A Building Block of Community | Jefferson Ellison

Jefferson Ellison is the first to say he grew up with privilege. His father was Asheville’s vice mayor and ran his own law firm for 40 years, and his mother holds two master’s degrees. 

Still at 31, Jefferson isn’t taking shortcuts with his own career or place in the city. He sits on the boards of the Asheville Downtown Association and the Downtown Commission, and he’s a voice of influence on The Block Collaborative, which is working with city leaders on the revisioning of Pack Square.

Today, I talk with Jefferson about his upbringing, his perspective on supporting his community, the complexities of gentrification and his thoughts on reparations. Underscoring it all is how he leverages his self-described privilege to help elevate Black Asheville.

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Transcript

Matt Peiken: We're in your office, and I asked you about the baseball glove that is hanging on a wall all by itself here in your basement studio. Tell me about the significance. 

Jefferson Ellison: You're in the office at a time where we're redecorating again, but around the office is random baseball paraphernalia.

Because, so my office is a building that my dad and his old business partner before he passed, my Uncle Howard, bought in my childhood. It's on The Block, and it was originally owned by Early McQueen, and in the 50s she ran the Ritz Restaurant. And during that time, the Ritz Restaurant it was also, she would also [00:01:00] house the players from the Negro League.

And so that was the story I heard a lot growing up because when my dad had it, he re he brought back the Ritz restaurant and he and my uncle Howard, they restored the building. They took. The old floors and put them on the wall And so the first floor was a sofu restaurant and the second floor was a jazz club And so I grew up in the jazz club.

I took all the time I used to grow up doing my homework in the cigar room while Cat Williams sang on stage and that was my childhood And so when we got when we I started renting the building back from mountain housing. I really we were decorating I really wanted To have little nods so I could tell that story because a lot of people who didn't know miss McLean before she passed I didn't know that this building, that was something that she did, was house the players from the Negro League.

And so every time somebody talks about baseball, they know I don't play baseball. And so it's just an opportunity to tell that story. 

Matt Peiken: That's interesting. So your father owned this building. Yes. And did you, did the building change hands between your father and you? Or did you? Yes. It did. Talk about that and then talk about how that changed hands and [00:02:00] your reclamation of this building.

Jefferson Ellison: Okay, yeah my dad's a lawyer, but like many country businessmen, he finds himself making investments, and this building, Ms. McQueen was someone who had been very instrumental in his life, my dad is also from here. And so Ms. McQueen, she owned a significant portion of this block in the 50s, along with the Ray family, who owned the first Black hospital and the first Black funeral home, and they also ran the pharmacy on the street that was on the YMI.

And so this, in the late 90s, this building was up, was going through foreclosure. And so my dad and his best friend, my Uncle Howard, who was another lawyer, they bought it at a foreclosure, and they were like let's try something. And they owned it for a little bit over 20 years. And so it was the Ritz restaurant and the Ritz jazz club.

It was a private members only jazz club. And then he had offices on the third floor. And like, when I say that was my childhood, like my childhood was I would do piano lessons at the YMI with Jacqueline King, may she rest in peace. [00:03:00] And then we'd come over here and we'd have dinner. And I spent my Saturdays doing the YMI a Jazz Band, and then we'd come over here and we'd eat.

I had every birthday party from 11 to 17 in this building. And throughout the course of the time my dad owned it, It was multiple restaurants at one point it was a Jamaican restaurant at one point it was mr. Jeans. My dad decided to sell it and he sold it to Mountain Housing who now owns it. They've been chasing development in this area for 30 plus years.

And my dad has been a part of that the entire time because, like I said, he's from here. He also used to be vice mayor. He was on city council. He was also on the board of the YMI. So he's just been around this area. He's still in town here. Yes. My dad's still practicing law. Yeah. His office is two blocks from mine.

Matt Peiken: So how did it go from the hands of mountain housing back to you?

Jefferson Ellison: Mountain Housing is a client of mine and their partner Eagle Market Streets is also a client of mine. And when the old tenant moved out, Stephanie Swepson Twitty, who was the executive director from Eagle Market Streets, who knows my family, she [00:04:00] called me and let me know that my dad's old building was up. I had a full time job. I was working at East Fork and was thinking about going back to work for myself, but I wasn't sure.

