Speaker 1: Okaba fan, I cannot be more excited to have this
Speaker 1: duo on the show. First of all, it's the duo
Speaker 1: I didn't know I needed in my life. And y'all
Speaker 1: know of brown ambition. I want to create a space
Speaker 1: where we can, like sister talk like we're getting around
Speaker 1: a table. We are not just having guests on who
Speaker 1: want to talk about, of course, all their incredible business ventures,
Speaker 1: but the people who have come up with them, the
Speaker 1: relationships that have sustained them during those hard times, the
Speaker 1: friendships that keep them going, the people who know the real,
Speaker 1: real you know, when the lights go off and the
Speaker 1: way it comes off, and the real you know, the
Speaker 1: real shit that we're all going through. And so I
Speaker 1: have a couple of incredible guests today. First, I have
Speaker 1: Kenya param who is the chief growth officer for a
Speaker 1: spill app. Here's the t Now, if y'all are not
Speaker 1: familiar with spill app, what's wrong with you? If you're
Speaker 1: looking for an alternative to the you know what of
Speaker 1: it all? Just going to put the what are we
Speaker 1: calling it? The are just formally known as Twitter, and
Speaker 1: you want to join a black owned, black maid for
Speaker 1: the culture. Social media app spill is where it's at.
Speaker 1: I love Spill, and then also Lisa Beasley, who I
Speaker 1: don't even know. Lisa, Like when people recognize your name,
Speaker 1: I feel like if I said, your real name is
Speaker 1: kind of cool, You're like a Clark Kent kind of vibe.
Speaker 1: She's actually better known as Corporate Aaron, the comedian actress.
Speaker 1: And we'll talk a little bit about entrepreneur as well,
Speaker 1: who has been plaguing our social media nightmares for years
Speaker 1: and giving us all PTSD of being in corporate and
Speaker 1: talking and listening to the corporate errands of the world.
Speaker 1: But I'm excited for y'all to get to know Lisa
Speaker 1: as well as Kenya, who.
Speaker 2: Y'all have come up together right well, firstly, you know,
Speaker 2: really grateful to be here with you and have an
Speaker 2: opportunity to introduce Spill to the BA community, the Brown
Speaker 2: Ambvision community.
Speaker 3: We are conversation connection, culture, community, commerce, an impactful place
Speaker 3: where we are on a mission to become the de
Speaker 3: facto place to discuss and discover the things that matter
Speaker 3: most to us as culture driving communities. We are an
Speaker 3: emerging social platform that's built to center brown, black, queer
Speaker 3: communities who have historically driven culture across the Internet, but
Speaker 3: unfortunately received the line share of hate on other social
Speaker 3: platforms because of a lack of trust and safety. So
Speaker 3: on spill, we have a deep, heavy policy and practical
Speaker 3: investment in moderation and safety.
Speaker 4: We can tag team Lisia, you know when you want
Speaker 4: to come through.
Speaker 3: But we were both at the AFRO Tech conference this
Speaker 3: past year in November. Where was I.
Speaker 1: Okay, I didn't get a chance to meet you, Lisa,
Speaker 1: but I saw you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I saw you.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Corporate Air was there and I took a It was
Speaker 6: a girl's trip. It was me and Corporate here and
Speaker 6: we were both there at the same time.
Speaker 1: Gotcha right, that's right.
Speaker 3: And so I had quite a few speaking engagements over
Speaker 3: the course of a couple of days. It was a
Speaker 3: super packed schedule and we had this spilled leadership team
Speaker 3: and a couple of our other folks there and we
Speaker 3: ran into each other at the Black Excellence brunch and
Speaker 3: the minute that I saw her.
Speaker 4: I was like, Okay, I know exactly who this is.
Speaker 4: I had a little fan girl moment.
Speaker 3: I went up to her and as I was speaking
Speaker 3: to introduce myself, she was like, I know who you are.
Speaker 3: I haven't seen you over the last couple of days,
Speaker 3: and I was like, okay.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, And I remember thinking, so at the last
Speaker 6: event that we saw each other at the Black Excellence brunch,
Speaker 6: so I was there working the event, but also there
Speaker 6: for myself.
Speaker 5: So I'm getting what I want to get done.
Speaker 6: But there was only a couple of activations that Lisa
Speaker 6: myself wanted to go to, because it is true, I
Speaker 6: do have different personalities from my characters, even though they
Speaker 6: all come from the same place.
Speaker 1: I'm so really to hear your real voice, I gotta
Speaker 1: tell you, that's such a relief.
Speaker 6: I can also do this like Beyonce though, so we
Speaker 6: have options. Okay, so she's she's a She's at the brunch,
Speaker 6: but had I had only gone to a couple of other,
Speaker 6: like auxiliary events put on by different companies, but Spill
Speaker 6: was always the like one of the companies at the
Speaker 6: activations that I was going to, So I didn't know,
Speaker 6: but I went to the Spill activations, And now that
Speaker 6: I'm thinking about it, the Spill activations appealed to me.
Speaker 5: So those are the extra ones that I went to.
Speaker 6: Because you know, when you go to these huge conferences,
Speaker 6: there's so much going on at once, which is why,
Speaker 6: which is why you have three people at a conference
Speaker 6: and they not know and so speaking to that while
Speaker 6: she's doing her thing with the there's a Microsoft Copilot event.
Speaker 6: She's on a panel and she's just talking that talk
Speaker 6: I like to hear. It's just very decolonized and there
Speaker 6: was no centering of ideals.
Speaker 5: That I didn't like.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and within like the first couple of minutes, so
Speaker 3: I'm like, hey, girl, huge fan of your work, not
Speaker 3: just your comedy and your artistry, but also you know,
Speaker 3: corporate batty to corporate batty, Like, I salute you.
Speaker 4: I get it. It makes sense to me.
Speaker 3: And I'm just kind of going through the motions and
Speaker 3: she's like, okay, you know what, I got to let
Speaker 3: you know right now. I didn't even have to pitch her.
Speaker 3: She was like, I'm planning this huge stunt. I'm leaving
Speaker 3: X and we about to do something and I'm joining
Speaker 3: Spill and.
Speaker 4: I want you to know that.
