- Coming up, we've got another really great show for you on "American Black Journal".

A Shaky economy has small businesses on pretty high alert these days.

We're gonna preview this year's Small Business Workshop which focuses on how to move forward in these uncertain times.

Plus, we'll go behind the scenes of "Passing Strange" at the Detroit Public Theater and a performance by Detroit's Urban Art Orchestra.

Stay where you are.

"American Black Journal" starts right now.

- [Announcer] From Delta faucets to Behr paint, Masco Corporation is proud to deliver products that enhance the way consumers all over the world experience and enjoy their living spaces.

Masco, serving Michigan communities since 1929.

Support also provided by the Cynthia & Edsel Ford Fund For Journalism at Detroit Public TV.

- [Announcer] The DTE Foundation proudly supports 50 years of "American Black Journal" in covering African American history, culture, and politics.

The DTE Foundation and "American Black Journal", partners in presenting African American perspectives about our communities and in our world.

- [Announcer] Also brought to you by Nissan Foundation, and viewers like you.

Thank you.

(upbeat music) - Welcome to "American Black Journal".

I'm Stephen Henderson, your host.

For the past year, the nation's economy has been really rocky with rising prices and the threat of recession.

What impact does that have on small businesses that are still rebuilding from the effects of the pandemic?

The Lee Group's ninth annual Small Business Workshop is gonna offer some answers in a free virtual seminar on May 24th.

I got a preview from the workshop's founder, Mark Lee, and Dave Girodat of Fifth Third Bank, which is the event's presenting sponsor.

Mark, I wanna start with you.

This is the ninth time you've put on this Small Business Workshop, and each year, there seems to be yet another challenge to small businesses.

But I want to start by talking about over time what you've seen and learned from all of this about how small businesses can adapt, how they can kind of be nimble.

Because each year there is either a new challenge or an old challenge that's revisiting us.

It's never smooth sailing if you're out there trying to make a go of it.

- Yeah, I couldn't say it better.

Every time we think we get beyond one phase, there's another phase that's coming along.

So over the nine years of the workshop, we have seen fluctuations in the economy.

We have seen changes in terms of issues affecting small businesses, and this year is no different.

This year, for example, we're noticing the economy.

There seems to be some uncertainty about the economy.

Although the inflation rate has come down, unemployment seems relatively stable, small businesses still have some issues to deal with.

So this year is no different.

Every year we do the workshop, we think we're moving past the asked issue, move to another level, but then we turn around and we have another issue.

And this year is still different.

We're talking about uncertain economy.

- Yeah.

Dave, on your side of things, you also see the things that small businesses contend with year after year, the things that come and go and then the things that kind of resurface.

Give me your assessment of what small businesses are facing right now and how something like the Small Business Workshop can really help them figure it out.

- Yes, Stephen.

So first, one, we're really excited to be participating with Mark for our ninth year in the Small Business Workshop.

And this will be unique.

We sat through times of pandemic and we talked about how to navigate and now we have new issues, and that is a very much an inflation-driven environment, a rising cost to capital.

We still see labor challengers and labor cost moving up and it is gonna be a far different world for a while and people are going to have to adapt.

This isn't the world of zero interest rates and free money.

We're gonna have to see a pivot of how you run your business.

And that's where someone like Mark and Fifth Third as partners are gonna help educate and give some strategies and thoughts about what to do different.

Because whatever you're doing, don't do it the same way you have been.

You gotta think differently.

- Yeah, I mean that's pretty bold advice.

I mean, pretty stark advice really, that things are changing enough or are desperate enough that people really can't just kind of sit tight.

Mark, tell us a little more about what exactly is going on.

I mean, I know that inflation is killing everybody still.

It's better, but things still cost too much.

But the labor market, which Dave mentioned, is an an added challenge for businesses.

What else are businesses really struggling with right now?

- I think quite frankly, excuse me, I think businesses are struggling with finding customers, having customers come back to the storefront, number one, and also still struggling with how to leverage technology.

Yes, technology is truly a part of our day-to-day operations now, but think about the number of customers that the small businesses lost during the pandemic, and thank goodness we're moving past the pandemic now.

But the challenge is how to get those customers back.

Are your services still relevant in this new day and age, so to speak?

So businesses have to deal with that.

You just mentioned inflation, inflation, things are still costing more.

And how do you manage your finances to ensure that you're doing things in a cost effective manner?

And I will certainly argue that the tight labor market, I was talking to someone the other day, quite candidly, a small business who says the challenge that he's having is that employees are ghosting him, that one day they're there and the next day they just don't show up.

