- Support for this program was provided by Horizon Blue Cross, Blue Shield New Jersey, Berkeley College, ed ucation drives opportunity.

Be inspired.

[upbeat jazz music] ♪ ♪ - Hello, this is John Harmon, founder, president, and CEO of the African American Chamber of Commerce in New Jersey.

Welcome to "Pathway to Success."

Today's guest is a global leader in sales, marketing, brand development, en trepreneurship, leadership, the father of one of the gr eatest artists of all time, Ms. Beyoncé, the founder of Destiny's Child and a dozen other artists that are known both domestically and globally.

Welcome, Mr. Mathew Knowles to "Pathway to Success."

- Thank you, John, and thank you for the invite.

I'm looking forward to the interview.

- Well, I'm just excited to have you here today.

We've had a few conversations getting to know each other.

Why don't we just start by a little bit about your background.

- John, I grew up in a rural part of Alabama, Gadsden, Alabama.

My mother went to high school with Coretta King and Mary and all of them, so she picked up the torch, but desegregation was in her blood, and when she got to Gadsden, and then I was born, and as a young kid, John, I never went to a Black school in Gadsden, Alabama, and we're talking 1958 to 1970 I intergrated elementary, junior high, Gadsden high, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.

My parents were poor.

I never knew we were poor.

My dad was a truck driver.

He convinced the people he worked for to let him use that truck 24/7.

He would tear down old houses, sell all the copper metal.

He would buy a used car, old cars that people had abandoned, give 'em $25, and then he'd sell all the parts.

My mother was a colored maid who made $3 a day.

She convinced the woman she worked for to give her all of her hand-me-downs and all of her neighbors gave her those, and on the weekend, my mother and her two best friends would make these beautiful quilts, so I, at an early age, I learned entrepreneurship from my parents.

- Just an amazing story, and I'm just assuming that they did not have the level of education that you have today.

Can you tell us a little bit about your educational foundation?

- Sure, and you're right, John.

Like a lot of us that's in my age bracket, my parents didn't have that luxury to go to college.

But myself, they were determined that I was going to college.

Fortunately, I became a pretty good basketball player, but I got a number of scholarships with the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.

Transferred my junior year to Fisk University, played basketball there on a championship team, and got a degree in economics, got a degree in business administration, and then went to my corporate life and worked at Xerox Medical Systems and Philips and Johnson & Johnson, and then went and got my MBA and my PhD, PhD in business administration with a specialty in strategic planning and organizational culture from a small, Christian school, Cornerstone Christian Bible College.

- You gravitated to business, entrepreneurship, and also working the corporation.

Connect those pieces for us a little bit.

- Sure, it goes back to parenting again.

My--especially my mother instilled in me to always work towards being the best at whatever I did in life.

She instilled in me that the belief that I could dream and be anything I wanted to be in life if I worked hard enough and found my passion.

So it started there, and then I had the fortune to, in the late '70s, to work at Xerox Corporation, which was known then, John, as the number one corporation for Blacks in America to work, but even more so also the marketing and sales, we had a university that we would train and go to in Leesburg, Virginia, and so I really, really understood and learned from Xerox Corporation the value of knowledge of sales and marketing that took me into the music industry.

20 years of selling diagnostic imaging, managed clear came about, and I knew I couldn't operate with looking at the cost of my equipment, so I knew I had to leave the medical industry, and my passion was music, and a young kid in Houston had been asking me to manage him, and that's the first record deal I got was for a rapper here in Houston named Lil' O.

Most people think it was Destiny's Child, but it wasn't.

- Lil' O.

We have a guy in Trenton named Big Ooh.

Very similar.

[laughter] Lil' O and Big Ooh.

- Yes.

What a combination.

So navigating the corporate environment and then, you know, can you kind of compare that to navigating your entrée into the entertainment business?

- When I left corporate America and went into the music industry, they were selling records.

My approach was somewhat different.

We were selling records, yes, but we were branding our artists, so branding and endorsement became critically important.

I'll give you an example.