Speaker 3: From that moment until when we chily pulled off this
Speaker 3: really successful big stunt, it was like ten days in time,
Speaker 3: which wow, I've heard of.
Speaker 6: Okay, I'm not trying to be like go out and
Speaker 6: circle back, y'all. I want I'm.
Speaker 5: In the camp of like, will let's all be making
Speaker 5: pick your fruit off trees?
Speaker 6: But I know we can't get it. So this is
Speaker 6: what I mean in terms of being a corporate baddy.
Speaker 6: The activation that we pulled off that took ten days
Speaker 6: would have taken your typical stress G marketing team anywhere
Speaker 6: from three weeks to seven eight months. Seriously so and
Speaker 6: still and people will know what I mean when I
Speaker 6: say this, still banging it out legitimately, like still having
Speaker 6: a deliverable slist, still having you know, the itemizations, still
Speaker 6: getting to the contracting, still doing the thing we've already done,
Speaker 6: the whole meetings to death thing that stops in the
Speaker 6: way of progress.
Speaker 5: And so here I.
Speaker 6: See this high executive in a large platform that I
Speaker 6: could have a place in, looking at me and talking
Speaker 6: to me.
Speaker 5: That's never happened at other platforms.
Speaker 6: So on X I left, it was twenty seven thousand
Speaker 6: followers and looking across if I if I look across
Speaker 6: my Internet kingdom, yes, you know, surveying the land of
Speaker 6: about six hundred and fifty thousand, I'm like, I can
Speaker 6: do away with that island. So but I also understand
Speaker 6: very de how my revenue streams as a pertean's platform
Speaker 6: work and how they also work as leveraging and marketing channels.
Speaker 6: So I didn't feel like I was losing anything because
Speaker 6: I was gaining some of my soul.
Speaker 1: Back, right yeah, and it's nice. I mean you guys
Speaker 1: are in startup phase, right ken yea? I mean you've
Speaker 1: been Mischief Growth officer. How's the growing doing? What does
Speaker 1: that all entail? How do you grow? Can't I can't
Speaker 1: think of a more intimidating kind of platform to launch
Speaker 1: when there's so much noise, so many options. My god,
Speaker 1: thread and Blue Threads and Blue Sky and the meta
Speaker 1: of it all. I'm like, but to have something like
Speaker 1: spill in the mix? What has that been like to
Speaker 1: grow this brand at this time?
Speaker 4: You know?
Speaker 3: I started off with the team day one, twenty twenty three.
Speaker 3: At the top of twenty twenty three as the global
Speaker 3: Vice president for Community and Partnerships.
Speaker 4: At the top of this year, I've stepped into being Chief.
Speaker 3: Growth Officer, where I'm now responsible for leading all growth revenue.
Speaker 1: User lines got promoted.
Speaker 3: I love to optimize the complete user journey, maximizing retention,
Speaker 3: scaling revenue operations, and making sure that our high performing
Speaker 3: teams are focused on success, and so growth looks a
Speaker 3: lot like an upward trajectory, but also continuing to double
Speaker 3: and triple down on what we've always done really well,
Speaker 3: which is centering the communities, protecting the communities who drive
Speaker 3: culture forward, and making sure that people have a stafer,
Speaker 3: more fun, more enjoyable place on the Internet to just
Speaker 3: be ourselves.
Speaker 1: How is it that you like, what actually goes into
Speaker 1: making this a protected a protected space, like we're an
Speaker 1: in dangerous b bcs or something the protected lens. If
Speaker 1: you're black, you're queer, your trands in that community. What
Speaker 1: are you getting that's different? You've said you protect us,
Speaker 1: But is it through moderation? Is it like we're going
Speaker 1: to filter out racism and misogyny and that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: What actually is happening behind the Wizard's curtain?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I appreciate that question.
Speaker 3: So, firstly, we have a really robust set of community
Speaker 3: guidelines that I authored in partnership with some of the
Speaker 3: top trust in safety professionals who are also black women
Speaker 3: across in this field. I sat and listened and learned
Speaker 3: to what was working and what wasn't working on other platforms.
Speaker 4: When we authored our rules, and that is kind of
Speaker 4: the rule book.
Speaker 3: By which we have created, you know, governance on Spill,
Speaker 3: and then we kind of bring our tech into it
Speaker 3: where we are training one of the first ever large
Speaker 3: language models in AI for content moderation, so basically culturally
Speaker 3: competent technology that is enforcing our community guidelines. And an
Speaker 3: amazing thing happens when we do that, because it's not
Speaker 3: just about the defense obviously, right, like you know, the
Speaker 3: things that would normally populate on other social platforms hit
Speaker 3: the timeline on Spill because of our AI lines of defense.
Speaker 4: But we also have humans in.
Speaker 3: The loop, a talented team of culturally competently trained human
Speaker 3: beings who are on the clock twenty four to seven
Speaker 3: three sixty five in shifts to be the human lines
Speaker 3: of defense to enforce these rules as well. And so
Speaker 3: that awesome thing happens I was talking about where it's
Speaker 3: not just about defense, but it's also about the offense.
Speaker 3: Because when you don't have to worry about defending for
Speaker 3: your life on social media, right, you show up with
Speaker 3: much more authentic, authentistic voice, You show up much more
Speaker 3: authentically in you know, in community, you know, and love
Speaker 3: happens when that happens, right, connection happens, Relationships foster, you
Speaker 3: can do business with folks right, Just amazing things spark
Speaker 3: from a place where you don't have to feel like
Speaker 3: you are combating yourself against some of the most vitriolic,
Speaker 3: disgusting elements of hate that, in particular, black women who
Speaker 3: over index in use on social media face every single day.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I'm in like a bit of a
Speaker 1: bubble with Brown Ambition because just the audience we attract,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's us. It just has always felt so
Speaker 1: safe and our listeners, it's just positivity up and down.
Speaker 1: And I mean doesn't mean they won't say when they
Speaker 1: don't like something or question something, but it feels very
Speaker 1: safe here. And it sounds like Spill also kind of
Speaker 1: offers that community. I have a personal Spill account. I
Speaker 1: think I need to start my Brown Ambition Spill account
Speaker 1: breaking news Brown Ambition on Spill come follow us.
Speaker 4: I mean, we've got groups now, so it'd be great
Speaker 4: to help.
