- And good evening.

You've got More Than Money, you've got Gene Dickison, your host and personal financial adviser, for the next half an hour as we share as many good ideas with you as we possibly can on More Than Money.

We took a little holiday break and we've been bringing you some fascinating guests.

I think tonight will be no exception.

But before we get started, I know these are challenging times in and a lot of folks out there are feeling a lot of anxiety, a lot of heartburn, a lot of angst.

I would encourage you in challenging times, look to at least two different approaches that might help.

Number one, be courageous.

It's time for courage.

It's time to step up, be strong and add to the positive conversation.

And number two, be courteous.

It's a really valuable trait that can change conversations in a blink, even if you're talking to somebody that you think, "I don't necessarily agree with them," courtesy goes a long way to bridging the gap.

So, make sure you stick with us.

Welcome back again as we add more of your questions to our future shows.

Send me your emails, gene@askmtm.com.

You can send them in standard email format.

You can get creative.

You could send videos.

That would be great fun.

And we'll put, I can guarantee, you send me a video email, it's most likely going to end up on our show.

But as we always do, we try to start our shows with stories that bring some insight into this journey that we have here in America.

We call them American stories.

And our guest this evening has an interesting story of his own.

I'm anxious to talk to him.

I think you will be as well to hear him.

I want to welcome Kevin Greene of Faces International.

Kevin, welcome.

- Thank you, Gene.

Glad to be here.

- Your background is is pretty interesting, but I want to start by giving folks a sense of Faces International, if they've not heard of them, what do you folks do?

- So, Faces International.

We are marketing, advertising and a development firm.

And when we say development, it's about staff development.

And I remember when we started this company nine years ago, everyone was like, "Hey, how do you partner up advertising "and marketing and all this fun stuff with, you know, "interpersonal development of staff and culture?"

And our mindset was that if you really don't understand the interpersonal development of individuals and who we truly are at the core, it's very hard for you to develop marketing strategies to connect with them.

In this day and age, hey, there's a ton of products out there and we're being bombarded every single day.

So, it's harder for you to stand out.

And the only way to really do that is to connect.

And the only way to connect is to truly know the people you're looking to reach, the psychographics I like to call it, to, so they can make a connection with your brand and your product and also, obviously your culture in your organization.

- So the the days of just being louder and more frequent and just pounding a message at maybe people who didn't want to hear, those are long gone.

- You know, it really is, because, you know, when we think about our devices, right, we're being pounded all the time.

So now the conversation is how do we stop the pounding, right?

So we're only going to allow so much to affect us and come into our space.

So when we're thinking about our advertising strategies, we have to understand that we're competing in a marketplace with so many people that can reach people so easily.

But also there's a little bit of burnout for the individual in a sense of how much stuff they could take and really how much stuff they're going to pay attention to every single day.

- That makes perfect sense.

Perfect sense.

Now, I'm going to make two observations about your website.

The first thing that I notice first thing out of the gate, everybody's so darn good looking!

That's almost annoying to old guys like me.

I'm going, "God, they're all young and handsome."

And second with style.

You brought your style today, but the website demonstrates you've got energy, you've got youth, you've got good-looking and style.

But nine years, what did you guys do?

Start this in junior high school?

- Ah, man, I'll tell you, man, it's so I'm 35 now, so 26.

So when we started this whole entire race and it was really, you know, taking a look at what was going on for us as people coming out of school, going into the workforce.

And obviously, you know, we're seeing some economic downturn right now due to the fact of the pandemic.

But we were, you know, the generation that was highly affected going into the workforce when we had a huge economic downturn.

So it really turned us into what you hear a little bit of the gig economy or the side hustle economy.

And we really started to look at that, "What is going to be sustainable?"

And we had a bunch of different talents within our group of friends and we were like, "How do we come together and use all of our talent "to create something sustainable?"

Because especially at that time, in any any time, it's hard to start a business with a lot of people.

It's hard to start a business with capital.

It's hard, definitely hard to start a business with no capital and no really, you know, we're not from the Valley.

So we were like, "How do we come together and unite "and create this firm that can be really what we call "the one stop shop," where we can come in, not only work with you in a sense your culture and your staff, but really work with you from start to finish to create the deliverables and the expectation and goals that you're looking to reach from a company.

- Fascinating.

I'm curious.

Faces International.

Where did the name come from?

- So at first, when we first started, we were Lehigh Valley Faces and that came from a branding perspective of like, "OK, since we don't have "heritage here, how do we go ahead and become a part "of the social fabric of Lehigh Valley?"

So, from a branding standpoint, we did that.

