We recently connected with Brock Thomas and have shared our conversation below.

Brock , looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

Back in 2018, I randomly reached out to a friend, Mike Nash who had just moved onto campus for his freshman year. We had gone to the same highschool and shared mutual friends but never really talked personally. We went to the cafe and grabbed some food and discussed life on campus so far. After that we became brothers. Suddenly a few weeks after this meeting he got the call that his cousin had passed away from gun violence in Philadelphia. Distraught by the news, he reached out to me to help him think of ways to honor his cousin’s legacy. At first it was just a few sneaker and clothing drives, but Thus the inception of The Men of Color Alliance, an initiative driven organization. The Men of Color Alliance was created on December 18. 2018 at Rowan University in Glassboro, NJ and aims to combat the negative stereotypes placed upon men of color in higher education and professional spaces. We seek to achieve positive results through retention, resources and visibility to our undergraduate, graduate, and minorities in trades. Since 2018 we have not only developed a safe space and brotherhood but we have gone on to host numerous workshops ranging from men’s mental health, financial literacy, and how to enter the professional space. Post grad, we decided to expand the organization beyond just Rowan. Over the summer we took the steps to register the organization as a 501(c)(3) non- profit, because we realized that this organization goes beyond an educational institution and us as founders. “Pain to Purpose to Passion” is our why. To take a tragedy and turn it into something positive for the community, that is showing real time results of change and impact to those who invest interest and time is a different level of feeling. Looking back, to how hard it was to push through all the NO’s we received from our peers, to now we just received a senate resolution from Senator Troy Singleton (NJ). I recently ran into my aunt at Dave & Busters who I had not seen in years, and the first thing she said was, “ I am proud to see you grow not only as a person but to grow this organization from nothing and I believe you will impact a lot of lives”. This is meaningful to me because as I was younger in highschool and college, I felt as though I had to navigate it on my own, from waking up for class, studying, living and maintaining social relationships. Now, I am able to embrace servant leadership and positively impact and guide the young men who look up to me and look to continue navigating through life.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I was born and raised in Southwest Philadelphia for most of my childhood before moving across the bridge to New Jersey for a better education and way of life. If you ask most people what they want to be when they grow up, they might tell you something along the lines of a police officer, a professional athlete or an actor. But if you would have asked me, I’d tell you not that I wanted to be but that I will be an entrepreneur. I realized I wanted to be my own boss and not invest my time into clocking in and out by the age of 9. Growing up I watched my parents take an idea and scale it from ground zero to multiple multi million dollar businesses. While most kids at the age of 9 were playing GTA or NBA Streets on their playstation, I was taking my allowance and buying toys and other sports memorabilia and reselling it for a profit. Writing out business plans for how I would market it to my friends from school and the neighborhood instead of being outside all day. Once I reached highschool I took interest in sneakers. I would save my allowance and money from my job at the time and buy sneakers in bulk at sneaker conventions and just keep reselling them until a good 100-200 pairs were in my possession.

I have always had the entrepreneur itch. I say now that I’m not chasing the money, but the freedom to live life on my own terms. With MOCA I am able to do just this, while learning and helping others at the same time.I was determined by any means to launch an idea and see it through from production to success. Thus far, along with co-founding the non profit, I have founded a clothing brand, Stability Worldwide and have become a turo host and currently work in corporate finance as a profession.

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

Starting out as a new organization on a growing college campus can be hard, when we first started we endured a lot of criticism and no’s from other organizations we were looking to work with, but we didn’t let this stop us. I always reflect back to the saying “Your network is your net worth”. This is exactly what we did, used our network to our advantage. In order to grow your brand, you have to be a strategic thinker, always thinking of ways to peak interest in a niche market. We realized that in order to fund the organization we needed to get creative, and fast. People will wholeheartedly support something that they are involved in, so why not involve them? We compiled a list of people who had the most influence and following on campus and asked them to do a photo shoot repping our new ‘MOCA Madness’ Hoodies. Once the photoshoot was over we told them to all post the pictures on instagram at the same time. This garnered massive inquiries as to who we were. We ended up selling out of hoodies on release day, while also bringing in a new influx of several dozen new customers. We utilized the funds to reinvest into the community and were able to purchase and donate gently used suits and dresses to the local highschool during prom season. We assisted the young men and women with picking out matching suits to how to tie a tie correctly and giving them the confidence they needed on their special prom day.

As we had to pivot from college to the professional world, the same marketing strategy ensued, we were able to successfully host events in undergraduate that produced upwards of 200+ attendees, while also giving back to the community, why can’t we replicate?

As we have expanded the organization post grad, we now are able to host fundraisers, annual brunches and networking events following the same marketing strategy that we utilized just a few years back, Your network is your net worth. We realized that in order to stay consistent, we needed to utilize the fail fast method. We produced multiple instagram reels of all of the founders giving insight on the upcoming events, included some guests in the marketing as well. We asked local businesses to sponsor the events, which opened us up to their clientele. In order to evolve, we realized that the more marketing we put out the greater reach we achieved. This allowed us to quickly indentify what worked and didn’t work in terms of building clientele. Word of mouth is great still, but why not have fun with the marketing too?

Have you ever had to pivot?

2020 was an eventful year for everyone. The normal lives that we all were accustomed to were altered right in front of us. We had to embrace the “new” normal and learn to live all over again. In the midst of COVID I found myself trying to push through my last year of college, while living on my own and also working full time for minimum wage. Plenty of nights I wasn’t sure how I was going to pay my rent or if I’d even have the opportunity to see graduation day. I will say though, that 2020 taught me to always bet on myself and take risks. I always dreamt of starting my own clothing business, but didn’t know where to even start. I realized one day I had to just ‘jump off the porch’ and start somewhere. I invested enough money to order some quality blanks from a supplier I found on Tiktok. 3 weeks later I had the website up and running and also had my first merchandise drop. Within 2 days I had sold out of everything, receiving orders all day. There was one thing about going out and working for money, but it was another thing to literally make money in your sleep and wake up to multiple orders. I ran the business and had 2 more successful clothing drops and eventually took that money and bought an Audi on my 21st birthday to use for Turo. On my 2nd booking as a host, I had a customer who unfortunately totaled my Audi. I could have done a lot of things but I kept my composure, made sure my guest wasn’t injured and reevaluated my business plan. As I reflect on that situation and how I handled it, I realized that at the end of the day it’s business, sometimes you win, sometimes you fail. Failures are just another opportunity to try a different strategy. Entrepreneurship is all about taking risks, as my mentor would say, you are just thrown into the ring blindfolded and have to start swinging, eventually something will connect.

Contact Info:

• Website: menofcoloralliance.org
• Instagram: ayobrock
• Other: Business Instagram: @themenofcoloralliance, @rowan_moca

Image Credits
Naledge Brown @powwar_shot (Instagram)