Best of BAB Podcast Season 1: Adam Troy - Building a Life Long Legacy in Business & Community Service

For over three decades, Adam K. Troy has been a bridge builder and catalytic thought-leader for fostering community and economic empowerment.

A multi-dimensional social entrepreneur, Adam is the principal of TROY Enterprises and also serves as the Chief Engagement Officer for the Community Development
Foundation of New Salem Baptist Church. He is noted as a transformational leader with broad-based experience in the areas of real estate and community development. To those arenas and beyond he brings a unique blend of expertise to align government and private sector interests with that of community residents’ and non-profit organizations toward the well-being of residents and overall quality of life impact.

His expertise with mixed-use projects in under-resourced markets and
continued commitment to the community has positioned him as one of our
nation’s most credible messengers and experienced thought-leaders in the field
of public-private partnerships. His completed project track record
demonstrates a proven ability to work in unison with staff, volunteers, and
board of directors. Skillful in interacting with stakeholders, community groups,
and government officials at varying levels, he is recognized for his ability to gain
consensus. Clients describe his workmanship as innovative, versatile, and
always centered on the end user. Adam’s vast network of contacts and results oriented approach has earned him a reputation as a solid team-player and business leader.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02: 0:00

Welcome

SPEAKER_03: 0:08

to be a baller podcast where we discuss how to build a lifelong legacy. I'm your host coach Tim Brown. Today we'll be talking about building a legacy and service to the community with our special guest, Adam Troy.

SPEAKER_02: 0:22

Before we get started, let's hear a word from our sponsor. The City of Refuge Good Life Foundation is a 501c3 organization that is an affiliate of the First Church of God, led by Bishop Timothy Joseph Clark. Our vision is that everyone will have a better life through the establishment of a stable and sustainable home environment. We serve all residents of central Ohio with a focus on residents in southeast Columbus who are TANF eligible and or who fall at or below the federal poverty guidelines. We accomplish our mission in four targeted areas. They are workforce development, mothers' initiatives in infant mortality, youth training, mentoring and development, and college preparedness for youth from impoverished backgrounds. To learn more, please visit our website at www.corgoodlifefoundation.org. That's www.corgoodlifefoundation.org. you

SPEAKER_03: 1:24

Today on the Be A Baller podcast, we're excited to have Adam here. Adam is currently serving the community in the Linden area as the CEO of New Salem Baptist Church Community of Cairn Development Foundation. Adam will talk about the importance of being intentional in serving and uplifting our community. Thanks for being a guest on Be A Baller podcast. It's a pleasure to be here and looking forward to the discussion today. Yeah, first of all, we got to talk about the style of the choice. Well, Where did the dress, where did all that come from? You all might have your own brand. Our mother, man. Okay. And not that she was, I think, so intentional about it. What's interesting is that, you know, we have no sisters.

