Creating Access to Capital: Nikoa Milton Gulstone’s Mission for Black Women Entrepreneurs

Anthony Codispoti : Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired by how they will overcome adversity. My name is Anthony Codispoti and today’s guest is Nikoa Milton-Gulstone. She is the co-founder and CEO of Level, a startup focused on building a racially diverse network of professional women working to tackle the racial wealth gap by investing in black women. Under Nikoa’s leadership, Level continues to expand its community, offering support and resources for women of color.

Nikoa holds an MBA from Columbia Business School and a bachelor’s degree from Howard University. She has shared her insights at Forte Foundation events and her background in finance and real estate includes roles in major companies where she oversaw significant investments and managed complex portfolios. Through her commitment to racial equity, she has helped shape Level’s vision to empower black women entrepreneurs worldwide. She also collaborates with other leaders to advocate for inclusive economic advancement.

She is recognized for her dedication in supporting black women entrepreneurs and for her advocacy work in closing economic gaps. Now before we get into all that good stuff, today’s episode is brought to you by my company, Add Back Benefits Agency, where we offer very specific and unique employee benefits that are both great for your team and fiscally optimized for your bottom line. Imagine being able to give your employees free access to doctors, therapists and prescription medications in a way that puts more money in your staff’s pockets and the company’s too. As an example, one recent client with 450 employees boosted net profits over $412,000 per year. Results vary for each company and some organizations may not be eligible.

To find out if your company qualifies, contact us today at addbackbenefits.com. Alright back to our guest today, co-founder and CEO of Level by Nikoa Milton Gulstone. Thanks for making the time to share your story today.

Nikoa Milton-Gulstone : Oh of course Anthony, I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else with you right now.

Anthony Codispoti : Alright, let’s get into it. So, Nikoa, before we get into how the idea to start level came about and what it is that you’re doing there, give us a little history about what you were doing leading up to this so we can kind of lay the groundwork for what your skill set is.

Nikoa Milton-Gulstone : Oh wow, I don’t even know where to begin. I almost feel like I have to begin with my upbringing because I’ve gained so many skills just by growing up in the family that I grew up in. So I am originally from Toledo, Ohio and my parents were or are blue collar workers. So I’m first generation college graduate and from that family environment, my parents taught me like a very strong work ethic. They taught me how to, they showed me how to be scrappy and so to figure things out. And so from there, I went to Howard University where I initially majored in chemistry because I thought I wanted to be a doctor. The only exposure I really had was either be a doctor or lawyer or teacher. My first semester as a chemistry major, not so much for me. Not your thing. Not my thing.

Anthony Codispoti : Hey, we need to try on different hats to figure out which ones fit and which ones don’t.

Nikoa Milton-Gulstone : Seriously, and that’s been like the through line of my life really, which I think has lent itself to my entrepreneurial pursuits. But I went over to the School of Business. I knew that I was good at finance and accounting. I mean, my favorite project in school when I was in fifth grade was looking through the serious catalog. We had a certain budget that we had. We had to like pay our bills and also buy presents for our families for Christmas.

And I still remember that project to this day. So I went over to the School of Business and changed my major to finance. And from there, I landed in Chicago on an internship at LaSalle Bank. And another through line in my life is how black women have supported me along the way. So a black woman hired me to an internship at LaSalle Bank. She mentored me while I was there when I was deciding whether or not I wanted to come back into either finance or capital markets. She pushed me to capital markets because she said, you know, there are not a lot of black women in capital markets. There are not a lot of us who do that. And you will develop a really deep skill set if you go back. She

Anthony Codispoti : wanted you to be a trailblazer.

Nikoa Milton-Gulstone : She did. And I listened to her. And that’s what I did. So I landed on the debt syndicate desk where I learned how to underwrite corporate bond deals for major corporations. And in 2008, I graduated from undergrad in 2005, 2008, housing market crash, big financial crisis, those of us who were in finance were, you know, really at a point where there was no certainty. So I learned very early on in my career, three years in that there really is no more certainty in a stable job than there is in entrepreneurship.

I watched my mentors be fired with no notice. And we just kind of had to figure it out. I was able to stay because I was young and like cheap labor in a sense. So through that process, you know, I learned very quickly how to pivot. So I, my mentors actually guided me towards investment consulting. So I went into investment consulting, but my focus wasn’t fixed income because that’s where I had come from.

Anthony Codispoti : So you were able to kind of leave on your own terms as you found another opportunity. And in 2008, 2009, not everybody had that luxury. Like you said, a lot of your mentors, a lot of, you know, the folks that you were reporting to, they were asked to leave. But you were kind of able to guide your own transition there.

Nikoa Milton-Gulstone : I was, and I was lucky enough front and I was, what I would say is that I was able to form relationships that were able to help me pivot into an industry that I knew nothing about. So as I mentioned in first generation, so everything that I learned about finance and learn about entrepreneurship, I’ve learned just by kind of jumping in and having mentors along the way. So I pivoted to investment consulting, was still in fixed income, but wanted to figure out how to get onto the real estate side of things.

And couldn’t really figure it out. I had interviews with folks and everyone told me that I needed to go back to business school or if I wanted to pivot to something else in finance, I would need to get my CFA. So I decided to go to business school because I thought that the network would provide opportunities that a CFA could not, a CFA designation is very limited in terms of like, if you want to pivot to do something else outside of finance. So I decided to go to Columbia to get my MBA. And after my MBA, I went to work for a real estate private equity partner. So I was able to make the transition to real estate.