You know, a typical major record label marketing budget might be-- let's say $1 million when you put out an album, but when you partner with L'Oreal in a commercial, it's 20 million people looking at that, and the record label mi ght have in their marketing maybe 3 or 4 million people that they're messaging to.

So I learned that from corporate America.

I was fortunate.

At Xerox Medical, I only sold copiers for a year, and then I got this quantum leap promotion to the medical division at Xerox selling xeroradiography, which was the main modality for breast cancer detection in the '80s, and I was fortunate enough to be the number one sales rep in the world for three out of four years.

So I really had a mastery-- I had mastered sales and marketing.

That's really been a catalyst that really has driven a lot of the success, building the right team, but understanding sales and marketing.

- How did the vision and the evolution of Destiny's Child come to fruition?

- Well, they had lost, like many-- you'd be surprised.

This show called "Star Search."

I don't know if you remember that show.

- Yes, I remember that.

- So, you know, "Star Search" was really what "American Idol" is today, for those of you that are too young to know "Star Search," but a lot of artists lost on "Star Search," and when I talked to the host, Ed McMahon, I said, "Mr. McMahon, these kids "are crying their heart out.

As a dad, what do I do?"

And I'll never forget.

He says, "Most people who win on this show "for some reason don't go on to success.

"It's the people who lose.

"It's the people that go back, rededicate, refocus, make changes in their organization."

And so those were the things that we had to do.

But you know, my former wife Tina did an exceptional job with the imaging of the girls because that's a real important thing.

We understood, again, that marketing.

What's the difference?

What differentiates you?

That's what marketing is all about, and so the imaging was different, the sound was different.

The songs were really female empowerment songs.

"Say My Name," "P ay my bills, bills, bills."

We pay our own bills.

It's a female empowerment stance.

- The initial contract, how did that make them feel?

After coming up short, how did they react to that?

- Good question, John.

They came up short a number of times before success happened, and that's the same thing that happens to many of us in life.

You know, in my book, "The DNA of Achievers," I talk about-- one of the chapters is learning from failure, and failure is an opportunity to grow and not a reason to quit.

And then came the magic of really understanding artist development, working hard, building the skillset, and learning from those failures.

And that's how, when the ladies got signed to Columbia Records, which was one of the top if not the number one record label, part of the Sony system, that was a major deal.

You know, you get a signing bonus, we'll call it, when you sign, and so here you are, 15 years old, and you see $1 million on a check for the first time, that's some pretty heady stuff.

- When did you come to the point where you felt that Destiny's Child had really come into their own?

- Yeah, when we released the first album, the first single, "No, No, No" went number one on the overall Billboard charts, and that's a pure indication, but I approached genres differently.

You know, when I named the company, it's Music World Entertainment, and purposely Music World.

Our approach was just that.

So they approached this and had this sense from a worldwide perspective, and they put the work in for that, and it paid off.

It paid off huge dividends for them putting in that work, which is contributing to Beyoncé's success because her fundamentals, her foundation was built by Destiny's Child.

- How difficult was it for you to finally go from a group to a solo artist, in this case Beyoncé?

Making that decision, how does one arrive at that?

- Yeah, in 2002, I sold Music World to the largest independent record label and the largest management company in the world, actually, a company in London called "Sanctuary," and we formed a division, Music World Sanctuary Urban, and so the idea-- at that time, you know, most people don't realize I made the last-- The O'Jays last two albums, made the last Earth, Wind & Fire album.

So, you know, we had some star names, and that's when I came up with an idea to build the brand of Destiny's Child and begin to build a brand of the ladies independently, that between each Destiny's Child album, they would do a solo album.

They did this three times, and it was tremendously successful.

So it built a foundation of their solo careers.

- We're gonna take a break here on "Pathway to Success."

We'll be back in a moment.

- The African American Chamber of Commerce of New Jersey is your pathway to success.

We encourage you to visit our website at www.AACCNJ.com or call us at 609-571-1620.

We are your strategic partner for success.

- Welcome back to "Pathway to Success."

