Creating a Legacy: Donovan Black's Automotive Revolution

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:11

all right, all right, what's going on? Everybody out there is ron brown, lmt, the people's fitness professional co-host. I don't know where he is. It's all good, the show must go on. Uh, that's my partner, so you'll see him probably later or you'll see him tomorrow. Thanks for y'all for checking out tonight's podcast. I really appreciate you. Tonight is all about Black excellence. We have Dr Paul Dyer here today and Donovan Black. What's going on? What's going on everybody? How y'all doing Wonderful, wonderful. Oh, that's peace. That that's peace. Thank you for coming out this evening. Really appreciate you. Um, I I got a little bit of information about you. However, um, before we get started, I'm gonna. Everyone already knows dr paul dyer anyway. They've been watching the show. They know who he is. He's a regular. Thank you for supporting the channel, dr paul dyer, and believing in this um becoming a movement. It seems like um and uh really appreciate you and thank you for bringing donovan black with us. So I don't know if you would like to lead tonight's podcast and ask the questions?

Speaker 2: 1:23

in a way I do, and I and the reason why, and it thanks everyone for coming on. But today was going to be about black excellence. We've been talking about the brain and the emotions and and donald can tell you about a lot of emotions that he had with his company that he started. But but we go through the brain, we go through how it affects you, we go through how it can throw you off. We've talked about how it can derail you. We talked about how it can affect your whole body as an organism, right, your synapses, everything about the brain through neuroscience.

Speaker 2: 2:09

And we've talked to some amazing people about how we as a people, as Black people, as a community, we fall short because we're not understanding the pieces, because we're not understanding the pieces, we're not putting the pieces together or we're not hearing enough people talk about how those pieces can work. Even through man, I work so hard or I'm tired and maybe I should give up and I get angry and I get sad and I get a lot of things. And I'm going to tell you, donovan Black has been through all of that and he started the first black Electric car company. Ok, that in itself. So, donovan, you take it from there and tell them about what you started, and we'll go from there and then you can tell them about your struggles in your own way, because I think people don't hear enough of the glory story. I think they hear too much of the glory story. I think they hear too much of the sad story. Yeah Well, in 2025, we like to say let's celebrate our people, to say that let's do this too.

Speaker 3: 3:34

So thank you. Thank you for the great introduction. Technically, I'm not the first.

Speaker 2: 3:44

Oh, you're talking about the older gentleman back before Ford.

Speaker 3: 3:48

Not just those guys. There's several other black automotive electric vehicle companies out now. I'm not sure if my registration predates them, but I know a lot of my engineering did but did, but uh, at least a few I know of. There may be some out there I haven't heard of, but long, long and short of it, uh, CR Patterson was the first automotive black uh company in America. It was uh Patterson Sons and then Greenfield Automotive, but they were in Ohio, very small factory.

Speaker 3: 4:31

Matter of fact, the whole reason factories are internalized as they are is because CR Patterson was sold a very small building, you know, being a black man, in 1838 when he started. It started as a coach building company. So they would buy, you know, really nice coaches and then do what we do as black people make it better, you know, put, make the seats plusher, the suspension softer, better horses better, ornate elements on it and such. And then when he got into automotive it was in the 1900s, early 1900s, and uh, his factory was every. Everything was internalized uh, engine crafting, uh, transmission axles, everything was in one building.

Speaker 3: 5:21

Um, it got to the point where there were tents outside the building because people were sleeping to wait to get to the next shift because he ran three shifts for 24 hours, and this is what Henry Ford gleaned from that company. He saw that they internalized everything. They didn't share their innovations with anyone else and if they did, they licensed them and all their workers wanted to work there. Why did they want to work there? Because he's a black man like me. He's down on the factory floor looking at stuff. He's in and around.

Speaker 3: 5:49

So I wanted to bring that back, um, but I also wanted to bring to our community um and I'm going to get into the the mental struggles I wanted to bring to our community manufacturing back and not just manufacturing, you know, shoes or T-shirts or popping up a hair salon All talents I have. I was born an artist. My mother father, my mother model, became a cosmetologist. Later my dad sang, did music. He also modeled and did hair, sold T-shirts, you know, sold art. You know my mother, she did interior design.

Speaker 3: 6:26

So multi-talented. You know I could have done any number of things, but the most impactful to our community, I believe, is developing something that we buy and it has to be a major purchase, high ticket item. You know it couldn't be, you know, just laptops or computers, which I'll later get into in the company, but right now it's automotive vehicles and the reason being you want the next generations to say I can be an automotive engineer. Yeah, you could be an automotive engineer. You could be beyond the stereotypes we have as well as you can go into the marketing aspect. You could go into the community part where we have accelerators and programs within high schools and colleges, you know, all the way down to the workforce development part, where we're not only employing people, we're trying to turn them into first generation home buyers, first generation sending their kids to college by having a mandatory minimum instead of the 68,000 for automotive worker. We're starting at 75 with this your similar dental health packages.