Anthony Codispoti : So interesting that you were choosing to go into real estate at a time or shortly after a time where the bottom fell out of that market. What was drawing you to that?

Nikoa Milton-Gulstone : So I started business school in 2012. So I saw the bottom fall out and I saw that people were coming in and buying up all of these distressed assets. I also, when I was a little girl, my mom used to take me to the creative homes. I don’t know if that’s a Midwest thing, but on after church on Sundays, we would go to the creative home where you look at real estate that we were never going to buy. But I developed an interest in real estate really young, but never knew how to like make money off of it. But then I saw the opportunity and the investment that’s out there wanted to transition to real estate. And it just so happened to be at a time where the bottom had fallen out.

There was so much opportunity. And I myself had bought up a condo in 2006 and was personally impacted because the value of my property tanked. So once a business school met my co-founder at level in business school, and we’ll get back to that.

But I transitioned to real estate at a private equity firm in Chicago. And this is another time where this is a black woman who I had worked with at a previous job. I was having trouble finding a job in real estate because of nepotism, because of, you know, real estate is a very white male dominated field. And that’s who they typically hire. I didn’t have a background in real estate, but I had a background in finance.

It was just really difficult for me to find employment after graduating from Columbia Business School. So where did you land? So my friend Lynette, who was working for a small private equity real estate shop, I was talking to her about like what I was experiencing. And she was like, okay, I’m going to talk to the owner. So I landed at Newport Capital Partners in Chicago because Lynette, another black woman, connected me and pulled me in essentially.

Anthony Codispoti : So that is where- It’s sort of this theme, like a recurring theme of mentors, of folks that were looking out for you, kind of helping you get connected and into the right seat so that you could then prove yourself. Yeah. Absolutely.

Nikoa Milton-Gulstone : Absolutely. And in that role, because we were a shop of only nine people, including like our receptionist, I was underwriting. So Newport Capital Partners is a boutique firm that invests in grocery anchored shopping centers across the Midwest. So we were raised in Chicago. We were nine people. So I, you know, was doing the underwriting. I was doing asset management, property management, acquisitions, dispositions. I was doing the portfolio management, so doing all of the numbers behind the scenes.

So I did it all because I was the person with, you know, the knowledge or at least the- all the pieces that could come together to support the acquisition sky and the accounting folks and the property managers. So I cut my teeth there and then I transitioned to Well Tower in Toledo, Ohio. So the story behind that is I, my husband and I, or my ex-husband, and I had two children at this point in Chicago. All of our support was in Ohio because- Where you were from. From Toledo. I did not- I never planned to move back to Toledo. And so there was only one place that I can work. And if I get a job there, I will move back. Just so happened to be that the CEO and then CFO were both Columbia Business School alone. And I knew that nobody wants to move back to Toledo, who’s had all of this like life experience. And I knew that I could connect with them in that way and prove to be an asset to them.

And I had also- it’s so funny and I forget about this. When I was in business school, the summer between first and second year, I couldn’t find an internship in real estate because I didn’t have experience. I didn’t know anyone. So I took the one internship that offered me something in Houston. It was CBRE and their seniors housing group. So Well Tower is a seniors housing group. So I was able to connect the dot from the only internship that I was able to get to get this job in Toledo and really be able to sell myself in that way. So I went there.

Anthony Codispoti : Isn’t that interesting how you can kind of look in the rear view mirror and be like, man, those dots really connected.

Nikoa Milton-Gulstone : And it was in a point in my life where I was like stressed because of like the lack of opportunity, but the opportunity that I was able to like create ended up being a catalyst for my future, which is really interesting and not something that I’ve ever thought about.

Anthony Codispoti : So how did the idea to start level come about? You mentioned that you met your co-founder back at Columbia Business School. Was this an idea that had been percolating over the years or was there sort of like a light bulb moment where the idea came about?

Nikoa Milton-Gulstone : So this is another, you know, the dots connected. So my co-founder Jenny, we were in the same cluster. So we got to know each other very quickly at CVS and in full transparency, prior to business school, I did not have, I had maybe one or two non-black girlfriends. It was hard for me to connect deeply with women who were not black, but Jenny and I were able to do that because she grew up in a household where her parents really, she mentioned that she’s a white woman who grew up in the Upper West South of New York. So we have very different backgrounds, very different family histories, but her parents really instilled in her the value of diversity and not just by like telling her, but by exposing her to diverse experiences, like they’re close family friends and when I say friends, like close family friends are black. So we were able to have conversations that I had not been able to have with other non-black women. So the idea was not percolating, but the connections were being made, you know, starting in 2012.

So fast forward to 2019. We both were either recently back or going back to work after maternity leave. So she has three boys, I have four boys. And, you know, she had been going to these events in New York City that were being put on by these women’s networking groups that said they cared about diversity, had a really hard time, attracting and retaining women of color. So because Jenny and I had a friendship that we maintain post business school, she called me up and she’s like, you know, Michael, what do you think about starting a company that’s really diverse, like from the ground up, where we bring women together to network? I was like, yeah, I work in my commercial real estate, I work in finance, like I’m just not interested in that. Like my group chats are like my black girlfriends, so that I can download on like all of the things that I don’t feel comfortable, you know, doing in settings that are not, that don’t feel safe for me. But I said, what I am interested in is starting a company for women like me, women who are smart and resourceful and scrappy and black, but don’t come from wealth.