Those are all challenges that are still out there in this new world so to speak.

- So let's talk about the workshop and the things that you expect to be able to help folks with this year during the workshop.

What's the focus gonna be?

- Yeah, I'm gonna first of all thank Fifth Third Bank, ninth year, they've been with me since day one.

They do a great job, and in fact, we're gonna focus on navigating a business during an uncertain economy and people can expect to hear from the chief market strategist from Fifth Third Bank is gonna give us the state of the economy.

Is there gonna be a recession?

What impact does inflation have on your business?

What are the other challenges out there?

Is the economy expanding?

Is it contracting?

What is it gonna be?

You don't wanna miss that conversation.

We're also gonna have panelists from across Detroit business leaders who will be joining with us a workshop and they're gonna provide practical solutions to Dave's point earlier to your questions earlier, what can you do to navigate these challenges as we look ahead towards 2023 and beyond?

And then I'm gonna have a fireside chat with a business CEO, Bruce Smith, who's the president, chairman, and CEO of Detroit Manufacturing Systems.

He has 1,500 employees in Detroit.

He's a minority owned supplier.

He's doing great things.

You don't wanna miss that fireside chat.

And of course we have individual workshops with business leaders from across Detroit where people can sign up and just go and really hone in and ask specific questions and fine tune and hone in on specific issues that need to be addressed.

- So Dave, of course the lending environment is always a challenge for small businesses.

It's an additional challenge here in Detroit where we have had less access to capital I think for small businesses than we've been able to achieve in some other markets.

I want you to talk about what that looks like right now and how these things like inflation or the tight labor market, the other challenges that small businesses are facing are affecting the lending market.

We still have this incredible need for capital for people to grow their businesses.

What's that looking like these days?

- Stephen, that's where probably all of us are concerned.

And if you listen to a lot of the smart people out there will tell you that the economy could retract, you could see capital tighten, and as an institution, we're watching it very closely.

Our job though is to really service our client and needs.

So we're being very diligent in our underwriting and we're making sure we make good decisions around our capital and with our shareholders, but it does start with the client and we're recognizing that the small business access to capital is one of the areas that can get hurt quickly and fast.

But the great thing is there's great tools out there with the SBA administration and I think those are things that one of the people on the panel is an expert from Fifth Third in that space because if we don't feed that area of the economy, it's just gonna perpetuate the problems.

It's gonna accelerate things getting tougher and slower if small business does not excel and grow.

So we'll continue to encourage it, but we're gonna be diligent, but retraction of capital, we're not seeing it yet, but now is a good time to make sure your store's in order as a small business owner.

So you're prepared if things do get a little more difficult with your access to the dollars you need.

- If I can just chime in one second, Steve, your business should be, it should not be the exact same business model today that you had three years ago.

You need to continue to fine tune based on the potential headways ahead of us, continue to fine tune your business.

You should not be sitting still because if you sit still, those headwinds will not go away.

- That's right, I agree.

- Go ahead Dave.

- I'm sorry.

- No, no, go ahead.

- Not to make it sound bad out there is I love to see businesses excel by growing, cutting your way to prosperity is not a good long-term strategy.

That's why we're just gonna emphasize making sure your house is in order and make sure you made the good decisions.

And back to Mark's point, look for ways to grow your business, alter how you do business.

You'll be more efficient because a strong top line is gonna get to a much better bottom line than just trying to cut the cost out in the middle.

- Mark, I wanna have you talk a little about Detroit in particular and the challenges that you see and that you are hearing from small businesses here in Detroit.

We have a lot of people who are concerned about places like downtown and how it comes back in a business sense.

I mean, I think in an entertainment sense, if you go down there at night, it feels a little more like it did before the pandemic, but in the daytime you really notice the number of places that are either gone or just don't have physical presences anymore.

What are you hearing from businesses about the climate here?

- The climate quite frankly is still a challenge, is still very difficult I think, again, I talked to another entrepreneur who eventually went out of business, this was in the last month or two, and I asked her why and she's just east of downtown, her business was, and she said, "again, Mark, we just did not get those customers back."

People got used to the virtual environment, she started using her virtual environment, but quite frankly, the competition was even that much stringent.

It was that much a challenge for her.

So the customers that she really needed to come back did not come back.

I say that to say I'm an optimist.

I think that businesses will come back, but right now we are in a challenged environment.

Downtown is doing relatively well.

Southwest Detroit with Corktown is doing very well with the whole Florida investment, the other parts of the city, they're still grappling.

