Speaker 1: Hey, Hey, ba fam, I could not be more excited
Speaker 1: to bring to you our two incredible powerhouse guests today.
Speaker 1: They are not just dominating beauty and wellness, but they
Speaker 1: are actively redefining what success looks like for black entrepreneurs.
Speaker 1: So first I want you all to meet Tamara Watkins,
Speaker 1: who is the brilliant president of Butterskin, which I love
Speaker 1: saying Butterskin, who's been making major moves since twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: She is a Howard University grad started am I allowed
Speaker 1: to say, you.
Speaker 2: Know, good family family, you know.
Speaker 1: Who started as a strategic consultant and literally helped transform
Speaker 1: that brand's trajectory. So she has twelve years of experience
Speaker 1: scaling multicultural beauty brands like Bevel you may have heard
Speaker 1: of them, and Hyperskin. Tamara has that rare combination of
Speaker 1: corporate expertise because she's led e commerce strategy at a
Speaker 1: little company you might know, Microsoft, Xbox, anybody I don't know,
Speaker 1: a little upstart and authentic entrepreneurial hustle. She is the
Speaker 1: definite of walking in your purpose while also building generational wealth.
Speaker 1: And I know we're both raising tiny humans. And I
Speaker 1: have just heard a small snippet of what she has planned.
Speaker 3: For her son.
Speaker 1: He better get ready because Mama has big goals over him,
Speaker 1: all right. And then Tamara is joined by friend and
Speaker 1: fellow entrepreneur, doctor Kristen Edwards, who was the founder of
Speaker 1: Black and Green, which is a marketplace that focuses on
Speaker 1: bringing non toxic, black owned beauty brands to the masses. Now,
Speaker 1: this Yale University graduate has a doctorate in public health
Speaker 1: from John Hopkins to boot like, because if there's one
Speaker 1: thing black women are going to do, we're going to
Speaker 1: get ourselves educated, you know, with the capital E. But
Speaker 1: before launching this marketplace, doctor Edwards was teaching future healthcare
Speaker 1: leaders at George Washington University and implementing cost saving initiatives
Speaker 1: at the John Hopkins Health System. But then she launched
Speaker 1: Black and Green in twenty seventeen. Doctor Edwards has built
Speaker 1: a community of over two hundred and ten thousand followers,
Speaker 1: grated one point three million dollars in sales, and been
Speaker 1: featured from Essence to The New York Times. And today
Speaker 1: we're going to get into how these queens are creating
Speaker 1: their own tables instead of waiting for seats, building wealth
Speaker 1: while lifting others and revolutionizing industries that weren't designed with
Speaker 1: us in mind, but will be rebuilt and reframed with
Speaker 1: us in mind thanks to these incredible powerhouse entrepreneurs. All right,
Speaker 1: let's get into it with our guest today, Tamera Watkins
Speaker 1: and doctor Kristen Edwards. Welcome ladies, Thank you great to
Speaker 1: be here. I'm so excited, so brown ambition. We call
Speaker 1: our our audience a BAFAM. We really are here to
Speaker 1: celebrate and to uplift, especially in dark times like this.
Speaker 1: Both of y'all have launched or been a part of
Speaker 1: the launch of incredible brands that really center us and
Speaker 1: your products and your focus. Can y'all talk about how
Speaker 1: does it feel to be building these brands and these
Speaker 1: businesses at a time like we're in right now? What's
Speaker 1: keeping y'all motivated?
Speaker 3: Did well?
Speaker 4: To be honest, Like, I wake up every day and
Speaker 4: I feel so incredibly grateful to get to do what
Speaker 4: I do, Like I recognize that I am very privileged
Speaker 4: in order to lead the type of brand that but
Speaker 4: is and what Butter represents. So it feels great, but
Speaker 4: even now more so than ever, Like there's a battery
Speaker 4: in my back, Like I'm.
Speaker 2: Literally in DC's backyard.
Speaker 4: So Kristin, I don't know how you feel, but like
Speaker 4: because we're like so close to the DC area into government,
Speaker 4: like you really do feel it, and so I just
Speaker 4: feel even more empowered to, you know, continue to lead
Speaker 4: the charge for black rounded brands.
Speaker 3: Did that come immediately?
Speaker 1: I'll let doctor, I'll let doctor Edwards go to do
Speaker 1: we just call you doctor Edwards or Kristen or what
Speaker 1: do you prefer?
Speaker 5: You know, you do whatever feels good to you. My
Speaker 5: mom would just say tell people to all you doctor Edwards.
Speaker 5: You work for that doctor.
Speaker 2: But hell yeah, so do whatever your heart.
Speaker 3: So for now you're going to be doctor.
Speaker 1: Okay, tell you.
Speaker 3: Doctor doctor Edwards. All right, well, I'll let you go
Speaker 3: ahead and go.
Speaker 1: How are you feeling these days?
Speaker 5: I think that's the best way to take a deep breath.
Speaker 6: It can feel.
Speaker 5: I think what I've been trying to focus on is
Speaker 5: what I can't control, And there's so much that I
Speaker 5: can't control, and I refuse to let what I can't
Speaker 5: control pull on my energy too much, and so I've
Speaker 5: been very intentional to worry about what I can control.
Speaker 5: What I can't control is where I spend my money.
Speaker 5: What I can't control is where I spend my time.
Speaker 5: What I can control is what I watch on TV.
Speaker 5: I'm not watching that little orange man do stuff because
Speaker 5: I don't want to spend my time doing that. So
Speaker 5: I control what I can control and try to ensure
Speaker 5: I'm wrapped around love as much as possible. But like
Speaker 5: you said, that's a privilege. That's the privilege that I
Speaker 5: get to control that in that way. There's some people
Speaker 5: who can't control it the way I can control it. Well,
Speaker 5: I'm thankful for the privilege, and I'm using the privilege
Speaker 5: to try to control as much as possible.
Speaker 1: I Mean, we all know entrepreneurship ain't for the faint
Speaker 1: of heart. It is stressful. It comes with all the challenges.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that I've been most grateful
Speaker 1: for is, like, thank goodness, no one sending me emails
Speaker 1: talking about can you send me five bullet points? And
Speaker 1: you know, and fearing for my job and at least
Speaker 1: being your own boss is some comfort in these days.
Speaker 3: And I agree with brown ambition.
Speaker 1: Even waking up the day after the election and then
Speaker 1: I came to talk to ba Fan and I just
Speaker 1: I was surprised by myself, by my hope and the
Speaker 1: level of inspiration. I was feeling the call to action
Speaker 1: battery in my back, just like you, Tamera. And that's
Speaker 1: why when I came into the new year with BA,
Speaker 1: I wanted to create a different format where it wasn't
Speaker 1: just about interviewing a specific guest, it was about really
Speaker 1: having around like a round table.
Speaker 3: It's a virtual table, so there's no shape.
Speaker 1: To but I call it the brown table, where we
Speaker 1: actually have people who represent not just success, but also
Speaker 1: the power of community. So that what I love about
Speaker 1: y'all is that you're not just fellow entrepreneurs, you are friends.
Speaker 1: And I want to hear about that relationship and how
Speaker 1: do y'all think your friendship has been growing over the years,
Speaker 1: and how that has helped y'all in scaling your businesses individually.
Speaker 4: I'm glad you are shifting the format because one of
Speaker 4: the things that is I believe is going to be
Speaker 4: so key for black brands moving forward is collaboration and community.
Speaker 2: I think so.
Speaker 4: Often, and I was a couple of years ago I
Speaker 4: was sitting on like when I say a couple of
Speaker 4: this was a lot of years ago. Black Enterprise used
Speaker 4: to do the State of the Black Business calls I'm
Speaker 4: not sure if they still do them. But Earl Graves
Speaker 4: Junior was leading and he was saying that he recommends
Speaker 4: the future for black businesses when it comes to growth
Speaker 4: is collaboration. So and that would really be in the
Speaker 4: shape of mergers and acquisitions essentially. And the reason why
Speaker 4: is because we're like fighting over like this small piece
Speaker 4: of the pie. When you know, if you get one
Speaker 4: eighth of a slice and I'm getting one eighth of
Speaker 4: the slice, why don't we combine those two slices together
Speaker 4: so that we can get a much larger slice and
Speaker 4: combine the resources. So I'm really glad that you're shifting
Speaker 4: the way that you format the podcast.
Speaker 1: Thank you absolutely, But friendship wise, I mean, how have
Speaker 1: y'all supported each What has that looked like for y'all
Speaker 1: building alongside one another?
Speaker 4: So I think the biggest advice is that for us, no, no,
Speaker 4: because it's just like.
Speaker 2: So many ways.