So can’t just like up and quit their jobs to pursue their entrepreneurial dreams. So, you know, Jenny, in this idea, Jenny has like an annual Christmas party. So we were talking about it at the Christmas party after 11, because I’m not going to practice when we were talking about it in February, she came down to Ohio and we like whiteboarded like what this could look like. So what level is, is a marriage of our two ideas. So it is a network of professional women who come together for the purpose of investing in black women. And we are intentionally made up of 50% black women and 50% non black women. And we take the women through a 10 week experience where they’re, they’re in a cohort of 10, 10 folks who are led by women who have already gone through the experience. And we really get to know each other because we think that, you know, the foundation of creating any change is going to come, you know, you need to have empathy. And if you don’t know each other’s heart for you to have, to have a empathy, it shouldn’t be, but it’s easier to have more empathy when you actually know someone’s story. So we get to know each other, we talk about like how do you have these hard conversations about race and the racial wealth gap across race because, you know, it’s uncomfortable. And we do that and we, we teach the women or refresh the women’s knowledge on the history of the racial wealth gap because we think it’s really important for everyone to have a baseline understanding of why the work we’re doing is so urgent and so important. And we need them to understand, you know, how we got here. And then we teach the women how to become angel investors. And one thing that we’re also doing is trying to make investing in private markets more accessible. So we don’t require that women be accredited investors.

Anthony Codispoti : Yeah, I kind of want to, let’s put a pin in this and kind of come back and I’m sorry to kind of jump in sort of the middle of the story here, but I want to rewind a little bit and better understand because, you know, your own comment, you said, Hey, in full transparency, I had not had friendships with, you know, non black people before. And I’m curious, was it the environment that you grew up, you just like there wasn’t the opportunity, you weren’t interacting with people who weren’t black or the opportunity was there, but you didn’t feel safe, or it just felt more comfortable to be over here because I want to understand that first and then understand a little bit more about how, you know, the transition to being more comfortable around Jenny and other white folks kind of came about. And you mentioned a little bit about that because, you know, it’s like, Hey, Jenny, she had a great background of, you know, growing up with a lot of diversity, you know, around her. And so that seeing that kind of made you comfortable. But I kind of want to understand a little bit more about your background, Micah. Sure.

Nikoa Milton-Gulstone : So there were seven, I went to an all girls Catholic high school, there were seven black girls in my class, I think there were 187 girls, but we all sat at one table and all the black girls sat together in the lunchroom. And I’m sure people can resonate with that. Like, if you think back to your high school days, or even your even like if you’re at work, why people kind of, I mean, you notice that we congregate because that’s where we feel, we feel safe. That’s where we feel like we can be ourselves. You know, going to work in corporate America, I could never show up as my authentic self.

I could never wear my hair like this or big poop earrings. I, you know, I’m always conscious of if I say this, what are they going to think? How are they perceiving me? Not because of what I am saying, but because of what I look like. And that, I think is a story that many black people in this country have. And I always say, like,

Anthony Codispoti : if you feel like somebody who looked differently could say some of the things that you are thinking, but don’t want to say and not have and not have a negative reaction. Exactly.

Nikoa Milton-Gulstone : Okay. Exactly. Exactly. Because, you know, women, specifically black women, you know, we get the angry black woman title, like, no, I’m just pushing back.

Anthony Codispoti : I’m just a person who sometimes gets angry like everybody else.

Nikoa Milton-Gulstone : Or I’m not even angry. I’m just pushing back and you’re perceiving that to be combative. But I’m just asking a question. And if they were a white man asking you this question, you would not have the same response. So it’s all of that. Yeah. And in corporate America, so, and I think that’s why it’s so necessary to have these identity groups in these companies because it offers a space for folks who are not, you know, cisgender white men to have a place where they can feel like their voices are heard and their experiences matter.

Anthony Codispoti : So yeah, like you said, you grew up, you know, you went to an all girls Catholic school, there were seven black girls in the class, you hung out together because you felt safe. You felt like you could be yourself.

That was that that was where you felt most comfortable and relaxed. And then come Columbia Business School, you meet Jenny, who is very different background. She’s white. Did it take a while for her to kind of win you over or soften you up or no, you guys kind of click pretty fast?

Nikoa Milton-Gulstone : We click in orientation. And this is like before class even started. And the story behind that is that Jenny will always show up late. And if you show up late, you have to get in front of the class and I do a dance. And Jenny lived down the street. I lived all the way in Riverdale in the Bronx. So I asked her when I’m like, girl, like, why are you always late?

Do you live really far? And she was like, I’m so embarrassed. Like, no, I just lived down the street. But like, that’s something that I could never do. Like, I’d be so embarrassed as like a black one because the stereotypes that were always late.

And then I could never be in the front of the class like being a black girl was like dancing. So we talked about that and talked about it openly. So she was really a fast friend. Very.

Anthony Codispoti : Okay, so let’s get back to kind of where we were in the story. So she had one idea, you kind of had a different idea, like you sort of married them together. And so I think where I kind of cut you off was we were talking about how you want to teach people to become angel investors.

