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Speaker 1: I'm gonna take that question one level deeper. Is you know,

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Speaker 1: because they're running it, no matter what you're doing, it's

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Speaker 1: gonna be hard, and especially in those early days especially,

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Speaker 1: And so at what point do you know it's hard? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: because it's supposed to be hard, but let me keep going,

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Speaker 1: or it's hard because I probably shouldn't be doing this.

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Speaker 2: I think the thing about strategy is time.

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Speaker 3: Like strategy is about time, So you can have like

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Speaker 3: good ideas you can have you say, I'm gonna you know,

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Speaker 3: you have a great to do list, but you're not

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Speaker 3: being strategic if you don't have time attached to it.

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Speaker 3: So when I started Black or Avengures, prior to this,

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Speaker 3: I had a T shirt company and I was doing

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Speaker 3: that and I was rocking and row and I worked

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Speaker 3: myself out of poverty with that T shirt company. So

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Speaker 3: let me backing up a sept to my story. I'm

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Speaker 3: a computer scientist. I had great jobs, but I had

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Speaker 3: two children. Have my first job when I was seventeen,

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Speaker 3: my second child when I was twenty one.

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Speaker 2: Now, I didn't.

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Speaker 3: Grow up in any and the way I grew up

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Speaker 3: was very middle of the most middle middle class, but

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Speaker 3: as an adult because I now had these two kids,

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Speaker 3: went the school, all of that. I ended up on

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Speaker 3: Section eight, ended up food stamps, government assistants, all of that,

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Speaker 3: just to keep things going. America's not built for a person,

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Speaker 3: a single person with children.

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Speaker 2: That's just the reality. And so But I had good jobs.

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Speaker 3: I was a kay through to ive educator, I worked

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Speaker 3: at a patent trademark office, you know, things like that.

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Speaker 3: But I still couldn't afford to live. Entrepreneurship was really

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Speaker 3: my way out. I had gotten laid off twice. Me

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Speaker 3: and my fiance broke up. I realized I'm not going

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Speaker 3: to get married now, I have three children, and I'm

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Speaker 3: not going to go back to anywhere where anybody can

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Speaker 3: ever come to me and say I'm laying you off.

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Speaker 3: But you know, people can only see your actions, they

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Speaker 3: don't have your vision.

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Speaker 2: I knew who I was.

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Speaker 3: What it looked like on the outside was crazy, and

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Speaker 3: people were like, what would you do. I build a

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Speaker 3: TP in my living room and rented it out on Airbnb.

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Speaker 3: People was like, what is she doing? I said, I'm

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Speaker 3: never going back to work for anyone unless the conditions

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Speaker 3: may make the most sense for me.

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Speaker 2: But you won't be able to come in and say

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Speaker 2: you lay me off.

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Speaker 3: So in that case, I was looking at like, how

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Speaker 3: am I going to build with whatever I have? And

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Speaker 3: so I learned to print T shirts. I started a

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Speaker 3: T shirt line. It took off, We made Essence Magazine.

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Speaker 3: We traveled all up and down to East Coast vending

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Speaker 3: and I worked and then I ended up getting deals

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Speaker 3: with like Google and Amazon. I worked myself off of poverty,

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Speaker 3: paid for my kids to go to school, like all

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Speaker 3: those kinds of things.

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Speaker 2: And then Blacker Adventures came up for me because I

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Speaker 2: need a community. I'm not a peron.

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Speaker 3: I didn't just want to be head down that. It

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Speaker 3: never worked for me, but I had a contract with Google.

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Speaker 3: So I was doing work with Google, bringing in community,

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Speaker 3: training entrepreneurs, and I was starting up Blacker Adventures. Blacker

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Speaker 3: Adventures wasn't bringing in as much money, so I said,

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Speaker 3: I gotta give it. I'm gonna give it three months.

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Speaker 3: I'm gonna give it all I got for three months.

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Speaker 3: If it don't take off for three months, I'm letting

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Speaker 3: it go. And I think it's important for people to

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Speaker 3: wrap time around what you're trying, so you and don't

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Speaker 3: keep trying the same thing for the whole time, right, Like,

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Speaker 3: give yourself a time window. Okay, I'm gonna go at

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Speaker 3: this while I work. Hello, please be working while I

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Speaker 3: have some men come coming in. I'm gonna go at

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Speaker 3: this as hard as I can for six months.