Speaker 4: But one of the biggest ways is making sure like
Speaker 4: when I get information, I'm cheering it with Kristen when
Speaker 4: she gets information and she's staring it with me. If
Speaker 4: I'm doing an event or if I can attend the event,
Speaker 4: if Butter can't be at the event, I'm reaching out
Speaker 4: to Christen and say, hey, I have.
Speaker 2: An opportunity, do you want to take advantage of it.
Speaker 4: It's just not gatekeeping, it's just being as open as
Speaker 4: we can with each other, because her success is my
Speaker 4: success and my success is her.
Speaker 5: I think that's the beautiful thing about black women is
Speaker 5: that we operate as a community no matter what. We
Speaker 5: try to support each other as a community, no matter what.
Speaker 5: It's not a competition. I think that we often hear
Speaker 5: in the black community that we'll keep pulling down each other.
Speaker 5: I don't know where y'all find these people at, because
Speaker 5: that's not my reality at all. Every black woman I
Speaker 5: have met in business wants to see me succeed.
Speaker 6: That's the core of what Black and Green is that.
Speaker 5: When I read the article that the product marketed to
Speaker 5: black people are more toxic than the products markets everyone else,
Speaker 5: everyone was like, well, why don't you just create your
Speaker 5: own product? I was like, because that's not my genius,
Speaker 5: that's not what I'm good at. But there's tons of
Speaker 5: black women who do that already, you just don't know
Speaker 5: that they exist. So that's gonna be my role is
Speaker 5: I'm going to try to create a community where they're
Speaker 5: all together or you can come find them and so
Speaker 5: community and working together in partnership and friendship.
Speaker 6: It is natural. It's natural for black women.
Speaker 1: And how have that relationship? Because y'all met in twenty
Speaker 1: you said twenty sixteen or.
Speaker 2: Seventeen twenty sixteen?
Speaker 1: And at what points were y'all in your career slash business?
Speaker 1: Cause Kristen doctor Edwards, rather you doesn't sound I'm not
Speaker 1: ready for Kristin yet.
Speaker 3: I'm not ready. I'm not ready doctor Edwards.
Speaker 1: You started you started your business around the same time,
Speaker 1: and I know Tamara you had your career in corporate,
Speaker 1: so's I love that. It's almost like y'all have been
Speaker 1: on this journey. But at that time, how did you
Speaker 1: nurture that relationship? I hear all the time from people, how.
Speaker 3: Do I get a mentor? How do you meet people in.
Speaker 1: You know network and all of that. So talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about y'all have nurtured your relationship all this time.
Speaker 4: Just stand in contact, Just send in a text message. Hey,
Speaker 4: how's it going. Hey, there's a grant opportunity.
Speaker 2: You should check it out. Hey, I'm going to be here.
Speaker 2: Do you want to link up? It's just it's not
Speaker 2: anything formal. You know, it's not like this a formal relationship.
Speaker 4: It's just do what natural, doing what naturally comes to us,
Speaker 4: just as people who want to see each other succeed.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and I think of a key piece of that
Speaker 6: is intentional. We're all busy women.
Speaker 5: We all have a million things to do, have two
Speaker 5: little kids running around the year, got a husband running
Speaker 5: around the heere if I want to.
Speaker 6: I can be busy, but it's making that attention. I can't.
Speaker 5: I am busy, but it's making that attention when something
Speaker 5: crosses me and say, ooh have you seen about this?
Speaker 6: Oh? Have you heard about this? Oh? Have you checked
Speaker 6: this out?
Speaker 5: It's just that intention to make sure if I can't
Speaker 5: do it, maybe she can't.
Speaker 1: Is there something anything that y'all have learned from one
Speaker 1: another that you sort of like keep with you.
Speaker 4: Resilience, like just watching what Kristen has been through. Like
Speaker 4: the resilience, the will, the desire to continue going by
Speaker 4: any means necessary.
Speaker 2: I mean if sometimes I'm just like, you know, if
Speaker 2: Kristen can do it, I can do it.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 2: I have no excuse.
Speaker 5: Well, there'll be one hundred percent honest because you know
Speaker 5: with podcasts, that's with the BA fan, that's.
Speaker 6: What we're gonna do. I didn't remember how we met.
Speaker 6: Since we met. I had a car accident.
Speaker 5: I was in a I had a traumatic brain injury,
Speaker 5: and my memory was impacted.
Speaker 6: My walking was impacted.
Speaker 5: The neurologist told my parents, I may be a vegetable
Speaker 5: for the rest of my life. I may never walk again,
Speaker 5: I may never talk again. I may I may never
Speaker 5: remember anything again. I don't remember my own wedding. That's
Speaker 5: how impacted my memory was. But the beauty of it
Speaker 5: is I don't remember how I met people. I don't
Speaker 5: remember when we met, but I remember how I feel
Speaker 5: around them that I remember, and I remember, Oh, she's
Speaker 5: a good person.
Speaker 6: I remember that.
Speaker 5: So it's interesting how the impact that you have when
Speaker 5: people are on me. That's how I have connected. I
Speaker 5: know whenever she's in my safe. I don't know how
Speaker 5: we met, I don't know how we trusted, how we
Speaker 5: know each other, but that she's good people.
Speaker 3: Not me crying over here. I don't know. I'm gonna
Speaker 3: em listening to that.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 1: I mean I read about your accident and I was
Speaker 1: gonna let I was gonna take your lead on whether
Speaker 1: or not you wanted to talk about that, but I
Speaker 1: know that I didn't realize the impact it had to
Speaker 1: your memory.
Speaker 3: That's really heartbreaking. Really yeah.
Speaker 1: Wow, Yeah, how does that feel to hear that?
Speaker 3: Tamara?
Speaker 1: I just feel like that's one of the most beautiful
Speaker 1: things I've ever heard about her friendship.
Speaker 2: It is beautiful.
Speaker 4: And I when I so Sophia you she's brought us
Speaker 4: pr lead and she also worked with Kristen as well.
Speaker 4: And I remember when it happened, like she just burst
Speaker 4: into this office space that we were working in and
Speaker 4: she was just crying, just she was just so emotional,
Speaker 4: and I was just like, what happened, Sophia, what happened?
Speaker 4: And she told me and we all just like, you know,
Speaker 4: it was just it was so emotional because, like I said, like.
Speaker 2: Kristen is like, you know, it's she's our sister, you know,
Speaker 2: So it was just so yeah, it was just a
Speaker 2: hard time. So thank you. I'm glad.
Speaker 4: I mean, you've impacted me way more I feel like
Speaker 4: than I've impacted you.
Speaker 2: But I'm glad to hear it. So thank you.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So, you know, launching a business and running that it's
Speaker 1: like nothing when you've survived that, and you're I read,
Speaker 1: is it true your newborn child was with you and
Speaker 1: your husband? And how are they are they okay?
Speaker 6: Yeah, they're doing okay.
Speaker 1: Oh thank god, because I would just.
Speaker 5: Turn yeah, because when I when when I ruined this accident,
Speaker 5: I got airlifted to the hospital, and Amblus came to
Speaker 5: take my son to the hospital, and my my husband
Speaker 5: went with my son to the hospital. So we were
Speaker 5: in two separate hospitals, trying to bounce back and forth
Speaker 5: between the two hospitals and cs and both.
Speaker 6: So it was like a very heavy time.
Speaker 5: At the time, I was still on maternity leave from
Speaker 5: my position when I was a professor, and so since
Speaker 5: my brain injury, I can't go back to being a
Speaker 5: professor anymore. So that piece of my career, that chapter closed,
Speaker 5: and I focused one hundred percent on kind of the
Speaker 5: work of Black and Green, but because of my brain
Speaker 5: injury at the time of my at the time of
Speaker 5: the par ancident, I was doing everything. I was shipping
Speaker 5: and packing all the products out of my home office.
Speaker 6: I stayed at the EPs. I was dropped.
Speaker 5: I was I was doing everything, but after that I
Speaker 5: just can't do everything anymore. So I had to move
Speaker 5: my products to a fulfillment center. I had a higher team,
Speaker 5: and hiring people ain't easy and I ain't.
Speaker 6: Got no money, so that maybe even harder. And so
Speaker 6: it was like trying to keep Black and Green alive?
Speaker 5: Was the process like I'm just.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and I got pregnant again.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's also the resilient piece. You were like, I'm
Speaker 4: not going to let this stop me.
Speaker 1: I can't understand. And this wasn't like a long one.
Speaker 1: I mean this was like not that long ago. We're
Speaker 1: talking like seven eight years.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, five, it was like five years ago.