Nikoa Milton-Gulstone : Sure. I mean, so we do look at, you know, revenue, we look at expenses, and we look at like the traditional finance like metrics, but we don’t necessarily make that be the end of the year. We understand that the ways that traditional VCs and traditional angel investing has been set up has not worked for black women entrepreneurs. We understand that not all companies are VC scale, but they are, they can be on track to be profitable or may already be profitable. So we take a creative approach to how we invest in these women and how we evaluate them. We also want to empower the women who are coming into our women’s equity circles to decide how they want to invest their money and what is important to them to look for.

So is it, you know, a company going and scaling at 10x or is it a mom and pop shop who employs, you know, 50 black people in the community and is profitable but just needs like a working capital loan. So we take a completely different approach and it’s worked well for us. We’ve done this at this point. We’re on our 19th cycle and we’ve had acquisitions happen. We’ve had loans payback early. So, you know, we are, we’re proving that the traditional models don’t necessarily work for us, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t make money.

Anthony Codispoti : It’s sorry, when you say that you’re on your 19th cycle, is that like your 19th fund? Like what does the cycle mean?

Nikoa Milton-Gulstone : So each women’s equity circle is made up of 10 to 12 women and each of those circles invest in one entrepreneur. So we’ve made, we’re in the process of making our 19th investment. We’ve made 18 to date.

Anthony Codispoti : Great. Okay. And so it may not check the boxes for a traditional VC private equity or, you know, angel investor, but these are models that you’ve already proven out can still be profitable for the investors and still really helpful as a leverage point for the companies that they’re investing in. Absolutely.

Nikoa Milton-Gulstone : And that’s not to say that we have not invested in VC scale companies because we’ve done that too, but that’s not the only companies that we target.

Anthony Codispoti : And so is this mostly just like making an investment and, you know, they’re kind of using your capital in judicious ways that they determine or do you get involved with any kind of operational support?

Nikoa Milton-Gulstone : So it’s making the investment and I’ll say that we’re not a fund. So the women in, in who are community members of level, they invest through third parties like we funder or they, we facilitate, facilitate the loans through a platform called Pigeon Loans. So they make those individual investments. And we also, because the women are across industry, so the women who make up the circles could be doctors, lawyers, they could be in VC themselves. We have educators. We try to provide a very wide range of expertise so that when we provide the support to the entrepreneurs, not just financial investment, but we also provide pro bono services for them, we want to make sure that we have a diverse skill set. So we stick with them for about nine months and work on any project that they just might need an extra set of hands for.

Anthony Codispoti : Okay, here we are on day two, part three of our recordings because we’ve been hammered with some technical issues, mostly some internet connection things. So we’re going to pick back up where we left off yesterday, which was, Nikoya, you were explaining how you use a couple of different platforms for investors to get money to the companies. And you specifically use these platforms because it allows people who are not accredited investors to participate. And one of the platforms you were starting to explain to us is something called Pigeon Loans. And how did this come about?

Nikoa Milton-Gulstone : So this came about because we were interested in facilitating loans for companies that weren’t interested in raising VC capital but just needed maybe some working capital to buy more inventory. So we were looking for a platform that would do the legal work for us. So they draft the promissory notes, the lender can go on and set up the loan between themselves and the entrepreneur and it takes level out of that process. We’ve worked with other like crowd equity platforms as well because they allow for non-accredited investors to be on their platforms. So we’ve consistently looked for creative ways to solve for the access to capital for black founders and the challenge of the expense of setting up special purpose vehicles and all the legal work that goes behind them. Lawyers are very expensive. So these platforms take that burden off of the entrepreneurs and it allows us to focus on what we really do well. Okay.

Anthony Codispoti : So with the funds going directly from the investors to the companies and level kind of being like a relationship manager here and providing a lot of training to folks who want to kind of get their feet wet in all of this, what’s the revenue model for level? How do you guys make money?

Nikoa Milton-Gulstone : So we make money by folks coming and joining our courses. So we charge a fee to participate in the circles and we’ve expanded our curriculum. So now we don’t just offer the women’s equity circle that focuses on entrepreneurship but we also offer a circle that focuses on policy. So instead of learning about how to become an angel investor, we’re learning how policy is written and how different policy makers impact our local elections and our national elections. So instead of bringing in entrepreneurs, we bring in black women who are running for office and then we decide which woman we’re going to support her campaign and we charge for that course. Our third course offering is a real estate course. So my background again is in commercial real estate and finance and there are a couple of other level members who have similar backgrounds that I actually worked with in commercial real estate and we’ve come together to build a course that… Discusses the history of land theft and gentrification and redlining in this country, but at the end of the course, after we teach them how to become commercial real estate investors, we form an LLC and then purchase the piece of property. So those courses we all we charge for. We also host live events.

Our next one is actually in Chicago. And we charge for those events where we bring level members entrepreneurs potential level members and other folks in the community to come out. It’s a dinner party series. So we have dinner. We have drinks and we come together to work on solving a solution or solving a problem. So that is essentially our revenue model and we don’t have a ton of overhead. We have a really lean team and we all work remotely. So we don’t have to pay for real estate and whatnot.

Anthony Codispoti : So and you’re not collecting like a management fee for the funds that are being invested.

Nikoa Milton-Gulstone : We are not collecting management fee.

Anthony Codispoti : No, we’re not a fund. So right. It’s kind of bypassing that model. Yeah. And you and so you mentioned obviously your business partner is not black, but are all of your members black?

