Hi, this is Dr. Willie Jolly and I want to welcome you to the new and improved Willie Jolly Wealthy Ways podcast. After many years of interviewing the best and brightest thought leaders around the world on my SiriusXM show, I am excited to now have those interviews available to people around the globe on this podcast. So many people would write us and say, 'I love what I've been hearing about your interviews with these great people. Where can I access them? I live in this country or that country or I don't have access to that technology. How can I get the information?' Well, I'm so excited now that we are able to offer the information and the interviews free on this podcast. So, we want you to sit back and enjoy this message and let me know how you like them. And then do me a favor. If you like them, send a review. Write a review and post it. And if you like it, hit like on here and share it and tell everybody you know about it. And then subscribe to this podcast so you'll get the alerts when we post a new interview episode. Thank you for listening and enjoy the Willie Jolly Wealthy Ways podcast.
Well, it's a great day. Great day, great, great, great, great day. This is Dr. Willie Jolly, and I want to welcome you to the Willie Jolly Wealthy Way Show. Whether you're listening on radio or whether you're listening on podcast, I am grateful. I'm grateful. Well, you know, I have only just a minute, only 60 seconds, and it's forced upon me. I can't refuse it. I did not seek it. I did not choose it. But it's up to me to use it. I must suffer if I lose it. Give a counter if I abuse it. Just a tiny little minute. But our eternities are wrapped up in it. I'm grateful for this minute, this moment, to be able to be with you. Well, I want to ask you a question. What would happen if you had a young woman who was an interested person in the radio business and she started at a radio station as a salesperson and she grew to be the general sales manager. Then she became the manager of the station. Then she became the program director and then she decided she wanted to have her own station. And bank after bank after bank after bank after bank turned her down. But she refused to give up. And then she finally was able to get the money. Started her station. But things got tough and she had to live in her station. She had to make a choice. Her home or the station. She chose the station. It had to live in the station. And yet she refused to give up and went on to build the largest radio African-American-owned radio network in the world. Today my friend is here. The one and only Dr. Kathy Hughes is here. You want to stay tuned for this interview because it will inspire you. It will encourage you and it will uplift you.
Well, you know, I start with that one minute, God's minute. And you know, if you listen to this show, I make a point every week to take a moment to give God glory, to give him praise, to thank him for life. Now, I know everybody doesn't believe like I believe. And I'm not trying to convert you or convince you. I'm trying to let you know that I am grateful. I am grateful because God has blessed me so marvelously. And I am so grateful. I have to take a moment to just say thank you. And so every week I take a moment to thank God for life and strength and health, for friends, for family, for an ability to do what I love to do and to get paid for it and be able to have a life that allows me to do some of the things I enjoy doing. And so I give God glory. And I know that God's gift to us is life. Our gift to God is what we do with our lives. So I say we should do something extraordinary with our lives. And so I'm grateful. Well, I want to thank you all, everyone who has made this the number one self-help show in America. I am grateful for you and made it one of the top five downloaded podcasts in the world. I'm grateful for you and all you are doing. I encourage you to please continue to tell your friends, your family members, your co-workers that this is a show we don't talk about anything but success, about overcoming, and about encouraging people to live their best lives. And so I want to thank you. And then I want to thank our sponsor, Truist Bank. They've been a great partner. They have made a commitment to our community. They made a commitment to me. They made a commitment to families. They made a commitment to helping people become financially literate. And so I want you to go to truist.com. Truist Bank. They are really committed. And when you start with care, you build a different kind of bank. Truist Bank.