Speaker 3: 7:42

But the mental, the mental aspect of it is imagine being a young person in the nineties. You get this idea that you want to do something impactful, you want to use your artistic engineering skills or go in that direction. But you don't come from a family middle class, you don't come from generational wealth. You got to work and grind to get to where you want to get to. And mental struggle is Jordan Peterson has a talk about this and the hardest thing is to be creative and broke.

Speaker 1: 8:20

Well, let me ask you this. I want to interject. So where are you from? Where are you from and what generation did you come up? Are you an 80s baby, 90s baby?

Speaker 3: 8:42

we're winning the Olympics. All the time Russia's bad, china's the enemy. You know GI Joe's awesome If it had explosions in it. It was a movie, you know, that's the era. Oh, and R&B was the best ever in the 90s, disco and the R&B, 70s and early blues and stuff. They're on a level of their own. They're in different classes to me, but R&B to me if I could play it. I can't sing it, but if it was KC JoJo or I was just thinking of that.

Speaker 2: 9:17

So it's KC and JoJo.

Speaker 3: 9:21

Or Black Creek, or you know, it was the joint.

Speaker 1: 9:30

Okay, yeah, you're getting ready to go into it.

Speaker 3: 9:32

Washington DC. Born and raised, lived in several parts from the lowest income areas to the highest income areas in Washington. Even lived in Maryland and some parts of Virginia.

Speaker 1: 9:43

What part of Maryland.

Speaker 3: 9:46

Prince George's County. You know Temple Hills, oxon Hill, my grandmother lived in Capitol Heights. Okay.

Speaker 1: 9:55

So I was in Maryland and DC every summer when I was a kid.

Speaker 3: 9:59

Yeah, same. Because of the income bracket we were in, sometimes during the summer we got to go live with a family member for a while, while, you know, parents work a double job, you know, and trying to pursue their dream. And watching that, you know, coming up and watching that, watching the perseverance and endurance of both my parents. They were both like when they went to high school, they were top of their class. Watching that, you know, coming up and watching that, watching the perseverance and endurance of both my parents. They were both like when they went to high school, they were top of their class. I can't remember what the title is, but like, literally, they were both the smartest kids in their school, you know. And you know just tried to excel, try to be the best that they could be and put their talents out there. But being a parent through the 80s and 90s most people don't realize it was kind of tough, you know, especially a black parent with no collegiate background, just high school. And taking the trades at the high school taught you. But you're going through an era where we're transitioning from computers to college based to get your trade. Your trade don't mean anything. You got that degree and that was happening through that era. So I watched my parents struggle, you know, take night classes and things like that, while I'm out here enjoying the fruits of for lack of a better word hood life and then not realizing my potential Not realizing my potential, but realizing my potential I used it in the streets to maximize manipulation. It all came crashing down. Then I had to sit down for a while, came back out, rocked out with electrical engineering and mechatronics how long were you sitting? For Two and a half years, rocked out with electrical engineering and mechatronics, and been going since then. How long were you sitting? For Two and a half years? Not, not, not long.

Speaker 3: 11:51

I had a. I had the strictest judge in Washington DC, judge Winfield. When I first met her, she told me she gave over 15000 man hours of jail time alone that week. Gave over 15,000 man hours of jail time alone that week, so. But she had over like 250 letters sent to her from community people, not just friends, like teachers, ex-bosses, anybody that talked to me that had some title of note, all the way up to a few people in the mayor's office at that time. And so instead of giving me what she would have, which was 15 years, she gave me five and I took it as a blessing and haven't done anything, or even attempted to try to do anything, to go back in that direction. I found that this is America you could go from. I hate to go political, but we have a sitting president with several divots.

Speaker 3: 12:59

You could go from bad to good and make it great.

Speaker 2: 13:03

Donovan, sometimes, when we talk about the brain and rewiring the brain we've talked about that in this show what was? If you can remember, you probably could. What was the switch between I'm going to change my thought process or I already had my thought process and I just was not focused. What was yours?

Speaker 3: 13:33

Mine was. I had the right motivation and thought process. I was applying it to the wrong thing.

Speaker 2: 13:42

So you were just not focused on the right thing.

Speaker 3: 13:45

Yeah, and what made me focus on the right thing was it was several articles that had happened at the time. It was like 2004 to 2005. Yeah, three, four or five. There were several articles I read. Like I had a cellmate who was very. He had a portfolio, a $1. Million dollar stock portfolio, and he showed me more than what I knew how to read-Corps or S-Corps or LLC, and not to establish a company, but to understand how. Because he would always ask me things about what I was doing and why, and he then would give me a counter where you could have did this and gained that. And he then would give me a counter where you could have did this and gain that. And that was the turning point. That's when I realized, oh crap I was. I've wasted about seven years on the wrong road. I need to turn around and go back. Go the other way.