Speaker 5: Yeah, my accidents are live first twenty and nineteen and
Speaker 5: then I have a three year old and the five
Speaker 5: year old now, and so I got because me and
Speaker 5: my husband, our plan was like grinna have two kids
Speaker 5: back to back. So it was a probably like a
Speaker 5: little bit past my maybe a year and a half
Speaker 5: passed my kind of recovery from a accident and was like,
Speaker 5: all right, we're gonna do this. I was like, we said,
Speaker 5: we're going to do this. So I had another son
Speaker 5: named Asher out of a biblical blessing, and so was
Speaker 5: a blessing to happen.
Speaker 1: To little boys too. I have a five year old
Speaker 1: and an almost two year old.
Speaker 2: Oh all boy, moms, Oh goodness.
Speaker 1: Talk about resilience. Well, thank you for thank you for
Speaker 1: sharing that that your identity.
Speaker 3: I mean reading your bio.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean having come from the academia and then
Speaker 1: having to turn to walk away from that. Was that
Speaker 1: something that.
Speaker 3: That you eventually had planned to do.
Speaker 1: Did you launch Black and Green while working in higher ed?
Speaker 1: Was it sort of like, okay, well this timeline has changed,
Speaker 1: but at least I've been preparing for it a little bit.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I would love to say I did, but I didn't.
Speaker 5: I purposely went into academia with the idea I'll be
Speaker 5: doing that the rest of my life.
Speaker 6: Because my thought was that.
Speaker 5: Academia was a lower lift than when I was a
Speaker 5: hospital administration. There was no way for me to kind
Speaker 5: of do what I did as the administrator and run my business.
Speaker 5: But my vision was, oh, I can just teach a
Speaker 5: couple classes we and still run my business. And so
Speaker 5: I was envisioning that always being a steady a part
Speaker 5: of my income. And then another piece of it is
Speaker 5: that because I don't make money off of Black and Green.
Speaker 5: So my vision was that my Professor would kind of
Speaker 5: be my financial security and Black and Green will be
Speaker 5: my fun passion project.
Speaker 6: So that was the way I envisioned it.
Speaker 1: And so that has shifted now, are you I would
Speaker 1: We'll get into that one real quick. So Black and Green,
Speaker 1: So maybe I missed. I thought it was like a
Speaker 1: marketplace where you are featuring all these products from other
Speaker 1: brands like a butter Scan or others. Is that the case,
Speaker 1: and then if that's the case, you're right, Oh okay,
Speaker 1: but you would like get their products and you were
Speaker 1: physically shipping them yourselves, so they weren't feeling.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's why I was doing it, But I have
Speaker 5: I'm changing my model now. When I started in twenty seventeen,
Speaker 5: the way it worked is people shipped the products to
Speaker 5: my house and I shipped out the product.
Speaker 2: I'm a wagon going to the post office.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and I'm like they were my best friends. I
Speaker 6: knew they like, hey, it like we was like we
Speaker 6: were height.
Speaker 5: So they people would shipped the price of my house
Speaker 5: and I would shipped them out. And the reason being
Speaker 5: I didn't want to have In twenty seventeen, black owned
Speaker 5: businesses were newer, and so I didn't want to have
Speaker 5: the pressure of Black and Green cells on these new
Speaker 5: indie brands.
Speaker 6: So if you're if you're trying to get.
Speaker 5: Out your five or ten orders for to day, if
Speaker 5: you adding five or ten from Black and Green, that
Speaker 5: might overload you. And so I said, I can take
Speaker 5: that piece off of you and ship the stuff thrown
Speaker 5: to me. And so for those first couple of years,
Speaker 5: that's the way it worked where I was the warehouse.
Speaker 5: Then I moved to a filming center. But now post COVID,
Speaker 5: post George Floyd being murdered, post Brianna Taylor being murdered,
Speaker 5: people are changing the way that they shop now. When
Speaker 5: I started Black and Green, people went a one stop
Speaker 5: shop to come shop and find things after being home
Speaker 5: for a whole year. Because of COVID, people got used
Speaker 5: to shopping online, in ordering all kinds of stuff online,
Speaker 5: and they don't need one store to go to anymore.
Speaker 5: They did all their research to go to all their places,
Speaker 5: and people started using Black and Green like a catalog.
Speaker 5: They'll come see the black on brands and go directly
Speaker 5: to those websites that buy their products. So that's like, ooh, Christen,
Speaker 5: so stuff is in your warehouse expiring because people aren't
Speaker 5: buying it from you.
Speaker 6: I can tell about my conversion rate. People are here,
Speaker 6: they still clicking, they still.
Speaker 5: Coming, but they're not buying. And so because of that,
Speaker 5: I have to change the way I'm doing business. So
Speaker 5: now the way we're going to work is that the
Speaker 5: brands will ship it directly and you'll come to blank
Speaker 5: greed to find the brands and go ship shop from
Speaker 5: them directly.
Speaker 1: Well, then wouldn't you get a fee like off the
Speaker 1: from the Yeah, so you were making money?
Speaker 4: How?
Speaker 3: Yeah, what's the business model?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 5: So the way worked beforehand is I woud get fifty
Speaker 5: percent of MSRP to hold the products in my warehouse
Speaker 5: and then ship them. So basically I was purchasing products
Speaker 5: from the brands, I was holding them my warehouse, and
Speaker 5: then I was selling them at the purchased.
Speaker 1: Now, oh, okay, okay, you're like a wholesaler almost like
Speaker 1: you're like you basically turned your house into target?
Speaker 3: Is what you did?
Speaker 6: I surely did.
Speaker 3: Okay, OKAYRD.
Speaker 5: I had people come into my house to pick stuff
Speaker 5: up and everything I live and do some girl, can
Speaker 5: I come get things?
Speaker 6: Come on, girl, come get it. So that's that's the
Speaker 6: way that it worked.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry it's not funny, but it's kind of fun.
Speaker 2: It's cute, it actually is.
Speaker 6: It's actually hilarious.
Speaker 1: It's a little bit comforting because I love to hear
Speaker 1: about scrappy beginnings and like it's everything because you see now,
Speaker 1: like I'm meeting you years into this journey, and you
Speaker 1: read the bio and you look at the websites all
Speaker 1: beautiful and have the followers and stuff, but yeah, the
Speaker 1: humble beginnings of it all and just having the like
Speaker 1: to get it done and even if it's not like
Speaker 1: the way that someone with an MBA or like with
Speaker 1: a retail background or whatever would have done it, like,
Speaker 1: you still got the shit done. And I just find
Speaker 1: that really inspiring.
Speaker 3: That's all.
Speaker 1: So thank you for sharing that, and thanks for helping
Speaker 1: me understand better about black and black and green and
Speaker 1: how that works. So then but when well, Tamara, you
Speaker 1: came to BUTTA when as in twenty twenty as president twenty.
Speaker 4: Okay, and so right before COVID hit. Actually I started
Speaker 4: in March, the beginning.
Speaker 3: Of my perfect timing.
Speaker 2: It really was.
Speaker 1: Okay, talk a little bit about that, because you all
Speaker 1: did you came from a you were a consultant. I
Speaker 1: know we talked about Microsoft, but you were a consultant
Speaker 1: and you were helping businesses scale. Is that what you
Speaker 1: were doing as a consultant.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So I was helping mainly brands that were black founded,
Speaker 4: scale their online acquisition and retention strategies.
Speaker 2: So that's everything.
Speaker 4: From meta ads strategy, Google ad strategy, search engine optimization,
Speaker 4: SEO email marketing strategy. So I came offering that suite
Speaker 4: of services to Buda in March of twenty twenty, and
Speaker 4: it was really great because the ownership really listened to me.
Speaker 4: Because when COVID happened and everything shut down and everyone
Speaker 4: had to stay in their homes, I was like, listen,
Speaker 4: all of my a lot of my other clients were
Speaker 4: just you know, they were fearful, and they really pulled.
Speaker 2: Back on their marketing spend.
Speaker 4: And I am a Warren Buffett fan, and a Melody
Speaker 4: Hobson fan, and a John Rogers fan. The aerial investments
Speaker 4: and you know they as often say, when everyone else
Speaker 4: is being afraid, that's when you should be you know, brave.
Speaker 4: And so while everyone else, all the other brands and
Speaker 4: companies were afraid to spend their marketing dollars. We went
Speaker 4: balls to the wall. We pushed the accelerator and so
Speaker 4: we started like.
Speaker 2: Really ramping up our marketing budgets, and it was synergy.
Speaker 2: There was a lot of synergy.
Speaker 4: Because black people were seeing what was going on, you know,
Speaker 4: and so they wanted to It was a battery in
Speaker 4: their back to support black founded brands because they realized, Okay,
Speaker 4: where we spend our dollars matter, and so we need
Speaker 4: to spend those dollars with brands that are going to.