Well, as I said, I'm honored today to have a dear friend as my guest. Many of you know her story and I knew her story, but recently I heard an interview where she shared the rest of the story and I said, I called her. I reached out to her. I said, 'I got to get you on because you blessed me. I know it'll bless so many others.' Well, let me tell you my special guest. My special guest is a dear friend of mine, someone who I have known for over 40 years and has had a profound impact on my life. But I'm going to give you a bit about her bio, but then I'm going to let her fill in the blanks. Dr. Kathy Hughes. That's right. I've got her on here today. Dr. Kathy Hughes is a dynamic media pioneer who demonstrates the power of one. One woman, one vision, one company. Urban One. She created Urban One by starting by buying one radio station and now she is the owner of the largest African-American-owned diversified media corporation in the nation. Reaches more than 80% of the African-American market through its subsidiaries. Radio One is an urban market leader with over 55 broadcast radio stations, TV1 and Cleo TV. And then two cable networks that are part of a great empire, Reach Media, where she syndicates radio programs. And then she has so many parts to this that I'll let her tell you more, but let me tell you about our life. When I was a new author, I was writing my second book. I called her and said, 'I want to interview you because the book is about turning setbacks into comebacks.' And she was gracious enough to let me interview her. But let me go back even further. When I was in the music business, I recorded my first record. I went to her. She had a station at the corner of Fourth and 8th Street. No one else would play my record. I took it to her. She played the record. She encouraged me and she said, 'Willie, you can do this.' And then when I started speaking, she encouraged me. 'Willie, you can do this.' And when I wrote this book, A setback is a setup for a comeback, I went to her and said, I want to interview you. And at that point, she told me the story about the banks turning her down and how she had to keep going. And at that point, she only had a few stations. Well, she now has over 50 stations. She has TV stations. And now she continues to do great things. The School of Communications at Howard University is named after her. Ladies and gentlemen, this is my dear friend, someone I am just so grateful to have in my life, the one and only Dr. Kathy Hughes. My sister, how are you?
I am wonderful. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for that wonderful introduction. Well, a couple adjustments. We're over 75 stations now. And although a lot of people refer to networks as radio or as television stations, actually we have two networks, TV1 and Cleo TV. They're actually networks. That makes them national. Stations are all local. But I like to tease you as you well know and say I've known you ever since you had hair.
That's right. That's right. I had hair. Absolutely. In fact, my partner Joe Mine and I sang at one of her birthday parties when we had a record deal with the deuce called The Deuce with CBS Records. So, she's been intricately involved. Oh, one more thing I must say that I am honored to be part of the Urban One family. I have a daily syndicated segment on Urban One called Wake Up and Wind with Dr. Willie Jolly on the Get Up Mornings with Erica Campbell show every day. And I am on this XM radio show right now on this network on this station because of Kathy Hughes. They were the ones who put me on radio and XM almost 20 years ago. My sister, you were a young lady in Omaha and you wanted to be in radio. How did you make this happen?
Well, I wasn't a young lady yet. I was a kid and my mother put a transistor radio in layaway for a year because my mother being a professional musician she had a group called the International Sweethearts of rhythm. She was one of the founding members an 18 piece all women's orchestra back in the 1930s and 40s. But she had given birth to me and we had ended up moving to and living in Omaha, Nebraska. And in Omaha, Nebraska, the only radio that was available to its listenership was country and western as it was called back then. Now it's just called country. I had never heard black music nor black people on the radio. Yet I was very familiar with the contribution that African-Americans had made to the world of music. My mother researched this high powered transistor radio that its handle was in fact the antenna and it could bring in radio stations around the country. She put it in layaway and for Christmas I was 8 years old. She presented me with a transistor radio that changed my life. And I say to young people all the time sometimes we already know God has already sent us a message at a very early age. Sometimes even before we reach puberty what it is that we are intended to do. But if our receiver is not on and I've heard you speak about this. If your receiver is not on, you miss the message from above. All right. It's not that God has not been trying to tell you is that your receiver is not on. So you're not hearing it. And even sometimes when you're hearing it, you don't understand it. I knew intuitively. I knew instinctively. I knew with every cell in my body that this was my future, that this was what God intended for me to do. And so some of the worst punishment I ever had to endure was about this radio that kept me up all night, not knowing that black men were not allowed to be on the radio, nor women. But back in those days, it was just unheard of. There were no women in radio. They weren't allowed to do news. They weren't allowed to do music. They weren't allowed to do talk. Only men.