SPEAKER_01: 2:09

And

SPEAKER_03: 2:09

so it's all four boys. But our mother just modeled that. And, you know, the joke actually about dad is that nobody's ever seen dad until recently without a tie. So whether he was mowing the grass or preaching a sermon, that's just how we thought it was supposed to be. So I think we just emulated what we saw. Wow. You know, you grew up in Warren, Ohio, and then you moved to Columbus for your junior, senior year of high school. How was that transition coming from Warren to Columbus, Ohio? Yeah, I'm smiling, man, because it was tough. We moved here in 76, Tim, and I was a junior in high school. And you know, when you're a junior in high school, you kind of feel like you're coming into your prime. And so we left Warren, moved here. And for people who who know us, we talk about the 216, that's the area code for Warren, Ohio. Our home was like three streets over from the project. So when we moved to Columbus, that was like a whole new world for us. It felt very suburban, if you will. And then to top it all off, when we moved here in 76 was the first year of busing. And so even though I live by, technically I could walk to Mifflin High School, I got bus to Brookhaven. So it was a little bit of a culture shock, man, but made friends fairly quickly at Brookhaven. And, you know, when you play basketball, you get a chance to get around the city and meet everybody who's out there. So that helped. Basketball actually helped tremendously in my transition. Your dad was on the podcast earlier this year. Can you talk about growing up as a PK, a pastor's kid? Yeah, all the PKs are like, just don't give away the secrets out there. But not only was, you know, dad, you know, we were preachers kids, but particularly in Warren, that was also president of the school board. Oh, wow. through in adolescence. There are things that your friends do that you can't necessarily do. There are places that they go that you can't necessarily go. But it puts you in a position early on to help you understand what your responsibility is, even to your peer group, in terms of modeling what hopefully good behavior and maximizing your potential can look like. So it wasn't easy, but we navigate. Right. That's a great point. Can you talk about maybe one of those experiences you had where the guys are going one way and you're thinking, no, my mom and dad don't play this. I can't do that. Should my family see this podcast? And here's what they're going to remember. Eric, my younger brother, there's only two years difference between us. And Tim, I promise you, like literally for, I don't know, man, five or six years, we probably got got a whooping every day. I mean, we were just guys who were just always out there, right? And so we were in perfect position to tell our friends, there's just some things that you do not want to do. There was one incident where we had, you know, we didn't have car access. And so we rode our bikes all over the city, which is not something kids do nowadays, right? Rode our bikes all over the city. And on one incident, instance, Eric and I had gone with a group of our friends to the drive-thru theater across town. And we got back after curfew. We learned from that because our father had applied education, if you will. The next time that opportunity presented itself, Tim, we were in a position to say, guys, we're not going down that route. If y'all choose to go to the drive-thru on your bikes, that's fine. We'll see y'all tomorrow, Saturday at the football field. So, you know, sometimes you just have to, you learn about it by going through it. I think we learned a lot about those streetlights. No doubt. No doubt. When they came on, we were in trouble. We were in trouble. We knew where to be. Speaking of that, can you talk about Detroit name and what it stands for in the community? I would like to think that, you know, it's almost, if you take the first letters of our last name, it's essentially how we, I think tried to hold up a standard you know that t in troy ultimately for all of us it's about trust and integrity we may not always agree but you can trust that our perspective and our movement is coming from a genuine place and not one that's that's typically self-centered so so the t in troy stands for trust the r as you probably can guess or as most people probably most people know us it's really about be relational yes it doesn't matter where you find people, whether you're speaking to people who are working the front desk or you're going to meet with the CEO, right? Be relational. And that's sort of in our DNA. And so the R stands for being relational. Always just always looking for the opportunity to bridge relationships or to do something good, right? Don't be blind to what's out there, what's in front of you and understand what your responsibility in your space is in that particular time. The why, interesting enough, is about the you, but not the you. In fact, I've cultivated this in pretty much everything that we do. Everybody who works with us in Linden, tied to the Development Foundation, has these bands. And as you can see, this band says, I see you. On the other side, it says, calling all connectors. The point is, as we grew up, it was about the you should be beyond the optics. Take the time to understand what that person is. might be going through, where did they come from? What was the effort that it took to get them there? White, black, red, or brown, young or old. And so that T is about trust. The R is about being relational. The O is opportunity. And the U is just always seeing people beyond the opportunity. So hopefully we've lived up to that standard. You guys definitely have. Well, you done gave me some work to do, man. My last name Brown just stands for the color. You know, if you say Brown, hey, that's just a color. You're a smart guy, man. You'll figure it out. Yeah, I'm going to figure it out. You know, there's a big focus on HBCU schools now. Yeah. That's the big buzz where everybody's talking about those. You and your brothers had the experience of actually attending Morehouse College. And attending Morehouse College, how did that prepare you for the community work you do today? Fair question. You know, our Morehouse legacy actually started with my brother, Keith, who, again, graduated, I think, in summer from Warren Western Reserve in Warren, Ohio, and ended up going to Morehouse College, which none of us had heard of. There is six years difference between Keith and myself and then Eric is two years behind me. I can remember he sent for us one summer and Eric and I had a chance to go and visit. And Tim, it was the first time that I think we got a glimpse of what black excellence could look like. Like this was all African-American people. performing at the highest level and I think Morehouse at that particular point in time left an indelible impression upon our entire family and certainly me I had a scholarship actually to go to Brown University in Providence the mistake they made was bringing me there in February and so I go there and it was just oh my gosh it was just blistering cold and so I made up my mind to apply to um to morehouse went down there and what i realized early on um was that we didn't have to apologize for who we were that that and almost with you know wakanda forever about to come out it felt that way you know and so what morehouse prepared us for is that um Dr. Benjamin Mays, who's often touted as the father of Morehouse, we had this saying, which was above the heads of her students, Morehouse holds a crown that it challenges them to grow tall enough to wear. So every day it was about, are you reaching the crown? And for me, that's allowed me to carry that mantra forward into places like Linden, saying there's a different standard now that we're here, right? And every day we're trying to challenge people grow tall enough to wear the mantle of London. There's a proud history there, right, of people who worked hard, who sacrificed for you to be there. And so Morehouse gave us the standard. Morehouse also provided, I think, the wherewithal to learn how to deal with different personalities, different cultures, and to be respectful in that sense, and to always make sure that my brother-in-law Keith often says this, Morehouse was true to this. If you were the smartest cat in the room, then you need to be in a different room. And so at Morehouse, there was always another room for you to be in. So I'd like to think that it prepared us both academically, but also just in terms of service and being strong standard bearers for the community. You know, you've been a successful real estate development company, Omni Management. Why did you get involved in serving the Lender community full time as the CEO of the New Salem Church, a community of care and Development Foundation. Yeah, I would like to think, man, that it wasn't so much, Tim, me choosing Lyndon

