Azariah (AZ) Yemma, Yemma Enterprises

*Note: The following text is the output of transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.

Bill Berthel:
So AZ, thank you for doing this. This is awesome to get to know you, and I know that your message and your work is going to be meaningful to so many other people.

AZ:
Yeah, thanks for having me. I always enjoy sharing whenever I can to spread any kind of help to anybody trying to start a venture or lead or you know just even you know personal growth in life. Yeah, that’s a thing.

Bill Berthel:
That’s awesome. So Syracuse has been home your whole life?

AZ:
It’s been home my whole life. I had, I guess I’d say luck to be able to, well, at the time maybe not so lucky, but to move around a lot and for a little while and then it kind of stabled out. But the times that we did move around, we took a left here.

Bill Berthel:
A left here?

AZ:
The time that we did move around, I got to meet everybody from every side of town.
So that kind of gave me the ability, like right in our town. Sometimes when you come up in our community in a black and brown community or you live some type of street life, you’re stuck to a side of town or a place.

Bill Berthel:
Okay

AZ:
And I guess I was lucky enough to be able to be on all sides of town.

Bill Berthel:
And what allowed that or facilitated that for you?

AZ:
Just being born and raised on the east side, and then we had to move. My father lived on the south side, so going over there, I got to meet all of my brother and sister’s friends, so everybody like De Z. And then we had to move to another part of the south side, and then we had to move to the valley. So I’m meeting all these people and I’m just making connections and I always just try to make connections even at a young age, like Okay.

Bill Berthel:
So you learned how to network as a little kid?

AZ:
Yeah, early,

Bill Berthel:
Really early.

AZ:
Super early. And then we moved to the northeast side and we were just like, we stayed up there for pretty much the rest of my childhood, but then my grandparents, they remained on the east side of the building. So luckily I got to live almost on every side of town and get to make great friends and people just so coming up, I didn’t have the issue of not being able to go to a certain side of town or a particular side of town. So Syracuse, all the Syracuse is kind of home in me.

Bill Berthel:
Gotcha. Yeah. So you had kind family in all these places. So family ties to all these different areas that then expanded your networks through friends and neighbors and all of that.

AZ:
I think when you go other places, you realize that Syracuse is like a town, maybe a Cleveland or something. It’s a really tough town. We don’t get the credit for being as gritty and tough as we are. We go through a lot being number one in child poverty, being the ninth most segregated, and all the other things, the high lead levels in our water and Flint, Michigan level water pollution, which is affecting our children disproportionately. And we still get up every day and we still get out and we still work and we still, we’re just a strong city.

Bill Berthel:
I Think there’s a big divide in economics, and I think there’s a big divide still in race.

AZ:
Absolutely. I take it right? Being the ninth most segregated city in the country, that tells you everything you need to know. Redlining really, really impacted this area that in those times, and then you throw in 81, which is well documented, it is easy to go straight to just look online and to see what happened to our community when they put the highway through our community.

Bill Berthel:
So how the highway really physically and literally

AZ:
Impacted us to get

Bill Berthel:
Separated. Separated, right, separated.

AZ:
Correct. So those things tell the story, and it’s a very real story. Being one of the original members of Good Life Youth Foundation and being the program director there for a number of years, we worked with so many kids and the poverty was so different even in the age where I said, okay, we’ve seen some poverty. There’s no way I can even trade places with some of the things I’ve seen with these kids and the level of poverty and the level of issues from health to, I mean, educationally right now I’m in the process of starting a new nonprofit organization and with a big push on literacy because I noticed I had 40 kids in my caseload. I had three that could read on the third grade level. Right now they’re seeing in our eighth grade, black and brown boys, only 12% are reading that level 12%. That’s not sustainable. So what I bring a kid in the big push was entrepreneurship and learning how to make something out of nothing, but at the same time, even entrepreneurship. But it’s like if I got kids, we can go straight. If that can’t read, where am I going to bring them to get a job at?

Bill Berthel:
Oh, it’s awesome to have those kind of people in your life.

AZ:
That’s a fact.

Bill Berthel:
They’re this force or this energy that help keep momentum going, help keep moving

AZ:
All day

Bill Berthel:
And introduce you to new things. They’re staying out there on the fringe.