You grew up in Omaha. By the way, folks, you should know that her mother not just was the forerunner for the International Sweethearts of Rhythm. But her grandfather, now you got to I got to give you this because her grandfather founded the Pineywoods School in Mississippi and he was a founder of the first African-American boarding school that's still in operation today.
So, in 1909, my grandfather founded the Pineywoods Country Life School in Pineywoods, Mississippi, a boarding school still in operation to this day. Where we do education a little differently. Number one, this school was always based on the premise that we were not concerned whether or not you could afford your education. We were concerned that you wanted your education, that you were worthy to receive it, and we would finance it. To this day, no government grants, no government assistance. We depend entirely on contributions and the generosity of those who support us and the school. And the interesting thing is that our president who's been with us now almost eight years went to Harvard, President Barack Obama. He had graduated from Pineywoods. He and his two siblings. These three children came from the south side of Chicago impoverished but very, very, very bright. They had been referred by their church and their school as someone that that's how we get most of our students is referrals from counselors and ministers and community activists. As I said, you've got to be desirous of changing your life. Now in this day and time is not so much an economic consideration as it used to be in yesteryear because so many of our children come from drug houses. Our children come from parents who are not financially strapped. We sometimes have students who arrive with $5,000 with the diamond studs in their ears. But their parents, their mother has never cooked them a meal. That they grow up in this environment that retards and obliterates their ability to reach their full potential. So it's not just about education at Pineywoods. And it's really about the fulfillment of your God-given gift to become that which you are destined to become from birth. And so we do education a little differently. We isolate them. We're on 2,200 acres. A little history if you don't mind. I know it's women's history.
Hold that thought. Hold that thought. We're going to come back because we got to take a quick break. We'll be right back with Dr. Kathy Hughes on the Willie Jolly Wealthy Way Show. And for sure, your best is yet to come. We'll be right back.
And we're back. This is Dr. Willie Jolly on the Willie Jolly Wealthy Way Show and podcast. And I want to encourage everybody to go to winwithjolly.com. winwithjolly.com for resource to help you win more, to do more, to achieve more, to make a difference in every sector of your life, in your finances, your faith, your family, and your focus. My special guest today is Dr. Kathy Hughes. She is the woman that you all have heard about across America. I didn't say earlier that her company was the first African-American company to be traded on the New York Stock Exchange. Come on, somebody. I'm honored to not only be a stockholder, but I'm also honored to be one of those people who jumped on board when I heard about it. And I'm honored and proud of that. Well, she's my dear friend. We've been friends for over 40 years. And she's had a profound impact on my life. Her son Alfred, he used to come hear me sing when I was in a nightclub. She used to come hear me sing. Okay. You grew up under the tutelage of your mom and your grandfather at Pineywoods school in Mississippi and I've been there and I've spoken there. I want to make sure we give people information if they want to be a blessing to that school where they can go find it and maybe make a donation. Please finish.
But first, I want to give a little black history because my grandfather was very close to Booker T. Washington and Booker T. Washington had discovered something that he tried to share. At one time there were nearly a hundred black boarding schools in America and they were primarily supported by white individuals of means who did not want their servants to have to go home to take care of their own children. So something that was done to hinder or be of service to the white community became a blessing for the African-American community because these children who were placed in boarding schools and black boarding schools received the best education. So Booker T. Washington had stumbled upon the reality that most states had legislation that allowed you to incorporate. That's how suburbs become entities unto themselves. These suburbs grow and then they pass legislation and they become townships or they become villages or they become what we call suburbs but they actually have their own police department. They have their own board of elected officials. They have their own mayor. And so Booker T realized that these black boarding schools, if they incorporated, could become their own entities, could become their own cities. And my grandfather being a close friend and mentor of sorts of Booker T. Washington. We had at that time about a thousand acres in Mississippi. The school was now 2,200 acres, but he incorporated Piney Woods. So, Piney Woods not only is its own city. Piney Woods not only is a boarding school, but it has its own post office. It has its own zip code. And the best part about this story was that when he incorporated, it empowered him to have his own law enforcement. So the security force at Pineywoods is our police department, which means the Klan could not come on your property because they were in a jurisdiction where they were not going to be protected by a white legal system that they would have to in fact live by the rules and regulations of that incorporated entity. So, Piney Woods has always had its own zip code. And ever since Booker T helped my grandfather, unfortunately, so many black schools, boarding schools, we're now down to four. There are only four left. We're largest and the most successful of the boarding schools.
