Trailblazing Spirits: Old Hillside’s Tribute to Black Women in Horse Racing  – ep.166

In this episode of the Jali Podcast, we delve deep into the inspiring stories of three trailblazing African American women in horse racing – Eliza Carpenter, Sylvia Bishop, and Cheryl White. These remarkable figures broke barriers in a dominantly male sport and left an indelible mark on its history. Join us as Emmanuel Waters from Old Hillside Bourbon Company discusses their unique contributions, the creation of the ‘Trifecta’ bourbon in their honor, and the impact of their legacies on both the sport and African American history.

We’ll also explore how Old Hillside Bourbon blends entrepreneurship with social justice, using their products to amplify underrepresented stories and support community initiatives. This conversation not only highlights historical achievements but also sparks discussions on the importance of diversity and inclusion in all sectors of society. Learn how embracing our past can inspire future generations and drive meaningful change in our communities.

Don’t miss this compelling blend of history, entrepreneurship, and advocacy – a true tribute to the power of perseverance and the spirit of innovation in the face of adversity.

Melyssa Barrett:  Welcome to the Jali Podcast. I’m your host, Melyssa Barrett. This podcast is for those who are interested in the conversation around equity, diversity, and inclusion. Each week I’ll be interviewing a guest who has something special to share or is actively part of building solutions in the space. Let’s get started. Again, I’m always excited to talk to you, Emanuel Waters. I’m so excited because I feel like we’ve known each other for a long time, but we met during Covid, I guess

Emmanuel Waters:  During covid. This is year four on podcast, on the phone, but I’m going to come out there. I’m going to come out there and y’all saying

Melyssa Barrett:  We’ll make it happen. I’m excited to see what has transpired for our old Hillside bourbon over the past four years because it has just blossomed and blown up and some of the things that you guys are doing with respect to the history, our heritage is just phenomenal. So I’m excited for you to kind of talk a little bit about what you guys are doing and how this all came about.

Emmanuel Waters:  Yeah, so I think last time that we were in the park, I think we were early on, I think we were in the 2021 or maybe early 2022 that we had just came out with our very first, the male series, which are the very first Mount Rushmore of black jockeys. And then since then we’ve done some veterans bottles. We’ve expanded across the United States, and I think before we couldn’t even ship online the first time we talked, we were so early on. It’s been a wild journey in a very competitive space, a space where a lot of us are represented. So as we are something close to 80% of consumption in alcohol, but less than 1% of ownership.

Melyssa Barrett:  Wow.

Emmanuel Waters:  Yeah, I did not know that until we used to embarked further on the journey. So every industry in America, right, minorities are pretty much the backbone and not represented. And so I think year four, excuse me, year four, going into year five now, because 2025 we unveiled last month the very first black women of horse racing. So that is what we’ve been on. This has been, I would say one of the most meaningful things we’ve ever done. We do a lot of bottles, we tell a lot of history, but this one was something special as a father of daughters, as a brother to two sisters, telling this story was just very impactful. It something that we wanted to do. And so it really came up just in the middle of the night. We had finished the male jockey series and we’re telling, and I was like, I wonder, were there any women in the sport?

That’s literally how the conversation, I texted Jess, my co-founder at 3:00 AM He was asleep. He literally said, go back to bed. I went down a rabbit hole for probably about a good four hours and found these three women’s names, Eliza Carpenter, Sylvia Bishop, and Cheryl White, and was just researching them, and I was blown away by the amount of history and the history that was told, and then Lac, their stories not being told was actually more shocking them. These are three women from 1800 to 19 40, 19, 50, 19, 60 women, black women in a sport that is dominated in Charlestown, West Virginia, Oklahoma, and Ohio. And three pretty much I would say dominantly racist states. Why isn’t anybody history? Yes. And so

Melyssa Barrett:  It’s history that you don’t hear at all?

Emmanuel Waters:  Never. No, I’ve never, I mean, I say this, we know black stories in America are buried underneath the surface, and we know, I always say black women’s stories are 60 beneath that, right? So if black stories in the surface, women are buried way beneath that. So yeah, nobody was talking about it, and so this bottle, 24 months in the making, this took two years.