AZ:
Yeah, he’s always on the cutting edge. It’s something that’s new,

Bill Berthel:
That’s cool.

AZ:
And learning. Yeah, that’s how I came. And of course, whenever something like that pops up, I always try to take the opportunity to jump on it as well just because, and more so more than learning the concepts. I like being in spaces with people. I think what I’ve learned through my experience is that being in spaces with people are almost more important than what you can learn from the course. Right.

Bill Berthel:
Yeah, and I think that’s the true nature of social learning, that we get to bounce off of each other. We share ideas. There’s something about sharing that same space, nothing against using technology, but there’s something about being with people that you get that collective intelligence to go higher, bounce off each other,

AZ:
And then you just learn. And it’s also the connections that you make as well, because especially being a serial entrepreneur, I always need somebody for something. It is very rare that it’s like people that say always do it all by myself. It is very rare that I’m doing something by myself. It’s like I need somebody for something. And so I’m in the cohort as a woman that works at an insurance group and it’s like, well, right now we need insurance for here. So it is one of those things where it’s like all we’ve talked a bunch of times, so now I’m going to give her a call. So it’s like the connections are always paramount.

Bill Berthel:
So would you say that’s one of the keys to your successes, that ability to network?

AZ:
Yes. I would say high nineties. The networking is everything for me because I come from a non-traditional place, so I come from a place of being outside in the streets. So I grew up in the buildings on the east side, it is called Parkside Commons now, but way back when it was called Hilltop. And not too many of us made it out or had favorable projections because of where we lived at and the things that we were going through. And then growing up in my time period, that’s when crack hit the streets. And so it changed the complexion of our community. I literally watched the community change. We go from being family light to within a few years you’re watching Zombies in the Streets. And so at this point, you’re just like, you’re surviving. And so the only way that you make it out of something like that is by networking or someone grabbing you and helping you and saying, this is how we get out of here, or this is the way to move. And that kind of pushed my life mission. That’s why I do the things I do in the community to help. I understand that that’s the only way is through networking and helping.

Bill Berthel:
We consider that scaling leadership, that you’re scaling yourself out there into the world and not from an egotistical plays, but really lifting other people, really uplifting others. Where did you learn that?

AZ:
It just felt personal because I know I was lucky enough to be around natural leaders my whole life. So even when coming up in the buildings, and then I lived in the east side, but my father lived on the south side and our family was going through the same thing other families were going through with the drug problems and stuff. So I had my big brother, Carl, I watched him. He always marched to the tune of his own drummer. I never watched him to come to Peer Pressure. I always seen him do the things that he wanted to do when he wanted to do ’em. And I noticed that people just naturally just followed him without him having to say a word. He didn’t have to say anything. He just, whatever he did, he just,

Bill Berthel:
people would follow him,

AZ:
Just follow him just for no reason. And then I had my other brother, my sister husband, he was outside in the streets, but he showed me a different path, but I watched the same thing with him. He just came outside and he said, follow me, watch what I do. And so, okay, got it. And so I would just see how he moved and I’m like, okay. But at the same time realized that he was teaching me and I watched him have other people around and he would always get mad when they couldn’t think for himself.
So he’d be like, no, he would try to show them instead of just saying, just follow blindly. And so then I started realizing then once a person started showing me, okay, this is how we’re going to move from the street to here. And I’m like, okay. But I realized enough to know that, alright, if this didn’t happen for me, I wouldn’t be here. So I noticed other people that I have to pull along. You have to pay back.

Bill Berthel:
Tell me about some of your proudest accomplishments or proudest moments in your work.

AZ:
Well, I guess my proudest things is putting myself in a position to do the things that I wanted to do. Those things felt almost impossible because when I was young, I got introduced to music, six, seven years old. People around me in my house were DJs, and at the time, hip hop was young and it was big. We talking in the eighties and there was a record store across the street from me, a cold of music, shout DJ Cole. He was instrumental in our family. So I was too young to cross the street, but I was still across the street,

Bill Berthel:
So he would be there.

AZ:
So I’ll cross the street and he’ll get me about a half hour. He’ll let me listen to the records and then he’ll call across the street to my mom and my sister. Then they’ll come get me. And then I get in trouble all the way home and it’d be like the same thing every day.
I’m at the corner, I’m just like,

Bill Berthel:
But it was worth it, it was worth it.