Gonna continue our conversation with Mr. Mathew Knowles today.

You know, he's not only the leader from the entertainment side, but he's also well sought after to speak for corporate events.

He's on corporate boards, but more importantly, you know, education, I think he's found his lane with reinvesting in parting unto the future leaders of tomorrow.

So he's a professor at Pepperdine University, the prestigious London College of Contemporary Music, and so Mr. Knowles, talk about, you know, this education piece because you've dropped a lot of nuggets on us today that, personally, I never even heard of that you've done.

So continue to enlighten us.

- Yeah, well, thank you for the opportunity, again, John, but this is 20 years for me in education and academia.

Now my first nine years, John, was at Texas Southern University, and I had the opportunity in a school of communications to co-create a degree program that still exists today at Texas Southern, and so ERM, entertainment and recording management is the course-- the degree.

But nine years there at Texas Southern and then I was at Rice University for a year.

At Prairie View A&M for three years.

I was at Fisk for two years.

And not only am I at Pepperdine, but--and LCCM-- but I'm the dean of our African American Museum of Music there in Nashville, and we have a course during the spring that we have 13 or 14 HBCUs online, and we talk about the music industry in a digital age, and on the team there-- the academic team is some of the best music minds in entertainment and academia, so I enjoy being a dean over there as well.

- One of the priorities of the Murphy Administration is the film and entertainment industry, so we have to get you here in New Jersey and figure out how you can make our state more competitive as it relates to the film, entertainment, and also get you connected with some of our institutions of higher education.

So that's another conversation, but let's talk about the rebranding of Music World, Music Film and Television LLC.

- Well, you know, we had to pivot.

I actually sold my catalog 2 1/2 years ago, and so other than I still manage Destiny's Child, I'm really not, other than academia, in the music industry per se.

- Gotcha.

- And so we transitioned to film and TV.

We have a slate of 12 different types of scripted and unscripted television and film products that are coming out, and excited about them.

One being Destiny's Child documentary they've been working on, and the other being the Mathew Knowles story.

- Well, named LinkedIn top voice.

What is that all about?

- Well, you know, I got selected to be in that top voice.

I always share with people that, when I-- you know, years ago, say, John, 12, 15 years ago, I was adamantly against social media, and I had to learn that social media is not going anywhere.

So I learned to embrace it, understand it better, and understand from a business perspective.

I use social media mainly for business almost daily or every other day, come up and share some inspiration.

- Mm-hmm.

- And LinkedIn is a big part of that.

- Let's talk about advice.

You know, there are a number of Blacks who have been sought after or are interested in pursuing being on corporate boards.

Can you share some advice how someone could possibly potentially position themselves to be a more likely candidate to succeed in that endeavor?

- Well, it goes back to having a strategy, being strategic, and one of those things is what we just talked about, John, it's having a presence on social media.

The other is there are companies that you can hire that will engage and position you for boards.

I've gotten on a number of boards by using those services, and you can google this.

I always tell my students that there's a second professor in my class, Professor Google, and you don't have to spell it correctly, the sentence can be wrong, and it'll find you an answer.

But I'm on a number of boards.

Often with start-up boards, you get a small piece of the company, and it's a strategy that I have as my years get shorter and shorter, that I can use those assets and actually live off of those assets a good way.

- So we're gonna pivot here again.

Health, particularly as it relates to Black men.

- As Black men, we lead the death rate-- the mortality rate.

We lead in cancer.

We lead in almost every category, and a lot of that has to do with just early detection and not going to the doctor.

You know, I am a cancer survivor.

A real rare disease in men, male breast cancer.

I call it, fr om a marketing perspective, male chest cancer.

Most men feel comfortable saying that more so than breast cancer, and I go all over, and I've learned a lot about genetics and the opportunity we have today to get an early snapshot, early in our 20s and 30s to understand if we have a higher propensity for cancer or heart disease.

We can find that out by a simple saliva test, and it's important that we get our prostate exams, colonoscopes when they should be.