Melyssa Barrett:  Wow.

Emmanuel Waters:  Getting to know them, and I want to say that we just didn’t take these women’s stories, steal their imagery and slap it on the label and try to make money. We didn’t do that. We took time to get to know the families. I had their blessing. I first sought out Cheryl White who passed away in 2019, so she’s probably closer in terms of story being recognizable. Her brother Raymond had the She White project, and then he was doing a GoFundMe for her to raise for the projects. So I just wrote an email and I was praying, I hope he doesn’t think I’m a crazy person. I wrote him an email and he wrote back, and we got on a call that day with the company and we just was telling us stories and we just said, look man, we just want to honor your sister. We don’t want anything. We don’t want anything from you. I think when you get to their statue and all the books and stuff going on, people tend to take, and I was like, we just want to give, and that’s what we’ve always been about since day one. We’re the only brand I know that’s our size of doing so much philanthropy. We’re not a million dollar brand, but we act like one.

Melyssa Barrett:  That’s awesome though.

Emmanuel Waters:  Yeah. So we got him first. Raymond came along, we met his son, we met their family, and then once we got the on board, we said, okay, we started just doing post about Cheryl via black history, via women’s history, mom, and then we were turning for Ms. Bishop, now, Sylvie Bishop. She took a little longer to find her daughter. We had chased her down for months. I mean, we got the attorneys involved trying to find somebody. We were just,

Melyssa Barrett:  Oh, wow.

Emmanuel Waters:  Yeah,

Melyssa Barrett:  You were on a mission.

Emmanuel Waters:  We were on a mission because it just meant so much to try to get their blessing, and I just didn’t want to do anything that wouldn’t get their blessing. So yeah, we found an author that wrote a book about her mom’s years back and got ahold of the author, and then she hadn’t even had any contact with the family. So we just went around this for nine months. My wife, who was probably Scooby Doo, she said, give me her name, found a random number. Her daughter named Laverne found it on some website, public domain, said, try this number. I was desperate. I said, I have nothing to lose. I literally called this random number in West Virginia. I left a message say, Hey, I’m looking for Ms. Laverne, I’m trying to find your mother, blah, blah, blah. She called me back, oh my God, it took seven months, 10 months to found her. And then I just told her, I said, I think your mom’s story is amazing, and I would just love if you would give us, grant us an opportunity to share

Melyssa Barrett:  It. Wow, that’s awesome. So tell me, what did you find out, even when you guys started and you were talking about the history of male jockeys and really created a model specifically for them and all of that, I mean, you guys were really into the history before that, but to have you kind of go into detail on these three women, it’s not like you said, I want to do one. You were like, no, I want to do three and let’s dig in and reach out and all that. I mean, once you got there, how did you decide what you wanted to talk about and how you wanted to do it?

Emmanuel Waters:  Ironically enough, so this bottle is called the Trifecta. So it’s a play on words, obviously three women, horse racing, and then three of our blends of our bourbons. But when we started researching, I’ll be honest, I was like, there’s just no way we can do just one of them. So there’s stories of rain to, so Eliza with 1850s, but she was sold twice before the age of eight, sold twice age six and eight, eight. So she’s born into slavery, eventually got freedom during the Civil War in Oklahoma and eventually became one of the first stable owners in America. And then she was a jockey as well. She would jockey her own horses. And so I was like, oh my God, I think 1850. I mean, she literally was sold twice by the age of eight, and you’re talking 18 hundreds that got her civil war or freedom during the Civil War. And now I was like, oh my God. Wow,

Melyssa Barrett:  That’s

Emmanuel Waters:  Amazing. So that was amazing. So I’m like, okay, so we got her. Then as I’m researching, I find out that Sian was the first horse trainer in America, and horses won over $150,000. That’s a couple million. So wow. So Sylvia grew up loving horses. She had to think horses since age eight in West Virginia, and there a time when the horse racing sport was dominated by males. And so to see Sylvia around the thinking about her around the stables, you’re talking 1920s and thirties, her around the stables, I was like, wow, this is phenomenal. I’m thinking in my mind, I’m like, they probably called her everything but a child of God. Oh,

Melyssa Barrett:  I’m sure. Yeah.