Then as we evolved and started to get clients outside of the Lehigh Valley, we didn't want to have clients think, you know, the first question is, "Can you only "market in Lehigh Valley?"

We're like, "No."

So we decided to it's time to evolve ourselves because the growth has happened.

And so the Faces come from because as a marketing and advertising development firm, you know, we're working with the different faces and souls of the Lehigh Valley.

So, not only are we a representation of the community, we understand that our community is so much more than sometimes that we see, and that's why we call it social fabric, right?

You really have to weave yourself within a community to understand it and become a part of it.

So that's why we're so involved not only in the business community, but our general community on the nonprofit side from our volunteer work, but also the initiatives that we launch ourselves and really trying to be authentic in the work that we do, but also constantly, actively listening to what our community needs so we can adjust on all different levels on the things that we do.

- Fantastic.

Well said.

Now, you talk about you and your your your team, not from the Lehigh Valley.

You didn't start your life in the Lehigh Valley or even in the United States.

Where did you come from?

- No.

So I was born in Jamaica, me and my sister both.

So, we were the first generation to come here.

So I got here at seven ,first time seeing snow was at JFK, looking at it out the window, didn't understand why people liked it.

Took about four years for me to actually go play in the snow because I just didn't understand why anybody would want to do that!

And grew up in northern New Jersey, went to school in northern New Jersey and then came out to Pennsylvania.

My uncle's been here now, I guess, going on 25-plus years.

So, he was the first one out of Brooklyn when we left and he came to Allentown.

So, my my vision always of Allentown was always Hamilton Street and going to the buffets.

So I always just thought, Pennsylvania is just full of buffets.

I'm like, "That's all we ever do "when we get here."

And then Dorney Park.

So that was kind of like our trifecta of what we did.

When we came here.

- As a kid that checks all the boxes.

- Yeah, exactly.

- That's all you really need right there.

Fantastic.

Your mom was a single mom.

Tell me a little bit, how was it growing up in northern Jersey, coming...

It's a new country.

It's snow.

It's strange.

How was it?

- You know, I think like any any kid going into any new situation, right, that is the toughest times of your life.

Being a kid in society, trying to fit in and trying and things of that sort, and obviously being not only from from or from another town, from a whole different ecosystem in a sense of what I knew just in the sense of American culture, but also what I was getting into.

The things that I was liking and wanting to get my interest.

So, definitely tough in the start of it just to figure out how to kind of navigate.

But truthfully, you know what I will say from my experience and I'm blessed to have the experience that I had, and it was just a core group of people, you know, my peers, but also parents at a young age that wrapped around me and really got me into sports, got me into things that really, again, I talk about that social fabric, allowed me to really start to get into things.

And as I'm starting to see from my son now, even with him only being four, building my own likes and wants and kind of dreams from that point.

So definitely a difficult thing because the stress of my mom having to go ahead and making sure that she's doing what she needs to do to provide for us, you know, that time that you miss, you know, with parents that I look and value so much now.

But as an adult now I look back and I know the work ethic that I have comes from seeing her never complain, always commit, and always showing up every single time.

And, you know, if it wasn't for her, she was the person that made me an entrepreneur.

I used to go to work with her and clean cars and things of that sort you know, while she was doing things.

Now as I was outside cleaning neighbors cars going around.

So, you know, she was the person who helped me start my first business and really set my mindset about how I can use my talent and my love to create something and create a quality of life that I'm looking for.

- Let's talk about your mom for a second.

It's it's a lot of years later, she made some big sacrifices to bring you and your sister here, big sacrifices to make sure that you were well taken care of.

And now she sees her son nine years into a business, most businesses don't make it to the end of their first year.

You guys have made a real career out of this, a real success out of this.

How does she view that?

What is she still giving you counsel?

Is she still giving you advice?

- It's funny.

We're just having the conversation the other day just about like what's happened, because I remember telling her, you know, "I'm not going to go back to work.

"I'm going to do this."

And she was the only person.

So there's some family members that I've had the, "Aha, I did it" type of thing conversation now.

But she was just 100% behind me and supporting me in the early stages of this.

And so when we talk about it now, you know, the dreams that I know that she's had, that I can't even imagine what it is to be on an island, you know, looking at planes leaving of this America and what it looks like and opportunities and then what she might be feeling now in a sense of looking to say that her sacrifice was worth it, to put me in a position.

And that's all I could really tell her now is that, "I'm just thankful for what you've done, "because without your sacrifice, I truthfully "would not understand and I truthfully would not "have the opportunities that I have now."

And now that I'm at my age and having a son, I see that, right?