Nikoa Milton-Gulstone : No, no. So we are very intentional about being made up of 50% black women and 50% non black women because we think that it’s going to take our collective effort to close the racial wealth gap. And we think that the relationships that we build across race is really going to be what is the driver for the change that we’re all looking for because we think that the conversations that we have at level, you know, our black members and non black members can take them back to their Workspaces they can take them back to their communities and start having open dialogue about about things that impact all of us. But we’re like scared to talk about. So no, we are very intentional about not being just black.

Anthony Codispoti : And so if someone were interested in the courses, sort of joining becoming part of what you’re doing, how do they get more information?

Nikoa Milton-Gulstone : So our application is on our website level leaders calm. You can find us on Instagram at let’s level LTS level. My LinkedIn is Nikola Milton Goldstone, where I have a lot of information about what’s going on at level. We also have a LinkedIn page.

And then when you go to our LinkedIn page and you click on employees, they’re not actually employees, but they’re level members. So you get an opportunity to see the women who are part of the community.

Anthony Codispoti : And so how do you spread the word? How do people find you? What’s kind of been the most effective method to date anyways for how you’ve been growing the community?

Nikoa Milton-Gulstone : So we have done no PR. We’ve done no marketing. The most effective way that we have grown this community has been word of mouth. Our members tell their friends about us, the entrepreneurs to come to pitch. They tell their entrepreneur friends about us. Entrepreneurs who have gotten funding or may not have gotten funding, then come and join the community to support other entrepreneurs.

It’s been 100% word of mouth from the women in our community because they feel so deeply about the work that we’re doing and they’ve had such a good experience that they refer their friends. We’d like to change that. So we are working on B2B partnerships. And we think that if we gain these partnerships, then it’ll be much easier for us to grow at scale versus the other. The word of mouth.

Anthony Codispoti : What do you think one of those B2B partnerships looks like? What kind of a business would you target?

Nikoa Milton-Gulstone : So we have had partnerships with large tech companies, with large financial services firms who could benefit from their work for us having had these conversations because what happens is it’s a training for how to have really difficult conversations across teams. You know, something that could be beneficial to any organization because a lot of times we leave our full selves out of work. But if we could bring our full selves to work, the workplace could extract more value and by extract more about, I mean, that sounds predatory, but we’d be more open to giving more value if we felt like we could have these conversations across teams. And because we’re having these really difficult conversations, it helps for these women who go back into these corporations to have difficult conversations. Maybe not about this, but it gives them practice to have conversations across difference. And that is something that any company could benefit from.

Anthony Codispoti : You mentioned earlier, Nikoi, that you offer pro bono services to the companies that get invested in, at least for the first several months. What does that look like?

Nikoa Milton-Gulstone : So the women in the circles, the circles are made up of 10 or 12 women across industry who are interested in doing the work that we’re doing. And we meet with the entrepreneur during our 10 week session to do a deep dive into our business to understand what her needs are outside of the financial needs. And these women who are fully capable of doing lots of things really rally around this entrepreneur and put their heads together to help her come up with solutions for how to move her business forward.

And those conversations and those projects have looked different depending on what the business is. Sometimes it’s just they want to have connections with other funders. So we make sure that we connect them with other people who are interested in investing in companies like them.

They also, we’ve done research projects. There was one woman who an entrepreneur who was looking to do some rebranding. So we did a focus group.

We had a researcher in our circle. So we did a focus group to help her with the rebranding. Other entrepreneurs have wanted like help with refining their pitch so that they can go and source other capital. So we do a myriad of things and it looks different, you know, depending on who the entrepreneur is and what help that they need. But we have been able to use our resources and our networks to help the entrepreneurs and meet them where they are.

Anthony Codispoti : What’s the biggest area of need that you see typically?

Nikoa Milton-Gulstone : I mean, outside of capital.

Anthony Codispoti : Yeah, outside of the obvious of, you know, they’ve come to you because they need cash. Are they still trying to prove like, you know, the minimum by a product? Are they, is it just all about sales? Hey, we need more customers.

Nikoa Milton-Gulstone : You know, it’s about the relationships. Honestly, it’s about being having them be in the right room to get the right help that they need. And it’s something that level thinks a lot about in terms of like relationship building because we know that the flow of capital, it is all based on who you know.

It’s based on your network. So a lot of our entrepreneurs need just those doors to be open because they have a lot of them are, you know, producing revenue. They have the patents. They have, you know, the team, but they just need more doors to be open so that they can access more capital so that if they need, you know, one of our companies is the medical device company and she needs more creative ways to raise capital.

But she doesn’t know the right people to talk to you. So they come to us and we reach out to our network to connect them with the people that they need to know to move their business.

Anthony Codispoti : Michael, when you speak at events like Forte Foundation, which focuses on women in business, what’s the message that you’re delivering that you think really resonates the most with these current entrepreneurs or aspiring entrepreneurs?

Nikoa Milton-Gulstone : So a lot of entrepreneurs feel like if they share their ideas, someone’s going to like take it and do something within like still their idea. And I constantly say that you are the secret sauce.

You are the special sauce. Even if you share your idea, no one is going to put it out in the market like you would. And you need to like hone in on that and dig deep and like believe in that and believe in yourself and know that, you know, you can’t get the help that you need if you don’t share your ideas. And if you do share your ideas, just know that no one else can execute it in the way that you can.