Speaker 2: Reinvest it into our communities.
Speaker 4: And so once we did that, growth was exponential, like
Speaker 4: it was a fast moving train.
Speaker 3: I love that.
Speaker 1: They make so much sense to Warren Buffett reference too,
Speaker 1: because I know him as an investor and he talks
Speaker 1: about you know, and I always say that when the
Speaker 1: market's going down, it's like it's it clearest thing sale,
Speaker 1: get some stuff you know that's cute apples, apples fifty
Speaker 1: percent off today. That's really why is the Melody Hobson
Speaker 1: She she's Aerial Investments.
Speaker 2: She's a yeah, she's co CEO.
Speaker 1: Co CEO, right. I also think about Stacy Brown Philpott
Speaker 1: from Task rab At CEO and she she was a
Speaker 1: CEO at task Rabbit and she has sench launched a
Speaker 1: venture capital fund too. She's just another rare black female
Speaker 1: unicorn in venture capital. And yeah, it's really nice to
Speaker 1: hear that I feel that way about Brown Ambition. I
Speaker 1: don't know if to give y'all some backstory. BA. We've
Speaker 1: been around since twenty fifteen as a podcast, and I
Speaker 1: was a journalist, a business journalist at like Yahoo Finance
Speaker 1: Business Insider. I did a SEO marketing for a financial
Speaker 1: fintech company for like five years, so marketing sisters here.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I went full time with Brown Ambition And honestly,
Speaker 1: I went full time as a solopreneur in twenty twenty one,
Speaker 1: and I have a coaching practice that I do. But
Speaker 1: when my business partner for Brown Ambition left at the
Speaker 1: end of twenty four it was my opportunity to like
Speaker 1: recharge the way that I approached Brown Ambition. And I
Speaker 1: had the great fortune to attend this conference called afro Tech.
Speaker 2: Have y'all Oh I went in November. You were in Houston.
Speaker 1: Yeah you were there too, Yeah, well there was only
Speaker 1: about thirty thousand of us.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, it was a lot.
Speaker 1: Well Tamra then you know, I had not been to
Speaker 1: I mean, Morgan is one of the first guests on
Speaker 1: Brown Ambition all those years ago, and anyway, and when
Speaker 1: I was there, I left with this light. I left
Speaker 1: with this sort of like quiet knowledge that, oh, Brown
Speaker 1: Ambition is way more than a podcast. It's been my
Speaker 1: baby all these years, and it's been this platform and
Speaker 1: this way of you know, really century women of color
Speaker 1: and conversations around wealth building. But for me, I'm like
Speaker 1: the business, the size of it, the scope of it.
Speaker 1: It was impossible to leave Afro Tech just thinking of
Speaker 1: it as a podcast. And now I'm I'm you know,
Speaker 1: balls to the wall too about creating a real, you know,
Speaker 1: media platform. And you see people like Joy Reid losing
Speaker 1: their shows at MSNBC and Rashida Jones leaving NBC, and
Speaker 1: like these these voices in media and how necessary and
Speaker 1: essential they are at a time like this, and I
Speaker 1: I just really feel that that calling and by hearing
Speaker 1: from people like y'all too, it's just very inspiring because
Speaker 1: I used to have these conversations very much like oh,
Speaker 1: that's great that you did that. Now I feel like
Speaker 1: I am trying to gobble up as much intel and
Speaker 1: as much guidance because I want to build too. It's
Speaker 1: very it's very inspiring, and I don't have a question.
Speaker 1: I just wanted to share that.
Speaker 2: That's all all right.
Speaker 1: So with butterskin, what makes it different than other brands
Speaker 1: that are on the shelf and why should we be
Speaker 1: buying up all y'all's products?
Speaker 4: Well, what makes us different is the founding mission. So
Speaker 4: BUTA was founded by an actor named Dorian Ornad. He
Speaker 4: was on a lot of photo shoots. He was on
Speaker 4: a lot of sets for movies and TV and film,
Speaker 4: and so when you're an actor or an actress, you
Speaker 4: have to wear a lot of makeup usually, and so
Speaker 4: that was the case for him, and when he would
Speaker 4: come home, he did not like the way that his
Speaker 4: skin looked once he would take the makeup off, and
Speaker 4: so he set out.
Speaker 2: To change that.
Speaker 4: But when he would go into beauty department stores or
Speaker 4: maybe even like a mass retail like CBS, he would
Speaker 4: not see skincare brands that reflected him from the shelf.
Speaker 4: So he wouldn't see models that look like his mom
Speaker 4: or his sisters. His dad is cousins, and so he
Speaker 4: set out to change that. So he went to private
Speaker 4: equity and he worked with the lab.
Speaker 2: He was really really.
Speaker 4: Deeply involved in the product development process, and so he
Speaker 4: created products that address the skincare concerns of black and
Speaker 4: brown people. So, for example, I don't know when I
Speaker 4: was younger, and even recently, you go into a drug
Speaker 4: store or department store.
Speaker 2: And first off, you see someone that doesn't look like
Speaker 2: you're at the counter.
Speaker 4: Secondly, you read the packaging and it says for redness.
Speaker 1: Who gets redness?
Speaker 4: I'm way too rich of a complexion. I don't get redness.
Speaker 4: I get dark spots. And so our skincare products are
Speaker 4: high quality, they're vegan, and they help to address the
Speaker 4: skincare concerns that we actually have.
Speaker 2: So even when it comes to like.
Speaker 4: Anti aging, like a lot of brands you know that
Speaker 4: are competitors, they tend to say anti agent. We don't
Speaker 4: do anti agent because we all know most black people,
Speaker 4: what do we all.
Speaker 2: Say when it comes to agent? Right, so we believe
Speaker 2: that we don't age.
Speaker 3: I only get half that promise. I represent.
Speaker 1: I represent the melanine challenge of our sisters out there.
Speaker 2: Hey, we're all we're all family over.
Speaker 3: Here, thank you in the club.
Speaker 2: We all fam We all fam. Yeah.
Speaker 4: So like the thing is like even that, like we
Speaker 4: don't do anti agent, we do skin preservation. So just
Speaker 4: making sure that we are authentically speaking to the community,
Speaker 4: we're representing people in the community, and we're also solving
Speaker 4: the skincare concerns that people in our community have.
Speaker 1: And also I'm assuming making sure that the products that
Speaker 1: we are creating don't have anything toxic to us.
Speaker 2: That's all right, I.
Speaker 1: Mean I was a just for me kid, like you know,
Speaker 1: the box, the relaxers in the box, and seeing what
Speaker 1: you seeing the lawsuits against companies and the dangers and
Speaker 1: we're still finding out there's probably not enough research. I know,
Speaker 1: with doctor Edwards with your health background, I don't know
Speaker 1: if you want to speak on that, but like the
Speaker 1: impact to black women by the toxicity of the products
Speaker 1: that we have been sold for so long.
Speaker 3: And I go to a grocery store.
Speaker 1: Even my local like neighboring grocery store, and I well,
Speaker 1: and I'm not talking about a CBS or like a
Speaker 1: target where you expect to see like a different a
Speaker 1: lot of different brands in healthcare. But I'll see Shay,
Speaker 1: and I'll see Miss Jesse's and I'll see you know,
Speaker 1: all these black owned beauty brands at my supermarket even
Speaker 1: And that's wonderful, But are you finding that today's products
Speaker 1: are you know, really and truly like healthy for us
Speaker 1: and better for us? And how would you educate consumers
Speaker 1: as we're shopping to make sure that we are like
Speaker 1: being smart about the products that we're putting on us,
Speaker 1: on our bodies, our hair.
Speaker 2: So I always recommend to take the food label approach
Speaker 2: to be honest.
Speaker 4: Like, just like you look at a nutrition label on
Speaker 4: your on the packaging of your food, the ingredient list
Speaker 4: is the nutrition lebel.
Speaker 5: With the food label, like there's gonna be a lot
Speaker 5: of things on there. You just don't know what it
Speaker 5: is and don't know what it.
Speaker 3: Is exactly true. And some of it you'll look it
Speaker 3: up and it's like, huhoba oil.
Speaker 1: Okay, I didn't know that that's true.
Speaker 4: That I was about to call you, doctor Edwards man doctor.
Speaker 6: So I love that question.
Speaker 5: So the report I read that kind of showed how
Speaker 5: the products marketed to black people are more toxic than
Speaker 5: the products marks everyone else. The Environmental Working Group did
Speaker 5: that report in twenty fifteen. I just work with them
Speaker 5: to redo that report to kind of see have things
Speaker 5: changed since twenty fifteen. I may have the dates wrong.
