The son to an absent father and a drug-addicted mother who passed away early on in his childhood only to be adopted at 10-years-old, Jason Humble has hustled his way through life and has become extremely successful and knowledgeable in his own realm.
Humble, a self-made entrepreneur and CEO is the founder of multiple business ventures, but has focused on his two ventures, Humble Family Office and Humble Capital Consulting. But Humble’s story is less about the ventures and more on how he has been able to bridge the gap in the business world and throughout the community.
Grit Daily spoke with Humble on why bridging that gap can help make you a better entrepreneur (and person).
Grit Daily: Your personal background and up-bringing has shaped you into the person, entrepreneur, and philanthropist you are today. Do you feel comfortable sharing with our readers your story?
Jason Humble: I grew up before the age of 10 in over 200 homes. My mother was on drugs, and she would just abandon me and my 2 sisters in different apartments. I lived in every borough in NYC, unwillingly, abused on every level.
When my mom finally started getting her life turned around when I was 9, we upgraded to the projects in Spanish Harlem, New York City on Pleasant Avenue. By then it was too late, she passed. My 2 sisters and I were fortunate.
In the last few months of my mother’s life, there were Christian missionaries that would knock on people’s doors; they knocked on ours. They did not know us. We did not know them. When my mom was dying in her hospital bed, she asked a family who had three kids of their own to take us in. They did. I never believed there was a God prior to that. That changed my perspective.
GD: Your story sent chills up and down our spine. Having said that, how does the value of family and business play into your life coming into 2020?
JH: I grew up broken and poor, with very few positive memories before the age of 11. Today, I’m simply thankful I can give back. I don’t care about being rich. I‘m happily married, baby on the way, and have peace in my heart. I am non-negotiable about my belief in God, due to how God intervened in my life. Every day I wake up grateful and look at each day as a gift.
GD: What would you consider to be the most valuable asset in your life?
JH: Personally and as an entrepreneur, my goal is to be more attentive to people’s needs. I aim to be integral and aim to build a relationship with all of my clients, while keeping my faith in God in the forefront.
As a philanthropist, I think the most important thing I can offer is my time and my personal finances in the foster care community. I am on the board for an amazing charity called Precious Dreams Foundation. We provide comfort items for children in the foster care system to provide them with a comfortable night’s sleep.
GD: You indicated that you wanted to develop a more personal relationship with each of your clients. How has your background in marketing and sales helped shape your path as a business consultant?
JH: My experience in sales and marketing goes back to my time with the New York Knicks and its PR department. Due to the nature of the beast, I’ve grown accustomed to being around a lot of top wealthy one-percenters. This led me into meeting a good friend of mine at that time, whose name was Adam, who owned a company called Global Resource Broker.
Separate from that, Adam had his own company, where he was matching private investors with different proprietary projects—intellectual properties of course. I worked with him for a few years, connecting him with my clients, because I had a really good, strong relationship with them. Adam was an intricate part in my growth.
GD: But you now have your own consulting company, correct?
JH: Yes. After a few years learning from and working with Adam, I moved on started my own company, Humble Capital Consulting, which is also Humble Family Office.
GD: How did your experience and time with the New York Knicks help shape the internal and external infrastructures of your company?
JH: From a public relations perspective, I learned a lot from working with the Knicks. I am extremely grateful for that opportunity. Most importantly, I learned how to understand people on a deeper level, and I can tell you understanding how emotional intelligence plays into customer satisfaction, is a big factor when being selfless to other individuals needs. Inevitably, my time with the Knicks organization helped me grow as person tremendously. Today, I am a part of some of the most amazing disruptive technology companies in the world.
The Power of Networking
In our conversation, Humble mentioned a recent deal he was involved with on behalf of Formulus Black Corporation, a venture-backed startup, which offers next-gen persistent in-memory computing, without peripherals or application changes, according to its website.
The company’s main product, Forsa, supercharges the performance of your most I/O intensive applications with Forsa, the revolutionary software stack that enables any workload to run in memory, without modification. This enables memory to be provisioned and managed as high performance, low latency storage media for an individual’s most demanding workloads.
GD: What can you tell us, without divulging confidential information, about your recent business dealings with Formulus Black?
JH: Hands down, this is one of the most disruptive technologies I’ve ever witnessed; a true unicorn in the tech space. I was allocated a few million-dollars from that company to help consult and raise.
For the most part, I partnered with David Kovacs, who was my business partner, and together we brought in some funding and consulted on that project. As head of operations for Mr. Kovacs’ family office and charitable initiatives, we just inked something very special with Formulus Black to set a partnership with Intel and Packet.