Anthony Codispoti : Yeah, it’s interesting that you bring that one up in particular because this is something that as an entrepreneur, I’ve wrestled with myself over the years. Developed a number of products, have some patents to my name. And, you know, I would always want to protect myself before I went out and had those conversations at least file a provisional patent, which is very inexpensive.

You can often do, you know, without an attorney or an expert that just kind of gives, you know, a little placeholder to say that, hey, this is protected for the next 12 months. But, you know, the older that I’ve gotten, I’ve kind of come a little bit more towards, you know, the advice that you’re providing, because I realize that just an idea, not to discredit an idea, but they’re a dime a dozen. It’s the execution that really matters. And there aren’t a lot of people who will stick with a new idea to bring it to fruition because you run into so many hurdles, so many challenges, so the great unknowns, you know, you don’t know what you don’t know when you’re starting something new. And so, yeah, I’m a little bit more towards the other end now, like you’re talking about, I would say, open up, you’re going to get more help than you are. And I think that’s our risk of something happening to you. Absolutely.

Nikoa Milton-Gulstone : I mean, entrepreneurship is hard. It’s hard. And I couldn’t imagine, like, taking someone else’s idea and trying to, like, figure it out. It’s hard enough to figure out how to execute your own ideas. So I always encourage folks to just go for it and ask for help and ask for help. No.

Anthony Codispoti : Let’s see. I want to shift gears now. I want to talk about a serious challenge that you’ve overcome, Niko, and you might choose something personal. You might choose something professional. How’d you get through it? What did you learn?

Nikoa Milton-Gulstone : Oh, boy. I’ve had so many challenges just in the past five years since I’ve launched Level. And I guess I’ll just go back to, you know, how we decided to launch Level when we did and, you know, think back to March 2020.

That was like the start of COVID. We were intending to launch in person. I don’t really know how we were going to do that because I lived in Ohio and Jenny lived in Brooklyn. But we were going to launch in person and then COVID happened. And it was when I was in the midst of a lot of chaos with my then employer.

My father was the first confirmed COVID case at the hospital that he was in. And Jenny came to me and she’s like, we can just wait. We can just pause to see, like, you know, what happens with your dad. And I was like, no, like, let’s move forward.

We are going to move forward and do the same because that is what he would want me to do. During that period, I was working from home. I had three children. My youngest was maybe four or five months. I had decided to quarantine with my ex-husband and start to build this business.

Anthony Codispoti : Was he your ex-husband at the time? Huh? Was he your ex-husband at the time? Oh boy. Yes. This is a tornado. You’ve got a four month old. Your dad is one of the early COVID cases in all of this. You want to launch this business. You’re sheltering in place with your ex-husband.

Nikoa Milton-Gulstone : Wow. With my husband. And so we didn’t really know much about COVID at the time. I, you know, and this is another testament to relationships because my best friend that I’ve known since seventh grade was an ICU nurse who was treating COVID patients at the time. So she was on calls with my dad’s care team twice a day. So every shift she would report back to me.

I’ll report to my family. And while I’m building level, our second, we were in our pilot phase. So our second circle was made up of seven women, one of which who is from the same town that I’m from.

And her dad happened to sit on the board at the hospital that my dad was in. So I was experiencing all these things. They had called us in to say goodbye. And I was like, no, no, no, no, no, because Ashley has called twice a day. Like I know what his care is supposed to look like.

I know that he’s improving. And I called the woman who was in level, whose dad was on the board. And I said, this is like, he’s not receiving the best care. Like, I know that they’re calling us to say goodbye because it’s day 21. So she called her dad and he made a call to the rest of the board. My dad’s care turned around and we were in, we were in a session actually with that particular circle. When I got noticed that he was being released from the hospital. Oh, wow.

It’s been on the news. So he was like on a ventilator for 21 days. He had to go to rehab for a couple of months. Like my uncle, his brother died during that time of COVID.

And we had to like share that with him while we were standing outside of it. Like, so, and in the midst of all of that level, I was like, it has to move forward. It has to move forward because what else am I going to do?

Sitting at the house and like just worry and be sad. No, I need to continue with the idea that we had because it’s very purpose driven. And this will be the fuel that I used to keep going.

And these relationships have gotten me to this point where I can call people up that I didn’t know before. They can make a call to someone higher up and they, they literally say, save my dad’s life.

Anthony Codispoti : What kind of care was he not getting that they were then able to switch and help with?

Nikoa Milton-Gulstone : So they were lying to us about his care. They were saying that his kidney function wasn’t what we knew that it was. They were saying that his oxygen levels were lower than they actually were.

And I, and, you know, I think that at that time the doctors didn’t really know that he was the first COVID patient. So they were like at 21 days, you know, we can’t do anything else.

Anthony Codispoti : Because that was the belief like 21 days and like, and that’s it.

Nikoa Milton-Gulstone : And I know, no, this is not, and I don’t,

Nikoa Milton-Gulstone : I don’t know if other patients got that care, but I know that I was not going to take no for an answer when I had been super involved in knowing about his steps. And his doctors were just lying to us. They were just lying to us

Anthony Codispoti : so that like knowingly lying or just knowing they were not informed and they were

Nikoa Milton-Gulstone : knowingly lying by his creatinine levels, his oxygen level. Like we knew them because my friend was calling the nurses every shift change. So we had a log of what was going on. We had a log of where his levels were. And when they called us to say goodbye, they told us that his, his levels were much different than they actually were. Why would they do that?

