Karl Sona

Introduction and Normalizing Black Excellence

Taryell Simmons: Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to another episode of RISE Urban Nation. It's your host, Taryell Simmons, and I got a special brother in the building today. My brother Karl, welcome to the show. Black excellence just dripping all through our screen right now. How are you doing, sir?

Karl Sona: I'm amazing, brother. I appreciate the energy and the hospitality. This is God's gift right now.

Taryell Simmons: We try to normalize Black excellence in all its forms, and you're about that too. What made you want to be a bridge to normalize that for our communities?

Karl Sona: It started in childhood. I was four or five, in a little two-bedroom apartment in Washington, DC, and I could hear my parents calling relatives back home in Cameroon, saying they didn't have enough money that month for my little cousin's tuition. I'm getting ready for bed with my school clothes laid out, and my cousin is about the same age as me. Why am I in this position while somebody in my family is going without? The playing field is never really even. I now have a moral obligation to leverage my situation and fill my cup so full that it runs over into other people's cups. That's where my intentionality around normalizing Black excellence was birthed.

Taryell Simmons: That's beautiful. Shout out to my boy Desmond for connecting us. I grew up in Northwest DC, my dad is Nigerian, so I know that same thing of sending money back home. For people who don't know, who is Karl?

Karl Sona: Too often our instinct is to lead with our job title, to rank ourselves in societal conventions. I'm not about that. I did the corporate thing and got out a couple of years ago. Karl is a young man created by God, put here to do God's work. Every day I ask what I need to do to stay available, and how to lean into faith and find the courage to do what God has ordered me to do. Right now that's living nomadically. I'm in the Netherlands, growing sales teams in media production. We help small and minority-owned companies amplify their brand message through podcasts and digital media. It's completely bootstrapped, and it requires getting comfortable doing things that make you uncomfortable. I'm always chasing a better version of myself.

Finding Happiness in the Journey

Taryell Simmons: That takes continuous learning. What are you currently learning?

Karl Sona: That happiness is accessible at all times, despite current challenges. I was supposed to be married in a couple of months, and that's no longer happening. I'm going through the growing pains of a bootstrapped business, and in hyper-growth mode there's sometimes a lot more month than cash. There can be dark days. Your dreams will cost you something. So I flip it around, because three years ago I was praying for the situation I'm in right now. I'm being positioned and processed for something greater. If you tell yourself happiness comes once you accomplish X, Y and Z, you run a million miles an hour, miss the lessons along the way and arrive unfulfilled. There's still beauty right at my fingertips.

Taryell Simmons: There's a cost to greatness, and be careful what you pray for, because you just might get it. Like Kevin Hart said with Jay-Z, life doesn't happen to you, it happens for you. And shout out to Michelle Obama's Becoming. I'm in love with the journey, because who I'm becoming is more important than the destination.

Karl Sona: Without question. I just watched Kevin Hart on The Pivot podcast talk about becoming addicted to winning by improving bit by bit. Everybody sees a media mogul, but it's twenty years of consistent daily effort. That gives me gratitude for exactly where I'm at every step of the way. Gratitude is everything.

From Corporate Success to Streamline Media

Taryell Simmons: What made you drop out of the corporate race and start your business?

Karl Sona: I spent about eight and a half years at a startup medical device company that helped doctors diagnose lung cancer without cutting patients open. I was around the twenty-seventh employee, and eight years later we were bought out for around 400 million dollars. I was one of the only Black people, if not the only one, who crossed the finish line with the company. I had a nice payday, but it paled next to what executives, the board and investors made. That taught me that equity is what we as people of color need to pursue. Everybody focuses on salary and PTO instead of ownership.

Karl Sona: I had just turned 30, it was March 2020, and a lot of people were questioning their lives. Do I chase the linear path of a medical device executive, or scratch this itch to go out on my own? One day on my rooftop deck in Denver, I had a divine intervention, and it was Dear BLK CEO, a podcast where I sit down with minority founders who left six- and seven-figure jobs to build wealth. So many of these companies aren't spotlighted, so they're not recognized, and so they're not seen as credible for deals with Fortune 1000 companies. So I started Streamline Media, a media technology company that uses artificial intelligence to help smaller companies develop content that positions them as domain experts, then produces and distributes it to give them visibility. There's an agency arm and a software-as-a-service arm.

Taryell Simmons: When you have to hunt for your food, it's very different from when your food is stored for you.

Karl Sona: But what if you learned to hunt so well, with skills nobody could take away, that there was endless abundance, versus the same entrée every day at twelve thirty in the same limited portion? Market conditions could shift and that entrée stops. What would you choose?

Community Economics and Relationship Capital

Taryell Simmons: It's even different for Black founders. I've worked with many through Startup Weekend. White founders can go to a VC who's a friend of a friend, while we have to bootstrap, and even our bootstrapping looks different.

Karl Sona: That's the importance of community economics. We have NGC Capital, a minority-owned investment group of me and nine day-one friends. In 2016 we said no one is coming to save us. NGC stands for No Glass Ceilings, and our goal is to help the first-generation African diaspora learn about investing and wealth creation. Every Sunday we vet opportunities and pool our money, buying equity in NGC Capital. When we deploy capital toward a Black founder who's being rejected because of their skin or their network, and it appreciates, we all grow our pie.