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Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, So I got to ask. So I'm

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Speaker 1: formulating this question as I speaking, because you just said

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Speaker 1: a couple of things that I want to dig deeper on.

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Speaker 1: Like you talked about like you worked yourself out of

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Speaker 1: poverty by building this business's t shirt line. That you

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Speaker 1: talked about the work you do with Google with training entrepreneurs.

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Speaker 1: And my first thought was that one me is different

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Speaker 1: than the one me that is now. And what about

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Speaker 1: that on me that was probably new in business or

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Speaker 1: hadn't been wildly successful yet, says to Google, I'm gonna

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Speaker 1: go train entrepreneurs on your behalf.

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Speaker 3: This is you're good at this, you know, like not

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Speaker 3: everybody's good at it.

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Speaker 2: Okay.

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Speaker 3: What's interesting about the difference between that only and this

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Speaker 3: on me is I was way more willing to take

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Speaker 3: more risks right now. I have so many partners, I

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Speaker 3: have so many alliances. You're not going to catch me

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Speaker 3: on anybody's social media talking bad about anybody you know.

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Speaker 3: And that's a hard place to be in. Right, It's

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Speaker 3: a privilege because I get to I honestly have been

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Speaker 3: blessed enough for these brands to allow me to do

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Speaker 3: the work I feel like I want to do. That's

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Speaker 3: a blessing. Not everybody gets that. They're not dictating what

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Speaker 3: I do. They say, even with our relationship with TikTok,

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Speaker 3: came to them, they said, hey, we like what you're doing.

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Speaker 3: Let's talk. We started talking. I said, look, this is

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Speaker 3: what I want to do. I want to put together

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Speaker 3: a fund that would give out marketing money to entrepreneurs

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Speaker 3: because that's the one thing that creators don't have, marketing dollars.

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Speaker 3: They said, okay, I said, I want to do storytelling

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Speaker 3: around it. So we did two seasons of a podcast

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Speaker 3: called The weigh In Series, and they also worked was

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Speaker 3: we went through a TikTok exceler as.

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Speaker 2: Well to learn how to use a platform. More so

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Speaker 2: where that brands go through.

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Speaker 3: So all of these resources that came to me, I'm

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Speaker 3: trying to learn and give it back all the time.

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Speaker 2: I'm trying to like take what I got.

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Speaker 3: And give it back so that me then didn't have

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Speaker 3: anything I had nothing to lose. I had no money,

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Speaker 3: I had no alliances. I was like that, ba, I'm

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Speaker 3: gonna do whatever. When I started to work with Google,

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Speaker 3: they were launching a brand new program and again network

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Speaker 3: I was already a Google supplier, so.

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Speaker 2: I was already doing business with them.

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Speaker 3: The person I was doing business with them through said Hey,

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Speaker 3: we're starting this new program where we're going to train entrepreneurs.

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Speaker 3: We would love to have you a part of it.

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Speaker 3: I said, okay, the parameters wire loose.

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Speaker 2: Now what a program is now is way.

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Speaker 3: Different than when I started, because they still have it

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Speaker 3: a digital coaching program. But it's different now if they

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Speaker 3: in fact, if they still have it. But again, I've

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Speaker 3: been privileged enough, busted enough. I'll say to work with

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Speaker 3: partners who say here's what we want, go do that.

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Speaker 2: At that moment, I got to create eight.

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Speaker 3: I got to think of how I wanted to do it,

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Speaker 3: and that was a space that honestly, working at Google

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Speaker 3: shifted a lot for me.

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Speaker 2: It taught me how to be a leader. It also

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Speaker 2: helped me.

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Speaker 3: They gave us access and privilege that our average contractors

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Speaker 3: didn't have. So I've been a Google offices all around

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Speaker 3: the world. Also just looking at the way they have

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Speaker 3: treated their employees. And I'm not here, I'm not caving

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Speaker 3: for Google, but I'm just saying that, like, it taught

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Speaker 3: me a lot to see this idea of like.

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Speaker 2: We treat you well and you'll do the work well.

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Speaker 2: We'll feed you, you.

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Speaker 3: Can take a nap, you can go for a swim,

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Speaker 3: you could you know, whatever, you getting the work done,

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Speaker 3: We're gonna get things done for you. And that helped

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Speaker 3: me adapt as a leader. And I was like, who

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Speaker 3: I am now