Anthony Codispoti : Well, you know, did I just pick at a really big gap here at a higher rate in childbirth than white women do? Why? Tell me. I want to hear it.

Nikoa Milton-Gulstone : We’re not taken seriously. We’re just, we’re considered disposable and we’re discarded. We have to advocate for ourselves a million times more than any other population, well, maybe not any other population, but then white people in this country. And I firmly believe that the only reason why my uncle died is because he didn’t have an advocate like my father did. My, my, that’s heartbreaking. My cousins and my aunts saw tears rolling down his face when they said that they were going to take him off the ventilator. He knew what was going on and he died because he didn’t have the advocates that my father did.

Anthony Codispoti : Where did you go for strength during this time? Yeah. You know, a lot of times when I hear stories where, you know, people are just dealing with multiple tornadoes at a time. It’s a spouse. It’s a loved one. But here we are in the midst of COVID and you’re with your ex-husband and I have to imagine that the dynamic there is not. Tell me if I’m wrong, but not one of love and support. Like what, what did you do?

Nikoa Milton-Gulstone : So I went within for sure. And I also have an incredible village of girlfriends who have helped me through every stage of my life when pre-COVID, when I was, you know, going through the separation and I had moved and I was trying to figure out how to take care of all these kids. My girlfriend moved her life, approved her life, came from Nashville, Tennessee and lived with me for six months. I didn’t have any furniture.

I didn’t know what I was going to do with these kids. She came and lived with me for six months to help me like figure it out. So I’ve always had a group of girlfriends who have done life with me through the good, the bad, the ugly and they 9.9 times out of 10 have been black women.

Anthony Codispoti : That’s your inner circle. Yeah. Your circle of strength. So let me now turn this around. I could ask, what’s your superpower?

Nikoa Milton-Gulstone : Oh, no one’s ever asked me that before. Huh. What is my super? So I feel like I’ve just like tapped into it. But for whatever reason, people feel really comfortable being really comfortable with me. Maybe it’s my vulnerability. Like I just am who I am and that makes other people feel really comfortable. That’s part of my leadership style. I allow people to be who they are without judgment. And I think people really gravitate towards that because it is pretty rare.

Anthony Codispoti : A lot of our listeners are tuning in. They want some advice, some guidance, some insights into maybe what has helped you. Is there a particular book, a podcast, a course, something that has helped you either personally or professionally that others might benefit from?

Nikoa Milton-Gulstone : Hmm. I don’t think that it’s like one particular thing. I’m not big on like self-help books or like industry books. I’m really big on accountability. And like I wake up every morning and I do a brain dump. So I do, I struggle with depression, anxiety and ADHD. So when I wake up, like my mind is racing. So I do a brain dump. I write everything down and then that gives me like a breath of fresh air.

Like, okay, like I’ve written it down and I can figure out like what to do with it later. And that’s helped me a lot with my anxiety. I do try to stay like in a certain routine. So when I wake up and after I do my brain dump, I listen to the daily and up first.

Those podcasts are favorites of mine. And then I have coffee and then I get to work. So I think routine has definitely helped me and that looks different for everyone. Like I’m not an early riser.

So I don’t get to work until 10 a.m. But I think leaning into your strengths, even if other folks have told you that they’re not your strengths, like you know, you know, just lean into that. And that has been really, really helpful for me.

Anthony Codispoti : Are there specific things that you’ve tried which have helped you kind of manage the depression, the anxiety, the ADHD?

Nikoa Milton-Gulstone : A to-do list. A written to-do list. So I have to like write things down. I can’t do the online, the notes. I have to write it down. Therapy. Medication. And also going to the gym. So I, you know, have four kids, I’m married, I’m managing, I’m running two businesses.

I’ve been responsible for a lot of things. But the gym is one hour that I get to myself where no one can reach me because my phone is in the locker. And I don’t have to think about anyone else. And I’m also releasing endorphins. So that really has helped me as well.

Anthony Codispoti : I think you hit on some really great ones there. I love that you gave voice to the therapy, to the medication, which is really important and helpful for so many people. The physical activity. Critical for everybody.

I don’t care what state you’re in. And the fact that you’re creating these to-do lists. Are you traditionally creating them in the morning? Is that part of the brain dump that you were talking about?

Nikoa Milton-Gulstone : I wish I had my to-do list handy.

Anthony Codispoti : Because I think anytime you can get it out of your head, there’s something really helpful in that.

Nikoa Milton-Gulstone : And then I categorize it later. I just need to get it out of my head and then I’ll find time to figure out what to do with it later. And I use a tool called Dashboard. It’s an amazing to-do list organizer that keeps me on track. And it’s been the one thing that has helped me keep things compartmentalized and also work through my to-do list in a way that doesn’t feel so overwhelming.

Anthony Codispoti : So you write it down first and then you transfer it into this application?

Nikoa Milton-Gulstone : It’s not an application. So I write it down just like as a list. And then I categorize it later on my written dashboard. So the dashboard is like a written… It’s a physical… Old school. I love it. Old school.

Anthony Codispoti : That way if the electricity or the internet goes down like we

Nikoa Milton-Gulstone : had yesterday, you can still upper it. I’m not gonna be a to-do list.