And she called me one day and she. Did not know me that well, but she knew my parents well And she spoke life into me for two and a half hours, and she just said she's like I don't know you But I've known you your entire life, and I just feel like you are not happy and So she gave me my first contract that allowed me to leave my full time job to reopen my business and then Six months later, she called me again about this building and we negotiated my lease for six months. Like she Gave me very favorable terms. Like she has continually poured into me and made it possible for my business to grow. 

It means a lot to me to be in a building that I grew up in and to be in a Black business district as a black business . 

Matt Peiken: This is what brings us into the reason for having this conversation in a way is your investment in this, in The Block. So talk about [00:05:00] your upbringing in activism in terms of not just being an. a member of this community, but taking an active role in the direction of this community and the health of your community.

Jefferson Ellison: I am not an activist. I did not come to be an activist. I am not an organizer. I am just a person who happens to be Black, who happens to be from here. I grew up in the church. My parents really instilled in me to be good, right? But also my dad always told us the secret to success is hard work and you need to find something bigger than yourself to care about. And so I just care a lot about my community and I moved, I went to school. I'm from here, went to Asheville high, went to NC state.

I moved to New York and then moved back, and so when I came back I had been away for eight years, hadn't really seen what Asheville was going through. I graduated high school in 2011, so that's when I moved to Raleigh and I moved straight to New York in 2015 and moved back in 2018 . And when I moved back and just saw how much the Black community had shrank.

Matt Peiken: Describe the Asheville that you [00:06:00] returned to and what had changed? 

Jefferson Ellison: It was just different. Asheville has always been like a small town, but it shifted where like the culture and the community aspects seemed a little bit more distant. They seemed farther apart than they used to be. You know what I mean? And it seemed whiter for sure and the conversation when I was growing up was a little less Pessimistic and more so here's the things that are happening. Here's how everybody can plug in. 

Matt Peiken: You said it was a whiter community, right? Notice when you came back Why do you think that happened? 

Jefferson Ellison: I talk about this all the time. Everyone likes to say that the Black community is shrinking because people can't afford to live here. And I tell people all the time, that's not true. The poor Black people in Asheville are still here because they can't afford to move.

It is the middle class Black people who have left this city . And they've moved to a city where Black culture thrives. They've moved to Charlotte and Atlanta or even Spartanburg, right? And I grew up with Black doctors and Black dentists and Black teachers. And there was a Black superintendent of Asheville city schools at the time, like [00:07:00] seeing Black people own a home and live a life was not a weird thing growing up.

My parents, my mom's a shrink, my dad's a lawyer. That was not talked about so often. Now it is like the way people talk to me and the way, especially white people who are new to Asheville, when they see me being a 31 year old Black person who owns his own business, and I told them that my dad's owned a business for 40 years, and my mom is a psychotherapist.

The way they marvel at that, as if that is so interesting, because the narrative around the Black community has shifted so much, because as the Black community gets smaller in Asheville, the conversations start to shift. That is the big difference. So I came back and being Black was just a lot more noticeable in Asheville 

Matt Peiken: Yeah, you said that you weren't raised in activism. You were raised to be a good person. You grew up in the church. Yet, right now you're part of The Collaborative. Describe The Collaborative. What are the roots of it, and your involvement? Why you got [00:08:00] involved?

Jefferson Ellison: The Block Collaborative is a neighborhood association for the members of The Block, and it's something that started About four years ago when the YMI was beginning to raise money for the capital campaign, Leaf Global Arts had just finished their construction of their spot. Noir Collective had started building a presence and Pennycup was settling into their space.

And so I think the neighborhood felt the energy shifting and wanting to bring more foot traffic to The Block from Biltmore Avenue. And so they started having these meetings . And over time, it's gone from being a monthly meeting to a weekly meeting. And so now as a neighbor on The Block, I go to these meetings and as somebody who drinks too much coffee and has a big mouth, I facilitate the meetings.