Emmanuel Waters:  So you got her, and then she goes into She White who was the first licensed trainer in America, and I thought, these stories are all so amazing, so how can we incorporate all three? And so we figured, well, since we did the men and we had their stories, let’s just do these women. So that’s how it came about. It was like we couldn’t pick just one. They were all just so phenomenal. And so eventually maybe we thought about maybe we can give them each their own series. That’s something to talk about in the future. But we had to find a way to highlight all three of them because there’re literally three pillars of horse racing history. These are three women that are trailblazers, and there’s probably millions more that we don’t know about, but these were the three that we were able to find.

Melyssa Barrett:  Yeah, it would be great if other people know stories and they want to reach out because

Emmanuel Waters:  In the wrong way.

Melyssa Barrett:  Please, please. This is awesome. I and what great way to celebrate Women’s History Month as well. And I know you had an event last week, right? Was it last week?

Emmanuel Waters:  The week before last? Yes. We did the trifecta launch. So it was important to us to find a way to unveil this bottle. And so what we did is, like I said, we had been in touch with the family for the past two years, and so we actually brought the families out to California and we did an event downtown Los Angeles. We had about somewhere between two to 300 people downtown la and we unveiled the bottle for the first time. We presented it with plaques, we donated back to their nonprofits, so the Cheryl Wide project, which educates black women on becoming horse racist. And then we’re also creating a scholarship in Ms. Laverne Sobe Bishop’s name so that she can present a scholarship in West Virginia. So we partnered with US Bank to do that, and then proceeds from the bottles that we raised that night went to that.

So it was just friends and family and social media folks, and we had some streaming companies there and a lot of media, and we just wanted to present to the world these women, their stories. So this event, so this, not yet, it unveiled the bottle. Everybody tasted the juice and a lot of people drank plenty of it, but it was really about, really was about just honoring these families. So Sylvia Bishops family and Sher White’s family who are still physically with us, they were all present in the room and it was just a night to honor them. And I can say when Ms. Laverne got up there on mic and just talked about her mother, I mean that it wasn’t a dry eye in the building. I

Melyssa Barrett:  Couldn’t imagine.

Emmanuel Waters:  I mean, for us it was just seeing, looking outside in, seeing all these people who are gathered together in honor of these women. And we as send to the, we’re just being conduit to telling a story that was really just so meaningful to us as a brand, and that’s what we came into this space to do. We wanted to honor unsung black heroes. That’s why we created the brand. That’s what we’re here to do. And so you don’t find too many brands of our size and really a lot of brands that’s doing, that’s honoring this history. I think a lot of people would typically do the fast route, slap some money on a label or steal the family’s ip. We did it completely the right way and we were satisfied with the event. And then we brought the bottle line, and my goodness, in two weeks we had sold close to 85% of the stock. But just so many people, this story is resonating with people, right?

Melyssa Barrett:  Yes,

Emmanuel Waters:  Absolutely. Which is what we wanted.

Melyssa Barrett:  Yes. Well, and I mean, I feel like this movie coming on my mind is like, oh my gosh, I would love to see this.

Emmanuel Waters:  That’s the goal. That’s what we want. We’ve talked to a few Hollywood executives and we hope to, these women are the hidden figures of horse racing.

Melyssa Barrett:  Yes,

Emmanuel Waters:  There needs to be a movie. There needs to be a story that black stories resonate with audiences. We saw with what the reason why I saw Six Triple eight that Tyler Perry did, the hidden figure, hidden Figures.

Melyssa Barrett:  Yeah.

Emmanuel Waters:  Black stories resonate with audiences because there’s so much of our history that’s been buried from 18 hundreds. So we want to get these women’s story told. So by all means, there’s somebody in the Hollywood, a documentary, we’re knocking on every door I’m knocked on Good Morning American doors. I’ve sent this bottom to everybody that I can think of because there’s a story here that needs to be told to a greater

Melyssa Barrett:  Audience. Yes, absolutely.