The whole thing and say, you know, "Now I understand "because I'm older" and things of that sort, "I wish I would have listened a little bit earlier" and things of that sort.

I'm just grateful for her commitment to me truthfully, her blind trust and love, because I get at the end of the day, starting anything new.

It doesn't matter what it is, a new school, a new sports program, a new project, a new business.

You know, you need that support because that's something you can lean on when times get hard and they will get hard.

- We started the show with we're hoping that people in these weird, challenging times demonstrate some courage and some courtesy, but we start with courage.

Your mom's courage in putting her family on that plane... Can you even imagine it?

Can you even imagine what she was feeling?

Has she ever talked to you about that, what it felt like to simply make that decision, knowing that there was so much unknown out there that it could have gone off the rails?

It didn't, but she didn't know that.

It took great courage.

So, yeah, sacrifices.

But she must also be a courageous woman.

- Yeah, and I mean, that's why I say that's why I feel that so much of myself comes from her, you know, being courageous and being almost... What I say as a business owner, I classify it as being an entrepreneur, right?

You have to be comfortable with failure.

You have to be comfortable to take that leap.

But truthfully, that's a life type lesson.

That's a life commitment, right?

You have to be willing and courageous to take chances.

And I don't know anyone that's more courageous than a mother that's in a situation that has no resources in another country to one, figure out the resources to get us here and then figure out how you're going to go in and sustain and get us here, at the end of the day.

So as much as she's told me, I know my mom loves me too much to tell me the full truth.

So, you know, that's why I get I get I get the back-end story from my fiance, who she seems to know more than me!

I'm not surprised.

- I thinking someday in the future, I might want your mom standing there.

I'm might want to talk to her about that because you want to talk about an American story of courage.

It's just it's just fantastic, you and your company, but particularly you have spent a fair amount of your time and energy in giving back to the community.

I know that you've served with the United Way and other organizations, particularly helping kids.

How does that connect to either how you were brought up or what you're trying to do today?

- So the first thing is, you know, all of us and when we started the company, now we're way more diverse in the sense of our staff.

But as you know, young black, African-American males, we knew that there were certain people in our lives that helped us, right, some of our pathways was sports.

Some of our pathways was education.

But we were able to come together and we're able to look back and say there was always people that were in our corner that kept supporting us, right?

And we knew if we truthfully wanted a Lehigh Valley and we truthfully wanted a community in the United States that was going to grow, we had to invest in the youth, right?

At the end of the day, I say now I'm starting to age out of cool.

I still got a little bit cool left in me.

And they're the ones that are going to keep us on point.

They're going to keep us accountable, you know, and they're going to continue to show us and let us understand the innovation moving forward.

So for myself and my company and our team, it's not only about making sure that we are at the tables like the United Ways, the Valley Youth Houses, the the Chambers, our Resurrected Life Community development core, Promise Neighborhood, being at the table, but also being boots on the ground, also with the community, as well making sure they can see us, feel us, touch us.

Because the one thing that we know in any community, the one thing communities know is how authentic you are, right?

So anyone can say anything.

But when you're authentic and you're genuine and you're purposeful in your work and you're someone that they can reach and touch and connect trying to connect with, that's where true relationships and trust come from.

So we make sure we make sure that we're purposeful about our work on both layers.

- That's fantastic.

I've never heard it said as well.

That's fantastic.

Now, let me be authentic.

Authentic for a second.

The whole aging-out-of-cool thing.

Please, I've got a few years on you, and I'm still radically cool!

So you've got a long ways to go.

Plus, you look way better.

It's fantastic.

- I appreciate it.

- There will be a point in your son's life where someone's going to give him guidance.

There have been people in your life I know you've talked about a guy, Big Harv, did I get it right?

- Yeah, Big Harv.

- Somebody is going to give him the guidance.

The guidance that you want to give your son when he's ready.

What lesson or what what philosophy?

What value system do you hope to share with him?

- You know, the first thing is really, truthfully, integrity, you know, making sure that he understands that integrity is all about what you do when no one's watching.

You know, definitely one of the next biggest things for me is never give up dreaming and your imagination.

You know, at the end of the day, when we think about the world that without imagination, without dreaming, would we have all the things that we have?

You know, and always making sure that you're willing to work harder than everyone else.

Because at the end of the day, you know the old saying, especially you hear it a lot in sports, you know, "Talent always will lose when hard work outworks talent."

Right?

So understanding that if you do have some talent, how great you really can be if you really commit to the work, commit to the grind and stay focused and make that the backbone that you're going to show up every single day, you're going to put 100% effort into it.

You're going to hold yourself accountable.