Because I'm like, we only have an hour, so we have to get some shit done. So I am not the leader of it. I am the loud person there who takes the notes 

Matt Peiken: But there has to be some conversation about how this area is also developing. There are now hotels on this block that didn't exist before. [00:09:00] Sure. And I'm wondering what the conversation is among you and your colleagues, you and your neighbors around this development that's happening around you that, the hotelification. The short term rental market that seems to threaten housing in this entire city. 

I'm just wondering, are you and your neighbors starting to develop a voice around we want to speak around development and what we're open to and what we are concerned about? 

Jefferson Ellison: Yes and no. I think first and foremost, everyone needs right?

We, and remember that these are all people trying to pay bills. First and foremost, we are all renters. 

Matt Peiken: You're talking about the people in The Block. 

Jefferson Ellison: Right? Like we are a business association in this neighborhood. And so our biggest goals when we get together is how are we keeping each other safe? How are we supporting each other? And how are all these businesses supporting our family units? And then as individuals in the world, we all have different levels of interest and capacities in greater politics [00:10:00] and the hotelification of what's happening in Asheville. And as that informs The Block, we discuss that.

But I think, and I say we need to calm down because I think sometimes people think that everybody who is oppressed is sitting around and Trying to become an activist and trying to become an organizer. It's no, we are first and foremost trying to pay our bills. And then everyone with additional capacity decides how they can engage with the rest of the world.

But we all talk about the fact that we can't change the world that's happening. Tourism is here. Hotels are coming. Short term rentals, all that's here and we can't stop that. So our goal is just to make sure that we're all informed and we can say, okay, Hey, this is new information. How do you feel about it?

Do you care? A lot of times something will come up. We'll be like. Does anyone here care? No? Okay, let's move on. Let's not pretend to care about something that we as a group or everyone in this group doesn't currently care about this topic. And let's bring it back when it's more relevant to us. But sometimes the rent is more important than some hotel coming down the street.

Matt Peiken: Yeah. And at the same time, rents are affected because of hotels coming down the [00:11:00] street. Sure. And how Broadway is the main tourist pipeline, main commerce activity for tourism here. You're just a block away. Are you and your neighbors talking about how can we leverage our proximity to Broadway to bring some of that tourism into Market Street and boost our businesses?

Or is that not the kind of Businesses that are developing here. 

Jefferson Ellison: We talk about that all the time. We talk about how, built more like the foot traffic on, I also used to own a retail store on The Block years ago during COVID. I opened the store and closed it very quickly. Oh, you did? Yes.

But we talk about all the time, how the foot traffic on The Block is different than the foot traffic on Biltmore. And so there's conversations about like wayfinding and signage and, how we make and that's one of the roles I play is, how is all the businesses marketing their business to make sure that people who are on Biltmore on their phones looking for the next thing to do, they know to turn left to come to The Block, right?

And so that's part of why we became The Collaborative because we [00:12:00] realized that some of these other neighborhoods like South Slope and West Asheville and the River Arts District that tourists seem to be more familiar with. The things they had in common was they were a organized group of people that were putting out their own marketing, right?

So now The Block has an Instagram page and we tell people to come to The Block, and all the businesses on The Block also do their part to make sure that they're marketing their businesses in all the places that's happening. But, at the same time, the thing that makes The Block complicated, it's complicated as like a shared entities, everyone here is not doing the same thing. There are some businesses on The Block that love tourism. Some businesses on The Block that don't care about tourism. Some businesses on The Block that aren't businesses, they're people, right?

You have affordable housing on the street. You have luxury condos on the street. You have associates who does hair braiding and there's two barbershops here right, there used to be a convenience store here, that is not for tourists. And then you have tourist attractions like the YMI, like Leaf Global Arts, that are very much and can be in service to both locals and to tourists, and of [00:13:00] interest to tourists coming through the city.

And then you have places like Penny Cup that will sell coffee to anyone, and Noir Collective that sells gifts and And daily wares to anyone so they benefit from tourism. They also love locals too and then i'm just an office. 

Matt Peiken: You just happen to have your office here You could be anywhere 

Jefferson Ellison: right and that's what I was saying It's like we're not all in the same proximity or relationship with foot traffic. 

Matt Peiken: At the same time most of you correct me if i'm wrong in this most of you are renting your Shops your offices. Are any of them Black owned buildings? 