I know Fifth Third is doing great things in their neighborhood to get some of those businesses back to the people, right now, there's still a challenge, no question, to get them back up and running where they were before.

- When you think about opportunity spots in Detroit, you've mentioned Corktown.

What's happening there with the revitalization of Michigan Central, the book depository, it blows my mind when I go down there.

I feel like there's a new business opening every week in that area of the city.

Are there other places that you would say small businesses could find the opportunity to get more of a foot traffic and crowds and the things that they need to support them?

- Absolutely, 7 Mile (indistinct) six to eight mile corridor is very hot right now.

It's extraordinarily hot.

But I wanted to defer to Dave because I know that Fifth Third has made a couple strategic investments in neighborhoods and he can address that question from Fifth Third's perspective, Dave?

- The strategic neighborhood fund that was created by the city that we are a contributor to, we adopted as we call it the G7, Gratiot 7 neighborhood.

And we are very focused there.

In fact, right now they just got approved for facade grants and renovations and fix ups to small businesses.

That Gratiot corridor is still really an opportunity and strong.

You think about that's the gateway into the city.

If you're not on one of the expressways on the east side, the the 7 Mile Gratiot area, there is retail, there is opportunity, and you have the revitalization of neighborhoods starting to take place.

We're seeing home ownership come back there versus transient rentals.

It's a combination of we need that foot traffic.

This is, you're referring to downtown or Corktown.

You look at what's going there residentially, our neighborhood focus is one of that.

We wanna rebuild it with small businesses.

We want home ownership.

We want that old feel of when we all grew up we'd walk to the corner store at the end of the street, and you need that.

That's gonna be a small business guy.

It doesn't have to be a Fortune 500.

So we're optimistic, but we are starting to see that type of activity in our neighborhood that we adopted and very very proud of what we're doing there.

It's been going on for a while.

- No, I'm glad to hear you lift that up.

It's an area of the city that is changing, where there is investment, and I think a lot of people who either live in the city or live in the suburbs don't really think about Gratiot 7.

They don't think about that side of the city and what's going on over there.

So people should go check it out and see about the opportunities to invest.

Mark Lee and Dave Girodat, congratulations again on nine years of the Small Business workshop and-- - And Stephen, I could say very quickly, the Small Business Workshop is May 24th from 8:00 AM to 1:00 PM.

Thank you very much.

Appreciate that.

- The wonderful Detroit Public Theater is closing out its season with a production of the musical "Passing Strange".

The Rock Opera tells a story of a young African American musician's search for his identity, his artistic voice, and what he calls the real.

The production is directed by Detroit artist and activist John Sloan III.

And One Detroit's Chris Jordan spoke with Sloan, with actress Lulu Fall, and Detroit Public theater founder Courtney Burkett about the show's meaning and its legacy.

♪ He's trying to write a song but the song's writing him ♪ ♪ It's a song about paradise wearing thin ♪ - What's interesting and really powerful about this show is that it's written by a black man and a white woman, but it tells a story of identity and one that is very unique to the black experience, but that also has archetypal themes that I think anybody can be drawn to.

♪ I wanna scream - It pulls something out of each person because it's such a multi-layered show and there aren't many musicals out there that are multi-layered in this particular fashion.

- This has been our first season in our new home which has been tremendous and closing it out with this big rock musical is really very exciting to see kind of the full capabilities of what we can do in this room.

♪ Mama, she's serving every one of my desires ♪ ♪ On a planet where it doesn't even matter anymore ♪ ♪ Paradise is a bore - "Passing Strange" is a wonderful, huge, intimate show that walks you through the journey of one person looking for their sense of self, grappling to understand who they are, who they are in context of what they want for themselves, in context of the weight of other people's expectation, and also what it means to be able to love and to be loved even when you don't necessarily understand why.

- This is a play that we have been wanting to produce since we were founded.

This is our eighth season, it's the biggest show we've ever done.

So it was really a big investment for us with a seven person cast and a full band on stage the whole time.

But we really felt like it was an important story to tell.

We're really interested in kind of contemporary work and work that Detroit audiences will see their own lives reflected in, and we really feel like the journey of this story and of this play is something that audiences will see and not...

It's really kind of a new way of experiencing musical theater.

I think it's not what most people think of when they think of musical theater.

It's not really traditional.

♪ But I hope you find it - I love shows that break the fourth wall, and in "Passing Strange", that fourth wall is completely broken by the narrator first and foremost just interacting with the audience.

So that alone just sets this musical apart.

This also being an autobiographical piece, that is another thing that completely blows all the other shows out of the water because of the fact that it's so intimate.

It breaks the fourth wall.