Speaker 2: 15:10

And I made that transition. You know that's so, with that transition, the greatest thing about transition. So did you understand the transition? Or, and you just enhanced it, or was there a transition and then you knew that information, you kept rolling with it, because now you built it into this thing. We'll get there later, but that change, I think people are still struggling with the trends. The trends, what's the word I'm looking for, ron? Transformation.

Speaker 1: 15:44

The transformation. Yeah, so from what I'm gathering right, you moved through Washington DC around that time. So, like how I normally do the interviews is like I take a person through like their whole life, almost right, and then it's like an introduction so you were in Washington DC. I always kind of bring up that era where there was a lot of drugs around and all that crack and all that, because in my era we were impacted by that. For the most part, everyone around my age range, we were impacted by it, except for someone who I just had on recently. He was 37 and he said that didn't really impact his life so much. Uh, but he's 37. So he, he's a little, he's a little younger. So, um, but I know washington dc and new york had a tight connection when it came, when it came to yeah, that baltimore dc drugs and all of that.

Speaker 1: 16:44

So so did you get caught up into that, and then that's what landed you in prison. Did you did you had to sit down? Did you have to sit down, maybe in the 90s or the 2000s? What led up to that point? Because you know you, because you had mom, you had dad, but they were out a lot, right?

Speaker 3: 17:05

So yeah, you had mom, you had dad, but they were out a lot, right. So, yeah, so prior to that, uh, let's rewind. Uh, let's go 90s. Uh, in the 90s, my parents had split up and my mother was, you know, raising this on its own. I have oldest and youngest sister. Oldest sister is one year older than me, my young sister seven years younger than me.

Speaker 3: 17:24

And we would my mom would, would work a lot, a lot. We were latchkey kids, you know. We came home, we rode the bus to school, um, we go. Our grandparents live around the corner, so we go around the house, you know, sometimes, um, we made our own dinners, you know, and like dinner, dinner, like it wasn't no microwave, nothing like right food, you know. And then, um, my mother started dating and first guy she started dating, this guy cool, really cool guy uh passed away a couple years ago. Ali, really great guy, muslim, muslim guy came back from lorton and he would tell me stories and stuff.

Speaker 3: 18:06

But I'm one block away from the worst part of our community. There's potomac gardens, a project that's 14, 30. Down the street there's 1 000 like those three communities are shooting at each other all the time and I used to hang down there and play with my friends, and that's when I got exposed to oh, there's some other money you can get out here and you can sneak it, because Ali, he owns a stand, so you know he puts the money in the drawer for your mom for the rent, so you can sneak money in this back, and Ali, nor her, know the difference. You know what I'm saying, and I started that way. And then my mother got hit and they separated. We moved to forest, uh, forest creek I'm doing the same thing there, mind you, I'm like 13, you know and then moved again. We're in colonial village by this time, but it's, it's bad now, my friend this 96.

Speaker 3: 19:06

Yeah, so my friends are like 20. I'm the youngest, I'm like 14. I'm carrying. You know, if you named it, I had it, but I don't have it. It's not on me, but I got it Right. Yeah. Yeah, but I don't have it. It's not on me, but I got it Right, yeah.

Speaker 1: 19:32

Real quick question before you go Hold that thought. In Washington DC around that time they had a lot of programs for kids and they also had community church.

Speaker 3: 19:47

In the city in DC. Yeah, there was a lot of things that children can get into, but not on the Northeast. What they failed to do was make it cool and attractive. Okay, cool and attractive was you saw your uncle with the BBSs and the new sob. You know what I'm saying. What was cool and attractive was you saw your uncle with the BBSs and the new sock. You know what I'm saying. So what was cool and attractive was your mom ain't going to work so many days a week. Y'all got, we got, okay. For instance, what was cool and attractive to me was we got a gallon of milk in the refrigerator and a whole box of cereal. Okay, yeah, because we only got a little bit left. This morning, tiffany got up and ain't eating none. Then I got up and didn't eat any. I know my mother didn't. So Brittany can have some cereal. You dig what I'm saying. It got bad, but Brennan's paid Eat gas, everything running, water running. We got clothes on our backs, access to food.

Speaker 2: 20:45

I remember putting water in my cereal.

Speaker 3: 20:52

Carnation yeah, the carnation milk right my mother even learned the trick with a little vanilla, some water, carnation and the powdered milk and stick it in the jug. You, we, we just thought it was tasty milk with creamer in it. So fast forward. My dad. He's living in Florida. He's got his consulting company going, married a college team, nice house on the water rocking. He hears his son is doing things that he did in the past. So it's time to come come live with him.

