On this episode of Butternomics, our host, Brandon Butler, talks with Big Block, the East Side Chevy rider and founder of Block Entertainment, and Ralph Sorrentino, VP of Operations for the Jim Ellis Automotive Group, about what happens when the music business and the car business come together to build something Atlanta hasn’t seen before.

Block breaks down his run from Tupac and Bad Boy to building his own label, and why ownership is the only real way to scale. Ralph pulls back the curtain on how the largest privately owned dealership group in Georgia actually makes money, and why every business needs fans, not customers.

Together they get into treating every vehicle like an artist, the Teachers Keep Us Moving program giving back to local schools, and why your neighborhood car dealership does more for the community than you realize.

Follow Big Block at @bigblockesc and find Ralph at any Jim Ellis dealership in Atlanta.

On this episode of Butternomics, our host, Brandon Butler, talks with Fred Blankenship, morning anchor of Channel 2 Action News This Morning on WSB-TV, the voice waking up Atlanta since 2007. Fred takes us from a 12-year-old kid in Harbor City, California who wanted to be the guy inside the TV, to the biggest decision of his career: when New York’s number one market offered him the job but told him to change his name, he said no and kept Blankenship.

Brandon and Fred get into building a personal brand inside a legacy institution, why authenticity became the whole strategy, using energy and 90s hip hop to connect with a city at 4:30 in the morning, protecting your peace in a heavy business, and how Atlanta made him who he is.

On this episode of Butternomics, our host, Brandon Butler, talks with entrepreneur and financial educator William Cross about how to teach the next generation what most of us had to learn late. William, founder of Wealthi AI, grew up in Tampa without ever hearing about 529s, trusts, or estate planning, then built a company to close that exact gap for kids.

He opens up about going from a long Word document to a book that sold over 5,000 copies, turning that book into a 10-hour curriculum, and building Wealthi AI into what he calls the Duolingo for financial literacy. He also gets honest about what it really costs to build an app, why $500 won’t get it done, and why vibe coding gets non-technical founders in trouble. If you want to put real money skills in a kid’s hands, this conversation is the blueprint.

On this episode of Butternomics, our host, Brandon Butler, talks with philanthropic leader Cicley Gay about how nonprofits actually work and why so many people get it wrong. Cicley, board chairwoman of the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation and founder of The Amplifiers, breaks down why a nonprofit is a $1.5 trillion industry that runs like a business, why no money doesn’t mean no money, and why a nonprofit is supposed to solve the problem and go away.

She explains the difference between a nonprofit and a foundation, what funders are really looking for when they read your grant, and why only 2.9% of donations go to Black-led organizations. She also gets honest about leading with love, why she calls bankruptcy a financial tool, and what it takes to build a foundation that lasts. If you have an idea for a nonprofit or you want to understand where the money really goes, this conversation is the blueprint.

On this episode of Butternomics, our host, Brandon Butler, talks with M. Cole Jones, founder of Rise Ventures, about how he turned the power of sports and entertainment into a vehicle for wealth generation in Atlanta.

M. Cole breaks down how Rise owns and activates the largest field-level suite at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, why the best deals happen outside the boardroom, and how he saw Atlanta's sports boom coming a decade before the World Cup and another Super Bowl landed here. He gets into his early days building in Atlanta's tech ecosystem with Cavello, the relationships that shaped the city's builder community, what Black operators really need to know to get to the money, and why raising capital isn't always the answer.

On this episode of Butternomics, our host, Brandon Butler, talks with entrepreneur and financial planner Latavius Powell about the $2.5 billion NIL boom and what it’s really doing to young athletes. Latavius, CEO of CSG Wealth Management, breaks down why these million dollar checks are 1099 income, how the IRS becomes the worst loan shark a young person can face, and how athletes go rags to riches to rags without the right plan.

He shares the building blocks of generational wealth, why schools put contracts in front of teenagers with no lawyer in the room, and what it takes to bring that money back to the community. If you have a young athlete in your life, this conversation will save you from costly mistakes.