Speaker 1: Great Fition group where okay.
Speaker 3: Your listeners and your community can continue to receive updates
Speaker 3: about what's happening on in the Brown Ambition world.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, so tell me like Kenya and Aaron,
Speaker 1: you guys met at this conference. I'm kind of surprised.
Speaker 1: Should I just called you Aaron? If you bring that wing,
Speaker 1: if you take that listen the pitch, better stay the pitch.
Speaker 1: I like the baritone. Uh what was I going anyway? Whatever?
Speaker 1: I want to start talking in a British accent again,
Speaker 1: It'll be fine, Aaron.
Speaker 5: No, this is the part of my person who joke.
Speaker 6: By the way, I'm maliciously I maliciously enjoyed this a
Speaker 6: little bit, so I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: But I'm glad you do. It's like my sons because
Speaker 1: I named them Rio and Remy, which I'm an idiot,
Speaker 1: and yeah, it's great. But I like Lisa, even though
Speaker 1: your name is in like twenty font in front of
Speaker 1: my face. Christ Almighty Lisa. When you were an Afro
Speaker 1: tech you were You're also an entrepreneur, right, so like,
Speaker 1: can you tell us about your corporate journey and how
Speaker 1: it's been in entrepreneurship land? How are you coping?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 6: Absolutely, A lot of people don't know my story because
Speaker 6: on purpose, I kind of market myself forward facing with
Speaker 6: the content because I've been having a lot of fun
Speaker 6: having a direct access to people who watch my content.
Speaker 6: Without Hollywood gatekeepers. So grow up, Gary and Diana. I
Speaker 6: went to perform in arts high school, but I played
Speaker 6: the clarinet, so I was very shy.
Speaker 1: So I wait a second, I also was a clarinet player.
Speaker 1: Does that mean that we're shy?
Speaker 6: Well, I was shy, but I knew I wanted to
Speaker 6: be like a star and a singer and broad Way.
Speaker 5: But I was like, I was.
Speaker 4: Clarinet in middle school.
Speaker 1: You guys all, this is now a different podcast right now.
Speaker 1: That's so funny.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so I took the that too. It was the
Speaker 6: only way I was gonna pay for college. So I
Speaker 6: went to a college in Memphis, Tennessee. I went to
Speaker 6: lamorna On College, went on a full music scholarship and there,
Speaker 6: yeah there, so I uh uh did a concentration in
Speaker 6: classical jazz studies. And from there I knew that I
Speaker 6: did not want to enter the workforce because I did
Speaker 6: the responsible thing of Okay, in senior year college, you
Speaker 6: can get a management position just because you have a
Speaker 6: bachelor's It doesn't even matter what it's in. So I
Speaker 6: did those programs that employers was doing at the time
Speaker 6: where they were enticing you know, fresh college grads doing
Speaker 6: the responsible thing of like, alright, let me secure my
Speaker 6: check so I could pay for my car so I
Speaker 6: could drive to my job, so I could pay for
Speaker 6: my apartment, so I could pay for my car so
Speaker 6: I could drive for my job. So and I and
Speaker 6: I was like, I wanna be a performer and I
Speaker 6: that was like one of the first calls from inside
Speaker 6: the house that I truly answered where I felt like
Speaker 6: I am shifting the direction of my life. And I
Speaker 6: went to LA instead of working at like enterprise rent
Speaker 6: a car. I could have got started at like sixty
Speaker 6: thousand dollars benefits, but I decided to go to LA
Speaker 6: with three suitcases and be homeless until I found an
Speaker 6: apartment instead. And then I did act the school for
Speaker 6: a couple of years, and that was like I knew
Speaker 6: the last time or I thought that I would be
Speaker 6: able to immerse myself fully in the arts for like
Speaker 6: twelve fourteen hours a day. I was truly on my fame.
Speaker 6: And here's where you start paying and sweat. So fast
Speaker 6: forward to leaving that I got broke, moved back to Gary, Indianna.
Speaker 5: And then I was like, oh no.
Speaker 1: Okay, so how many years did you try to kick
Speaker 1: it in LA before I was there for.
Speaker 5: Two and a half years.
Speaker 6: I was at school for two years and then I
Speaker 6: tried to do six months as a green, fresh eted
Speaker 6: actors student. I ain't had no money, I didn't understand Hollywood.
Speaker 6: I just knew I was very talented, and that is
Speaker 6: not how you want to.
Speaker 5: Go about that.
Speaker 6: So I moved back to Gary and then I started
Speaker 6: auditioning in Chicago, and that's where I found like this
Speaker 6: robust theater scene, and that's where.
Speaker 5: I found like a career and like where you could.
Speaker 6: Get your equity card and have health insurance because you're
Speaker 6: an artist in Chicago.
Speaker 5: And then just started building from there.
Speaker 6: It's a great place to like be a producing artist
Speaker 6: and curate for the city. And then I did about
Speaker 6: six to ten shows a week for about ten to
Speaker 6: twelve years.
Speaker 1: What kind of shows was this?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 1: Improv it?
Speaker 5: So it ended up with improv. But at the start
Speaker 5: I was doing.
Speaker 6: Musical theater, like original musical theater from playing theater houses
Speaker 6: in Chicago or like other August Wilson's and the and
Speaker 6: the Fences and the and I was always a comedic
Speaker 6: relief in serious.
Speaker 1: Plays and then oh we love that, Yeah.
Speaker 6: And then I started started doing comedy in Chicago because
Speaker 6: I found the there was this improv scene growing up.
Speaker 6: We called it ad living, and I didn't know how
Speaker 6: serious improv was a new team if they had a show,
Speaker 6: but I was never into I was never into Saturday
Speaker 6: Night Live. I was never into the improv as they
Speaker 6: know it. I was just into black people play all day.
Speaker 6: So that's where I get my chops from. So it
Speaker 6: turned out I was very good at it and started
Speaker 6: getting the jobs that that that the white people had
Speaker 6: wanted for decades but didn't and I would get there
Speaker 6: as soon as possible, get the jobs that they wanted.
Speaker 5: And just skyrocketed through that.
Speaker 6: And then that's when I saw like this path of
Speaker 6: and here's how you get a TV show, and here's
Speaker 6: how you get in writer's rooms, and here's how you
Speaker 6: work and how like, and so I sincerely tried.