Jefferson Ellison: Eagle Market Streets is a Black led organization has always been Black led from my understanding when it was founded in 1994. And they own a significant portion of The Block.

And then the YMI owns a significant portion of The Block. And then the Mount Zion owns a significant portion of The Block. And so those are all Black led non profits. 

Matt Peiken: Which I would think would help insulate this region from potential gentrification that has affected other regions and pushed a number of Black residents out of those neighborhoods, I would think there'd be some [00:14:00] insulation from that because of the Black ownership of these buildings. 

Jefferson Ellison: Two things. One, anyone can gentrify. And white people when they move into Black neighborhoods don't have to gentrify, they choose to, right? And there are plenty of Black people in different cities who gentrify Black neighborhoods.

Gentrification is not a race thing, it's a choice of capitalism . But, the neighbors on The Block care about making sure The Block is a great place for locals and Black businesses, Black and brown businesses, and there are white businesses on The Block. But I do think because Eagle Market Streets is focused on the sustainable development of Black and brown businesses, and the YMI is the oldest Black cultural institution in this country, and Mount Zion is a historic Black church, those institutions are our stakeholders and they keep us grounded in what The Block was. 

Matt Peiken: I really appreciate you articulating it in that way, in that Gentrification, in and of itself, it's not race dictated. Anybody can gentrify. But [00:15:00] because of the entities that own these buildings that you just spoke of, there is a motivation to keep these buildings in the hands of Black business and Black residents. 

Jefferson Ellison: They care. But again, everyone can care, right? Look at the Foundry. The Foundry is a Hilton. And the Foundry since it's been open, and I feel comfortable saying this, has tried really hard to be as Black as possible.

Matt Peiken: What do you mean by that? 

Jefferson Ellison: Like, when Benne opened, it was nothing but Black people working there. Benne has only had Black chefs. All of my friends have worked at Benne. I have known everybody. Like I have run into ex boyfriends working at Benne. Like everyone has worked at Benne or at the Foundry.

The Foundry's general manager is Black. The Foundry, they are part of The Block Collaborative? They may not be Black owned, but because they're on a Black street, They choose to engage in cultural conversations and they do their part To make sure that they are part of a Blacker presence in asheville.

Matt Peiken: I'm glad you told me that. Benne is one of my favorite restaurants in this [00:16:00] town. Now, with Pack Square and the redesign of Pack Square that's been talked about for years. There've been committee meetings with stakeholders, residents, longtime residents about what should happen.

What is the role that you and your colleagues on The Block Collaborative are having around the redesign of Pack Square and how it integrates or doesn't with The Block? 

Jefferson Ellison: So the city applied and received a grant from the Mellon Foundation to Redesign Pack Square. And as part of that redesign, it was, they wanted a greater connectivity to The Block.

And that happened. And The Block Collaborative was made aware of that when the money came through. And Dana Frankel, Steph Munson Dahl, who run that program, have been very active in coming to us and letting us know this is the process, these are the options.

And I think for the last eight to nine months, we've been in a conversation with the city and the county about what that project is and what it [00:17:00] isn't and how The Block Collaborative can be involved as the city tries to forge deeper connections to Pack Square and The Block.

My firm applied for the community facilitator position. That was very well documented when it came out to manage the project or The Block portion of the project. We were not awarded that contract, but since then we've been in conversations with the city and so we are taking on a different role with the city and the project as in managing the community coordination.

Matt Peiken: How does that sit with you? Not getting awarded that contract, but yet being asked to do this other role? 

Jefferson Ellison: Okay This is hilarious because actually this is the first time I've ever talked to anyone about this because when it was happening I told the people at Blue Ridge Public Radio and to be able to leave me alone, but I applied for the city contract because I am a consultant. I run a consultancy and one of my mentors has been encouraging me since I started expanding my business to look [00:18:00] into city contracts. So like city contracts are a great way for consultancies to sort of, get to become more bonafide, they're longer. Should have said brings stability.

So I apply for the contract. I came in second out of, I think, 11 applicants. And so I was upset by it, but also I'm happy. It was the first time I've applied for a city contract. So it was like, I was the highest ranking local firm. So that felt nice. I was disheartened by the way the community discussed it because my score and my firm's name was released into the public and as the loser without my permission and that's both fine and also like 

Matt Peiken: That's pretty unusual.