SPEAKER_01: 12:28

as

SPEAKER_03: 12:29

it felt like Lyndon chose me. Some people know I was in six or seven years ago, I was in Detroit for a couple years, and then I came back to Columbus. And my brother at that time, who was a pastor over in New Salem, asked me to consider sitting in the seat as our admissions director, but also overseeing the community development initiative and at that time we were singularly focused on what we call the golden triangle that was essentially the five or six blocks around the church about 197 families and the goal was could we focus our relationships and our resources over a 36 month period of time three years and build a demonstration project to hold up to everybody else to say all right doesn't matter what your ethnicity is doesn't matter where you come from, but with focused resources and relationships, this is what the model could look like. The mayor at that time was just about, was beginning to roll out One Columbus. And the mayor and his people came to see us. And what began to happen is as we're very big on data. And so as we put in the zip code for our membership, what we found was that it was a few hundred people who were New Salem members who lived all throughout Linden. And so by proximity and membership, it sort of pulled us into service because we were servicing those families. And what I began to look at was, all right, now that we're here, Can we leverage our relationships and marshal all of our resources, but do it in a bigger footprint? And what began to happen, Tim, is that we decided to reside at what we call that intersection of the sacred and the secular. It was focused on what happens Monday through Saturday. We already knew we had strong programming on Sunday. And as long as we resided in that intersection, partnerships began to come our way. People began to come our way. And then we do what we do, which was to execute. Yeah. And so in that in the past five years, I've fallen in love with Lyndon and hopefully they like me a little bit. But I think we we've been able to develop a special relationship in terms of creating an environment which has off the chart potential. It really does. Yeah. You know, thinking of that, how have you been so successful in bringing community partners together to impact the in the community because we all know that's one of the challenges getting people on the same page yeah I think we're very good and you'll appreciate this being the athlete that I know you are four years ago people can google this or see it on YouTube Adidas had a commercial called it's theme calling all creators they never say the name of the product but they're all at this big table it's entertainers it's athletes it's artists and they're just talking about the vibe and you see snippets of the product I saw that Tim and I said that's us if we can create a big enough table in Linden that no matter if you're young old you know older than 50 younger than 50 you're black white you're blue collar no collar you know white collar if the table's big enough and people coming and sit at the table. And we give them an opportunity to do three things. We always talk about conversation, hopefully leads to community. Community leads to culture. And what began to happen around that premise is that partners began to say, yeah, that's a place I can see me at the table. And there are like-minded people at the table who will not only come and work side by side, but will challenge me and hold me accountable. The beauty about running a faith-based initiative is that we can speak truth to power no matter who it is. I don't care if you are, as we like to say, a street pharmacist or you're the mayor, right? If you come to Linden and we're all at the table, we're going to speak truth to power in the interest of people who will never get a chance to sit at that table. And I like to think that that's what began to resonate with now more than 30-something different partnerships that we've established over the past five years. The

SPEAKER_02: 16:54

City of Refuge Good Life Foundation is a 501c3 organization that is an affiliate of the First Church of God led by Bishop Timothy Joseph Clark. Our vision is that everyone will have a better life through the establishment of a stable and sustainable home environment. We serve all residents of Central Ohio with a focus on residents in Southeast Columbus who are TANF eligible and or who fall at or below the federal poverty guidelines. We accomplish our mission in four targeted areas. They are workforce development, mothers initiatives and infant mortality To learn more, please visit our website at www.corgoodlifefoundation.org. That's www.corgoodlifefoundation.org.