Speaker 5: To do that and it was very hard.
Speaker 6: But there is this transition from from acting on stage
Speaker 6: to TV that does take time because the immediate gratification
Speaker 6: of having an audience is no longer there when you're
Speaker 6: on set.
Speaker 5: So it was a different mindset that I was shifted into.
Speaker 1: So did you try to do TV, Like, were y
Speaker 1: did you have like pilots.
Speaker 5: Or oh absolutely, yeah, so you.
Speaker 1: Moved back to LA at a certain point, or you
Speaker 1: doing that in Chicago? Okay.
Speaker 6: I stayed in Chicago because I was one of those
Speaker 6: people that's like, oh, you don't have to be out
Speaker 6: there to do this, because they moved slower out there,
Speaker 6: just traditionally as working meaning California queen.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah yeah, and not slow slower like in Chicago.
Speaker 5: We have a problem.
Speaker 1: No, I'm from New York. I mean I live in
Speaker 1: New York now, but I know they do move slow
Speaker 1: in Cali.
Speaker 5: Yeah, like.
Speaker 6: Tuesday, we'd be like, you want to meet, Let's meet Wednesday.
Speaker 6: But in California it's like, let's meet next Wednesday.
Speaker 1: So it's that gives me anxiety just thinking about that.
Speaker 1: Why not now?
Speaker 6: Yeah, So I was like I'm gonna keep my operation
Speaker 6: here because I started to get guest star roles.
Speaker 5: I did a couple of TV shows.
Speaker 6: I have a lot of friends in TV, like helping
Speaker 6: write pilots and pitching pilots, and I was doing the
Speaker 6: pitch game. But I heard no too many times for
Speaker 6: the level of talent that I knew that I had,
Speaker 6: and so I stopped, and so I worked at I
Speaker 6: was a writer at Cards Against Humanity, And on June twelfth,
Speaker 6: twenty seventeen, that's when I was decided to become a
Speaker 6: full time entrepreneur because I've always done that. I did
Speaker 6: graph design to support myself through acting school, and that
Speaker 6: built this way up kind of like with my acting
Speaker 6: career of becoming eventually a creative director and a founder
Speaker 6: and a company. So I know, I just sounded like
Speaker 6: I skipped a lot, but this is like ten years
Speaker 6: of me working skills alongside each other because to be
Speaker 6: an actor, I had to have a real world skill
Speaker 6: to support myself because it was one hundred and twenty
Speaker 6: five dollars a week. The kids' theater shows were not
Speaker 6: gonna pay the bills, so I would offset it with uh,
Speaker 6: my own graphic design clients that I managed terribly because
Speaker 6: I didn't understand my own workflow. If we wanna talk
Speaker 6: about entrepreneurs, not I. I have a feeling in my
Speaker 6: spirit that there are some listeners on the Brown Ambition
Speaker 6: that understand the client deliverable aspect of their businesses, and
Speaker 6: how do you start to realize it's a different skill set.
Speaker 5: But anyway, it's so real. That's so it's it's so real.
Speaker 6: And so I took I took those skills and I
Speaker 6: started a traditional, good old fashion corporate, mid corporate corporate
Speaker 6: business where I did a inclusion consultant for Fortune five
Speaker 6: hundred and Fortune one hundred companies and this is where. Yeah,
Speaker 6: so that was a good that was a good five
Speaker 6: years of talking to industry agnostic. Industry agnostic is how
Speaker 6: we work. But every single call was the same. And
Speaker 6: so by this time in my acting journey, I had
Speaker 6: taken my characters off stage and started to put them
Speaker 6: online because of the pandemic, because I was bored and
Speaker 6: I missed applause, and I.
Speaker 5: Also went through being real.
Speaker 6: I went through my whole like there's no audience, this
Speaker 6: energy is gone, and I just started to play with
Speaker 6: the audience that I had, and that audience grew. So
Speaker 6: Corporate Airon is like the fourth character entry pointing to
Speaker 6: this universe as some people they've already entered into different characters.
Speaker 6: So before Corporate Airon, LORI Lightfoot ran locally really huge
Speaker 6: in Chicago.
Speaker 1: And that's the mayor, right, you did like an impersonation, yes,
Speaker 1: remember that one?
Speaker 5: Yeah, on my way out of corporate.
Speaker 6: I couldn't take it anymore, and so I was like,
Speaker 6: y'all are not going to stop doing this. So I
Speaker 6: became them and made that my next character, and then
Speaker 6: that swelled a portion of my business and I forgot
Speaker 6: where I was going or what I was being asked.
Speaker 6: But I think that's kind of a good place.
Speaker 5: To be, like, hey, we are and here we are out.
Speaker 4: Here because I resonate with so much of it.
Speaker 3: I mean a lot of times people, particularly in the
Speaker 3: last two years, here the work that I'm doing with Spill,
Speaker 3: and assume if they've never met or seen me before
Speaker 3: that I just kind of always worked in tech, but
Speaker 3: this is my first time working in working at SPILL
Speaker 3: is my first time working in house one hundred percent
Speaker 3: for another company. Straight out of school, I invested in
Speaker 3: myself and became a consultant. I started off as a
Speaker 3: girl who got the coffee and worked my way up
Speaker 3: to being a campaigns consultant and a fundraiser in electoral politics,
Speaker 3: and in twenty six sixteen transitioned that because a special
Speaker 3: thing happened in twenty sixteen that we all remember with
Speaker 3: the elections there, right, And I.
Speaker 5: Was like.
Speaker 3: And I was like, well, I think I need to
Speaker 3: kind of recalibrate and check on myself a little bit.
Speaker 3: And I parlayed that into doing cultural consulting from movie
Speaker 3: TV film studios. So there are so many parallels between,
Speaker 3: you know, our trajectories in terms of being entrepreneurs, being
Speaker 3: black women who had to kind of hybrid interface into
Speaker 3: corporate infrastructures while also running our own business businesses. And
Speaker 3: you know how amazing. I would have never known that
Speaker 3: that pathway, that trajectory could have led me into working
Speaker 3: in tech or recognized a non traditional pathway that was
Speaker 3: had a transferable skill set the entire or time that
Speaker 3: would be applicable for a time like now to create
Speaker 3: you know, uh help help to create spell.