Speaker 3: 21:28

So I go live down there for about like three years, um, come back up to still messing up down there. Tested out of high school, got a really high score on the uh test. I was even in the Miami Herald for it. Um, and what wasn't around to take a picture to be in the magazine. My, my stepmom and my dad at the time took a picture for me because I was running the street. Um, and this is like news news. You know I'm saying right, um don't even know what happened. A whole year later I know what happened, um, because I'm thinking you, I'm just being a teenager, come back up here and see the state of my family and say, ok, I bring that with me, but I'm trying to work and everything, and then it. Just it got it got beyond doing street stuff. Now we're we're knocking off drug dealers which we're taking their their stuff Cause we don't. We don't. On the street you can get 38 to 5,600 a day, but one move will land you 50 grand, you know.

Speaker 3: 22:38

So it wasn't that that got me arrested. What got me arrested was I was on my way to a party and we're in a cab and a gentleman I was with once arrived, a cab driver on our way to this party and we, like two nights ago, we just like did something crazy. We both of us got like at least 10 grand at least and I stayed because I'm tired. Now. That's how I got arrested. I'm tired now, that's how I got arrested. I'm tired. I didn't even get out. I didn't run. You can see it in my transcripts. I didn't run nothing. I didn't even. I didn't. I kept it stopped snitching. You know I didn't. I didn't tell anything.

Speaker 3: 23:23

But they separated us that night and I saw everything. It was like came clear. I saw it really clear. He had, he had like a letter in his pocket which we call an insulated statement, so he was telling on me. So I knew I was going to get like everything, because he's going to tell on every, everything we did and he did. And but my judge, she was really lenient. At first she gave me like 0 to 45, then she worked it down to 0 to 15, then 5 to 15 and then didn't give me 5. And uh, because I was facing 45 like he told on everything I did with him, everything, anything, and uh, I took it as a sign. As I said, well, I'm gonna change myself while I'm in here, but I didn't know how. They have a term in prison called programming, where you learn stuff and you get to a routine. So I was doing that. Going to art class, I could draw, so I'm just going to the art room to draw.

Speaker 1: 24:19

Now real quick. There's a lot of rumors about DC prisons and all of that. You were there.

Speaker 3: 24:28

So what was that experience like? So here in dc it was, it's, it's, it's a prison. You know it was a jail for real, for real. Um, when I first got there, my first cellmate was the father of somebody I went to middle school with. He had the same, yeah, and we didn't know it till we started talking about the past and stuff and he was coming down off of heroin. So they give him like methadone to step him down and they give like so many of it, so many levels of it, every week or day, so he will only eat the fruit and the cookies. So the rest of the meals he would give to me and I would trade the food for like chicken, the chicken for like cigarettes and stuff. We talked a lot Then.

Speaker 3: 25:17

My second one after that was like a motorcycle guy and I'm still going to court and stuff. When I finally get my time they put me over to another building next door called CTF. It's like a better, it's more like a. It feels like a medical hospital more than anything. It still sales, but it just the look and feel of it says prison, hospital and there was a program there called the Youth Act and I was just right under the age to get it. I think I was 20, going on 21, so I was right under the age to get it. What it would do is it would rip it off your record. It's on your record if you go for FBI or Homeland Security or something, but everybody else would see nothing. I went through the program and every day we had to stand in formation, we had to get out, say something positive, we had to exercise, you know, and then we had like talent shows and stuff. I got into a rift with the lead, the squad leaders, to the point where all seven of them jumped me and so I tested my metal, that's like. At that point in time I was like I'm not going nowhere. So every day we got in formation I would lunge at one of them and beat the pipes off of them and I kept getting locked down for it. And then I got to like the fifth one and he finally was like trying to tell me like you know, this is going to your judge'm. Like you know, I have to live here if I'm going to get 45 years, I have to live amongst these people. And every prison got to know I'm not going through this, because that's what I thought it was. But we're like the oldest person's, like 25. The youngest is 16, you know, we're mentally just full of piss, you know. So after that they, um, they. Let me talk to the last two. One of them backed out of the fight, the other one we locked in. I beat him till he was winded, because what they weren't was.

Speaker 3: 27:20

I was calculated on the streets. I wanted to be a kingpin and I trained like Batman and to this day I still train like Batman, like no jokes about it. Like yesterday I was at the gym three times. So they were about that life and you know what they look like and how they sound. But I was about that life Like I had to live it. Jump. After that I come home no, we go to.

Speaker 3: 27:51

When I get my time, they send me to North Carolina, went to North Carolina. It's a prison facility down there and I did the rest of my time there, like a year or something, because I know it was April 2005. I came home and I didn't get early termination. I had to do the whole two and a half years. They took me as a threat like I was going to do more, but I wasn't the whole time I was in there I just focused on reading and learning myself. Like anything about me, I can learn, I would learn.