Speaker 5: I was trying to look over here to get the
Speaker 5: exact dates. It might be Okay, there's a twenty sixteen report,
Speaker 5: so they just redid it between twenty five I work
Speaker 5: with them to redo that report and we found a
Speaker 5: couple of things.
Speaker 6: Have things gotten better?
Speaker 5: They have gotten better, and so there's a lot of
Speaker 5: toxic ingredients that we don't see being used anymore, like parabins.
Speaker 5: We have seen a decrease in those. But what concerns
Speaker 5: me is we also saw increase in fragrance and undisclosed fragrances.
Speaker 5: And why that concerns me is that our fragrance mixture
Speaker 5: can be a mixture of over a thousand different ingredients
Speaker 5: and we don't disclose what you are in them. It
Speaker 5: can be all kind of ingredients that you're throwing in
Speaker 5: that were linked with cancer or can be for mal
Speaker 5: the high releases. So it's all kinds of things that
Speaker 5: can be in fragrance, undiscloys, fragrances, and so we did
Speaker 5: see an increase in that.
Speaker 6: What that showed me is that us.
Speaker 5: Doing this work on trying to on what ingredients we
Speaker 5: need to pull out of products is not the real
Speaker 5: battle because manufacturers are smart. They said, Okay, if you
Speaker 5: don't want parabans anymore, we can pull out a parabin
Speaker 5: but we can stick the thing that we want in
Speaker 5: this undisclosed ingredient, so we still get a harmful ingredient
Speaker 5: in there. Anyways, I said, so, what I want the
Speaker 5: push to be is on the manufacturers to prove that
Speaker 5: the product is safe, not to avoid a toxic ingredient.
Speaker 5: I want to switch the responsibility to be if you
Speaker 5: want to put your products on the shelf, you get
Speaker 5: to prove to me that it is safe. Because people
Speaker 5: assume if it's on the shelf, it must be safe
Speaker 5: for me, and that's not true at all. And the
Speaker 5: way to make it easier for consumers, because it's a
Speaker 5: lot of work and there's no way you can know
Speaker 5: these thousands of ingredients and which ones are safe and
Speaker 5: which ones aren't. The way to make easier is one
Speaker 5: shop with the place like Black and Green where we
Speaker 5: do all the work for you. Shop with marketplaces that
Speaker 5: do all that for you to make sure that you
Speaker 5: have non foxsing ingredients in there. So that's one way
Speaker 5: to make it easier for folks the purchase products. I
Speaker 5: don't have the expectation that you're going to undergo the
Speaker 5: background every single one, and the background every single ingredient there.
Speaker 5: There's no way you'll know. And they're hoping that you
Speaker 5: don't know it's marketed and it's named in the way
Speaker 5: that you won't know it's just some crazy ingredient. Another
Speaker 5: kind of tool I use. If you can't pronounce it,
Speaker 5: stay away from it. That's kind of like the more
Speaker 5: of a food label thing. If you can't pronounce it,
Speaker 5: you don't I recognize it. It's probably not the best
Speaker 5: thing for you to use. Is that one hundred percent truth? No,
Speaker 5: it's not one hundred percent truth, but it's a good
Speaker 5: way for you to get a little test for it
Speaker 5: when you're trying it out.
Speaker 4: So, Kristen, can I ask you questions to follow up
Speaker 4: to that? In terms of you wanting manufacturers to prove
Speaker 4: to a consumer that the product is non toxic? What
Speaker 4: would that look like?
Speaker 6: Oh?
Speaker 5: I love that question. So what would that I imagine
Speaker 5: us having a I imagine having a report. I don't
Speaker 5: want to use the word report, but kind of having
Speaker 5: a metric that say you have to prove your safety
Speaker 5: from these seven things that I don't want us to
Speaker 5: have to go test every single ingredient to figure out
Speaker 5: what are the health of negative health effects of those ingredients.
Speaker 5: I want you to come to us and prove the
Speaker 5: safety of your product, like, hey, we have done the
Speaker 5: testing of this, we have verified the health of this,
Speaker 5: we have verified them when these products are mixed together,
Speaker 5: here are the outcomes of this product. So I want
Speaker 5: the manufacturers to do the work of proving to us
Speaker 5: that it's safe before we say, okay, check mark you
Speaker 5: can put on our shelves.
Speaker 6: Now does that make sense?
Speaker 1: It's like a like an organic label, you'd have to
Speaker 1: sort of set the It's so it's subjective, right, Like
Speaker 1: what's toxic? Really right?
Speaker 3: And like there's like the level of things is toxic.
Speaker 1: And maybe it would take like you'd have to use
Speaker 1: a certain product one hundred thousand times before it had
Speaker 1: those adverse impacts. And I see that with sunscreen, it's
Speaker 1: so freaking hard to like, I'm like, what do I
Speaker 1: what sunscreen is safe? Like the fuck? It's so part
Speaker 1: of my friends. I have a pine mouth, But it's
Speaker 1: it's frustrating. Yeah, as a consumer, and I love the
Speaker 1: idea of Black and Green being that that sort of
Speaker 1: screen which does put a lot of burden on Black
Speaker 1: and Green, which you should get paid for. And I
Speaker 1: hope you're yeah, you talk about grants and stuff and
Speaker 1: all that, but I wonder like, yeah, how who there
Speaker 1: is no organization that defines those terms. So it would
Speaker 1: be up to an organization like Black and Green today,
Speaker 1: Well you can't you can't sell on our website unless
Speaker 1: you have these you meet these like metrics and have
Speaker 1: this seal of approval.
Speaker 5: And Black and Green uses an Environmental Working Group, So
Speaker 5: that's the organization that has done the work and doing
Speaker 5: the research under every single product, every single ingredient, trying
Speaker 5: to understand the toxicity of that ingredient itself. And so
Speaker 5: that is one that that is one organization that exists
Speaker 5: that does some of this work for us. And they
Speaker 5: have an I believe they have an app where you
Speaker 5: can scan the product and can let you know kind
Speaker 5: of what the toxicity score of that is. So any
Speaker 5: product on Black and Green wed let you know what
Speaker 5: does what does the e that used toxicity score? And
Speaker 5: it's also something important to mention is that in the
Speaker 5: European Union they do a much better job than we
Speaker 5: do in America than in America. But we don't tell
Speaker 5: you what products, what ingredients you can use, what ingredients
Speaker 5: you shouldn't use. And the European edients say, okay, you
Speaker 5: can use the ingredient, only use this much of it.
Speaker 5: We can only use as much of it. They have
Speaker 5: regulations on the percentage of ingredients that you can use,
Speaker 5: and so they have a lot more control over the
Speaker 5: things that are being put into products. And so the
Speaker 5: beauty of that is is that we just say an
Speaker 5: ingredient is bad, ingredient is bad, okay, cool, versus this
Speaker 5: say ingredient in this a lot is bad. If you
Speaker 5: use this amount of it, it's okay. And so they
Speaker 5: have a lot more regulations around the actual amount of
Speaker 5: ingredients that could be used, which I like that that
Speaker 5: I think that it takes. It's still a less of
Speaker 5: science be there, and it's still it just controls it
Speaker 5: in different ways than control is here. We don't have
Speaker 5: any federal control in the America at all.
Speaker 6: States are doing it.
Speaker 5: So Maryland had done some work to advance and ingredients,
Speaker 5: California had done some work to band ingredients, and so
Speaker 5: states are taking on the responsibility of banding ingredients and
Speaker 5: personal care products.
Speaker 1: Okay, now imagine like for you, Tamera, as a business
Speaker 1: owner or not a business owner, but being a part
Speaker 1: of butterscan hearing that, Can you talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about what that would look like from it? Like it
Speaker 1: almost would add a lot more work on the creator side,
Speaker 1: the founder side, and we want more businesses by us.
Speaker 1: But do you see any limitation there or any like
Speaker 1: any other perspective to add to that conversation.
Speaker 6: I do.
Speaker 2: I think it would put especially if you're a smaller business.
Speaker 2: I think if you are.
Speaker 4: The size of let's just stay a butter skin and
Speaker 4: you do have access to private equity dollars in your
Speaker 4: leveraged business, maybe not so much. But if you're a
Speaker 4: smaller business, it could put more of a burden on
Speaker 4: you because these processes are expensive. Working with these EWGs
Speaker 4: are expensive, and so that is definitely it could I'm
Speaker 4: not gonna say it definitely will, but it could chip away,
Speaker 4: you know, at your margins, because either you're gonna have
Speaker 4: to raise the price of your product or you're gonna
Speaker 4: have to take.
Speaker 2: More of a hit on the margins of the product.
Speaker 2: But you know, I think.