Taryell Simmons: Black finance folks have told me investors overseas don't want their money sitting in the bank. They'd put a million into an apartment project, pull it out once the banks come on, and put that million to use again. I was like, wait, you can do that?

Karl Sona: Hard money lending. There's no shortage of opportunities. Are you aware of them, are you willing to learn the skills or find people who can teach you, and will you take action? We owe it to those behind us to get in the arena, because high tides raise all ships. I'm thirty-one, and every day I'm making deposits that compound for my family and others who look like me.

Taryell Simmons: And that deal only went through because a more senior partner brought the cachet the bank wanted.

Karl Sona: Relationship capital is real. We think that without the knowledge or the capital, we can't take on the deal. It's talked about a lot in white circles, not so much in ours: relationships can be leveraged. You might be the sweat equity partner, but bring on somebody with cachet and you find creative ways to get deals done. I always ask, how is this possible despite a door closing?

Taryell Simmons: That's Rich Dad Poor Dad. "I can't afford this" stops the conversation. "How can we afford this?" makes you creative.

Healing, Therapy and Doing the Work

Taryell Simmons: Speaking of books, what should someone read to be wiser?

Karl Sona: I'm reading How to Do the Work by Dr. Nicole LePera. As a Black man, I'm proud to say I'm on my healing and therapy journey. I didn't grow up in a house where we talked about feelings. You swept it under the rug and kept moving. Your body holds on to those things, and for me it showed up as self-sabotage, getting in the way of my own greatness. This book shows step by step how to peel back the layers, look at the mess and accept it, because that's where healing begins. If you feel a sadness you can't put your finger on, lean into where it's coming from. Generational trauma can even be passed down through our genetics. I don't see that as a victim. The ball's in my court to reverse it so my kids have smoother waters.

Taryell Simmons: This work has been present in my life all week with family. In survival mode we don't have time to sit with our emotions. In Maslow's hierarchy, safety comes before self-actualization.

Karl Sona: It's like a foundation. I just came from Italy, and those sidewalks are older than America and barely cracked. In Denver they poured cement a couple of years ago, quick, and it's already cracked and uneven. This work takes time and discomfort, but done right, your foundation supports generations. Those Romans weren't thinking about me, but I can see that city because they laid a solid foundation.

Taryell Simmons: It's hard but necessary, and it takes vulnerability. Watch Brené Brown's talks on that.

Why Everyone Should Learn to Sell

Taryell Simmons: What skill should everyone have, and why?

Karl Sona: The ability to sell, hands down. We all sell every day. Selling is finding problems and communicating solutions that help people get where they want to be. Without it, it's very difficult to escape basic survival needs and climb toward self-actualization. So many people take a salary and are happy with it, not realizing it takes oxygen from their ability to create options that break the glass ceiling.

Taryell Simmons: Karl is a slick talker, y'all, with those glass ceiling puns. What was your first job?

Karl Sona: As a high school sophomore, my calculus teacher set me up with her husband at Briggs & Stratton, the lawnmower company. I was an engineering intern at nine bucks an hour, checking CAD specs. It's the only job I've ever been fired from, because I was so bad at it, and I didn't even know I was getting fired while it was happening. You can be down and out and still bounce back.

Steps to Building a Business and the Future of Content

Taryell Simmons: What steps did you take to get into your career and business?

Karl Sona: It wasn't linear. I'm good at failing forward and failing quickly. First, I got into new rooms: conferences, seminars and workshops. Second, I found a mentor, even someone you watch from afar. Third, I built accountability with my power list: five core items I do every day toward the big goal. Do them and you win the day. The goal is to win your week, because consistency compounds. Fourth, I went public with my intentions. Within about a month I got three or four job offers for roughly $600,000 a year, but I'd told everyone on podcasts and LinkedIn that I was doing this. I'm not about to live out of integrity, because the second I do is the second I start dying.

Taryell Simmons: Nothing holds you more accountable than declaring your intentions. What's the future of your industry, especially for people who look like us?

Karl Sona: Content marketing is how you communicate about your products and the problems they solve. We help brands show up more authentically online, and artificial intelligence is increasingly part of that. A lot of what you read online isn't written by a human. We're building these technologies in-house to help content creators help businesses. If you're in business, you're a content creator, because content equals currency. AI is in its infancy, but it will revolutionize how we create and distribute information.

Taryell Simmons: What are you working on, and where can people find you?

Karl Sona: I'm launching a software-as-a-service tool called Podnotes.io. Upload a podcast's video or audio, and in about 90 seconds it produces show notes, blog posts and social captions. It's in beta, and we're preparing our pre-seed round. Find me on LinkedIn at karl-sona, Karl with a K, on Instagram at karl.sona, at karlsona.com, and on the Dear BLK CEO podcast.

Taryell Simmons: Karl Sona, ladies and gentlemen. I'll put all his information in the show notes. Thank you, brother. We appreciate you, we salute you, and we'll catch you next time.

Karl Sona: Much love, bro. Thank you.