Speaker 3: 28:39

I had a cellmate. He liked to exercise a lot. We would do 10 pull-ups and then he would do 10 pull-ups and then I would do 10 pull ups and then I would do 10 pull ups. We did that till we got a twenty five hundred pull ups. That's like every day, you know, and they call me Bruce Leroy because I couldn't get any big. You know, because I didn't have people sending me money from home to buy extra commissary. I didn't have extra food. Sometimes I got stuff out the kitchen, but for the most part, any money that I got down there, I earned it, working 17 cents an hour and I would make like 31 bucks a month at the most. All of that and the difference with that than the prison here was where I was.

Speaker 3: 29:31

Ctf was a bunch of boys. When I got down there it was 5000 men and just imagine a bunch of warriors standing around each other like no disrespect to what anybody did. You know there's something wrong, but we all treat each other like warriors. Everybody could kill anybody in there if they wanted to. There was guys who did 25 years and was down there because of camp. It was a medium-low, we all had low violence levels, but we all were considered violent criminals. We respected each other. Some fight broke out because one person did not respect that man. He treated him less than a man and he's going to get what he deserves Most of his beatings not many stabbings or anything like that. But it was the DC stigma of a lot of DC males down low. Yeah, there we go. I wanted you to say.

Speaker 1: 30:25

Oh yeah, no, no, I'm going to cover it. I'm going to cover it. It we go.

Speaker 3: 30:27

I wanted you to say I'm going to cover it. I'm going to cover it. It's real. There was a guy who went to high school with his name was Damien, but in there they called him Donut. He has everything. And when we were standing in line we were getting checked in. I can't forget this. We were getting checked in and they make you bend over and call Okay. And when they made you bend over and call, when they made him bend over and call, the entire line bent this way to look. I'm still looking forward trying to look at the back of someone's head the whole line. Wow, Even the guy who's making you bend over and call the correctional officer is into that. There's a lot of.

Speaker 3: 31:10

It was a lot of that At CTF. It was even worse. Like I said, it was like a glorified prison hospital over there. There were correctional officers that would meet people at night at their cell. In their cell there was even a survey that we all got asking about an interview about certain correctional offices, because there was some type of litigation or something that happened. And then when we got to north carolina um, it was north carolina the chicken uh factory had closed, so most of them who worked there was your next door neighbor. They of the correctional offices. She immediately got fired and then the ring got sent out of that prison. The gentlemen that were in on it, they got sent somewhere else and then several other female correctional officers got sent somewhere else and then we got a new slew of them from the neighborhood and the thing happened again. Even our caseworkers we got down to there were interactions with caseworkers.

Speaker 2: 32:34

What I you know and I know you, donovan, and I know your story and we can talk. I mean, yeah, I'm not talking about the clock. But from all of all of the stuff you went through to where you are now. I don't know, it's, it's. I think we ought to get there. So people don't keep saying what was me?

Speaker 3: 33:06

Well, most people don't look at what they've been through. Like you know, people chase success, not realizing they're a success, right and so, like all of that, it wasn't until I started really going hard developing this car in 2014 did I don't mean to cut you off, brother I I just want to get there Right.

Speaker 1: 33:29

But we're going to take you. We went, we're going to take you out of the prison experience.

Speaker 3: 33:34

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 33:34

To where you are now. Right, yeah, now, now, after all that you experienced in prison, right, and in the different things that happened and different experiences, right, and the different things that happened and the different experiences, right, we already went over to DC prison and the rumors, right, the rumors, and you basically confirmed that that's true, right, that that stuff happens in the DC prisons right Now. You survived all of that. You survived all of that and then you get out in 2005. Right, did you go to school in prison or did you go to school when you got out?

Speaker 3: 34:14

So when I got, when I was in prison, every anything I wanted to take up had already started or was ending and if I started it up I couldn't complete it before I left. So when I came out I said what jobs can I get that's going to skill me up and be able to pay for and or pay for skilling me up? So the first job I got was concrete construction and the odd thing about it was I still talk like this and think like this. They put me on the engineering crew after I had been on the finishing crew for like 11 months and the finishing crew is like you walk around any spots broken, anything, you finish it, you make it perfect, you know, and that's like an elite crew to concrete. And then I got on the engineering site crew where I was working with math and looking at blueprints. I had not a mathematical analytical brain, but I could. They call it spatial awareness, where I could take an object that's 2D and make it into 3D in my mind. And if you want me to make it out of something, I can make it into 3D their gaming and simulation, because it was the closest to design and drafting that I've bought. That has questions in it for me to study, for you to do what? For you to tell me that I know what I know? I'm going to pay you to tell me I learned it.