And as Black men, I'm on that soap box sharing, "Hey, you gotta go in to the doctor.

Spend three hours, four hours that'll help save your life."

- Unfortunately, so many of us find out too late.

- Remember I talked about Xerox Medical Systems and xeroradiography?

That was for the early detection of breast cancer.

Then go figure, one day I would come down with male breast cancer.

Had it not been for the training that I got, I would not have known because my doctor who's a prominent doctor in Houston, when I told him that I wanted to get a mammogram, he almost laughed and said he had never in his 40 years diagnosed a man to go get a mammogram, but I knew the signs.

I'm fortunate that I was diagnosed stage-1 and 'cause I knew the signs and I went and got a mammogram and the rest is history.

- Legacy, what would you like for people to remember you for?

- My legacy is that I helped people.

You know, I had empathy.

Sometimes as a manager, tough love.

You know, sometimes in the classroom, tough love, but I say in the first day of class, "If you came here an d you just want to be good, please don't come back.

I only teach greatness."

But everyone knew in those its love, and I'm really about talking about the things that we're going through in America today, racism that exists, and I want that to be part of my legacy that I would talk about those things that was difficult for others to talk about and bring them to light.

- I think that's fantastic.

You know, when you agreed to have this conversation with me today, I wanted to really get to know you, your full story because your body of work also speaks volumes.

I wanted to know Dr. Mathew Knowles, and I wanted to kind of convey that today through our conversation.

My final question, now that we've gotten to know each other, and it's my hope that we will build on this relationship, and you've gotten a glimpse of the body of work of the African American Chamber of Commerce of New Jersey.

Any thoughts about how we could go forward together?

- Yeah, I think there's an opportunity for us to--with a health-- and mental health initiative as well as health that we can share around this country.

I think that there is opportunities for entrepreneurship.

I'm excited.

We can't forget I'm gonna be your keynote in October, and I'm looking forward to that, but, you know, entrepreneurship, health, and wellness, those are things that I am really excited about talking about.

"The DNA of Achievers."

Most people, John, don't know I've written five books, two best-sellers on Amazon.

"The DNA of Achievers," ten traits of highly successful professionals, "Racism from the Eyes of a Child," which tells my story growing up and being a first, being beaten and being spit on and electric prodders by the state troopers in Alabama.

The things we had to endure so that we could be sitting right here today, not just myself, but many, many others.

Another book I've written, "The Emancipation of Slaves Through Music," that talks about the impact of slavery and music even today.

"Media and Public Relations," and then "Destiny's Child: The Untold Story," so, you know, I look forward to finding places that we can spread the word, we can encourage, we can empower, and we can incorporate not being good but being great.

- This is a great conversation.

We look forward to you coming to New Jersey to keynote our corporate awards in October.

We will also get your books out.

You know, great testimonies are a result of a great test, and you shared that throughout our conversation today, so Dr. Mathew Knowles, we're just excited to have you here today.

- Thank you, John.

- And to our viewers, those who tuned in to "Pathway to Success," until the next time, this is John Harmon, founder and president and CEO of the African American Chamber of Commerce of New Jersey.

Thank you for tuning in today.

♪ ♪ Today's message is the man behind the curtain.

Often times, you don't know the full story.

You see individuals reach high levels of success, but there's other people behind the scenes that are making it happen.

Today you heard from.

Dr. Mathew Knowles, and it appears to me that his body of work has been about helping others achieve their dreams with excellence.

I learned a lot today, and I think we as a people could learn a lot from others' experiences if we would just turn down our volume and lean in and let our ears do the work and by taking in information and experience from others, we might be better at pursuing our personal endeavors.

So I'll leave this with you today.

Don't ever give up on your dreams.

So inspiration comes from many forms, so today we all leave a little more inspired, a little more motivated to pursue our dreams with excellence because excellence is the differentiator.

♪ ♪ - Support from this program was provided by Horizon Blue Cross, Blue Shield of New Jersey, Berkeley College, ed ucation drives opportunity.

Be inspired.