It's funny, it's raunchy, it is sad, it's real.

♪ No one ever made him feel ♪ As real as when she said to him by lending him ♪ ♪ Her keys ♪ And said welcome to Amsterdam, welcome to Amsterdam ♪ ♪ Welcome to Amsterdam.

- What you see with "Passing Strange" is you see a show that just in its existence is revolutionary, telling the story of a kid who is being told that he's not black enough and a kid who then struggles to try to find himself in an environment surrounded by a whole bunch of white people and Europeans, right?

That struggle is what is revolutionary.

The telling of that story is absolutely revolutionary.

What is accessible though is just that it's good storytelling, it's just good music.

It's a story that everybody's been through.

Everybody has been 22 or will be 22.

Everybody has been 16 or will be 16.

Everybody has had that journey of getting into an argument with your parents and not knowing that you regret that argument until 10 or 15 years later.

Everybody knows what it's like to have to find yourself.

Everybody has been one of these people on this stage at some point in their lives and their journey.

♪ We are the stereotypes - John Sloan is an incredible artist who has been working in the Detroit region now for a while.

John and I met pretty early in the life of Detroit Public Theater, and immediately I really admired him.

And so we were really happy that he accepted the job of taking on the direction of this play and this production, and he really brought it to life beautifully.

- What I love about his directing is of course he has a vision and of course there's certain things that he wants us to do, but I also really, really, really love that he trusts us as actors, as intuitive artists to try some things.

Some things work, some things don't work and that's fine, but I do love that he allows for that space.

- Welcome to my riot.

- If art imitates life, then we need way more diversity on stage.

Not just color and race and gender, but stories.

There are so many stories out there walking down the street.

No one has the same story.

And that's what makes me gravitate not only towards "Passing Strange", but generally to non-traditional musical theater because it just shakes things up.

- Especially in this context of what's happening in theater today, right?

So you go back and you look at the last five years, four years really.

Ever since the summer of 2020 and this uprising because of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery.

And this realization that that parts of the country have that racism still exists and is still a thing, right?

And the way that that then started to trickle through the artistic communities and you started to see in different industries the leaders of those industries, recognizing their impact and their influence in those systems.

The question then becomes is that recognition honest?

Is it truthful or is it a mile wide and an inch deep?

It's not just about producing content, it's about telling stories and valuing the telling of those stories.

Not because of the identity around that, but because of the understanding that art and media can share cultural conversation.

And you can learn about somebody who you might not have met before through their music, through their food, through watching their story on a stage.

And what "Passing Strange" did when it was on Broadway in 2008, what it's doing now here at Detroit Public Theater, this is one of those great shows that can meet two goals.

It's just a phenomenal piece of work, but it also has a very powerful message.

♪ I've been thinking about leaving my fingerprints ♪ This is a show that invites you to talk back to us, that invites you to have a conversation with us.

They're very similar to the other work of Dominique Morisseau or Erika Dickerson-Despenza says "hey, come and be involved and welcome into this community."

- The circle is complete when the audience comes in and the audience gets an experience and feels at home in this space because we built it for everyone.

- It's just joyful, and the actors, the artists, everybody works really hard to make sure that you could not just come into the show and and learn something, but you could come into the show and feel something, that you could come into the show and have really good time.

♪ She say it's all right, it's all right ♪ ♪ He say it's all right, it's all right ♪ ♪ I say it's all right, yeah it's all right ♪ ♪ It's all right now - And you could see "Passing Strange" at Detroit Public Theater through May 21st.

That's gonna do it for us this week.

We're gonna leave you now with the sounds of saxophonist Deshaun Jones and the Urban Art Orchestra from their appearance on Detroit Performs Live From Marygrove.

You can find out more about our guests at americanblackjournal.org and you can always connect with us on Facebook and on Twitter.

We'll see you next time.

(upbeat jazzy music) (upbeat jazzy music continues) (upbeat jazzy music continues) (upbeat jazzy music continues) - [Announcer] From Delta faucets to Behr paint, Masco Corporation is proud to deliver products that enhance the way consumers all over the world experience and enjoy their living spaces.

Masco, serving Michigan communities since 1929.

Support also provided by the Cynthia & Edsel Ford Fund For Journalism at Detroit Public TV.

- [Announcer] The DTE Foundation proudly supports 50 years of "American Black Journal" in covering African American history, culture, and politics.

The DTE Foundation and "American Black Journal", partners in presenting African-American perspectives about our communities and in our world.

- [Announcer] Also brought to you by Nissan Foundation, and viewers like you.

Thank you.

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