Speaker 5: It's a transferable skill set for me.
Speaker 6: Cause when when I heard her background, and it's bigger
Speaker 6: than the consultancy piece. But when you hear the background,
Speaker 6: entrepreneurs and people who have been in these different worlds
Speaker 6: know what that looks like really on a day to
Speaker 6: day level, Okay, like this this you got a thousand,
Speaker 6: ten ninety nine and W two's when it's time to
Speaker 6: do taxes, you got like the day to day of
Speaker 6: it it's just kind of a different lifestyle.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I c I regre lucky.
Speaker 6: Ye, what I do, what i've what I've done, and
Speaker 6: what I think Kid is doing, which is why the
Speaker 6: likes of us found each other and for and what
Speaker 6: I hope to inspire people to do is all of
Speaker 6: these transferable skills that we use for other people, use
Speaker 6: them for yourself or for what you're trying to build.
Speaker 6: So I used to be in circle back, follow up,
Speaker 6: project manager, hell for other companies I do. I'm not
Speaker 6: saying I'm running. I treat myself like that. I give
Speaker 6: myself grace. I'm not indulging myself in white supervis practices
Speaker 6: on myself that's crazy.
Speaker 5: But I am using that skill set to build.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's about that energy. I was just writing I'm
Speaker 1: working on my first book right now, and I was
Speaker 1: just I literally wrote in writing a chapter that's basically
Speaker 1: encouraging any woman woman of color in corporate to take
Speaker 1: your age, subtract it from one hundred, and the larger
Speaker 1: number is what percentage of time you should be focusing
Speaker 1: on other skills Like then year nine to five, which
Speaker 1: may sound like, Okay, I'm twenty two, so I'm really
Speaker 1: going to spend you know, seventy eight percent of my
Speaker 1: time on myself, Like yeah, yeah, I think that's I
Speaker 1: think that's fair like that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, wait a minute.
Speaker 1: I so you can flip it. If you're more conservative,
Speaker 1: you can say, Okay, I'll spend twenty two percent of
Speaker 1: my time on my side hustle and eighty percent. But
Speaker 1: just the idea is to normalize the the just normalize
Speaker 1: that behavior, Normalize that you should be working on other
Speaker 1: things and putting all of your one hundred percent into
Speaker 1: a company that can drop you at the you know,
Speaker 1: like that, and like screw anyone who says that federal work,
Speaker 1: federal government job, good government jobs are safe, because like,
Speaker 1: look at what's happening right now to thousands, tens of
Speaker 1: thousands of workers who are being let go. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm just big on saying hell no, do not give
Speaker 1: them your one hundred percent. Save something for yourself so
Speaker 1: that you have more resilience. So, whether it's like you Aaron,
Speaker 1: I mean whatever your name is, got me again, Got
Speaker 1: me again, whether it's you Lisa or you Kenya, you know,
Speaker 1: leveraging those skills and in corporate but then taking them
Speaker 1: out for yourself as well.
Speaker 3: Totally, and thank goodness we did. You know, like again,
Speaker 3: you know, building community on a social space, a social
Speaker 3: app was far outside of my purview of what I
Speaker 3: thought is something that I would be doing.
Speaker 1: As a creator. Lisa. Yes, Lisa, I questioned myself even
Speaker 1: when I said it right, as a creator, Lisa especially
Speaker 1: and with your partnership and you know, your activation with
Speaker 1: Spill and being on this app. Now, I'm curious because
Speaker 1: even with Brown Ambition or any other creator, now there
Speaker 1: is this increasing conversation about you know, owning your community
Speaker 1: and when you put all your eggs in one social
Speaker 1: media platform for example, that and we saw this with TikTok, right,
Speaker 1: TikTok almost well went away, and like what that could
Speaker 1: have meant. I feel like TikTok is probably your biggest platform.
Speaker 1: That's where I first discovered you.
Speaker 6: I'm so glad we're talking about this, and I'm probably
Speaker 6: gonna get more specific because of your audience and for you,
Speaker 6: please dealer, because this is kind of the stuff I
Speaker 6: nerrid out about that I don't get to talk about
Speaker 6: because a lot of people, you know, well, we're all
Speaker 6: just enjoying the content because largely how I view myself
Speaker 6: as a creator is when I think about, Oh, I
Speaker 6: didn't think I would be doing this. In my mind,
Speaker 6: this y'all was gonna be watching me on TV now,
Speaker 6: so it's like, oh, this is different. I have to
Speaker 6: play out a storyline still for mass media, and the
Speaker 6: storyline is still catching on.
Speaker 5: So it's like, Wow, I didn't know that I would have.
Speaker 6: A TV like character exist in the world in five
Speaker 6: d I was thinking small and thought it would just
Speaker 6: be on a TVA screen. So with that, I want
Speaker 6: to talk about some numbers because I want to encourage
Speaker 6: creators who think about these per platform to build their
Speaker 6: media literacy and just kind of think of mass media
Speaker 6: in general, because your reach is way further than the
Speaker 6: analytics that platforms share with you, because the entire Internet
Speaker 6: is a whole digital landscape. But creators, you've been kind
Speaker 6: of groomed to think of it per per per platform.
Speaker 6: So I when I swelled to I think like four
Speaker 6: hundred and fifty thousand on TikTok, I started to do
Speaker 6: the analytics games for partnership to be like, Okay, here's
Speaker 6: my analytics, here's the numbers that I've reached, here's the
Speaker 6: demographics I do I'm reaching partnerships please, And so I
Speaker 6: pulled a report from sprout Social. I did a if
Speaker 6: so any day was out there. I did a Sprout
Speaker 6: Social activation and a part of it was payment and
Speaker 6: pullar report. So for creators that do have these conversations
Speaker 6: with people, sometimes it's not always about.
Speaker 5: Money, money, money, money, money, money, but you can also
Speaker 5: barter with large companies.
Speaker 6: So from there, I found out that without even including TikTok,
Speaker 6: I was reaching. I thought I was reaching from what
Speaker 6: I saw two million people, but they showed me that
Speaker 6: across the entire Internet, not including TikTok, I was reaching
Speaker 6: a hundred and fifty million people. And then I had
Speaker 6: a ninety seven percent approval rating across positive comments. So
Speaker 6: these are stats that you can pull on yourself. I
Speaker 6: did a listening analysis and it was like, okay, from
Speaker 6: these keywords, here's how this is being received across the Internet.
