Today we’d like to introduce you to David Bellard.
Hi David, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
My name is David Fitzgerald Bellard, Jr. I was born on December 7, 1994, in the small rural town of Opelousas, LA. From a young age, I have always shown a high aptitude for learning and an understanding of the value of hard work. I was “the smart kid.” The one that everyone votes as Most Likely To Succeed. You know, the kid everyone expected to be a doctor, lawyer, engineer, or something like that. Like many people, I thought that this would be my path, so I worked hard and earned an academic scholarship along with a chance to play football at Louisiana Tech University. Against the advice of just about everyone at the university, I decided to major in engineering & quickly found myself overwhelmed by my workload as a student-athlete. This challenged me to try harder, but I ultimately concluded that engineering wasn’t for me and ended up changing my major to Biology during my sophomore year.
My major pivot was not well planned and was done with the intention of keeping me on track to graduate in four years. Shortly after changing my major, I made the decision to leave football and get a job. This provided me with income and peace of mind but I still has an issue. I did not have a real plan. During my junior year, I realized that I would much rather do business & marketing, but I wasn’t trying to get a bunch of student loan debt by changing my major again. So during the summers, Jared, Kelly and I began to work on various side ventures trying everything from dropshipping to forex to making an influencer page. We didn’t know it at the time, but those summers began to sow the seeds of what would grow to be BWR.
After graduating, I started the process of becoming an EMT and during that time, I was introduced to Rich Dad Poor Dad by one of my best friends/co-founders Jared Spiller. The book opened my eyes to the realm of financial literacy and ignited my passion for entrepreneurship. From that point forward, I felt that it was imperative to share this information with people who look like me based on a firm belief that a large part of our issues are rooted in economics. If we knew this type of information earlier, we would see many of the changes we wish to see in the black community as well as a higher level of achievement. That is exactly what we aim to accomplish with this platform; educating the black masses on the importance of financial literacy & group economics by providing them with examples as well as the tools and resources to help them attain wealth.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
What started out as a passion project grew very rapidly into a movement on social media, however, we did not have a lot of the systems and processes in place to ensure that we were growing as a business. This lead to us doing a whole lot of work for free and ending up with what was essentially a very time-consuming hobby.
As our brand continued to grow exponentially, we launched the podcast in March of 2019 in order to continue pushing educational conversations forward in a longer format. We saw our podcast grow very rapidly to become on of the top 100 business podcasts in the world, but we still were not pulling in the revenue necessary to work full time in the business. I continued to push forward and work on the business while working my 9-5 but I kept running into timing issues finding that BWR was taking up a lot of my time while I was at work, leaving me to neglect some duties. After struggling to maintain for a while I made the difficult decision to step out on faith and work full time in my business even though it wasn’t paying me yet.
For six months, I grinded it out; living at home with my parents, I reduced spending to an absolute minimum & spent all day working on improving systems & processes in BWR while also building my own brand on the side. It was an extremely challenging times with many ups and down, but in the end, I was able to not only replace my income from my job but actually earn more than I was getting paid as an employee! Since I’ve been focused on taking the business to the next level & impacting more people
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Black Wealth Renaissance?
Black Wealth Renaissance is a media platform that is focused on normalizing conversations about wealth in the black community through sharing the stories and experiences of successful black entrepreneurs and investors. We also share helpful resources and tips that we believe will be useful in attaining and maintaining generational wealth. BWR is helping to push the culture forward through exposing our people to information that they can use to improve their lives today.
We offer free downloadable guides, digital courses, advertising services, and a private online community, BWR Academy, where we host bi-weekly classes and answer people’s questions in real-time. In addition, we also host events all across the DFW area for entrepreneurs and investors to connect and build business relationships.
We’d love to hear about any fond memories you have from when you were growing up?
Getting put to work in the garden and around the yard by my grandmother. It wasn’t always fun but I appreciate the skills and values instilled in me by doing this.
Pricing:
- BWR Academy – $47 A Month
- Courses – $47-$297
- Book – $25
Contact Info:
- Email: info@blackwealthrenaissance.com
- Website: www.blackwealthrenaissance.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/blackwealthrenaissance/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/blackwealthrenaissance/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/bwr_movement
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCewW14-cu36GV3D-HgKQS9Q
Image Credits
David Bellard Kelly Rhodes Jalen Clark Jared Spiller Photographer: Matthew Johnson