Anthony Codispoti : I still don’t know what’s on here. So, like, Co, as you look back, what’s the best decision you’ve ever made for your business?

Nikoa Milton-Gulstone : Oh, for my business. Hiring my director of community operations. She was our first hire. She’s incredible. She’s adaptable. She’s been able to like… And I think that’s important to an entrepreneur because you can’t necessarily afford to hire like the entire C-suite, but you need someone in there that can do a lot of things. And Ishelle has been that for us and she’s been able to do so many things and go with us through all of the changes in the organization. And I don’t think we would still be here if we’re not hiring her. So we made a really good decision at hiring. I mean, I know a lot of entrepreneurs, like, their first hires do not work out. Ishelle is gonna go with me everywhere.

Anthony Codispoti : You’re joined at the hips now. Yes. There’s no separation here. Yeah. You know, this next question I think is a fun one to sort of think about because as we’re going through our lives, our careers, and a lot of times we make mistakes, we trip up. But then when we fast forward a few years, we kind of look back in the rear view mirror. Sometimes the thing that at the moment seemed like a big mistake, we can now look back at with a lot of gratitude because it actually helped to propel us forward in some way. Can you think of something like that where it really felt like a huge debilitating mistake at the time, but now you’re like, oh, so glad that happened.

Nikoa Milton-Gulstone : A huge debilitating mistake. You know, I don’t…

Anthony Codispoti : And maybe it’s not as dramatic as that. Maybe it was a smaller mistake, but something that you were kind of beating yourself up for at the time. And now you look back and you’re like, you know what, that taught me this, which led to that. And I’m so grateful it happened.

Nikoa Milton-Gulstone : Well, so early on, we were trying to do a lot. We were doing this curriculum. We had a book club. We were doing just a lot of stuff. And it was great because that’s what the community needed during COVID. But then post-COVID, we kept trying to do that where folks were like more interested in getting together in person because we had been on lockdown for so long. So while it seemed to be like great at the time, we learned that, okay, we’re spending a lot of effort doing things that our members no longer value.

And I think we did that for too long. And once we had the epiphany, we were able to pivot and offer them more in-person events and more things that they did value now that we’re outside of COVID. And it ended up being an additional revenue stream for us, which has been great. And it’s not only an additional revenue stream, but also a different way to recruit new members. So it’s turned out to be a blessing in disguise.

I wish that it had not taken us as long to get to that point. But, you know, my co-founder and myself, this is the first time we started a business. So, you know, we learned as we grow and as we go. And we’ve had several hiccups and I don’t know if that’s like our greatest one, but in entrepreneurship, that’s just, you don’t know what you don’t know. You do the best you can and hopefully you move on sooner rather than later.

Anthony Codispoti : Where do you want to take level here, you Jenny? Why do you want to take it the next few years?

Nikoa Milton-Gulstone : So I’m really excited about these new offerings that we have. I’d like our members to own the real estate and to be backing candidates who are interested in supporting the initiatives that are important to our community members. And I’d love for more entrepreneurs to be funded and also increase the pipeline that, you know, we have entrepreneurs that come to us. I’d love to introduce them to more funding and more resources. And it’s hard for me to quantify what I want level to be in the future. But I want to do more of what we’re currently doing and at a larger scale.

Anthony Codispoti : Let’s see, Nikko, I think I’ve just got one more question for you. But before I ask it, I want to do two things. First of all, everyone listening, go ahead and hit the subscribe button on your favorite podcast app. We’ve had a great conversation here over the last two days with Nikko. And I want you to get more great content like this. Nikko, can you let people know how to get in touch with you or continue to follow your story?

Nikoa Milton-Gulstone : Yes, you can please reach out on LinkedIn. I am very interested in knowing folks who are interested in the work that I’m doing. So don’t be surprised if you reach out and then I follow up with like an email wanting to connect with you. So that’s Nikkoa Milton Goldstone on LinkedIn. We are at Let’s Level on Instagram, level leaders on Instagram or on LinkedIn, I’m sorry. And our website is levelleaders.com.

Anthony Codispoti : And we’ll include links to all those in the show notes for folks. But last question for you, Nikkoa, you and I, we reconnect in a year and you’re super excited. You’re celebrating something. What’s that thing that you’re celebrating?

Nikoa Milton-Gulstone : We’re celebrating multiple assets in our real estate portfolio. We’re celebrating building our team. We’re celebrating supporting. So we’ve run 19 cycles. So we’ve invested in 19 black women-owned businesses. I’d like to double that in the next year. Wow. And I’d like to get folks more involved in the local level politics.

And we’re bipartisan for sure, but we want folks to be involved in policy because we know that closing the racial wealth gap isn’t just about the money, but it’s about policy as well.

Anthony Codispoti : Nikkoa Milton Goldstone from Level. I’m going to be the first to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us today. I really appreciate it.

Nikoa Milton-Gulstone : Thank you so much for having me, Anthony. It’s been a wild ride with these technical difficulties.

Anthony Codispoti : Hey, and just like any entrepreneur, we persevered and pushed through it and we made it work.

Nikoa Milton-Gulstone : Perfect. I appreciate it.

Anthony Codispoti : Absolutely, folks. That’s a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories podcast. Thanks for learning with us today. Thank you.