Speaker 6: Because I hadn't put any content on YouTube, and somebody
Speaker 6: had put corporate air on on YouTube, and I was
Speaker 6: so scared to look at the comments, cause they are
Speaker 6: they are scary over there.
Speaker 5: Every time I picked on the YouTube and look at
Speaker 5: the comments, it a.
Speaker 6: It cu it could be a it could be a
Speaker 6: I ain't even gonna make a joke about it. Yeah,
Speaker 6: the comments are scary. And I went and all the
Speaker 6: comments was nice, and I was like, I am, I
Speaker 6: am I working with someone? Did I Did I do
Speaker 6: some So I was like, I I feel like I'm
Speaker 6: working with something, but I wanna pull the data. So
Speaker 6: that's what it led me to see in like the
Speaker 6: the ninety seven percent approval rating and stuff like that.
Speaker 6: So I think about why don't focus on certain traditional platforms.
Speaker 6: I think of the content as a whole. And so
Speaker 6: when I think of like creators building community, the reach
Speaker 6: is way larger than you actually think it already is,
Speaker 6: even for the numbers that you have.
Speaker 5: Because sometimes I really.
Speaker 6: Like to get very needy, greedy with how I talk
Speaker 6: about this, because it could seem like, well, girl, you
Speaker 6: got millions of followers, like it's easy. Oh quite Oh
Speaker 6: sure a percentage of that will kick back to you
Speaker 6: some cash. But there are ways that companies use data.
Speaker 6: There's ways that they use our content that go way
Speaker 6: outside the platform with the platforms have been provided for us.
Speaker 6: And so I work from that angle and not from
Speaker 6: the angle of how many people are watching, how many.
Speaker 1: People are clicking, so it's a deeper level, yes, smart.
Speaker 1: It also helps you keep it in perspective like, oh,
Speaker 1: I lost four hundred followers or whatever it's like, But
Speaker 1: that's not the bigger picture here.
Speaker 5: That's not the bigger picture.
Speaker 3: I think the best part about this is having creators
Speaker 3: like Lisa and the thousands others that are on the
Speaker 3: platform helped to inform that development from the ground up.
Speaker 3: So we're building with that in mind and considering that.
Speaker 3: You know, it's a really important problem to solve, and
Speaker 3: you know, we've been talking with creators on the ground,
Speaker 3: We've been talking with creator agencies right try this. You know,
Speaker 3: are we happy with these particular outcomes? And I think
Speaker 3: you know that having that opportunity while we're still in
Speaker 3: beta has been a really great reciprocal exchange. And I
Speaker 3: think it's building the foundation for what's a successful you know,
Speaker 3: creator platform partnership can look like, and the foundations of
Speaker 3: you know, a creator ecosystem and a creator economy on
Speaker 3: a platform like spills on legacy platforms. It's like having
Speaker 3: to undo infrastructure that is fifteen seventeen years in development
Speaker 3: and was never developed with in with with the mindset
Speaker 3: of centering and protecting the creators who have made those
Speaker 3: platforms pop is a much heavier lift than you know,
Speaker 3: coming to a platform and saying, Okay, here's what I
Speaker 3: like over here, here's what I'd like to do that
Speaker 3: I've never been able to do, and having that conversation.
Speaker 3: And again, as leadership, we're on the platform every single day.
Speaker 3: We're listening attentively. We make ourselves available for this feedback.
Speaker 3: And you know that's been really great.
Speaker 4: I mean, you know, data has has been released from
Speaker 4: you know, multiple reports.
Speaker 3: I think Bloomberg reported that the creator economy is going
Speaker 3: to be you know, a trillion dollars in just a
Speaker 3: few years, set to set to.
Speaker 1: Trip billion dollars for who though, well, the well.
Speaker 4: The creator the creator economy at hole, right, and.
Speaker 7: We already know that like advertisers, and we know that
Speaker 7: advertisers spend one hundred and fifty six billion dollars to
Speaker 7: reach our communities, right, and you know, amongst our communities,
Speaker 7: we are the trusted voices.
Speaker 4: So if we think about what creators are.
Speaker 3: Doing to aid and assist in that kind of in exchange,
Speaker 3: you know, why not link arms, link arms with our clarinets.
Speaker 1: You know, my little fifty four cent checks from Meta
Speaker 1: crack me up every time they hit my anymo, like,
Speaker 1: why are you sending me an invoice? I'm gonna get
Speaker 1: a ten ninety nine for four dollars from Metta.
Speaker 5: I work from the philosophy of like people first.
Speaker 6: So if I'm getting fifty four cents from Meta doing
Speaker 6: it this way, well I'll try to get one hundred
Speaker 6: dollars trying it this way. And if it doesn't work,
Speaker 6: guess what creators are added nothing to lose point with
Speaker 6: their own businesses to try to switch it up and
Speaker 6: try it new tactics. And by that I mean investing
Speaker 6: in the idea of going back to the advertisers. There
Speaker 6: they will come directly to you because you have the eyeballs.
Speaker 6: Because the eyeballs of television are shrinking, so you're talking
Speaker 6: major networks will have a boosted ratings and it would
Speaker 6: be like five million people washed today, But you can
Speaker 6: look across your analytics and see how many people you've reached.
Speaker 6: Their they're paying for the same eyeballs, and they're just
Speaker 6: taking advantage of some creators not also being entrepreneurs or executives.
Speaker 5: And that's that's kind of like the decide and difference
Speaker 5: between it.
Speaker 1: What was your learning curve, like Arin, Like did you
Speaker 1: have a mentor to help?
Speaker 5: Like what what?
Speaker 1: What was your learning curve? And then like moving into
Speaker 1: the next level where maybe TV, Hollywood will come calling,
Speaker 1: but you also have this your own business. You know,
Speaker 1: you ha, you can show up. I'm sure you got
Speaker 1: paid a pretty penny to show up at Eefrotech as Aaron,
Speaker 1: you know, as corporate Arin. And that is a level
Speaker 1: of professional resis millions that I think is wonderful even
Speaker 1: for a creative person who maybe has aspirations to be
Speaker 1: on screens. Even still, how do you how do you
Speaker 1: bridge that gap for yourself in terms of that knowledge?
