not really my focus.

When I first got into business, one of the first organizations I joined was Rotary Club and a mentor told me, we had breakfast every Wednesday morning at Rotary Club, and a mentor told me, he said, "When you come to breakfast, don't ever look to get any business outta anyone, and you'll get a lot of business outta everyone."

And as a young kid, fresh outta college, that's a little hard to get your head wrapped around because you're so focused on trying to get a sale or make a deal happen or make some money.

But he was right, when I started to focus on other people and what they're trying to do and what their needs are and what their goals are, it was almost like other things just sort of would gravitate back towards me.

And that's just really how I've tried to structure my life ever since.

Some of the structural issues that I see within the minority community have existed for 50 or 60 years.

And I look back pre-1960s at the Black community and I look at how vibrant it was when you had a Black Wall Street and you had so many Black business owners and just so much great things that were happening in the Black community.

And I think the one thing I noticed about that period of time is that a lot of those individuals and families felt empowered.

They knew how to make choices and decisions on their own without necessarily relying on anyone or even relying on government, they did it themselves.

And it's like the, when you look at the 1960s and the introduction of the Great Society and all the programs that got created, and I know these programs were designed to try to help us, but they almost killed us.

And so now when you look at the structural gaps in home ownership, income, wealth gaps, we're at 1968 levels between Black families and their white counterparts.

Four outta every 10 Americans, or four outta every 10 Black Americans are financially illiterate.

They can't balance a basic checkbook.

We know that we need to be looking harder at economic mobility because of some of the things I've showed you already on the east side of town.

We should be looking harder at economic and financial literacy, housing, infrastructural needs on the east side of town.

And so I just felt like it was time to create an organization or a network that would allow more Black Americans to get the information, the education they need to be empowered, to be a critical thinker, to make their own decisions, to create their own companies and their own jobs and their own community.

And so the Black Empowerment Network is an issue advocacy and policy research network.

We're working with Duke University right now to do a focus group study on 10 core areas in the Black community where there's structural gaps that exist.

And then we want to formulate a strategy and an action plan and start working with the public and private sector to move the needle on some of these issues.

And when we're successful here in North Carolina, we want to take the blueprint from North Carolina and we want to go to South Carolina, we wanna go to Virginia, we want to go to, there's about 11 or 12 states in this country where there's a heavy population of African Americans.

And we want to target those areas and essentially work to empower those individuals and families so they can be more successful.

- Thinking back, I love thinking back, just to memories of when I first met Algenon.

I'm originally from Florida, grew up in West Palm Beach, decided in 2004 that I wanted to leave.

Moved up to Raleigh and Algenon was the first person that I met in the local market.

- A common theme is relationships matter and so I've think I've always just tried to center my life around building relationships and leveraging relationships to be able to do more and accomplish more.

And so I think when you and I connected, it was pretty cool because you were like, working in Raleigh and I'm working over in the Triad and we're just starting out, we've got sort of a boutique investment banking firm.

It took us three years to figure out what we were even doing, but then we're covering the whole state because we're leveraging our relationships.

And getting Wharton Gladden off the ground back then would've been impossible without that relationship.

- We used to do this when we worked together.

We would typically go and spend like a full day in one another's markets and literally drive around and have breakfast, lunch, dinner and meetings in between with all these different people and then end with a cocktail reception somewhere.

And this was like a regular thing that we would do.

We both have evolved so much since we first met each other, but like in the best ways and just to see how we're shaping up or continuing to shape is always nice.

So I always appreciate that.

- Yeah, well, no, I was certainly glad to have you here and when they asked about someone that could participate in this with me, I immediately thought about you.

And you used the word evolve and we certainly have evolved.

I mean, we are light years away from where we all started back in 2003.

I still remember back when we got our first engagement and it was a $500 engagement fee that we charged on that deal, first deal we ever did together.

And course that amount was far too low, but we were so excited to make $500.

And now today, of course, we charge a lot more for a deal and I always remind people, I tell people, I still remember you calling me, you called me every day and say, "Hey, has that $500 check showed up yet today, can you go ahead and send me my half?"

And so, we have come a long way but even more so than the success and some of the money and recognition that has come, I mostly appreciate your friendship.

So I appreciate you being here, man.

For sure.

- [Derrick] And we appreciate you being here.

Thanks for sticking around and discovering some of the driving reasons behind one of Winston Salem's avid entrepreneurs and business advocates.

I hope you'll join us on our next episode of "Making North Carolina" as we continue to explore the brilliant minds that live around us.

[poignant music] [poignant music continues] [poignant music continues] [poignant music continues] [poignant music continues] [poignant music continues] [poignant music continues] [upbeat country music] [upbeat country music continues] - [Announcer] "Heart of NC" is dedicated to lifting up cultural experiences in Randolph County.

Like hearing homegrown bluegrass music at the Sunset or Liberty theaters.

Taking home pottery from internationally renowned artists in Seagrove, the pottery capital of the country.

Learning NASCAR's legacy at the Petty Museum and feeding giraffes at the largest natural habitat zoo in the world.

"Heart of NC" wants you to know all Randolph County has to offer.

Experience Randolph, the heart of North Carolina.