Where can people make a donation if they want to make a donation?
Go online pineywoods.org. pineywoodschool.org.
Pineywoods.org. Okay. So, you had this great legacy, your grandfather and then he birthed your mother and your mother had the legacy of the International Sweethearts of Rhythm and then you and your mom were in Omaha. You were raised in Omaha.
In honor of Women's History Month, allow me to go past my grandfather into my ancestry. If you do not mind. My great great great grandmother, Charlotta. Charlotta Piles. I always call her Charottetta because I have a niece named in her honor without us even knowing she existed at that time. Ancestry.com wanted to do a project with us. And they wanted to look at a 40-year-old woman, a 50-year-old woman, and a 60-year-old woman. At that time, I was 72. And my staff said, 'Please look at Miss Hughes's history.' They're thinking again about my grandfather. Well, once Ancestry.com really dug deep into my history, my legacy, my roots, my DNA, they decided to send. Most people don't know that ancestry.com is headquartered in Salt Lake City. All right, which means it's a Mormon company. It's an entity. And one of the things that's very interesting about the Mormons is they are very heavily research-oriented. They have so many historical artifacts and history and documents dealing with slavery but also just the history of the United States. They were so blown away that no one knew this story that they sent their head of research, their senior VP of research came to present me with who I was from whence I had come. Turns out that my great great great grandmother was second in command to Harriet Tubman. Let's start the story with her being a slave. She was half Native American, half African, 11 children, married to a freedman. A lot of folks do not realize that all Africans did not arrive in the United States as slaves. Many came as skilled craftsmen and they settled them in the Midwest. Because the Midwest did not have legalized slavery and they were skilled craftsmen. You know, the fallacy of Governor DeSantis in Florida saying that black folks should be happy for slavery because we were taught skills that we had to wait 400 years to use. Okay. Was correct. The reality is the reason this country had skilled craftsmen was because Africans brought those skill sets with them to the United States when they were identified in Africa by the slavers. The slavers brought them and brought them to families in the Midwest. So, long story short, here she is a slave, married to a freed man who was never enslaved, but refused to help her to take their 11 children to freedom. So, she conspired with the owner. The owner had left his plantation and all his slaves to his daughter. His sons took that daughter to court to try to get the slaves back because she told her father that if you leave me your slaves I am going to free them. So the brothers are fighting with the sister over these slaves and the plantation and the daughter that the only girl out of like seven or eight brothers conspired with my great great great grandmother and helped her facilitate moving all 11 herself and all 11 of her enslaved children out of Kentucky. When they got to Iowa, there was a large population of freed Africans already. The money that this white woman had literally taken from the sale of the plantation and the runaway with the slaves was stolen. And so they ended up settling in Iowa. My great great grandmother hooked up with Harriet Tubman and started she returned back to the south. She was the opening orator for Frederick Douglas who wrote her a beautiful poem that was published in his newspaper. Ancestry found all of this. They found a letter from Harriet Beecher Stowe to Harriet Tubman that says the work that you and Charlotta are doing is a mission from God. That this is okay. And so she became second in command because Harriet was blown away that this slave woman could get herself and her 11 children into freedom. But more importantly she was on her way. She was trying to get her family to Canada but ended up in Iowa. But more impressively, once she was introduced to Frederick Douglas and Frederick started using her as his opening orator, she raised $2,500. She paid per son-in-law. She had two daughters who had married other slaves and had in fact had children. And my grandmother did not want her grandchildren being raised as slaves. So, she went back at her own risk. Now, here she is, a runaway slave with $2,500, went to two different plantations, paid the owners $1,250, and brought her son-in-laws back to Iowa so that her grandchildren would have a daddy. So it's very interesting as we talk about my grandfather who has for decades and decades and decades and rightfully so gotten all the accolades for what he had done but in fact my great great grandmother. An interesting thing my grandmother's oldest daughter had a daughter her grand became the first PhD in our family.