Most companies are still spending millions on beautiful, polished content that almost nobody cares about. Shannon Watkins has sat at the top of the brands that figured this out and the ones that didn't. Former CMO of Aflac, global CMO of Jordan Brand, and former global CMO at Fiserv, she's spent her whole career at the intersection of brand and culture, and she pulled up to Butternomics to break down what's really changing in how brands win.

We get into the multimillion dollar mistake brands keep repeating, why people stopped trusting brand voices and started trusting people instead, and what brands are actually buying when they pay a creator. Shannon breaks down the difference between brand, marketing, and advertising, why the agency model is getting disrupted in real time, and the earnings report move every creator should be using before they pitch a single brand.

She also takes us through the road that got her here. The pre-med plan she walked away from at Fisk. The worst assignment at Kraft that taught her the foundation of business. The Powerade campaign built around Derrick Rose and a Tupac poem. The Teyana Taylor partnership at Jordan Brand that changed how she saw creators forever. And now Watkins Brand Advisors, where she's helping CEOs, nonprofits, and creators figure out the problem behind the problem. This one's for the founders, the creators, and anybody trying to build something real around their creativity. Shannon doesn't hold back. Watch the full episode and let us know what hit hardest. Connect with Shannon Watkins on LinkedIn and Instagram, and check out Watkins Brand Advisors.

Simone Hardeman-Jones flew into ATL to break down how she's reimagining what philanthropy actually looks like. As executive director of Green Light Fund Twin Cities, she walks into rooms full of wealthy people and convinces them to invest in the communities everybody else overlooks. We get into the Minnesota paradox. It's ranked number one in quality of life and dead last in the income gap between Black and white residents. Same state. Two completely different realities depending on who you are.

Simone shares how Green Light Fund finds high-impact programs that don't exist yet in a community, brings them in, and backs them with $600K in seed funding over four years. We talk about the maternal health crisis where 95% of Black maternal deaths were preventable, the food logistics problem hiding behind 9 million food shelf visits, and why she stopped selling her community as a problem to fix.

She also gets into what it means to be a Black woman asking for money in rooms that weren't built to welcome her, the difference between deciding for a community versus with it, and the fifth-grade letter-writing campaign that started it all. Learn more about Green Light Fund at greenlightfund.org Subscribe for more conversations on the business of culture.

David Shands didn't set out to build a podcast. He started interviewing speakers to sell tickets to his Social Proof Conference, stopped when the event was over, then picked it back up the next year because it actually worked. Now he runs Podcast Summit, two studios, and a community teaching entrepreneurs how to turn an audience into a business.

In this episode he breaks down the formula. Don't start a podcast because it's a good idea. Start one that cultivates an audience of people who will buy what you sell. Sell strollers, talk to mothers. Sell motivation shirts, tell the stories of people who built something from nothing. The audience and the product have to line up.

David gets into why he'd take 1,000 real podcast listeners over 50,000 random YouTube views, why going viral on a 60 second clip doesn't actually grow your brand in 2026, and the math on a $2 community of 10,000 people. He talks through episode 54, the one that finally hit after 54 tries, and why most people quit at 10. We also get into why he built Podcast Summit in Atlanta after losing $250K on the first one in Miami, his full AI workflow for solo episodes, and the line he keeps coming back to: content needs a business model. If you're sitting on 200 views an episode and thinking about quitting, this is the one to watch.

Atlanta calls itself the Black Mecca. But ask who actually owns the city, who gets pushed out when the money moves, and who benefits from all this growth, and the answer gets complicated.

Nathaniel Smith has spent his life on that question. He's the Founder and Chief Equity Officer of the Partnership for Southern Equity, and he grew up in Kirkwood watching the Olympics, gentrification, and the crack era reshape the neighborhoods he loved. He started with one $500 check and built a 16-year movement. In this episode, Brandon Butler sits down with Nathaniel to break down what equity really means, why the Beltline put people in position to fund their own displacement, and how Atlanta built its Black wealth in the first place.

They get into tax allocation districts, why organized people matter as much as organized money, and why he believes Atlanta is the place that has to get it right. This one is for anybody who loves this city and wants to see it work for everybody in it. So goes Atlanta, so goes the South. So goes the South, so goes the nation.