How CashBlack & Afrofiliate Are Turning Everyday Spending Into Black Wealth - Matthew Addai CEO

Speaker A: This is Clayton. For the Cash Flow show, we're joined by Matthew Adain, co founder and CEO of cashblack, an Afro Affiliate. Matthew is a multi award winning visionary social entrepreneur serving as the co founder and CEO of Cashblack and Afro Affiliate. Cashblack is an innovative platform that offers cash back to consumers supporting black owned businesses. While Afro Affiliate connects these brands with affiliates to foster growth. Thank you for joining us Matthew.

Speaker B: Thanks a lot for having me. Thanks for the intro as well.

Speaker A: You're most welcome sir. You're most welcome. Now tell us a bit about your role. Obviously you've got a, ah, dual role here with Cashblack and Afro Affiliate. Could you explain to our listeners, the cashflow crew, exactly what those companies are and what your role is?

Speaker B: Sure, um, I'd love to. In short, cashblack is a platform that rewards our members with cashback. See what we did there? When they shop online with black owned businesses, so users, they register with us, they browse the products and services from black brands and then when a purchase is made, they receive cash back from the affiliate commissions that we receive that they can withdraw for themselves or donate to one of our affiliated goodwill causes where we match donations 100%. And afro affiliates, that's an affiliate network that connects black owned brands with different content creators and media houses, enabling them to convert their uh, loyal customers into economically incentivized brand ambassadors to help their businesses grow. And we also work with major organizations to help them tap into diverse audiences through our diverse content creators.

Speaker A: So what made you start those two businesses? Because they actually, they're symbiotic, they actually work very well together which is really great from the start. But what made you guys decide, right, we're going to set up these businesses and we're going to make them happen. How did that come about was, um,

Speaker B: back in 2020, um, I went on a bit of a sabbatical, um, from work. My last role, um, where I was working for a hedge fund. I was made redundant in 2019. So I spent that year just like working for myself. And then I thought, right, 2020, it's going to be a symbolic year for me because I'm going to go into a real period of independent study, autodidactism and just really teach myself how the world works. So did everything I didn't really learn about as much as I should have done in school from macroeconomics, microeconomics, um, political science, natural sciences, everything. Really just taking in all the information I could to very much try and give myself a better Understanding of how the world works. But halfway through 2020 with the whole pandemic, the recession and of course the global anti racism movement, I feel like we all got a better idea of how the world works. And I'd already been researching why things were how they were with regards to racism and the socioeconomic impacts on the people who faced racism. And of all the like starting statistics and still the uh, like one liners you're seeing left, right and center during that summer, one thing that really stood out to me was that there was a direct correlation between the lack of support for black owned businesses and the issues that black people faced. And I felt that probably try and fix those issues for the people by fixing the ones with the businesses by perhaps coming up with a way to incentivize patronage in black owned businesses by having the black owned businesses reinvest back into the patrons. So looking for something entrepreneurial to do like so many people were during 2020, obviously during lockdown, et cetera, my two younger brothers and I, we thought to ourselves, how about a cashback website? A cashback website for black owned businesses. Why don't we call it Cash Black? And then what started off as a play on words between the three of us turned into a tech company and then with cashback websites because we went straight and we didn't really do any research on it, we just bought us a cool name, let's build the site. Quickly found out that yeah, cashback websites, they need to work with affiliate networks because that's where, that's how all the tracking of the clicks and conversions go. And so we thought, oh, most of the businesses with whom we're looking to work, they're small medium enterprises who aren't necessarily on affiliate networks. So why don't we just create our own? That can't be too difficult, right? Naturally it was. But a couple years later we were able to go live with Afro Affiliate to be able to connect all of those businesses with Cash Black. And so yeah, like you said, very, very symbiotic. Both inextricably linked. Can't really work without each other. So yeah, spent a lot of time in 2020 taking in all of that information. We came out of that with two tech companies.

Speaker A: I love the expression how hard can that be? Because that's the story of my life. How uh, hard uh, can this is gonna be easy.