You got this history of slavery. Okay. And you got serious greatness in your bloodline. I mean the DNA that you come from is incredible. So that now makes sense as to how this woman named Dr. Kathy Hughes that we know now is not just a person who has made history, but she continued to do it. We also want to make sure everybody knows that when she was at WHUR, Howard University Radio, she started a program called The Quiet Storm. She was the one who came up with this concept that now many stations around the country use and she has continued to be a trailblazer. We're going to take another quick break for station identification and then we're going to talk about how she was able to not only get the money to buy her first station, but then what that decision of station or house, station or house, and how she made that decision and how it changed the world. This is Dr. Willie Jolly on the Willie Jolly Wealthy Way Show. We'll be right back.
Hi, this is Dr. Willie Jolly and I got an email from a gentleman in Australia who shared how he had been struggling in his business and he bought some of my books and audios and how it had a profound impact on his business and he went from worst to first in his company. I shared with him how much I appreciated his note. But I told him those books, those audios, those videos were not just something that I just thought up one day and started to write. They were born out of my experiences, out of the challenges of overcoming the problems and the difficulties and how I was able to do it. And I shared with him that others have sent similar messages and that these resources work. I want to encourage you and invite you to go to my store. Go to wjspeaks.com/shop. wjspeaks.com/shop. Get some of the books. It only takes a minute to change your life. Or a setback is a setup for a comeback. Or turn setbacks into greenbacks. Or chicken soup for the soul. Or an attitude of excellence. Or the book I wrote with my wife after 34 years of being married and not having an argument in over 30 years. We wrote a book called Make Love, Make Money, Make It Last. And now it is saving marriages all over the globe. Go to the store, get some of the audios, the videos, the books, the resources to help you have greater personal and professional success. This is Dr. Willie Jolly. Make this a great day on purpose.
And we're back. This is Dr. Willie Jolly on the Willie Jolly Wealthy Way Show. And yes, it is true. For those who are just joining us, I have as my special guest, Dr. Kathy Hughes. Oh my god, she's just a world changer. That's what I call her. But before we go back into the interview, I want to make sure I take a moment to give some love to our sponsor, Truist. For those who know about life and being successful and wealth generation, it starts with home ownership. And Truist Bank has made a commitment to making sure that more people can get homes with a low down payment loan. The best way to find out if you qualify for a low down payment loan is to talk with a Truist mortgage professional. Visit truist.com/mortgage. truist.com/mortgage to see current rates, get a sample mortgage payment, help you find the best financing options available to you.
Truist Bank is an equal housing lender. When you start with care, you build a different kind of bank, Truist Bank. My special guest is Dr. Kathy Hughes. We can go on and read all the accolades. The fact that she now has the School of Communication at Howard University named after her. She has won every award there is. She has been inducted into the National Association of Broadcasters Broadcasting Hall of Fame. The naming of a Kathy Hughes Boulevard in her hometown of Omaha. She is the Lowry Mays Excellence in Broadcasting Award winner. The Phoenix Award. I mean, just one after another. And you know what? She deserves every one because of what she went through to get here. It wasn't by chance or happenstance that she got here. She got here because she did the work. One of the things that I wrote about in my book, A Setback is a Setup for a Comeback, is that bank after bank after bank turned her down and she refused to give up. And then when she finally got her first station, was finally able to get the money, it was tough. She had to make the sales calls. She was on the radio doing the morning show. She was doing the morning show every morning. She was selling advertising in the afternoon and it came to a point where the money was tight. She had to make a decision. Do I live in the house or do I give up the station? Please tell us about that story, Dr. Hughes.