Emmanuel Waters:  That’s our hope.

Melyssa Barrett:  Well, and black history is American history, so we need to help people understand what the history is. Let not hide it.

Emmanuel Waters:  That’s the crazy thing, Melyssa. It’s like black history is American history, so imagine us literally building a sport and not being represented. That’s the crazy part is when I think of horse racing, now that I’m in it, I’m like, wow, this is so fun. But that was a kid. I mean, I just thought it was something that rich people, I don’t care about horse race. It is not basketball, football, but it’s like we literally dominated, we literally created the sport because it was a direct translation between slavery. We know that slaves pretty much tended to the horses, and that became a thing. And one thing that we found out, and I didn’t know, I don’t know if you know this, but where the term bet on black comes from,

Melyssa Barrett:  Where does it come from? Tell

Emmanuel Waters:  Because you were told to bet on the black jockeys. That’s where that term comes. So I didn’t even know that. I’m like, oh, that makes sense. Right bet the black jockeys. So that’s why for decades, black jockeys were dominant sport, and then when people found out how much money was in it, they pushed us out. So we just want an opportunity to tell the stories and read them the history that we dominated once that we literally created. So that’s what we’re trying to do. We hope to keep doing it.

Melyssa Barrett:  And for me, because I have such a connection to financial education and all that, it’s like the more of these stories that we tell, I think it helps people understand how much we have been ripped from that has been ripped from us. You know what I mean, in terms of our own wealth, because you start horse racing, there’s so much money involved, and then to not be represented at all because you were forced out, there’s just so much richness to the story, so much truth, so much that we haven’t been able to share so much pain.

Emmanuel Waters:  I mean, to dominate a sport for literally decades. And then Jim Crow in that era comes around. Then all of a sudden, from 1921 to 2000, there weren’t any black writers at all. Literally 85 plus years, no black riders in a sport that we had literally dominated like a previous decade before. So it’s crazy, right? It is crazy to think. And so yeah, we just want to now just try to tell a story and educate and get an opportunity to do that. So every time, so now I’m, look, if you’d have told me five years ago, maybe even four years ago, that I’d be out here going to Kentucky to horse races, dressing crazy, I would’ve laughed at you and oh, that’s not,

Melyssa Barrett:  You have a glass of bourbon in your hands. So

Emmanuel Waters:  I got a glass of, it

Melyssa Barrett:  Could be worse

Emmanuel Waters:  Hat. I got a picket suit and I’m out there and I’m, it’s such an exciting time and I think it’s like, wow, our brand is what we say is worth feminine friendship. And so we go to horse races and we just hang out and we crack a glass of bourbon and we talk about the Good Times, talk Akima High School, let’s talk about those stories. And that’s what our brand became. It became, yeah, it’s a history component too, but it’s also let’s celebrate.

Let’s talk about friendship. And so that’s what we’re all about as a brand. And like I said, it’s just been a, I think we’re humbled. I think this project really for us was just like, wow. It was very unwilling to see 250, 300 people just celebrating these women and their stories. And to us being able to be a conant to tell those stories, we’re honored to do it. And I’m always thankful. I talk to Raymond now all the time and talk to Ms. Laverne all the time, and I’m always, I thank them every day. They thank me. They were thanking me so much other then I said, look, this is you guys’ day. We’re just honored that you let us tell the story. And through our bourbon, we’re much appreciative of doing it.

Melyssa Barrett:  Oh my gosh, this is so awesome. And hopefully other folks will kind of see and hear and really invest themselves in the curiosity. I mean, I love the fact that you were just like, are there women? Ask the question. Right?