Speaker 6: Well, for me, the learning curve was actually in the
Speaker 6: reverse where I knew more than I I had to
Speaker 6: learn myself. So because I kept in my the consulting
Speaker 6: that idea was, I was telling CEOs what to do.
Speaker 5: So I was the mentor. I was the kind of.
Speaker 6: Shining light for some people. So growing and confidence of
Speaker 6: that is the learning curve.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 1: You didn't just yeah, come up with corporate Aaron in college. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you did have that career first.
Speaker 6: Destroying, destroying the gas light of my innate experience and
Speaker 6: authentic intelligence is the hard work that I had to
Speaker 6: do to destroy my imposter syndrome.
Speaker 5: And then the gap I feel some times is the.
Speaker 6: Gap of knowledge that I need to provide for other
Speaker 6: people in terms of I tell people like, this is it,
Speaker 6: Like as an artist, a lot of people are just
Speaker 6: not realizing, like, oh, we're in the TV show. We're
Speaker 6: a part of the TV show. And if I look
Speaker 6: at her IMDb, she was on TV screens. She is
Speaker 6: on TV screens. Does she is in that world already?
Speaker 6: So there is no world for me to go to.
Speaker 5: This is just this is it?
Speaker 6: And so I'm kind of existing in the gratefulness of
Speaker 6: being able to enjoy my own.
Speaker 5: Ebs and flows as an artist and entrepreneur.
Speaker 6: And the largest gap that I had to overcome was
Speaker 6: the gap that not that I didn't need any guidance
Speaker 6: or any help. There's a I think people who operate
Speaker 6: at a certain executive level understand that there's a myriad
Speaker 6: of like friends influences what you read, what you eat,
Speaker 6: and what you're doing, what you're listening to, what you're intaking. Yes,
Speaker 6: I had to get to know that I really didn't
Speaker 6: know what I was doing, and the imposter syndrome did
Speaker 6: not apply that I couldn't apply it to me and
Speaker 6: how how deep I was in it, because when I
Speaker 6: could show up under contract for somebody else to validate me,
Speaker 6: when I tried to show up as myself, for some reason,
Speaker 6: I didn't have that overlord.
Speaker 5: I felt like I wasn't worthy. So I had to
Speaker 5: really get over myself.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it's okay to stand on your own and
Speaker 1: not have like a corporate brand to like legitimize rall. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've definitely been there.
Speaker 6: I have been there, and it's a longer road sometimes
Speaker 6: and sometimes it's just a choice. So for me, I
Speaker 6: value creative control, which is why whatever show of Mind
Speaker 6: that ends up on TV, I have to do it,
Speaker 6: which means I have to finance it, which is a
Speaker 6: different road as opposed to pitching.
Speaker 5: It to this network who will give me a team.
Speaker 5: Then I'll have to share, and then it becomes down
Speaker 5: and that.
Speaker 6: And there is also still places where projects like that
Speaker 6: can exist and be still if fully contained and go great.
Speaker 6: But when you're innovating in a space that people are
Speaker 6: not familiar with, they're still gonna want to try to
Speaker 6: what you're doing.
Speaker 5: Is to go there, right. So that's the part where
Speaker 5: I like to be like, no, this is it.
Speaker 4: This is art too.
Speaker 1: I get it. It's the Yeah, No, I get it.
Speaker 1: It's a circle. I want to take a quick pivot
Speaker 1: into wrapping up the show.
Speaker 5: So what we do.
Speaker 1: I know, Keny, you said you're a longtime listener, so
Speaker 1: you know we do brown Boost Brown Break. Lisa, that's
Speaker 1: maybe your first time hearing that. So at the end
Speaker 1: of the show, we like to kind of highlight either
Speaker 1: something that we want to celebrate. So it could be
Speaker 1: a brown Boost about I just got this amazing contract,
Speaker 1: or I just hit this milestone in my career, whatever
Speaker 1: it is, I have this new app that I'm loving whatever,
Speaker 1: or a brown break is something that is driving you
Speaker 1: nuts and you just want to like complain about you
Speaker 1: want to call it out, give a little bit of
Speaker 1: a read. So I will. I'll kick it to y'all.
Speaker 1: Brown Boost, brown Break. You don't have to do both.
Speaker 1: You pick one, Okay, I'll go first. It's our cool Yeah,
Speaker 1: of course.
Speaker 4: Okay, big brown Boost, Big brown Boost. So spill right.
Speaker 3: We've been talking about it this entire time. Visual conversation
Speaker 3: app place to discuss and discover culture. We're the first
Speaker 3: social app to put spades on the platform. Right, We've
Speaker 3: got live tea parties which are like our goal live feature.
Speaker 3: We call our folks on platforms billionaires trying to lean into.
Speaker 1: The ideology that's okay of value.
Speaker 4: We come from a culture and create culture of value.
Speaker 3: You can express yourself by adding text to image and
Speaker 3: gifts and videos and share your quotes and comments on
Speaker 3: your spills.
Speaker 4: It's fantastic, right.
Speaker 3: We are actually launching our first ever crowd round, So big, big,
Speaker 3: big brown boost there.
Speaker 1: Okay, crowdfunding like a so we could own a little
Speaker 1: piece of Spill.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So this crowd round is a unique opportunity for
Speaker 3: the community to own a piece of the commonversation, own
Speaker 3: a piece of a social platform that has been building
Speaker 3: and centering our communities from the beginning, alongside with the
Speaker 3: vcs that have also invested in us. So that's, you know,
Speaker 3: a rare opportunity that doesn't normally happen in our communities.
Speaker 3: We're really excited about this. So everybody can go to
Speaker 3: spill dot com, Forward slash invest to find a little
Speaker 3: bit more about how to own a piece of the
Speaker 3: conversation and Spill minimum investment is two hundred and fifty dollars,
Speaker 3: and investment investors can you know, get a range of
Speaker 3: benefits including, you know, like special profile badges and early
Speaker 3: access to new spill features and a first look at
Speaker 3: our company updates and merch and all kinds of cool stuff.