AZ:
But I’m just waiting for something. I’m like, what are you guys, once you leave, I’m going back across the street. I’m sorry, I’m getting back to the record store. I’m going to get in here. I don’t care what you talking about, but my sisters through, throughout everything I say that they are probably the most instrumental people in my life because they always wrap their arms around me, but at the same time, show me something else. You know what I mean? I watched them go through struggles, but at the same time, graduate college, I watched them when people said they couldn’t do it. My sister was going through some things younger and they just countered her out. And two, three degrees later, I am watching this stuff and I know things aren’t great, but I’m watching it. But they bring me to my first concert.
I go to my first concert. I said, I’m going to do this right here. And people are just like, you’re going to get famous people to come to wherever you want to come. I said, yes. And if sometimes it felt impossible, because when you’re outside and you live in a different type of lifestyle, you live in a street style type of an environment. Sometimes you second guess yourself. You say, man, maybe this is all that I’m going to have. Maybe this is it. You know what I mean? Even though I graduated in the top 10% of my class in high school, I still felt sometimes you felt hopeless in trying to get in the SU and getting there and getting kicked out two, three times. But then winning academic excellence awards there and then having a 4.0, but it’s still getting kicked out because you’re catching legal cases and you’re still trying, you’re half in, half out trying to figure out how to survive.
And I go to another concert, Hard Not Life tour with Jay-Z, and I watched that show and I said it again, I was 10. The first show that time, I was in probably 11th grade. And I said I was in Rochester. I said, I’m going to do this. And so when I eventually got to the point, my ex-girlfriend’s brother, he brought me, he had a club. He let me DJ in here. He taught me how this is how you book an artist. We started, he started showing me how to do it, and I said, I’m still going to do it myself. So one of my biggest accomplishments was throwing my first show. So it was like, alright. I put everything together. We talk on a hundred thousand dollars show. I had $0 in my pocket, nothing. I’m like, how am I going to make this happen?
I still caught an agency, still got the paperwork. You got the money. Yeah, I got the money. I didn’t have nothing. Right? So I’m scrambling and I’m making it work. Then I’m like, all right, how do I start a business? I had nobody to show me how to do this, right? So I’m like, all right, I’m going to work it out myself. So I start just crashing, succeeding, failing, succeeding, and figuring it out. And to the point where I finally got it together and to walk out on the stage and tell everybody, I’m AZ. You know what I’m saying? Walking to my show. That was probably the first big thing that showed me. I think that right there gave me the confidence to know that anything after that is going to happen.

Bill Berthel:
What I also hear in your testimony, AZ, is that you want to bring others with you. And doing that, it’s not about getting to the top. Earlier you said, it’s not about puffing my chest out and being that kind of leader, you really want to bring people with you.

AZ:
I think it’s essential, right? I’m a faith-based person, so I don’t feel like God brings you through anything by accident or by coincidence. I think everything is done for a reason. I used to ask myself when I was going through some of those things, why am I going through it? And so one day when I was working with some kids and the foundation that I was in that we helped create, and the kid was going through a similar situation that I went through, and the light bulb came on, and this was early in my mentoring career. And I was like, I went through all of that so I could talk to him.
And he took to, and I noticed that every kid that I talked to, “thats AZ”, and they understood. They knew I understood what they were going through and what they were talking about and what they needed. So I’m like, hold up. I had to go through this to help others. And so I also, not only did I work with youth, but I also know that all the things that I learned in leadership, all the things that I learned in business building, all the things that I learned, I didn’t go through all those hardships. Not having anybody to show me. I know the frustration of not having nobody to show you what to do. I know the frustration of being at a place and not having a mentor to call and be like, what should I do? Or give me some advice. I didn’t, didn’t have those luxuries, those options I can lean on. I call family, but sometimes it’s different when they never kind of been in that situation. And so once I went through that, I realized, okay, those frustrations I went through because now I have to help other people.

Bill Berthel:
Syracuse is lucky to have you.

AZ:
I’m lucky to have Syracuse. It gave me grit. It gives you that grit, man. You’re going to get it one way or another.

Bill Berthel:
You’ve got it. And I like it in you. Yeah. Thanks man.

AZ:
Yes, sir. Thanks for having me.

Bill Berthel:
All right. Yeah.