You know, the things that I want to instill in him and continue to hold myself accountable to those values every single day and truthfully hoping that we can get that into our community because I understand how much other people and his peers are going to influence him.

So the work that I do in the community is to make sure when he's with his peers, he's in the right circle and things of that sort that also have what they need so they can continue to help themselves just as much as the individuals within my companies help me develop myself.

- It's an incredibly important point, it's one that as a parent of of "children" that are much older than four years old, and are adults in their own right, that you pray, literally pray that they are connected through the grace of God with the right people, because so much of what you and I want for our children is influenced by who they just happen to hang out with.

Good luck with all that, I'm praying for you!

This is going to be good stuff.

- You wish and pray for the best!

- Indeed, yes, as you hope for the best and prepare for the worst, it's...

Your mom, obviously a huge influence on you.

Has there been anybody professionally who's been a primary influence on you that you've drawn either inspiration from or information from either one?

- Yeah.

You know, there's definitely two or actually three that always come to come to mind to me.

So definitely.

First, Hasshan Batts, executive director of Promise Neighborhoods.

When I met Hasshan, I just could not believe how authentic he was in every space, but also his commitment to growing every single day, someone that has had, you know, a thousand lives and, you know, to come to a point of achieving his, you know, his PhD and moving forward in the work that he's doing right now, it just just amazes me.

And he's person that texts me at four o'clock in the morning and I'm like, "You're up already?"

And I think I'm getting up early at 6:00.

You know, I'm think I'm beating I'm beating out most of my peers, but I'm not still beating him, right?

He's got ten years on me still moving.

I'm like, you know, this is the type of...

This is who I'm, the type of work ethic that I need to continue to drive to be.

The next person would be Phyllis Alexander.

You know, a long, long-time Lehigh Valley resident, worked for the city, done a lot of things in the nonprofit space as well.

And Phyllis really, really has always been a person that I can reach out to.

You know, she's a person that will just touch base with me and say, "Hey, I just want to catch "up with you and see how you're doing."

And she always provides a space for me to to I guess you could just say, vent, really just get some things off my chest because in my world a lot, I don't get that opportunity, right?

I'm in a lot of leadership positions, so I have to burden a lot of that weight and being able to keep moving people forward, keep people motivated and getting us to our end goal on our task.

So being able to have that space from someone that I respect to, to be that worried about me to to facilitate that type of stuff always makes it just impactful in the sense of our conversations.

And definitely Gregory Edwards, you know, Greg Edwards, you know, from day one, has just been a person that has impacted me in so many different levels of my life, is related, cousins and things of that sort to my fiance.

I found out that, you know, he was a sax man as well.

I used to play the sax when I was younger.

So there was just a lot of things that Greg did from his mentorship, from working with him, from the connection family-wise and then obviously his his love of music.

He's touched me in so many different ways.

And being able to see a person again that's been able to evolve and have so many layers to them continue to be impactful.

And, you know, those individuals just really bring a lot.

I call them my elders.

Hasshan might not like that as much, but is his beard is gray, you know?

So, he's an elder as well... - It's fascinating to me as as an entrepreneur, as a businessman, that the folks who have influenced you the most most professionally aren't what we would think of typically as entrepreneurs.

They are in a very real sense.

Entrepreneurs are creators and they're changing things and are evolving and they're putting in programs and systems to make our world better, just as you do every day in your business.

But they're not traditional entrepreneurs.

And yet those are the folks who have touched you, and your description of them, it's all because... And you've used the word authentic a number of times.

When you meet somebody who is authentic, it doesn't really matter much what they're doing.

You want to be part of that.

If you had the chance with a young entrepreneur, somebody who's 26 years old, they just came out of North Jersey they're in the Lehigh Valley, they don't know from nothing, but they want to start a business.

What advice do you give somebody who's anxious, excited to start a business, but they're not really sure what they're supposed to do to start?

- The first thing is to start doing.

Too many times as entrepreneurs, especially in the beginning, right?

You don't have enough earned data or information to really make this great plan.

It's not to say to not have a approach, a goal.

You want to have those things pretty clear.

"Where do I want to be?"

Right?

But understanding that the only way you really know if this is the road map to get there is to start doing and failing at them.

And then you really understand what's working, what's not working.

So the biggest thing that I can start to say, an entrepreneur, "If you have that feeling in that gut and you have that, "nobody else has to believe in it, nobody else but you."

And that's a beautiful thing about entrepreneurship and dreams, is that you're the only person you have to convince about this dream.

So once you believe in it, start working at it every day, because I believe truly in manifestation of your destiny.