Jefferson Ellison: I don't follow city contracts like that in the news, but I think because it is The Block and it's this conversation, everyone's really excited about this idea. And so I think like a lot of things, this project and how the first round of the RFP with the city council and the city played out, it became Like an avatar [00:19:00] for everyone's greater frustrations with race relations in the city and how money works.

And so at some point I remember saying to my mom, I don't think anyone having this conversation is thinking about how this makes me feel. I don't mind telling people that I applied for, that I put in a proposal for a contract that I did not get. But for months people were talking about the fact that I did not get something.

And then the people who didn't care about it, they thought I caused this hubbubaloo about me not getting a contract. And that, I didn't love that because that's just not what happened. 

Matt Peiken: And from what you're telling me, that this incident was used as a sort of an example of a disconnect between Black community and city administration.

Jefferson Ellison: I think it's a disconnect with how things work as a whole. And it's all public, but like when you look back at the conversations being had around this development, the issues people had were not how the scores played out, it was the process itself, and the process is [00:20:00] defined like over years, like how the city does RFPs is not a case by case basis, it is a policy, and it just felt like this moment became a time to talk about other things. And so throughout this process, once the dust settled, the city came back and said, what we are realizing in this conversation is that it is a bigger project Than initially thought about and there is deeper work to be done and also to be clear, the firm that won the contract is somebody I know.

At first time I met Dr. Margaret Brunson was at Noir Collective, and she spent two hours trying to convince me to go to grad school. That's a very, she's a lovely person. And we didn't even know we were competing for the same contract til after it was all over. 

Matt Peiken: Oh, that's awkward.

Jefferson Ellison: I called her and I said, respectful. I said, bitch, what the hell? I was like, what is happening? And and that just goes to show how this conversation sort of flows. It's like all the people who are being quote unquote pitted against each other, we're all in community together. I love the people at the city who are managing this contract.

I love the people on city council. I consider a decent portion of what I'm sitting here on to be personal friends of mine. And someone like Sandra Kilgore has [00:21:00] been in my life most of my life. We and we can have disagreements on the greater politics and policies of the world, but we're all in community together.

And so I think, overall, the city council, the community at large wanted more local buy in. And so because the local, the firm that won the contract that was most qualified, Dr. Margaret Brunson is smarter than I am. I feel comfortable saying that's a brilliant woman and she has years of experience on me.

At the end of the day, I am not upset that a Black firm in Durham who does amazing work is getting a job. And so if she is more qualified than I am to do work that impacts the Black community at large, great for them. And because they happen to not be here, the project shifts a little because okay, the most qualified people got this job. How does that shift the rest of the work? Let's have boots on the ground. And we can work together. That's really nice. 

Matt Peiken: So your reaction happened in stages, first to not getting the initial contract and nobody asking you how, [00:22:00] just how this was hitting you, they were using it as an avatar for some of the problems that were happening.

Jefferson Ellison: And I think that happens a lot with, I serve on the downtown commission and I'm also on the board of the Asheville Downtown Association, so I'm in a lot of conversations around a lot of things. And I think a lot of times people use moments as avatars for greater frustrations, and I want, and I invite more people to remember that there are people involved in these conversations. Like people who work for the city are not politicians.

The people who make these decisions are not politicians. They're just trying to do a job. Everyone here has bills. Everyone here has a boss like they have people who work for the city work facility because there are good benefits there. They're not rich from that job.

Sure. And so I invite everybody to remember that most of the people in this work for community development, they are not politicians. They are people trying to do a job so they can go home to their families and pay their bills . 

Matt Peiken: You just said you're on the board of the Asheville Downtown Association and the Downtown Commission, right? For somebody who's not inherently [00:23:00] an activist, who doesn't see themselves as a political player, you're in a role of shaping public policy to some degree. Since taking on these roles, what are you conscious about that is driving you on a more public level in terms of the role you can play in shaping your community that you weren't necessarily aware of before joining these boards. 