Emmanuel Waters:  Come on. Now we know that women are the backbone in America, black women especially, and you go in any face society and there’s not a woman there. She’s probably behind the scenes or she paved there. There was something there. So that to really sparked my curiosity, I was like, I literally was just laying, it was late like 11. Like I wonder, is there a woman in the sport? And then I’m like, they a backbone of the talking about, and also to that point, it’s also when we partner with several other libraries and horse racing organizations in America. So one is Keeneland, who was a big, big archive where we were able to get the license to the jockeys and whatnot, and they talk about what was tough during that time and how it was so tough to do authentication was because depending on if these people had relatives, if they have family like Eliza Carpenters to what we know, she didn’t have any children. So if you don’t have children, no descendants, it got the story. It’s really tough to follow. So that’s another portion of this. We’re trying to dig up as much as we can. And then what we’re finding on this small journey, I mean, just yesterday I did an interview with a horse regular magazine. I found five more black jockeys that I didn’t know about. So just a bolt.

Melyssa Barrett:  Yes. So

Emmanuel Waters:  We hope to keep shining a light on it. It’s very important. So that’s the goal and that’ll keep us going.

Melyssa Barrett:  I love it. I just think this is so awesome. I love the way that you all are really looking at your business as not just a business. It’s like your mission is not really, not even about the bourbon, it’s really about the fellowship and the celebration and all of that, which yes, you might have a libation, but at the end of the day, it’s really about connecting with other people. And so I love the fact that you guys are bringing in and really being inclusive about how you’re looking at it.

Emmanuel Waters:  Yeah, so funny story about that. If you ever look at one of our bottles on our bottles, you’ll find there are hidden gems across the bottles. And so in all of our bottles you’ll find a lion and is represented the five lion. I think we have told this before, the five lions in Africa that were more than a tribe, they came together and they became essentially a pillar. And so we think of five lines and we thought of ourselves as that. We’re not just a brand, we are a conglomerate. So bourbon is only one lion. There’s also the history telling portion of it. We’re essentially, we’re going to create a production company to tell these jockey story that we’re going to create. We’re going to be a major pillar in any way that we can. Right? I love it. Love it. That’s the goal. So yeah, bourbon is just, it is a conduit.

It’s one thing you can sit down and cracked glass, and that’s the literal way we do. When we were tasting the trifecta, we went to distillery and we’re trying things, and as we were trying the bourbon, we’re talking about, okay, this is the flavor profile and what’s the proof on it? And this proof is too hot, but we didn’t want it too low because these women, these probably were fierce women. So we want our bourbon to match that. So let’s have a fierce, some hotness, some mild, you know what I mean? That’s kind of what create the

Melyssa Barrett:  Drink. I love it. Oh my gosh, that’s so fun to be able to think through it that way and really represent them with the flavor that you’re creating. So that’s awesome. Let’s talk about how people find out more information about what you all are doing, what you bring, the bourbon itself. I know there are folks that want to drink. So tell us how can people get in contact?

Emmanuel Waters:  Yes. Yes. So most of it is done via our website, old hillside bourbon company.com. Those that are, so this trifecta, because a lot of people would ask, so I’m glad you brought that up. So if you are not in Durham, North Carolina, you can only get that bottle online. So unless you’re in North Carolina and Durham specifically, we put it specifically online because it was just too much demand. We didn’t have time to go to all the stores. So you can check our website, old Hillside bourbon company.com. That’s where you get a bottle of tribe Back then most of our bottles are check for your locations and then not going to say on social media, Instagram, Facebook at Old Hillside bourbon co. You’ll find a lot of our events that we’re doing. And we actually just started as of last quarter, quarter before, excuse me, we came out with a newsletter.

So you can check our website. There’s a newsletter there, you can subscribe that’ll show you what we’re doing. Events that we have, we generally post a quarter before, so this particular quarter we just so many tastings galore and the Kentucky Derby is coming up. So we have a lot of things going on back in Kentucky for the horse racing season. Check all our social media channels, that’s where you generally can find us and you can find a bottle, like I said, normally any spirits location near you. But yeah, check us out there that you can find us. We’re always doing something. There’s too many events and not enough of us going around

Melyssa Barrett:  For sure. That’s for sure. And that’s awesome. And then do you have any tastings or any other events coming up you want to talk about or

Emmanuel Waters:  Yes. What do we have? So let’s, let’s see. Women’s month. So next month we’ll do the Women’s Iconic Awards in Oakland. That’s an event that we have going on. We’re honoring several pillars in the community for several iconic women within the community. So we’d be tasting for that. Juneteenth is coming up. We got that coming on. So just check the newsletter, check the website. We put, I think last month we had, there’s 20 days. We did 47 events, so I can’t keep up with all

Melyssa Barrett:  Of it. Oh my God.