Speaker 3: So we're we're really really excited about this opportunity, So
Speaker 3: big brown Boost for congratulations. First ever crowd round allocation.
Speaker 1: Is it live now or is it going live at
Speaker 1: a certain time.
Speaker 4: When your listeners hear this, it will be live.
Speaker 1: So okay, all right, Spill dot com slash invest we
Speaker 1: got it. We'll put it in the show notes for
Speaker 1: your BA fan.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: All right, Lisa, I'll do brown Boost.
Speaker 5: Because I'm okay.
Speaker 6: So I'm excited because I'm gonna launch some content specifically
Speaker 6: and exclusively for Spill.
Speaker 5: So I didn't know this was gonna be my problems.
Speaker 5: But I'm excited.
Speaker 6: Because if I think about like company updates, I really
Speaker 6: don't have nobody to give company updates too. So this
Speaker 6: is like a this is a serious company at leasta
Speaker 6: the experience core update. I am moving some of my
Speaker 6: what I call analog things I do in the real world,
Speaker 6: in real classrooms with real bodies. I'm moving some of
Speaker 6: my analog classes that I teach at the collegiate level
Speaker 6: in terms of like how artists can be entrepreneurs or
Speaker 6: move like it into the digital space exclusively specifically at
Speaker 6: spill so and to also kind of help launch creators
Speaker 6: like you kind of into a different mindset of like,
Speaker 6: oh right, here's how we can activate, reinvigorate and just
Speaker 6: kind of like do what I do with the classes
Speaker 6: in the real world in this digital space with creators.
Speaker 6: So I'm excited about that. Yeah you know, I'm gonna
Speaker 6: let you know. Yeah, I'm gonna let you know. So
Speaker 6: I'm really excited about that. That's like my Brown moves
Speaker 6: because I'm excited to do something directly with a platform.
Speaker 5: Like I'm a big creator on the Internet and.
Speaker 6: I haven't pitched two other platforms, but they also haven't
Speaker 6: reached out.
Speaker 5: To me, and I feel like being at this level
Speaker 5: that I am, I'm.
Speaker 6: Very excited to share and I keep just knowledge that
Speaker 6: I have because I don't have anything to do with it.
Speaker 6: I'm practicing it, and I just kind of want to
Speaker 6: share what I know and I only feel safe doing
Speaker 6: it at a place that has community.
Speaker 5: Got it's like spill.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's facts. That's amazing, And I mean that's a
Speaker 1: big like part of our ethos at Brown Ambition too
Speaker 1: is like no gatekeeping. Just that's why I ask deep questions,
Speaker 1: you know, like how much do you make? And where
Speaker 1: where do you get your money from? And how do
Speaker 1: you diversify income streams? And what's your list look like? Yeah,
Speaker 1: because that's what's happening behind the scenes, So like why
Speaker 1: not why try to pretend I share?
Speaker 5: I share all of that negotiating with brands, pitch deck
Speaker 5: like everything.
Speaker 1: Oh nice, Okay, I gotta have you back to talk
Speaker 1: about negotiating because that's my jam and the negotiating click.
Speaker 3: Me taking part in a trend that started in twenty
Speaker 3: twenty three on platform when we first launched, which is
Speaker 3: still university. So I know other platforms have been credited with,
Speaker 3: you know, educating.
Speaker 1: Not Hillman Talk said, y'all were first. Noteing's first still university, okay.
Speaker 3: In twenty twenty three, and it has a robust set
Speaker 3: of classes and educators who in real life who are
Speaker 3: coming to platform to share their knowledge and resources, and
Speaker 3: you know, classes ranged from you.
Speaker 4: Know university level level curriculum to like contend one on one,
Speaker 4: you know, like.
Speaker 1: You know it's it's a game that is Yeah, okay, girl,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna up front. I need to learn how
Speaker 1: to play space.
Speaker 3: Well, you can learn how to play spades on spill.
Speaker 3: We've got a practice mode. No angry uncles to flip
Speaker 3: the table and cush you out when you mess up.
Speaker 1: Okay, you can try being a biracial baddy in a
Speaker 1: family where you don't know how to play spades and
Speaker 1: you just like try to fade into the background at
Speaker 1: every gathering.
Speaker 4: Listen, you can, you.
Speaker 3: Too can learn how to play spades. And when you
Speaker 3: sharpen your skills, girl, tag me in. We can take
Speaker 3: we can run these tables together.
Speaker 1: Is it like a group game? I really don't know
Speaker 1: anything about it.
Speaker 4: It's a group. It's communal. It is a space where people.
Speaker 3: Exchange, you know, ideas, and you can do live video
Speaker 3: and live audio while you're playing spades as well communicating
Speaker 3: with folks.
Speaker 4: Lisa is a great spades player too.
Speaker 5: I love playing spades.
Speaker 1: Okay, I can't wait. I'm very competitive, so I can't
Speaker 1: wait to suck it up in there and play and
Speaker 1: talk my ship. But I can't talk my shit yet
Speaker 1: because I don't know. But we don't worry. When I
Speaker 1: get it there, I'll be I'll be shit talking.
Speaker 6: I should do a space ship Talk and tea party
Speaker 6: where a lesson on once you get your SPAE skills.
Speaker 1: Here's there's because I talk my ship very well and
Speaker 1: like the banter. I love the bad babes like I
Speaker 1: can go back and forth. If I can't like insult you,
Speaker 1: then like really all be friends. You know what I mean?
Speaker 1: So right, if I don't like a really good like
Speaker 1: a like a dagger kind of insult, that's like did
Speaker 1: she kill her? I don't know, Like that's my love language. Ah,
Speaker 1: that's amazing, okay, ken Ye. So everyone's got to check
Speaker 1: out Spill University, the ogs no shade to Heilman Talk University.
Speaker 1: Maybe they need it too. But let's give credit where
Speaker 1: credit is due to my incredible guests who did not
Speaker 1: grow up together in Gary, Indiana, but you know, in
Speaker 1: a fan fiction world, maybe you did. We don't know.
Speaker 1: Kenya and Lisa, thank you so much for joining me
Speaker 1: at the Brown Table and for joining and just sharing
Speaker 1: your your your shine and you're light with ba Fam,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 4: This is fun.