Speaker 3: 36:11

So I dropped out. I'm going to be honest with you. I dropped out and I began teaching myself electrical engineering, mechatronics and mechanical engineering. From that point on, I taught myself CAD. I taught myself computational fluid dynamics, which once you put a CAD model in there, it tells you how water flows around air flows around it, how to adjust it. I can't think of all the technical names for the things, but I can explain it Like a suspension. I taught myself how to design a suspension system, the whole thing From the rim to the control arms, taught myself how to design that and work and function. And if we built it in the real world, it might no, it will put other companies shit Excuse my language, because I'm part of the first people was ever created. Once I tapped into that and realized that about myself. During that time I just went hard. Anyone will tell you. I just kept going hard in it studying, studying, studying and applying to study. My dad he has a consulting company, so a lot of times he will bring me technical consultants. Someone needs something engineered, someone needs some information system developed or software built, something that had to do with electrical engineering. And then I started doing renovations on the side as well, because I was in construction. So I'm looking at real world household electrical, low voltage and high voltage, but I'm also developing over here devices or systems for people and I realized I could do something with this. I typed in all my skills from sculpting and within parentheses and in Google as disciplines and it popped up automotive engineering and design. Like what is what I'm supposed to do? Mind you, I didn't explain.

Speaker 3: 38:17

When I was in prison, I kept reading this book called Finding your Calling in Life. I can't remember the author, but I kept reading it and it basically teaches you how to ask yourself a series of questions to determine who you are and what you want to do. And it never tells you what you are, just ask. Tells you to ask yourself very deep questions. You know, are you? Yeah, what are you like? What would you? What would you put yourself to? You know what are you? Do you like to help people? Do you like to build things and can? Can you apply that to you? Know your, you know, and so, in that I had found who I was and I knew I wanted to do something in technology and use my art at the same time. And automotive and I love cars, and so automotive engineering was at least developing a vehicle was the thing I had to do it, and I haven't stopped.

Speaker 1: 39:32

I haven't stopped. Okay, so you, you, basically you're autodidactic, pretty much right, so you're self-taught, and so how is your, your discipline with study to make sure that you get this down, to be able to create these things? What's your study habits like? Are you studying like straight three, four hour clips, two hour clips, you know, to give people some insight of on how someone could you know study to become proficient at creating something like this?

Speaker 3: 40:10

So I took my syllabus from DeVry and looked at the time we were in class and the few good professors I did have would let us take breaks, but I took the entire syllabus and made sure that the subjects I'm learning are along those same lines. So, whatever you want to teach yourself, some school wrote out a syllabus exactly what you need to do, at least what books you need to read. Then you have to know your boredom time. That's what I call it in my mind. So for me it's 90 minutes. After 90 minutes I need to go do something. That else, if I'm reading or studying and what I mean studying is, my grandfather taught me to read it and then try to write it down and then read what you wrote and you'll know you're missing stuff. So go back and read it again.

Speaker 3: 41:15

Also, whatever subject you're trying to learn, you need to know someone who you know degree, expert, credible source in that field that you can bounce your, your, your problems off of and they can tell you if they're right, wrong or what you need to improve. Several are better, um, I have howard reed. He's an electrical engineer. He developed several devices, several patents under his name. Um, and I bounce off of him. Additionally, the software I taught myself electrical engineering on is the same software they give to you in colleges. It's free and it checks your errors in the software. There's a lot of these out there in many subjects and so even in coding you know. So, whatever you want to teach yourself, there's something out there that will you know, correct you in you learning it and you, you know you take the. Did I get it right? No, it told you it's wrong.

Speaker 2: 42:20

I like what he did, because he does, he actually calls me too, so that's the other thing he reaches. So he created a syllabus for his life and for those people who are just not into school. He actually created a list which you want to say, to say I'm going to do this, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do this. And it's marked out in times right, I'm going to do this from 215 to 345.

Speaker 2: 42:57

Now, if I'm working, I do this from this, but even in my break and work, I'm going to do this from this. So that's a training model. You know, most people probably do that when they exercise. I'm going to lift, you know, this weight three times in 10 sets, so whatever it is. So he mapped out his list throughout the day and across from that, he has resources that he has looked for, that he's tapped into, to say, okay, I'm going to check myself, I'm going to reach out to this person, I'm going to get this, I'm going to get this, so I can make sure I'm doing it.

Speaker 1: 43:42

Right. So now, after creating this format to allow you to grasp all this information, how did you get into creating this electrical I think you said electric vehicle?

Speaker 3: 44:02

Yeah, so that was the goal to create an electric vehicle. So that that was the goal and the study was leading up to it. And so First it started, I'm an artist first. So first it started with the design. I designed the body and styling of it and said to myself, all right, what, what, what dimensions do I have to work with, what, what power do I want to put out? You know, I basically gave myself some criteria, I worked backwards and because I don't come from the automotive world, you know, I don't come from the traditional, even though I'm studying these guys like who knows what you know, from CR Patterson, henry Ford, to the modern guys, maté Remac of Remac Automobili and Konex Egg of that company, you know, even to the Porsche family, you know. But I engineered differently. I say, you know, you got 10 inches by 12 inches square, make it fit. That's how I engineered. Um, and it's gotta meet, you know, this specification or that torque output, and it just each piece just kept coming together.