Speaker 4: Chris, and I was actually going to ask you, do
Speaker 4: you think, in terms of your business model, would you
Speaker 4: consider becoming a service that helps to basically become like
Speaker 4: the easy pass lane for black and brown businesses to
Speaker 4: work with the EWGs in order to get them those
Speaker 4: certifications that they need, Because I think another consideration is
Speaker 4: the bandwidth and capacity if you're a solopreneur, like you're
Speaker 4: already looking at, you know, working with packaging, marketing, et cetera,
Speaker 4: et cetera, et cetera, and now I have to work
Speaker 4: with these e wg's which I may or may not
Speaker 4: know anything about, you know, to get these certifications. So
Speaker 4: have you thought about that like as an additional arm
Speaker 4: of your business.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I definitely have like explored doing that and try
Speaker 5: to help people get these certifications and testing on their
Speaker 5: products because I care about it.
Speaker 6: What I found is how do I say this in
Speaker 6: the right way?
Speaker 5: What I found is it didn't lead to the person
Speaker 5: making more sell and so it was hard for to
Speaker 5: make the choice to investment.
Speaker 1: They said, so, okay, that's America for you.
Speaker 2: You know, because we're hearing something different from OLTA.
Speaker 6: Ooh what do you hear?
Speaker 4: So I'm hearing that when these badges for these certifications
Speaker 4: are present on PDP pages, PDP product display pages for
Speaker 4: those are in the e commerce world, they see an
Speaker 4: increase in conversion rate on those PDP pages. So I
Speaker 4: think if you can equip people business owners with that
Speaker 4: data on how these badges are actually going to benefit
Speaker 4: their sales, like, you know, incrementally, I think it would
Speaker 4: help that conversation goes maybe a little bit smoothing.
Speaker 5: Yes, I love that if basically I need the data
Speaker 5: to show by you doing that, that is going to
Speaker 5: increase your sales.
Speaker 6: But I didn't have that data.
Speaker 5: I said, I, you just need to do it because's
Speaker 5: the right thing to do. And that wasn't enough for
Speaker 5: to get people to move but needed So it's not.
Speaker 1: Like they did it and then they found out that
Speaker 1: they weren't making more sales. It's like to get them
Speaker 1: to do it, you have they're looking for you to
Speaker 1: tell me, like, what's the business case for this?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 3: Classic?
Speaker 1: Right, this is the classic conundrum with DEI efforts. And
Speaker 1: also you know, like, well, what's the business case for this?
Speaker 1: Make it make sense?
Speaker 4: That's an obvious when you know, I mean the numbers
Speaker 4: that the number It's like if you're a white business
Speaker 4: and you're marketing to one hundred white people and there's
Speaker 4: fifty black people that you can also market to.
Speaker 2: Now you have an extra fifty customers. The math is
Speaker 2: just the man.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know, you're making too much sense to Mara.
Speaker 1: I don't know about that. It's just like the logic
Speaker 1: does it have a place here in America anymore? I
Speaker 1: don't know, but one percent of greed that sounds that
Speaker 1: sounds really great. So you're and then to Mara with butterskin,
Speaker 1: You're sold in Ulta stores.
Speaker 4: Yep, we're in Alta, Amazon, Macy's, JC, Pennies, and coming
Speaker 4: more to some other stores.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 1: I mean I'm thinking about BA FAM and I know
Speaker 1: that they're resonating with the conversation about how to be
Speaker 1: better about picking products off the shelves. So I love
Speaker 1: that we know black and green. Now I'm always trying
Speaker 1: to put myself in their shoes of like what do
Speaker 1: they want? I know that getting the inside scoop on
Speaker 1: like how a beauty brand is. In conversation with Alta,
Speaker 1: Alta has sort of emerged as it'd be great to
Speaker 1: have something from Alta on in the future, but they've
Speaker 1: sort of emerged as like they're about to sell sacred product.
Speaker 1: They've always sold Tracy Yellis Ross's products and I've talked
Speaker 1: to Kim Lewis, the CEO of Cromex, and she sells
Speaker 1: her products there. So have y'all been having a good
Speaker 1: relationship with them and have they helped? Has it been
Speaker 1: like an engine for growth being in a brick and
Speaker 1: mortar store like that for Butterskin.
Speaker 2: Absolutely definitely an engine for growth.
Speaker 4: I love that Olta and Macy's and JC Pennies like
Speaker 4: they're very much supporters of the brand and so they
Speaker 4: do things like because make no mistake, going into brick
Speaker 4: and mortar is very expensive, Like I think a lot
Speaker 4: of brands think it's like you know, the Panaceo or
Speaker 4: like the north Star, and it can be, but it
Speaker 4: is very capital intensive. But once you get in there,
Speaker 4: because there is this, you have to show your worth,
Speaker 4: Like once you're on the shelves, that's just not even
Speaker 4: half the bat, that's a quarter of the battle.
Speaker 2: Then you have to prove that you can stay in there.
Speaker 4: And so may season all to JC Penny, all of
Speaker 4: our retail partners have been really great about supporting us
Speaker 4: and giving us the tools and the resources that we
Speaker 4: need in order to make sure that we can stay
Speaker 4: on the shelves.
Speaker 1: And what does that look like like if you're someone
Speaker 1: who wants to work with those kinds of partners, what
Speaker 1: makes a good partner? What kind of resources is it
Speaker 1: that they give you? Like educating, I mean you probably
Speaker 1: don't need education on how to grow your brand, but
Speaker 1: like placement on shelves, like intel on what's selling and
Speaker 1: what's not selling. They give you patience to like try
Speaker 1: things out and if it doesn't sell immediately, they don't
Speaker 1: kick you off the shelves.
Speaker 2: What a good partner in business?
Speaker 4: So one of the things that they might do so say,
Speaker 4: for example, like once you're on the shelf, you really
Speaker 4: need to the expectation is that you will allocate marketing
Speaker 4: and advertising dollars in order to inform your community that
Speaker 4: you're on the shelf now prior to me, prior to
Speaker 4: like twenty sixteen and me working with brands that are
Speaker 4: in brick and mortar. Like in my mind, you know,
Speaker 4: you're thinking, oh, I'm at Alta Macy's now, Like the
Speaker 4: work is done and like the products are just going
Speaker 4: to sell themselves. Now you have to allocate you know,
Speaker 4: X amount of dollars in order to inform your customers
Speaker 4: and other customers that the product is there. And so
Speaker 4: the expectations is that you will use your digital marketing
Speaker 4: dollars to or really reallocate your digital marketing dollars that
Speaker 4: you may have earmarked to spend to drive traffic to
Speaker 4: your own website. Now you have to spend those dollars
Speaker 4: to drive traffic to Alta's websites. Which might be counterintuitive, right,
Speaker 4: but that is an expectation. But one of the resources
Speaker 4: that Alta Macy's may offer a black founded or a
Speaker 4: personal color brand is you know, hey, so we want
Speaker 4: you to spend fifty thousand dollars on advertising, but we're
Speaker 4: gonna you know, co sponsor some of that. So that
Speaker 4: will just basically subsidize or all set the cost of
Speaker 4: the marketing, which is really.
Speaker 2: Helpful, you know, like twenty five thousand dollars.
Speaker 4: You know, it could be a real big help to
Speaker 4: a brand that might you know, have some cash flow challenges.
Speaker 5: That's the interesting thing I want to talk about with
Speaker 5: host selling and a business in the marketing that when
Speaker 5: you and the price of products and see if I
Speaker 5: can do this in a quick way. So let's say
Speaker 5: a product costs ten dollars. When you host sell it,
Speaker 5: you usually gonna be a fifty percent of MSRP. So
Speaker 5: the person's going to take home five dollars and the brand,
Speaker 5: the Alta, it's going to take home five dollars, is
Speaker 5: fifty percent is pretty fair term. Sometimes you can get
Speaker 5: sixty percent of you giving to the brand or seventy percent,
Speaker 5: depending on what the brand is. And so there's already
Speaker 5: that split there. And then on top of that split,
Speaker 5: they want you to put money behind pushing people to
Speaker 5: buy from them instead of buying from me directly. So
Speaker 5: that's the that's the piece of that's the piece of
Speaker 5: host selling and brick and mortars that I wanted to
Speaker 5: pay attention to, and what I am encouraging people as
Speaker 5: an owner of a marketplace. I encourage people go directly
Speaker 5: and buy directly from that brand because that ensures that
Speaker 5: they get all the money.
Speaker 6: I don't know if that hurts or helps.
Speaker 5: Like, if you have your thing at Aulta, I'm trying
Speaker 5: to make my Aulta look good, so I want my
Speaker 5: people to buy some Ulta. I'm like I want to
Speaker 5: I want to get all the money, so making you
Speaker 5: get all the money.
