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Stephen A. Smith — a relentless grinder who made himself a broadcasting legend — joined ForbesBLK’s stage in Atlanta this week for a fireside conversation with Forbes’ Randall Lane, where he was even asked the blunt question so many Americans wrestle with: what do you want your legacy to be? The scene felt less like a TV set and more like a reminder that real influence comes from long hours, high standards, and answering to your family and community.
ForbesBLK was created to lift up Black entrepreneurs and to turn cultural influence into economic power, a mission Forbes has promoted since launching the summit and the platform in 2023. The event has drawn substantial crowds and attention — a marketplace of ideas and connections where careers and companies are meant to be built, not simply applauded on social media.
Watching a figure like Smith onstage should be a moment of unity for commonsense Americans: celebrate success, honor grit, and encourage the next generation to outwork the one before. Conservatives should be the first to applaud a discussion about legacy that centers on work, family, and self-reliance rather than victimhood or government handouts. No politician’s program can substitute for the kind of discipline that made Stephen A. who he is.
That said, the summit’s earnest focus on access to capital and structural barriers — issues organizers raised plainly — should be an invitation to free-market solutions, not a call for more bureaucratic entanglement. Reports from the event make clear entrepreneurs still struggle to find fair capital and partnerships, which is a problem best solved by entrepreneurs, investors, and private charity opening markets, not politicians promising quotas.
If conservatives want to lead on this, we should propose policies that expand opportunity — lower barriers to start-ups, cut red tape, and encourage community investment — while calling out the empty theater of identity politics that too often replaces genuine empowerment. Businesses succeed when they are judged on results and value, and every American who believes in the Constitution and free enterprise should back efforts that turn talent into tangible, job-creating success.
Stephen A.’s moment on the ForbesBLK stage is more than celebrity theater; it’s a patriotic prompt for every hard-working American to consider the mark they’ll leave. Let’s honor legacy by promoting responsibility, strengthening families, and unleashing capitalism’s power to lift people up — not by surrendering to the temptation of victim narratives or elite virtue-signaling.