Speaker 3: 45:33

I can't really explain everything, like, for instance, the chassis. I have read a study by Chalmers University where they took a carbon substrate and was able know what we would consider like a graphene sheet and aluminum and made a mini battery out of it and said, okay, well, if I scaled this up, I can store energy in the chassis, the monocoque, the frame that you sit in. I can store the energy in it. And how do I keep the emf feedback? So now I got to learn about emf feedback. Now I got to learn about uh, uh, how to shield electrically better than I know how to do building a board like how do I protect humans? Now I got to study that, um, and in studying that, I learned about some scientists in 1951, studied the human body and found out that it resembles a circuit board. Even the DNA is zeros and ones like code. So now I'm going into another branch and learning about the human body and frequencies.

Speaker 3: 46:45

And oh, the electric motor makes frequencies. Yeah, Donovan, yeah, it does. How does that relate to people? Can I, when they're sitting in a seat, can I heal them? You know that's how it went. As things progressed, as I'm learning new things, I'm adding new features and perfecting those features. Remember I told you 2014, it wasn't till 2021. I realized, all right, the design is. I'm in the final, final phases of the design. I want this to be a reality and, um it. We kept going from there.

Speaker 1: 47:24

So this is the vehicle here.

Speaker 3: 47:26

Yeah, um yeah, you're on the 400. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 47:34

So so you, you, of course you're, you're an, an artist, so did you draw this out and this is.

Speaker 3: 47:39

This is a 3d, this is a parametric model. So not only is it three dimensions, I could send those individual components to machinery and it could stamp the part out, it, it can 3D print it, it can mold it. They're parametric. That's what I learned at school the difference between, you know, game simulation and things that are parametric models, parametric models, physical models. So the program I use is Fusion 360. It's a program I used before that was a four thousand dollar a year program that the industry uses, um, but this one is at a lower price but all, all the same features, and so it allows you to build, uh, you know, suspension systems, uh, gear systems, electric motors, circuit systems, the like, what's what you? There's a lot that's not in here, like the suspension, the radiator and such For lack of a better word anti-theft purposes.

Speaker 1: 48:47

This is. This is great, now, being that you already know how to incorporate, already explained that like llc and things like that. What did you do? How do you? Because this is a car company, right, so this is bigger than what I ever even thought, and for myself, you know, I'm saying like I'm thinking you know podcasting, black media, uh, company. You know, like I'm thinking merch, I'm thinking you know there's other types of businesses that I could think of, but a car company is like that's the last thing that would be on my mind, right, so how you incorporate this llc or Corp, however, I mean whatever, um and so, after that, what are the requirements to have a car company?

Speaker 3: 49:43

Well, the founders all got to have licenses driver licenses, that's one of them Um regulatory just being registered in the United States. Um, that vehicle, the, the frame before you saw the monocoque all of that has to pass 32 tests across National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Institute for International Highway Safety. It's like an insurance institute, i-s-a-h-a. The insurance is to, uh, I S a H a, um, and that's if, if each test passed the first time, that's 32 cars you send to them to crash and let's say, eight of those fail, you got to send eight more cars. Um, we've designed the monocoque in a way that it could do several crash tests at the same time. I mean, oh, different intervals and their regulation allows for outside of that, and they also allow, within a certain time frame before the final design is submitted and validated, you can begin taking pre-orders, but there's not much to Okay, you said there's not much to have a car company.

Speaker 3: 51:06

Yes, where the much comes in is how are you producing this vehicle?

Speaker 1: 51:12

That's what man Yo man, that's what Yo man.

Speaker 3: 51:17

That's where the much comes in.

Speaker 2: 51:20

It's not like you're throwing up a donut stand.

Speaker 1: 51:27

Yo, this is great man. This is like thinking outside of the box, man.

Speaker 2: 51:33

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 51:33

Wow, wow, wow, wow. Now where are you in the process of having an actual vehicle, and you know where are you in the process there.

Speaker 3: 51:46

So this year we're aiming to begin filming the build phases of that prototype. We have several components um that we've been storing and continuing to get more um yo.

Speaker 3: 52:04

We gotta support this brother I don't, I don't, I don't want to close the number because it's a very, very, very, very very low number to build that production prototype. But that's the simple part and that's the part I'm going to have the most fun at and the most engaging. For me After that it's all meetings and flybys, but at least I get to build the prototype and be a part of some of the production going forward. The goal is to bring people in that think like me or similar or close to that, align with the same corporate culture and have that open internal tenacity to, you know, be innovative so that we can push even further.