Speaker B: Had I known what I know now

Speaker A: so said, how have you built the strategic partnerships on network to overcome the isolation that a lot of companies feel, but especially in your area, a Financial tech company. It's a lonely world for you out there because there's not many people from the black community involved in those things as we speak.

Speaker B: It's always been difficult to be honest. And like we were alluding to earlier about how ours can't be that difficult. No, it really was. But having said that, it wasn't so difficult right at the beginning. We were lucky to. I say lucky. Obviously it came out, came from a place of negativity initially. Obviously we're working in 2020, but around that time people were uh, a lot more forthcoming. And so it was easy to approach a major organization like, hi, would you like to do this? Just because Black Lives Matter this year? And so they were more likely to be like a lot more respondent with us because of the fact that it was somewhat in vogue in fashion, supporting black owned businesses, supporting black entrepreneurship, et cetera. So at first it wasn't as hard as it seems. Now naturally these things are somewhat cyclical. Right. So yeah, as um, the winds have changed somewhat. So like uh, speak to all businesses, all business owners, funding is much harder to come by now than it was five years ago. Or uh, even though it's not just the funding as well, it's the social capital part of it which is somewhat difficult. But uh, I suppose we're lucky that because we've been doing the groundwork for so long, we're blessed to have been connected with loads of major organizations who've been able to like, help facilitate those introductions to those partners with whom it would otherwise have been difficult to connect. So yeah, we're lucky to have been on different programs, different accelerators, working with major brands like Ray and Nephew who can help facilitate those early introductions which fortunately for us have been able to lead to something greater.

Speaker A: So how have you navigated the alternative funding routes? Because has it been purely via things like Ray and Nephew, or did you just knock on doors or did you send people DMs, you know, uh, how did it actually work?

Speaker B: I ask myself that all the time. It's funny you should ask because it was all of those, the very first iteration of me doing the outreach, because I've never, I haven't been in sales before for, or anything. And I was thinking to myself quite naively that because like this is for everyone, this should be easy to sell. I mean it's literally paying people to support black owned businesses. Light work surely. Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah. And just almost got like PTSD from the rejections you're getting. Like in real life. Um, we'd go to different black pop up markets, pitch the idea. And this was before I was able to like pull out the app and do the whole razzle dazzle of it to actually show them what it was. This was just when it was an idea. So I mean to put that it took a lot of heavy lifting on their part to see the vision. So it really was difficult. Like you could do all the like pitch decks and the uh, like presentations and do all of the talk about it. But it's, it's still hard because there's so much education to go with it as well that you really need people to be on board with the idea from conception to uh, really really want to be on board with you. So yeah, it was hard, but it was just something that is hard for everybody irrespective of the business. I was just a bit naive in thinking that because ours is somewhat benevolent and altruistic, it would be a tad bit more simple.

Speaker A: Do you think that if you had been more aware and necessarily educated as far as business was concerned, you may have had slightly an easier time?

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. I'd be arrogant to say no because that would assume that I know everything. Every day I work out that. Oh, I didn't know that. I should have known that that so my uh, knowledge gaps are filling up all the time and so yeah there's, I don't believe there will ever be a time in my career from here onwards where I'd be like, um, no, no, no, I know or I know everything. I didn't need any more education or assistance or knowledge in that. Nah, um, I would always have been able to have benefit from knowing something. And it's not just um, it's not just like just on the basic business things which I may have learned through school, university or what have you. Some of it unfortunately, uh, has to come from experience. I'm a huge fan of being burnt to learn. Not intentionally as like no one really should be, but that's experience is the best teacher. So a lot of the biggest lessons of which we've learned have come from the fact that we have just tried and failed enough times to know that. Oh, okay, cool. So we should probably not do that because it didn't work the last six or seven times we tried. So perhaps we should use this as an experience, learn from it and then go on to be better.

Speaker A: So if you were having a drink with some investors, venture capitalists, people with money, and they said, matthew, I really, I really want to get into working with some black Black people, I really want to get involved in it. What would you say to them as a route to encourage them or to put them in a position where they actually were of ah, benefit to black owned founders and businesses.