Jefferson Ellison: The only thing that is new information to me from that standpoint is how ignorant people are to how the world works. I am very clear with people. The life I have lived is strictly based on the fact that I had come from a family of praying women and privilege. My parents paid for college. I always know that if I have some place, if something goes wrong, I have a house to go home to and I don't need to help them pay the rent.

And if I need 20, somebody in my life, it may not be my mom I give it to me. My brother got a job. I got friends with money. I have so much privilege in my life, both through the amount of love poured into me and also the amount of access I have had. My [00:24:00] father was vice mayor. He ran for city council. My dad has run his own law firm for 40 years. My mother has two master's degrees. That is privilege. My grandfather went to college. That is privilege. And so I am living this life because of the generations of love and privilege and prayer that I have been blessed with. And so the amount of people who don't realize that when they talk about things, that is what has been most shocking to me .

Work is hard. This city is hard. It is hard to make money in this city. It is hard to live in this city. It is hard to be Black in this city. It is hard to be poor in this city. It's hard to not be from here in this city. And the amount of people who disregard that in their conversations around things and policies, that has been shocking to me.

Once I realized that I had privilege, I started speaking more frankly about it because I realized that without naming it, people don't know how to get around it.

And as somebody who is both assigned male at birth who still identifies as a man, who's somebody who is Black but was raised in, I mean I have a [00:25:00] huge family and I've always been around Black people, but I was like one of two Black families in my neighborhood growing up. I was like the only, one of two Black families in the country club I went to growing up.

I've always been the only Black person in the room most of the time, and so white people do not scare me, and I'm comfortable around white people, and I'm equally And more comfortable around a lot of Black people and I am also someone who is queer, but I am also someone who is 6'3 250 pounds.

Like I am comfortable in majority male spaces as well. And so I live in a lot of nuance and I live in gray areas. And so talking to people about complicated issues is something I'm very good at and I enjoy doing. And most of this work around harm reduction and intersectionality and restorative justice requires hard conversations and dealing with complicated, nuanced topics, and a lot of times the reasons they don't work is because there's nobody there to make sure that what you said is what somebody heard. 

Matt Peiken: A question just occurred to me. I hadn't thought to ask you this, but what are your thoughts on how the reparations process is going in Asheville and where things stand and what hasn't [00:26:00] happened?

What are your thoughts around that? 

Jefferson Ellison: I am not a part of the reparations process. I think that commission is doing the Lord's work and those people care a lot and they're trying. I think Asheville needs to be asking itself bigger questions about how it defines reparations and if perhaps we're using the notion of reparations to find different ways of funding government malfeasance .

What do you 

What do you mean by that?

Jefferson Ellison: My thoughts around the notion of reparations in America, for me personally, is that, and the reason I think a lot of people disagree with the conversation on reparations is that we don't agree on what reparations are supposed to be, right? And so I think the public school systems working for students is not reparations.

That's the job of the school system is to work for its students. I don't think, Buses running on time is reparations. I don't think people being able to feed their kids is reparations. I think that is [00:27:00] the role of a democracy . And so, if we're going to talk about a debt that is owed to the descendants of slaves who built this country for free, so people can make money, to me, I want to talk about money .

And I want to talk about how the government can serve its people. To me, those are separate conversations. And so I think Asheville as a whole, I want Asheville to have bigger conversations about how the government and the city can do better for its citizens. And I want us talking about The wealth that this country has and that families have because of slavery, And how they can rectify that . To me Those are separate conversations. 

Matt Peiken: you talk about how government can work better for the people But government plays a role in funding schools and funding some of the things you're talking about that you're saying are not reparations But yet they're enjoined. 

Jefferson Ellison: Right, that's what i'm saying. But a lot of the wealth From slavery is private. Like a lot of the companies that are now publicly traded companies built, got their wealth on the backs of [00:28:00] slaves . I want their money. Not me. I don't know that I, I have not done my 23 and me. So I don't know that if I, that if reparations checks would be handed out, that I will be owed one. But what I'm saying is the reparations conversation is, to me, and my understanding of it and what I think about is very specific to the actual wealth that was created because of free labor. That is trackable and those companies still exist today and a lot of them are private. The government had a hand in that, yes, but a lot of that money that was created and the wealth that exists is private. The government funding schools, that's their job. The whole people must fund the education of the whole people.