(Packet provides a bare metal cloud and infrastructure automation, which under the Intel deal, will provide on-demand access to a fleet of Intel Xeon Scalable servers with Intel Optane technology at no cost to developers)
So that’s just one example on how we continue to move the needle forward. I’m very fortunate to be able to be partner with Kovacs, as he is also my business mentor. I give him all the credit, you know, most of what I have learned in this tech vertical is the result of the knowledge he has provided me with.
GD: If you could attribute one strength to Mr. Kovacs, what would it be with respect to your maturity as an entrepreneur?
JH: I’m extremely grateful for his patience. It’s not every day you get to work with individuals that help run billion-dollar tech companies.
Life is Like a Deck of Cards
Throughout Humble’s career, networking has been the key to his success. “When you’re meeting people, it’s kind of like going through a deck of cards,” Humble explained.
“You have 52 cards in a deck. In that deck, vetting will weed out the extra jokers. As you turn over each card, you will come across different numbers, alongside some Queens, Kings and Aces. Each deck has 4 aces, some people come across their Ace to soon in life and are unable to attract them because they are not ready for success nor do they have the business acronym. Others run into their Ace a little later. Life is such. We come across people with different backgrounds in different cultures every day. You may find your Ace at the beginning of your deck, or at the end. Ultimately In business, it’s our job to go through the deck to find the appropriate match for intellectual property and keep turning those cards over. Some people spend too much time looking for “just” their Ace. My view is every card is valuable to someone. Although the Ace may be the sharpest, you can still specifically pick and choose the right match for each card in your book of business. Each card is of value to someone as there are a number of games you can play with the 1 deck you are handed. The biggest question is how you are able to shuffle and hand out your deck appropriately.”
GD: For those who look to your story for inspiration, what can you say with respect to networking and developing relationships similar to that of you and David?
JH: I met David nine-years ago while I was at a speaking event at the United Nations. He was speaking at the event, and he and I had the opportunity to hang out afterwards on various occasions. We became good friends, and we both lived in New York City at the time. What started as a professional relationship, turned into a brotherhood. He’s family and I consider him my brother. That takes years of loyalty to develop. It did not happen overnight.
GD: But you didn’t go to the UN to meet him for business reasons, right? For those who don’t have that business acumen, how can they learn from your experience?
JH: You know what, I had to start somewhere, right? Let me say this, because this is important. If I had met David fifteen years ago, I probably would not have been working with him, because I just didn’t have the proper business acumen to speak the exact same language that he and I do now—therefore the potential business attraction wasn’t there.
I didn’t go there to just partner with him—I was focused on the personal relationship first. I wanted to know who he was, where came from, Family, what motivated him etc. That’s how you should start any business relationship, by making it personal first. Too many times people miss this step because their impatient.
The difference between then and now is the ability to grow in certain areas of my life with personal development over the years. It helped me tremendously. So, when that “Ace” did come in front of me from that “deck of cards,” I was ready and I was prepared.
I say this to you because a lot of times, individuals are not ready to take that jump due to whatever personal reasons or events they have going on in their life. I think it’s important for individuals to understand that they have to be ready, willing, and able to handle the next step in their personal development, as much as it’s great meeting other people in our society.
It’s ten times more important to be working on yourself each day and building yourself as a person to be able to attract that kind of networking power.
Injecting Tech Into Less-Fortunate Communities
Humble in name and humble he is, especially to those less-fortunate. And why? Remember his up-bringing.
Near and dear to Humble’s heart is his involvement with the Precious Dreams Foundation, which supports the well-being of foster and homeless children by using a special technique focused on using bedtime necessities and positive reinforcement to empower children to recognize and focus on their dreams.
Humble sits on the Board of Directors for the 501(c)(3), which was founded back in 2012 by Nicole Russell and Angie Medina.
“If I can continue to do something without getting paid for it, it would be the time and effort I put into Precious Dreams Foundation because I’m one of those kids,” Humble shared. “You know, I went through that and I went through a very tough time at a younger age in my childhood. So I definitely know what they’re going through, and it’s a difficult situation.”
GD: In our conversation, you mentioned that you currently provide virtual reality (VR) headsets to children’s hospitals. Of all things, why VR?
JH: We are in the process of providing VR headsets to children’s hospitals to help children have a way to escape while being sick and bed-ridden. Hospitals are being vetted and we will provide details in the near future.
What I can tell you is that this initiative is provided by Kovacs, who is also the co-founder to a highly-successful VR company that produced Firewall Zero Hour, the firt-ever multi-player VR game in history.
GD: And finally, what do you want readers to take away from your story and our conversation today?
JH: We already have victory when we put God first in our lives. I never made excuses to not be successful, as easy as that could have been with my background. Instead, I encourage everyone to embrace their adversities and set out to accomplish something bigger than yourself. The first one to hit adversity wins. Period. Perseverance in every situation with the right emotional intelligence will take you places you have never imagined.