And that doesn't come by just thinking about it.

That does by putting actions into the world, into the universe, because as you start to do these things and you're connecting with people, right?

And they're seeing your passion and feeling you, you start to become a part of their Rolodex, you start to be on their mind.

They start to think about you when these situations start to happen.

You also start to put yourself out in these situations that, again, if you were sitting home planning, trying to make it all perfect, you would have lost those opportunities.

So, the one thing that entrepreneurs always have to understand, you have to start doing and opportunities are abundant and they're always available.

You just have to make sure you're prepared to take advantage of them.

And the only way you're going to know that is by going out there doing and learning every single day.

- Fantastic.

A lot of folks have read the book Think and Grow Rich, and folks who have not read the book say, "That's ridiculous.

"What?

I'm just going to sit there and think "'I want $1 million' and it's going to show up?"

If they read the book, it's think, work your ass off, and maybe grow rich.

- Exactly.

- That's exactly right.

Fantastic.

I have to ask I'm curious, beyond all belief and I'm a curious guy, the Cleveland School of Cannabis, what exactly is that?

- So the Cleveland School of Cannabis.

We are an education workforce development company.

So when I say that, it's our goal is to educate the new workforce and our content is cannabis.

Cannabis is in the top ten largest and fastest growing industries in America and starting to really be globally.

And what we understood was being our base in Cleveland, Ohio, and we have a branch in Columbus and our online campus was the fact that as cannabis was starting to wave itself across the United States, there was going to be a huge lack in not only a workforce but an educated workforce.

- Oh, without a doubt.

- With that.

So we knew that there was two options for employers, right?

It was either you were going to just take a chance on Indeed, or you were going to go ahead and have to recruit people to the to the East Coast and the Midwest and to say, "It's going to be a pretty penny to tell somebody "to leave California and come live in the Midwest "where it started winter October, right?"

So understanding that that was going to be the threat to the business, we we knew that there was a gap to fill and that's what we decided to do.

But not only fill the gap, we wanted to do it at the highest level.

So we've gone out there and we were the second state-approved school for cannabis in the entire country.

Only one east of Colorado.

We then are in pursuit of national accreditation.

So we're going to line up, it's a three-year process.

We're in line to be the first school for cannabis that'll be national accredited.

- So when you're training somebody in "cannabis", what are you training them about?

How to grow it, how to market it, how to package it?

- All of that.

- All of that?!

OK. - So we have five different programs.

So you have horticulture on two ends.

You have the horticulture for medical-grade cannabis or hemp and CBD, which you understand that hemp is a great fiber material as well.

So, a lot of these things in this room can be made by hemp in the future and will be at the end of the day.

Then about manufacturing extraction.

So that's where you see all the different components and delivery systems of edibles, tinctures, patches, topicals, all these different ways to be able to interact with cannabis and then also the dispensary operations side of it as well.

And then the CBD market especially.

That's been blown up, right.

That's one of the big acronyms from the cannabis market market right now is CBD, so it's all about preparing, preparing individuals that might not have the knowledge of cannabis right now, but also they want to be able to go ahead and get into a career field that's going to give them upward mobility.

And that's how I judge the industry, right?

Coming into the workforce, there wasn't a lot of upward mobility, right?

Then, the market crashed.

So we had to move around a lot.

You had to almost leave a job to move up.

The cannabis industry because it's so new it's in its infancy, there's a lot of upward mobility.

So, you might be working for someone now.

But in five years, as cannabis continues to grow, you now become the stakeholders of the knowledge that are going to be needed and valued.

That is nothing better than upward mobility set up for you, and we just want to make sure the general public can get access to that.

And that's how we know that we can create equity within wealth within this, but also create a new wave of just how things are going to be done in our mindset.

And I think cannabis is just another great opportunity.

- Kevin, I think we could have another hour.

I would love another hour!

We might do that again.

I want to thank you very much.

Stay right where you are as I wrap up our show for the evening.

If you didn't learn a half a dozen things during this show, you're just not trying.

Give it a go.

If you would like more information from Kevin Greene, from Gene, from any of our staff that can advance you either in a career, your finances, your retirement, your investments, whatever it may be, the show's name is More Than Money.

It's not just about your money, it's about you and about the person that you want to become.

And if you want to get more information, get more traction and move forward faster, there's lots of ways you can do that.

One of the ways you can do it is give us an email, send us that question that you've got or that request for more support or information, we're happy to help.

Gene@askmtm.com.

Secondly, you can get trained up.

Cannabis school.

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Folks, it's been an exciting show for me.

I hope you enjoyed it as well.

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