SPEAKER_03: 17:53

You truly have a servant's heart for community. What's inside of you to help you stay committed? Because a lot of people, they come in and out of community. We've seen these before. But what's that in Adam Troy that allows you to continue in this fight? Yeah, I think part of it is certainly our DNA. But I tell this story pretty often. Almost two decades ago now in Linden, I was unloading some boxes in front of the church. And there was a young man I could see out of my peripheral, Tim, coming down the alleyway. And I was helping my sister-in-law, Brenda, unload some boxes. And I'm in the lower level of the church. And all of a sudden we hear over the loudspeaker at that time that somebody had just broken into her car, taken something out of her

SPEAKER_01: 18:43

car.

SPEAKER_03: 18:44

So I come rushing back out on the street. I can see what appeared to be the same young man running across the street. My brother, Pastor Troy at the time, came out the other door. And so I'm watching my brother chase. And the young man probably was about 13 or 14 years old. And so I'm watching my brother chase this young man across Cleveland Avenue, dodging cars. and behind one of the houses we had just built with Habitat. And so I go south, and my idea was we would corner him, which is exactly what ended up happening. And so we're about six feet from him, and I can see, Tim, what he's got is a cell phone. He had reached in the car and taken her cell phone. And we called him Jamal, because to this day, I call him the proverbial Jamal, because we still don't even know his name. But I could see the cell phone in his hand, and my my brother and I began to approach him and he pulls up his shirt tail and he brandishes a gun. And he's 14, 13, 14 years old. And he says to us, back up, you don't know me. Go back to the church. We're not about to take a bullet for our cell phone. We call the appropriate authorities. Inside of two hours, they had this young man. Here's the indictment. And this is what became our motivation. At that time, we're arguably probably one of the largest African-American churches in central Ohio. We got programs out the wazoo. We got a fair amount of visibility. There's nobody we probably can't touch within a phone call or an email. Jamal lives six doors down from us in a prostitution house. And we didn't know him. And so that to this day has become my clarion call saying it doesn't matter how big we are, how good we are. There's still somebody out there that we have yet to make a connection with. And so if you look at the mission statement of the Development Foundation, it's not creating more programming. The mission statement is creating a connected community. That young man's words still continue to haunt me to this day, but it also became the rallying cry inside of me saying, you know what? we may be doing okay from the outside looking in, but I guarantee you, there's a Jamal six doors down from us. We don't have enough of a relationship to prevent him from taking from us, not to partner with us. And so every day, man, that's the motivation. Like, where's the next Jamal? Yeah. As you were sharing that, I was thinking about the role of the church today. Can you speak a little bit more on that connected community, that connected, being connected? Because you see a lot of churches And the reality is some of the big churches members may not live in the area. Yeah. But that connection. How can churches build that connection in the community? Fair question. Oftentimes, black and brown folks who live in suburbia get criticized for living out there. Right. And what I say to folks is it's not necessarily about where you live. Right. I mean, that does have its merit. It's about where you spend your time and you're done. Most folks who, quite frankly, live inside the inner city, wake up, and they leave the inner city to go to work or to go to school. Most people who live in the suburbs wake up from the suburbs and come into the inner city. So there's a fair exchange there. Symbolically, what I hold up in terms of just sort of answering your question, no matter what the religion is, if you take the cross as the symbol, right? The cross has two planes, vertical and horizontal. And what the church has to remember is that we are either obligated to operate on both planes. What the universal church typically gets comfortable with is operating on the vertical plane. That's what we do on our Sabbath. That represents your relationship to the deity. We do that fairly well. Where we often fall short at is on the horizontal plane. That's where the access is, right? And so, the church has to remember our approach is a balanced approach if, in fact, you're going to truly represent the cross. Most churches, well, I should say a lot of churches, right, have an unbalanced cross. And the community of smart enough to look back and say, oh man, you're not really interested in me. It's all about what I can do for you on your Sabbath. My brother's teaching a class to our senior staff, and he reminded us that at its core, the church is called to give comfort to those who are afflicted and to afflict those who are comfortable. And oftentimes, that's what we miss as the universal church. If we hone in on that, we'll