I don't think that is reparation, that is not restorative justice because white people go, like everyone goes to public schools. And they should work. 

Matt Peiken: But while at the same time we're seeing the so called voucher system that's siphoning money from public schools and going into private, family hands, state money public tax money going into private hands to send their kids to private schools. 

Jefferson Ellison: But even in the voucher conversation, those are [00:29:00] two separate conversations. Like the notion around vouchers is that money should not stop somebody from having access to the best education and then the response is always, yes vouchers take money from public schools and so it ends up going to the hands of rich people.

But two things can be true. Don't get me on a tantrum because I actually love this topic, but this is actually the thing. It's actually not about money in this country. It's actually about culture. 

Matt Peiken: Yeah. 

Jefferson Ellison: And this is a conversation that people don't want to have. It's the culture of wealth. And this is why I talk about privilege.

I am not the richest man known to mankind, but I grew up with parents who had income. So when I turned 16, they bought me a car. And I didn't have to work to have 20 in my pocket and they paid for college. I went to public school, but they paid for college. And they were very clear. If you want to go to University of Chicago, that's coming out of your pocket.

But mom was like, we will pay for UNC Greensboro, which is the second school I applied to. I went to NC state, but I was around very wealthy people, so I grew up comfortable with the notion of wealth and with the performance of class and the culture of class, the pontification around art at [00:30:00] a dinner table the bullshitting of wine and learning not to gasp when someone tells you about their house in Aspen.

And so therefore I am more comfortable faking it to I'm making those rooms today because it's not the first time I've seen a big house. That's why the wealth of the city doesn't shock me. It infuriates me 'cause I'm confused by it. But being able to quote unquote hobnob with wealthy people has helped me convert them into clients. That is real. That is why I'm 31 years old and sitting on the downtown commission, because I am a professional, because I have went to college, and because I know how to converse with people with way more money than I have.

That's what allows me to find modicums of success. 

Matt Peiken: I need to hobnob with you and your people. 

Jefferson Ellison: Not my people. You need to hobnob with the people who exist in this city. 

Matt Peiken: Yeah, I'm not a good hobnobber. I'm wondering what's important for you going forward.

What are some aspirations you have for things you want to take on things you want to focus on that you're doing now, but you want to give more focus [00:31:00] to. What can we expect more from you in the year or two going forward?

Jefferson Ellison: My focus right now is on my business and what it means to be a stable business.

And I've been chasing, having a business for the last five, six years. I've started and stopped, I've cried and apologize and all the things. And now that we're finding some stability in this, we want to keep it. And so my focus is on, nerding out about what percentage of our monthly revenue is retainers versus projects and like how are we billing and things like that.

So that's where my focus is and also on the projects that we currently have. I'm really excited to be working with the city. I want to make sure I do a good job with my first city contract. My company is also putting on a food festival in August. It's the inaugural year. We want to do a good job with that.

Matt Peiken: What's it called? 

Jefferson Ellison: It's called Bite Me. It's happening august 14th to the 18th. It's all over the city. 

Matt Peiken: Was that your founding? Did you conceive of this? 

Jefferson Ellison: Yeah. It's us and some friends of ours. 

Matt Peiken: What's the angle on Bite Me? 

Jefferson Ellison: It's a new type of food festival. The idea is that food [00:32:00] festivals are complicated and we wanted to strip them down and expand the things that work and re imagine the things that didn't. So it's like a build your own journey . You can buy a ticket to just one event, or you can just buy a ticket to the after party.

So depending on your schedule and your budget, you can be involved without spending a lot of money. And so all that to say, my focus really is on establishing my business. A lot of people think that I'm all over the place, but then I sort of show them consultancies in other cities that have been around for 30 years.

This is what they do. If you look at McKinsey and company or like the Boston consulting group, or even like McAdams in Raleigh, and you look at what they do, a portion of their business is government contracts, a portion of their business is clients and projects, and a portion of their business is owned concepts and brands.

That is a standard way for an agency, a consultancy to stabilize itself and build a reputation. And so I am trying, I am pursuing that goal and I'm trying to find a way to do it while living in the community that I was born into and caring [00:33:00] about those people and making it sustainable so I don't burn out and I continue to be an active member of society