Speaker B: In short, just communicate with them. Um, that's the easiest. I get asked this question quite often and it seems almost like a cop out answer just talking to people. But it is that simple because at least that way you're able to get rid of all of your preconceived beliefs and illusions as to who they are or what they might want and some that's which is we're not. As much as I'd love for us to be like monolithic because it'll be a lot easier to sell the idea of cashback, black people aren't, especially not in, in the United Kingdom. Um, my wants and needs as a uh, quote unquote black founder would be different to uh, the next person or the next person after that. And you wouldn't know what those wants and needs are unless you approach us in a communicative way to really get a deeper understanding of exactly what we do require. Obviously naturally we don't want money, so throw us money then that could maybe uh, satisfy that one aspect of like what would be needed. But then that's not really the be all and end all in most cases. I can't speak for everybody, but yeah, actually speaking to us, coming down just on the level to get a better understanding of who we uh, are, what we do, what we might need, that is the absolute bare minimum. So yeah, in short communication as much as it is a simple, straightforward cop out, your answer, that's, that's literally, that's, that's all, that's all it takes in my humble opinion.

Speaker A: What advice would you give to others thinking about starting their own business?

Speaker B: I'm assuming that you and I both laughing at the fact that I'd come out with just a simple one liner or don't or whatever. But um, I get asked this a lot and I don't like using that answer as much as it is the truth for now, it's not really helpful. It really really isn't helpful. But I can mitigate that by saying that if I am able to half jokingly half seriously answer, don't and that's enough for you to not want to do it, then there's your answer because there are several people who said don't to me when I asked about this. Because I mean I didn't, I, I, I did jump straight into it. Both feet, head first. Whatever analogy makes it seems like a crazy ambitious, ambition driven mindset from watch in which we started this. But I did speak to people who like in business, um, who've been in business before, same question like oh, uh, I want to start what do you think about it? And they said don't as well. And I did it anyway because I had that self belief that I could do it. Without that self belief I wouldn't be having this conversation with you now. Perhaps I could be in employment somewhere, living my best life in a corporate or my survival, what have you, but I wouldn't be doing this. And this is ultimately what I had the desire to do. What I had the belief and passion and drive to do. Not just for me obviously mission driven. So the impact of it I still have every belief that will be far greater than me and that's all come from the fact that I heard don't and I did it anyway. And so I can still give the answer as don't to anybody who does ask like jokingly or not. Don't may be my correct answer but you as the founder, as the uh, entrepreneurs, the businessman or woman, as the visionary. If I say don't and that's enough for you to stop, then that was your answer. However, if I do say don't and you have the passion, self belief and drive to carry on, go for it.

Speaker A: Excellent answer, excellent answer. So where can our cash flow show listeners go to for more information about you and your business?

Speaker B: Cool. So website cashblack.com um where you'll be able to use the platform, download the app, um add our browser extension the Cash Black Afro bot which enables you to discover black owned alternatives through Google Chrome to your usual online e commerce shopping destinations using artificial intelligence. Through that um, you could also find our social media pages cashblackhq across all social media where we're heavily promoting our events with Camden Markets and Camden council on Saturday 4th October hoping to have 50 black owned brands in Camden Markets Hawley wharfed it with whom you'll be able to discover, shop with and earn uh cash back on your purchases in real life with them. That's for Cash Black and then for Afro Affiliates afro affiliate.com where you'll be able to as a business register to be uh able to onboard your own affiliates, media houses, content creators, micro mega influencers to help you boost your black owned business or as a content creator you'll be able to register to become an affiliate of a wide range of black owned businesses and major organizations with whom, um, you'll be able to benefit from being a conduit into your diverse community where you'll be able to promote the brands and earn a passive or active income shopping with them. So afro affiliate.com afro affiliates across all social media. Um, if I probably need to spell it, it's often spelled wrong to me. So yeah, I'm having to correct people more often. Not a F R uh, O F I L I A T E across all social media and dot com. And obviously Cash Black C A S H b l a c-k.com and cash black HQ across all social media.

Speaker A: Thank you for sharing that. So, Matthew Adai, co founder and CEO of Cash Black and Afro Affiliate, thank you for joining us on the Cashflow Show.

Speaker B: Thanks a lot for having me.

Speaker A: It's been a pleasure. Thank you.