Speaker 1: 52:57

Man, listen, man, hold on. Man, y'all got it, yo. If y'all didn't watch this show, rewind from the beginning, because this is so ill to me. I'm coming with the New York slang, pardon me. This is super ill because first of all, he came up like we all came up go to prison, come. Go to prison, come out, study on his own autodidactic, did his own thing, and now he has this here and the ball is rolling. Man, this is so dope man. We need to support stuff like this. This is totally out of the box. You know what I mean. When you think about Black business, what comes to mind?

Speaker 2: 53:55

But when you think about black business, what comes to mind? But when you think about black excellence, it is not just a conversation like when I'm going to one day man, you'll see, man, you watch me one day. Those conversations never happen. When you're talking to a person that says watch, you'll see one day. What's your list Right? What is your syllabus for your life Tomorrow? I'm going to do this Right. Not just things on a list. What is your time From 2 to 3, from 4 to 5, from 2.15 to6? What is your list through your 24 hour period? I'm talking about your sleep period. What is your training for yourself To rewire your focus? So at the end of your traveling, your journey, you come up with where you're going, not where you want to be, not the end, because there is no end, but where you're going Right. This isn't Donovan's end, this is just the start. It's like martial arts the black belt is not the end, it's the beginning.

Speaker 3: 55:25

Right, we don't really. Our community isn't bombarded because we're not in a lot of these companies and what I mean is on the decision-making floor. So in the 90s, toyota spent $10 million to study the black luxury car buyer $10 million in the 90s and they found out that BMW, mercedes, mercedes nobody wanted to sell us a car. So they flew all these Koreans and Japanese people over to America, opened up these dealerships called Lexus, studied. I mean, they spent another 10 million dollars on studying the luxury cars we bought and designed their vehicles Like, literally, they looked at the suspension and said, make it like that but make it better.

Speaker 3: 56:16

Make that seat like that, but make it better. And then they said how do they treat them? Talk to them better. When white person come in, don't walk. If a black person and a white person come in, walk up to the black person first, ignore the white guy. This was in this is public knowledge by Toyota. Toyota did this first. First year they made that $20 million back, plus some In the next five years they had already made $100 million on this.

Speaker 2: 56:41

And do you know what was also triggering? The white people started buying Lexus because they did not want the blacks to outbuy them in a vehicle that they too could buy. Not that they wanted it.

Speaker 3: 56:58

We spent that much money on that car company. What if it's our car company Now? What can that buying power do? How many schools can we upgrade to level four schools for free? Make the government pay it back, or we'll get it back, we'll figure it out. I have a nice CFO that figures all kinds of ways to make money from throwing money out the door, you know. So what can we do? And then what does that do? Internally, pride to people, you know, knowing that your community produces a vehicle that you buy. Yeah, we got a sedan coming. Yes, we have an SUV coming. Yeah, we got a minivan coming.

Speaker 2: 57:41

I want you probably to. I know you're a humble guy and I know you want to probably give your shout outs to your people.

Speaker 3: 57:53

Definitely I wouldn't be able to have done this without my dad there, my uncle and Miss Bell.

Speaker 1: 58:01

That's nice man.

Speaker 3: 58:03

They backed me. Miss Bell I was a personal assistant for years. My uncle I've renovated his basement. My dad I've always, anytime he calls, I'm on it. They have reciprocated. They're my biggest uh sponsors and backers, um, for this project as well. Um, the rest of my team uh got a shout out.

Speaker 3: 58:27

Mr anderson and miss hagan's and uh, mr ventor Hagen says again, this was. She was my store manager at once at CVS and in a time when I had nothing, she looked out and took a shot on me. You know what I'm saying. And best inventory person and logistics person I know, anderson world travel security, professional risk management understands things. And here, mr Ventura I was his estimator in construction, but they've and he does engineering as well, for us as well. But everyone here has been here since day one. Charlie Greenhouse I met him in 2012. He has an EV company, evsr Racing, and he's been my consultant on engineering. Again, one of those people that knows more about the subject than you do and can tell you if you're wrong or right. Mr Carter, very innovative individual. As you can see my humility, I've put me at the bottom. You know that's my software guy, corey hot fire, um, like Roto. Roto and myself.

Speaker 1: 59:40

Wow, man. Hey, thank you guys for coming out this evening. I really appreciate you, man. We got to have you back. Donovan, you got a lot to share. We got a lot to talk about this vehicle company. Man, I want to push this hard man. I want to push this hard man. I want to, you know, try to use whatever resources I have to support this. This is, this is different. Y'all, this is different. Thank y'all for coming out this evening. I really appreciate it. We will talk. Thanks to everybody in the chat, everybody who was, who was watching, and we'll see you tomorrow, peace.