Johnny Hackett Jr’s pivot from corporate life to impacting lives with Black Dollar Corp

Johnny Hackett Jr had it made in corporate – good money, decent hours, healthcare, a respected title. Everything was going great, except Johnny felt like he wasn’t making a true impact on the community. So right before he was about to get a nice bonus, he left to make a difference.

Transcript

Alisa Herr: Welcome to Inside Impact, where we give you a behind the scenes peek at how organizations can create positive change in their communities. I’m Alisa Herr, founder of Unity Web agency. And on the show today, Johnny Hackett Jr. from Black Dollar Corp and Black Friday market comes on to share what he’s been doing to impact the black entrepreneurship community. Johnny and I have known each other for years now. We met back in 2018, when he actually applied to work with me at Unity.

Johnny Hackett: I was a business systems analyst at Blue Cross at the time, was getting paid great money through Blue Cross, you know what I’m saying to do whatever, but it just wasn’t challenging. And I wanted to do something different that actually made a difference, took less money to come work with Alisa and even left Blue Cross a month before I was about to get like a huge bonus. Like, I didn’t want to do it, I was ready to like get out of there.

Alisa Herr: We were lucky enough to be a part of the Johnny Hackett experience for almost two years before he went out on his own with Black Dollar. That company is an online directory of over 1100 black owned businesses. That’s right, 1100, which is just incredible. Then during the pandemic, Johnny started the Black Friday market retail space in downtown Raleigh. 

Johnny Hackett: A lot of people know about Black Friday market now. The retail store that basically makes the directory kind of a real place for retail businesses anyway. So you know, a lot of people call it black Walmart, we do have an official partnership with Walmart right now, which I haven’t. 

Alisa Herr: Wow

Johnny Hackett: That I announced it just now. 

Full Episode Transcript

Johnny Hackett Jr is the founder and CEO of Black Friday Market and Black Dollar Corp.

Full video from the Earfluence Podcast Studio at American Underground

Inside Impact is hosted by Unity Web Agency CEO Alisa Herr and is produced by Earfluence.

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