Speaker 2: If you need butter in a hurry, then you go
Speaker 2: to Alta. You know, if you needed a hurry, you
Speaker 2: go to Macy's or you go to jcpenny.
Speaker 4: So it just depends on you, know how quickly you
Speaker 4: need your products. If you're about to go out of
Speaker 4: town and you can't wait for two day shipping, please
Speaker 4: take yourself to Alta and pick some butter products up.
Speaker 3: And then you may have more on your website than
Speaker 3: you do.
Speaker 4: Yeah great, Yeah, limited shelf space, so not all the
Speaker 4: products are are not available at Alta, but we are
Speaker 4: working on that. We're looking at purchasing behaviors in store
Speaker 4: versus online and trying to figure out how can we
Speaker 4: create Alta jcpenny retailer exclusives that cater more to the
Speaker 4: needs of people shopping in person.
Speaker 1: Oh I love it, Okay, because I just want to
Speaker 1: go a little bit deeper into your background to merit
Speaker 1: because now you're the president that's your title president at Butta, yes,
Speaker 1: where as a president of grow Okay, and with your
Speaker 1: career trajectory, can you talk about like how have you
Speaker 1: learned the keys to growing businesses and scaling businesses, and like,
Speaker 1: what advice would you give to a really ambitious entrepreneur,
Speaker 1: even like myself who is a solopreneur but wants to
Speaker 1: become much bigger and wants to reach that next level.
Speaker 1: And from me, like what I hear is like, well,
Speaker 1: venture capital is harder to come by, so I've been
Speaker 1: looking at things like grants and and you know, other
Speaker 1: opportunities to raise capital. And I just wonder, with all
Speaker 1: your expertise, how have you gained so much knowledge? And like,
Speaker 1: what advice would you have for me us via a
Speaker 1: fam I.
Speaker 2: Have a lot of advice.
Speaker 4: I talk about this a lot with my husband, just
Speaker 4: some of my things I wish people knew.
Speaker 2: So, okay, talk to me.
Speaker 3: You forget your husband. He's plants, sick of it.
Speaker 1: He's like, you're gonna go find a microphone somewhere.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay. So the first one is VC.
Speaker 4: I would say when it comes to venture capital and grants,
Speaker 4: I would also say.
Speaker 2: Maybe don't stop that. But I always like to focus
Speaker 2: my attention on the big bets, the big rocks.
Speaker 4: So grants are cool, right, Like you get ten thousand
Speaker 4: and fifty thousand and that's that's some real money. But
Speaker 4: money that can really make a difference in your life
Speaker 4: is going to be by maybe by going to private
Speaker 4: equity and venture capital because the same amount of time
Speaker 4: that you're spending applying for a grant, because you know,
Speaker 4: every single grand application want you to upload a unique
Speaker 4: video and a unique process application and that could take
Speaker 4: you by the time.
Speaker 2: You're finished, you know, four hours.
Speaker 4: Half your day is gone when you can be pitching
Speaker 4: to private equity folks, or you can be building relationships
Speaker 4: with investment bankers things like that, the people who also
Speaker 4: have a lot.
Speaker 2: Of money to invest in brands.
Speaker 4: So I would say that also really get the time
Speaker 4: to know your numbers, like you need to know how
Speaker 4: to so you need to be fluent in financial statements.
Speaker 2: So you need to know cash flow statements, income statements,
Speaker 2: and balance sheets because that's how private equity and VC
Speaker 2: are also going to evaluate your business. It's your business
Speaker 2: report card. And so if you don't know that, I
Speaker 2: feel a lot of founders talk about the.
Speaker 4: Warm and fuzzies, you know, the branding and community building
Speaker 4: and all that is also important, but the foundation of
Speaker 4: your business is also those financial statements.
Speaker 1: I do have them I have a great bookkeeper and
Speaker 1: she creates beautiful reports, and oh god, I sound like
Speaker 1: President Orange when I say beautiful reports. But it's when
Speaker 1: I even think about standing, I think I have so
Speaker 1: much work to do. It's crazy how I feel like
Speaker 1: I'm starting from a scratch, even though I've been doing
Speaker 1: this podcast for ten years. But it really feels like
Speaker 1: bringing all the skills Thatt's across my career into this
Speaker 1: one like new chapter. And I genuinely feel like I'm
Speaker 1: starting from scratch in a lot of ways, which is
Speaker 1: exciting but intimidating because I know about brown ambition, but
Speaker 1: like to explain it to a venture capital fund, like
Speaker 1: how am I going to build the confidence?
Speaker 3: Where am I gonna?
Speaker 2: What do I what practice practice makes perfect?
Speaker 4: Like I think the more you pitch, you know, or
Speaker 4: the more enough pitching, and the more you try to
Speaker 4: inform people about an investment opportunity in your business, the easier.
Speaker 2: It will become. But also think about I always say like,
Speaker 2: and I.
Speaker 4: Said this earlier at the start of the podcast, is
Speaker 4: I would encourage you to get married again. And when
Speaker 4: I say get married, I mean like, maybe take on
Speaker 4: a partner, because what your partner what you may be
Speaker 4: good at is what your partner is not so good at,
Speaker 4: and so you both you combine your strengths. Because I
Speaker 4: also see a lot of business owners doing it by
Speaker 4: themselves and it's hard.
Speaker 2: I don't encourage it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, I Afrotech.
Speaker 1: Actually I was sitting at the table with Oh, sorry,
Speaker 1: doctor Edwards, go ahead.
Speaker 5: I'm just saying I agree. I don't encourage either because
Speaker 5: I'm tied mm hmm.
Speaker 4: Like you know how women are just like you, you
Speaker 4: want a man and just come along.
Speaker 2: And help us out, you know kind of thing.
Speaker 4: So I think it's the same way. I think you're
Speaker 4: stronger with partnership. Even Warren Buffet says that he's like,
Speaker 4: the most of the important decision you'll make of your
Speaker 4: life is who you get married to.
Speaker 6: Yep, yep.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I think as a business owner, absolutely, And I
Speaker 1: think what I agree is what I'm trying to say.
Speaker 1: And I'm a little bit at this point where I
Speaker 1: would definitely be thinking about that. And at Afrotech, I
Speaker 1: was at a table and there was Raquel Martin. She's this,
Speaker 1: you know, incredible therapist and she has a big brand
Speaker 1: in a podcast and a book coming out and She
Speaker 1: was sitting next to Rachel Rogers, who of course is
Speaker 1: like we should all be millionaires in like a business
Speaker 1: battie and listening to them debate about Raquel's approach to
Speaker 1: like her business and and basically she wants to start
Speaker 1: a nonprofit arm and then Rachel's like, listen, we all
Speaker 1: think we need to start nonprofits. Like maybe we don't
Speaker 1: need another non profit. We need to make money money,
Speaker 1: and yes, and she was ben Roquel was like really
Speaker 1: firm in her purpose and like, but this is for
Speaker 1: the people. And she's like very rooted and like wasn't
Speaker 1: giving anything. And I was looking at them and I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: it sounds like you guys just need to like combine forces.
Speaker 1: And I mean obviously not like literally together, but having
Speaker 1: someone who has more of that like just business bowl sense,
Speaker 1: you know, of like, well, here's how we can take
Speaker 1: it to the next level. That's definitely in the in
Speaker 1: the lane that I'm going right now. That's like where
Speaker 1: I'm thinking is like, how do I get in more
Speaker 1: spaces like afrotech where I can be in community with
Speaker 1: other people who may be interested in helping like a
Speaker 1: brand like Brown Ambition become what I envision it, and
Speaker 1: I'm excited for that because working alone is not so fun.
Speaker 4: It is not as all just challenging, and you know,
Speaker 4: you're your own homework, you know, like you're writing your
Speaker 4: own homework. So there's no one sitting on your shoulder going,
Speaker 4: uh no, I don't think we should invest twenty thousand dollars,
Speaker 4: like we have this much in the bank.
Speaker 2: Here are the metrics, like, here's a report card.
Speaker 1: I was gonna askt GPT what they thought about something
Speaker 1: earlier today and I was like, not you trying to
Speaker 1: like get a business partnership from about like stop it.
Speaker 1: I was like, well, what do you think how should
Speaker 1: I plan my day?
Speaker 2: I do you think that's a great idea?
Speaker 6: Oh?
Speaker 4: Because it's unattached, it's nons it's not emotional. It's not
Speaker 4: your baby. He can tell you your baby's ugly, and you know,
Speaker 4: it's just kind of like, yeah, I think you do
Speaker 4: need someone that has a healthy amount of detachment to
Speaker 4: advise you on things.
Speaker 5: And back to the EC conversation. Black and Green has
Speaker 5: not raised any money at all. We've only done it
Speaker 5: with grants and we've probably gotten about one hundred thousand
Speaker 5: dollars at grants, which is like great, but you're right.