Emmanuel Waters:  This is the season. So this month kicks off officially Women’s History month, and then we go into horse racing season. So this is kind of our busiest time of the year. And then we go, so April and May up until the Derby we’re just everywhere and anywhere, which is a great thing. So I said check the newsletter, our website, you can find us. I think we generally post our events early in the month, so you can please check us out and stop by. And always happy to crack a glass and tell more of these stories. We love to do this.

Melyssa Barrett:  Yes. Fantastic. Well, and it’s so good to have you here because it seems like just yesterday you were working your corporate job,

Emmanuel Waters:  It seemed like it lot things

Melyssa Barrett:  Change in five years.

Emmanuel Waters:  This is going on year two for me, full-time on the business. So yeah, we left in so early 2022, summer of 20 21, 20 22, corporate America. I left. I think it just, I’ll be honest with you, I didn’t go into this thinking that I would be, first of all, I never went into this thinking that I’d be a CEO. That was never a part of the plan. If I could be quite honest with you. I thought this would be something to just pass time while we were locked down during Covid, quite honest with you. And when I discovered this story, I was like, wow, this is amazing. And yeah, like I said, I didn’t go into this being CO for dang sure, all the entrepreneurship I had aspirations do. I never would’ve been CEO of a bourbon company that just was never in the car.

Melyssa Barrett:  Some things you’re destined for, I guess. So,

Emmanuel Waters:  Yeah, no, absolutely. I wouldn’t change anything. This has been so rewarding, so fulfilling. And I know you have a lot of entrepreneurs that listen to your podcast and I would tell anybody, there’s so many highs and lows. Entrepreneurship is so many highs and lows. You’re literally, you’re pretty much fighting and scraping every single day. But why wouldn’t change it? Because it’s probably the most fulfilling thing I’ve ever done outside of obviously being a husband, a father. But I always tell Jesse and my co-founders, while I’m so grateful to them because they voted to be CEO, but I tell Jesse all the time, he had the idea to start the bourbon company. And I always tell him, I always joke, I’m like, besides the fact that you aged me and you gray me out, you may lose my hair, but you created something that brought me into

Melyssa Barrett:  Purpose

Emmanuel Waters:  And I’m forever grateful. That’s really what entrepreneurship is. If you can wake up every morning and say, enjoy, and it doesn’t feel like work, then you’re in the right place. And I think for us, we look at it as well, if we’re doing what we’re supposed to be doing, the money, everything will come, everything will come. And so all the entrepreneurs out there, don’t give up. Stay encouraged. It is a fight. I think last time, Melissa, on your podcast, we were scrambling because we didn’t even have money to stay in the Airbnb to do your podcast, middle Kentucky. I remember having a check trying to cash a check in the airport, hoping that it’ll clear. I remember all those days, but it’s a nonstop journey, right? For sure. Do not quit. Please be encouraged. It’s a hard time, especially for entrepreneurs of color and women out here. It is very tough. We are living it, but stay true to it. Do not give up. Please don’t give up. My only advice is keep on the grind and eventually you’ll crack a glass, you’ll break the ceiling. It’ll happen.

Melyssa Barrett:  Yes. Well, and I am so grateful for you and I, we met through somebody else and it has just been how you meet somebody and it’s just like, wow, I just want to celebrate what you guys are doing. I don’t drink a lot, but I have had my share of bourbon. I will say,

Emmanuel Waters:  You’ve had some oil, you’ve had some oil. I got some.