It wasn't a hard decision to make because I knew that I was on a mission very much like my great-great-great grandmother and like so many individuals that have gone before us that are present right now with us like you. You knew once you found your niche that that's what God had intended for you to do. You feel it.
You live it. It becomes part of your DNA. You understand that this is what God intends for me to do. And when you accept that, then it's not hard to give up your home and sleep in a sleeping bag in the radio station because you know it's only temporary that God has a plan. My receiver was on. My started with that little transistor radio. That receiver was on full blast, high volume. When at 17 years old I was informed that I was going to be a mother and I very innocently said to this doctor, the last time that I had a male doctor because of his insensitivity towards me, I sought out over the years because now it's easy to find a woman doctor, back then it was not that easy, particularly not in a place like Omaha, Nebraska. He laughed at me. I said, I've only had sex one time. He burst out laughing. He thought it was the funniest thing he had ever heard. He said, 'Well, in case you don't know, it only takes one time.' And really ridiculed me for understanding how I could possibly be pregnant. My mother taught me a lot about life. My mother did not teach me about how you became a mother. I certainly was not aware that one time. You know, I was just trying to experiment being fast at 17. You know, so often when you're bright, you have to learn that you don't know everything. You have to learn how dumb you really are. When you're smart and you're a teen, you think you know everything about everything there is to know about everything. And I had to learn in a very hard way that there was so much more. And now I just thank God anytime I come across new knowledge, new experiences, new opportunities to grow and learn.
Let's make one point, Dr. Hughes. That baby boy who you raised by yourself is now the CEO of Urban One, Alfred Liggins. And one of the things I'm so inspired by you, not only did you educate yourself, educate him, but then you sent him to Wharton to create a real generational wealth experience. And I thought that was so wise of you.
Not true. Not true. Okay. Not true. Okay. Let me put a little meat on that skeleton. Okay. And thank God for a gentleman named Larry Bailey who had graduated from the Wharton Graduate School of Business who happened to have been the chairman of the admissions committee at Wharton. Conspired with Alfred. Alfred went to him and said, 'Listen, you're our business manager.' Larry has been with us since the inception. All right. Back when I couldn't afford Larry, Larry was still creating my financial system for my company. And he said, 'I need an MBA.' And Larry said, 'Well, you got a problem because you didn't get an undergrad.' Okay. My son had been through his first successful year completion at Wharton before I became aware that he was even going to Wharton. I was terrified. Really. Oh my goodness. He kept, he was not returning my calls in the evenings. He was driving to Philadelphia three nights a week and all day on Saturday. There were these big blocks of my son's working for me as at that time as a salesman and a sales manager. He had already gone through the ranks of sales and now was a sales manager, but he's disappearing. And needless to say, when it's just you and your kid, you and your child, you're like, why are there these big blocks? And he kept saying, 'I've got something important to share with you, mother, but I can't share it with you just yet.' I was terrified. Is he dying? Has he gotten in trouble? What in the world is going on that my child does not return my calls? There's these blocks of time where he's just missing. So Larry Bailey, thank you God for Larry Bailey as the admissions person for Wharton, chairman, admissions chairman of the board at Wharton, had convinced them that he had observed Alfred for many years and that Alfred already knew a lot of what Wharton was teaching and to take him even without an undergrad degree on a provisional status. Wow. I did not send him to Wharton. He sent himself.
What a great, thank you for making that. And that says a lot about Alfred. That says a lot about him. But that also says about what you put into him and your mother put into him. And so my god, what a great story. Okay. So you got to make a choice.
I had to make a choice of either keeping my company alive and using the mortgage money. I have to honestly say thank you, thank you, thank you, dear God, creator of all, in the almost 45 years now of being in business, I have never missed a payroll and I have never had a check bounce.