always stay at that intersection, of the cross, which again, I refer to as the intersection of the sacred and the secular. And I think that's the challenge of the universal church. How do you stay at the intersection where you are relational enough to function and can be seen as a credible messenger on the horizontal plane, but you never lose sight of why we're here in terms of your relationship to the deity. How'd you miss that calling for ministry? Listen, man. You're sitting in here preaching now. There are enough of those in our family. Yeah. Adam, your work in the community has been called innovative, versatile, and always centered on the end user. I'm curious to your meaning of that commitment to the end user. The end user is, and we sort of referenced the end user early on, is the person who's in the shadows, who's never going to get a chance to sit at the table. And so whether I'm in the barbershop or I'm in the boardroom, I have to recognize Represent that person's interest because that may be that single mother who's never going to make more than$30,000 who's working two and three shifts just to keep a roof over their heads or to make sure that the kids can go to school. My responsibility with the gifts I've been given is to make sure that I represent her interest. To me, she's the end user. So oftentimes we get people who support us because when they show up, they know I'm not in that room representing my own agenda. I'm speaking for Ms. Robinson or Mr. Williams, right? And so the end user for me is always, at the end of the day, whatever we're talking about doing, whether it's a person coming into the community, whether it's building a new place, whether it is introducing a new product, the people who live, rest, or worship here, they are the end users. How will their lives be enhanced by that thing? So I'm always focused on the end user benefit. Yeah. You know, last as we wrap up, this has been a great conversation. Can you issue a challenge to the audience, the importance of being involved in the community? Yeah. And if I might, Tim, let me sort of narrow that focus, given sort of where we started. You know, we come from a family of black males. And so we are, I think, always keenly sensitive about the challenge and the accountability and responsibility responsible to other black and brown men. I was watching Animal Kingdom earlier in the year doing COVID as I do from time to time. It's an interesting analogy. In Africa. They were in Africa. And the African guy was leading a tour of folks whose melanin are not like mine and yours. And so they came across a village that had been trampled. And so the guests asked what happened to the village. And what the guide shared with them is that it had been trampled by young pachyderms, young elephants. And so one of the persons who was a scientist said, that's abnormal behavior. because elephants typically, that's not in their DNA. They don't trample over villages, right? They're usually pretty passive, right? Until they are provoked. And so the guide acknowledged that and says that all of the adult pachyderms had either left or been killed. And so this generation didn't have anything to model. I said, man, that's us. That's us. And so, well, we've got so many of our adult black males who are either invisible because they're not engaged or they move outside of the central city. We now got a generation that is literally trampling the village. They're killing one another. They're maiming folks. They're cussing in front of the elders. That's not who we are, man. And so my challenge, hopefully to the viewing and listening audience, particularly particularly if you're an African-American male, you got to show up. You have to get visible. This is not at this particular point in time, given the sports analogy, it ain't a spectator sport anymore now. I mean, if you are genuinely concerned about where we're going as a people and where we're going as a community, that power literally lies in the hands of adult black males. And showing up. Absolutely. And showing up. And that's why I know that you and New Salem have always showed up. you know and what you guys do it's not about the presence it's about your presence that's right

SPEAKER_01: 28:17

you know

SPEAKER_03: 28:18

that's absolutely right the presence is going to come and go you know Christmas time that's right it's over with but your presence in New Salem has been that presence in the community so I want to thank you thank you sir I appreciate the opportunity to come and share what a great episode on community service that brings the end of this episode thanks Adam for joining us and sharing your journey to build a legacy in community service We hope today's episode was encouragement to you all. As always, thanks for listening to Be A Baller Podcast.

SPEAKER_00: 28:48

If you enjoy our show, please share this podcast with your family and friends. Be A Baller Podcast is available on all major podcast stations. Be sure to come back next week as we continue to discuss on how to build a lifelong legacy. Until then, don't forget to be a baller. This podcast was created by Coach Tim Brown. It was edited by Teron Howell and produced and recorded by the video production class of Worthington Christian High School.