Melyssa Barrett:  I still got some on my shelf, but I need better that. So I do break it out. My kids have enjoyed the libation. They’re old enough to drink, by the way. But yes, I mean, I just really appreciate you all and what you’re doing, and I just can’t thank you enough for coming back and sharing with us your update because it’s such a celebration of you all as well. As you celebrate others, you in turn are being celebrated. So I just want to thank you guys.

Emmanuel Waters:  No, thank you for having me. This is a great platform and I follow you and I’m always looking around and I’ll pop in and I love listening to other entrepreneurs and everybody having your podcasts talk, and it’s very encouraging. So for you to create a space, given your background and where you come from to create a space for us, it’s so well needed and important. So thank you for even thinking of us because it is well needed. So anytime I come up here and share, look, this was four years ago, so the fact that we’re here four years later means we’re doing something right? Right.

Melyssa Barrett:  You are definitely doing something right. I mean, I keep seeing you guys with all these celebrities and stuff now. I said, wow. It’s like, remember the little people as you go?

Emmanuel Waters:  Oh my, that’s funny that you NBA All-Star weekend, we were sitting around, me and Courtney, he had come up, we did a pitch that morning to a group called Untap Investing or black female entrepreneurs who are saying that we want to see more blacks in the private equity space. And so they asked us to pitch in this room, and we did that. And then later that afternoon, we were sitting around and we’re in this room and I’m like, oh my God. We’re sitting around, I’m talking to Chris, Paul, Carmelo Anthony, her leisure podcast. I’m taking photos of, I’m like, I’m literally, I can’t believe this is our life. They’re literally tasting a product that we created five years ago during Covid, and you just came back that up, man, life has a funny way, a funny putting in places that I literally was like, man, I can’t. I was blown away. I just could not believe it. I’m like, wow, this is crazy. And so yeah, now every now and again, we’re just, oh, what celebrity is popping up nuts? Because you never know. These are people that we grew up idolizing. They’re here trying to try some bourbon. It’s very humble. So it’s encouragement, it’s very encouraging.

Melyssa Barrett:  Yes. Well keep it going. Keep it rocking. I’m excited for you guys, and I continue to follow you at any time. So just again, I appreciate you coming back and kind of giving us the update. So I look forward to the next journey. I know it’s going to happen more accelerated now.

Emmanuel Waters:  It won’t be three more years. I can promise you that We’ll do this little, we’ll have to do a quarterly or a yearly. It won’t be another.

Melyssa Barrett:  Yes, yes. I’m going to have to come to one of your events one of these days. So

Emmanuel Waters:  I know you be having so many podcasts. We’re going to have to sponsor the podcast and do the bit where you do the, we have to do that or something.

Melyssa Barrett:  That’ll work. That’ll work. I’ll be there. Awesome. Well, thank you so much, and please tell your entire group hello and thank you again, and I am thrilled. In fact, I’m going to have you come back and talk more about all the pillars, and there’s so much history when we think about Africa and just the proverbs and all of the things that we incorporate, and it’s amazing when you start hearing the stories and the depth of the history. So I’m just encouraged every time

Emmanuel Waters:  I need two hours. I need two hours next time

Melyssa Barrett:  With everybody talking about erasing diversity, equity, and inclusion. I think I feel like this is the time we need to double down and separate the wheat from the chaff. You know what I

Emmanuel Waters:  Mean? And we’re going to keep doubling down. Jamie Fox said it best. I was watching the other day and he said, every time they try to race, we just replace. And that’s what we’re going to keep doing. We’re resilient. We’re doubling down this year, and that’s why it’s even more imperative for us to get that trifecta out with everything going on. I was like, no, now’s not the time to go away high. Now it’s the time to keep celebrating and keep talking. Get louder with a megaphone. That’s what we’re going to keep doing. So we’re resilient. We’re going to stay resilient. We’ll keep doing it.

Melyssa Barrett:  Do something. Do something. Go for it. Thanks again, Emmanuel. Thanks for joining me on the Jali Podcast. Please subscribe so you won’t miss an episode. See you next week.