Speaker 5: It took a lot of work and a lot of videos,
Speaker 5: a lot of them doing this and a lot of
Speaker 5: that didn't have to do that. And I have to
Speaker 5: be honest with you, I'm scared to get a VC.
Speaker 5: I'm scared. I'm scared that they're going to change there.
Speaker 5: I think what my fear is that the way I
Speaker 5: want to do business is not the way to make
Speaker 5: a lot of money. They're gonna want me to make
Speaker 5: a different choice that's gonna be different than.
Speaker 6: What I want to do.
Speaker 5: So I don't want to give that up. So I
Speaker 5: don't want to think I want to give a power.
Speaker 5: But I have come to gripts. I can't grow without
Speaker 5: their money, and so my growth is going to be hindered.
Speaker 6: I need a team, I need people.
Speaker 5: I'm tired, and I can only grow so much and
Speaker 5: I can only afford I can't afford I can't afford help,
Speaker 5: and so I'm stunting myself because of my inability to
Speaker 5: go get VC money.
Speaker 6: I know all this, I know it, but I haven't.
Speaker 4: And listen, working at Microsoft, one of the things that
Speaker 4: I realized that makes that engine run so smooth and
Speaker 4: efficient is at Microsoft, people do one job. If you're
Speaker 4: great at SEO, that is your right.
Speaker 2: At customer service, that is your one job. And the
Speaker 2: reason why is because it creates efficiencies.
Speaker 4: So I'm not having I'm not having to shift from
Speaker 4: product development to customer service to fulfillment to operations to finance.
Speaker 4: Like you are just highly efficient and that's how that
Speaker 4: engine runs. And so I think, as black founders, black entrepreneurs,
Speaker 4: we really got to get out of this one hundred
Speaker 4: percent ownership because, like you said, Christian, like you, it
Speaker 4: stunts the growth.
Speaker 6: I've had this conversation multiple times.
Speaker 5: People say, you just have to find the right investor,
Speaker 5: Like you're not going to lose all your control if
Speaker 5: you've lost all your controls because you didn't find the
Speaker 5: right investor, Just find the right investment. So I'm trying
Speaker 5: to find the right investor. And because I know that
Speaker 5: my growth is dependent upon.
Speaker 1: It, I'm like, damn speaking, I'm needing to help. I
Speaker 1: need my producer to be here during these episodes like this,
Speaker 1: But whatever, why are we in the same boat? Doctor
Speaker 1: Edwards like legit And I just really felt what you
Speaker 1: were saying, and I and thank you, Tamara for like
Speaker 1: telling me what I need to hear that I need
Speaker 1: to hear it again. I heard it at that table
Speaker 1: with Rachel and Morgan and Raquel and the other people
Speaker 1: that offer tech, and I need to hear more of it.
Speaker 1: And that's why I'm I'm so excited to hear about
Speaker 1: like these VC.
Speaker 3: I know that we're at a time and.
Speaker 1: There's so many things where it's like there's not enough
Speaker 1: funding for black owned businesses and dada da da da.
Speaker 3: But I'm very much in like the.
Speaker 1: Okay, but there's still money out theres and there's still
Speaker 1: some people who want and like, how can I be
Speaker 1: the one who gets the funding?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 1: And so these like where would you suggest we should start?
Speaker 1: Doctor Edwards? And I, you know, reach like and I
Speaker 1: think part of it doctor Edwards for me too. It's
Speaker 1: like a little bit of pride I when you said
Speaker 1: grading your own work, because I'm so close to this baby,
Speaker 1: I'm a little bit self conscious that someone's going to
Speaker 1: come and say this is all you did in ten
Speaker 1: years to show like, you know, but I have to
Speaker 1: get over that if I really want help, right, So Tamara,
Speaker 1: what do you think what should we do?
Speaker 2: So you know what you just said, that's all you
Speaker 2: did in ten years. So here's the thing that.
Speaker 4: I've I've learned is it's all about perception and storytelling.
Speaker 4: So it's how you tell your story to an investor
Speaker 4: who who is seeking to, you know, help you put
Speaker 4: some jet fuel on your baby the lett it grow.
Speaker 4: So that's one thing, change the way that you tell
Speaker 4: the story and a perception. Then the second one would
Speaker 4: be to position yourself in spaces where you can start
Speaker 4: to form relationships with investment bankers. Because it might not
Speaker 4: be a venture capital firm, it might be a private
Speaker 4: equity firm. So start going to conferences where you can
Speaker 4: interact and start to cultivate relationship with these people because
Speaker 4: they might not invest immediately, but you're starting to build that.
Speaker 2: Really, it's like dating. I always equate everything to like,
Speaker 2: it's like dating, Like you.
Speaker 4: Just have to build a relationship because if you meet
Speaker 4: somebody a guy at the bar, restaurant, wherever you choose
Speaker 4: to socialize, and they try to take it to make
Speaker 4: a home run, immediately, you're like, you know, but if
Speaker 4: they gradually court you, which is what you would be
Speaker 4: doing with investors, updating them on Hey, here's my progress.
Speaker 2: You're in Chicago. I'm going to be in Chicago. Can
Speaker 2: I take you for coffee?
Speaker 4: Like those type of interactions and then you will eventually, you.
Speaker 2: Know, get an investor. So that's what I would say.
Speaker 4: Go to conferences, and it doesn't have to be the
Speaker 4: conferences that we all know about, like look up some
Speaker 4: other ones, and AI is a great resource to help
Speaker 4: you find those.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean I got invited to a small dinner party
Speaker 1: with Morgan and Afrotech and I sat next to literally
Speaker 1: a vc funder who was on her way to the
Speaker 1: Black Ambition, like I don't know event where they like
Speaker 1: give out their million dollar reward. By the way, hadn't
Speaker 1: heard a black ambition. That was embarrassing and also fun
Speaker 1: because I'm like brown envision Black Ambition. Great, but that's
Speaker 1: Pharrell's VC or his like investment fund. Anyway, My point
Speaker 1: is I sat next to her and I just was like, Oh,
Speaker 1: that's really cool.
Speaker 3: Uh huh. That's for other people to think about.
Speaker 1: So it's like changing, yeah, to being at tables like
Speaker 1: that and understanding you know, what those roles even mean,
Speaker 1: Like even you saying maybe it's not VC, maybe it's
Speaker 1: private equity, Like what's the difference.
Speaker 2: The difference is expectation of return. Okay, you know, VC.
Speaker 4: Like because from a number standpoint, from a numbers standpoint,
Speaker 4: VC is looking at it from every let's say ten
Speaker 4: businesses that they invest.
Speaker 2: In, one is gonna like really set it off.
Speaker 4: So they have the expectation that you were gonna set
Speaker 4: it off. Versus versus private equity, like they're looking to sell,
Speaker 4: to buy, create some operational efficiencies, and then sell.
Speaker 2: So it's like real estate investors, but for businesses. Mmmm.
Speaker 3: So which one is like that? I don't know.
Speaker 1: They both sound scary?
Speaker 3: Which one does? Butter use, we'll go that way.
Speaker 2: We're private equity. We're private. Private equity tends to run
Speaker 2: a leadership.
Speaker 4: So there's like, you're not VC's in the past they've
Speaker 4: handed out like these big blank checks essential almost and
Speaker 4: so you got you get a lot more money to
Speaker 4: play with. But the expectation is a lot more pressure.
Speaker 4: The expectation is for growth, for exponential growth is a
Speaker 4: lot higher versus private equity, Like they're looking to, like
Speaker 4: I said, create some operational efficiencies and then sell you
Speaker 4: off usually eighteen to I don't know, anywhere from like
Speaker 4: a year to five years sell you know who, another
Speaker 4: private equity firm perhaps, or another business.
Speaker 1: Oh it's so icy. Well that's the real estate thing.
Speaker 1: It's got to flipping a house a little bit. You
Speaker 1: make a little bit off the top. But then as
Speaker 1: you as the founder or as the company, like, do
Speaker 1: you get a say and who your next owner is
Speaker 1: going to be?
Speaker 4: That's a little you do you do typically though those
Speaker 4: type of things are you know, you hire a business
Speaker 4: broker usually, or you can start to build those relationships
Speaker 4: with investment bankers as well, So yeah, you have a
Speaker 4: say in it.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, thank y'all so much for I love
Speaker 1: the I love that even Doctor Edwards, you're getting to
Speaker 1: share a little bit about your journey with Tamara that
Speaker 1: maybe you hadn't before, about like your like how you're
Speaker 1: thinking about funding your company. And I feel like after this,
Speaker 1: y'all are gonna have to like touch Yeah.
Speaker 4: I know, I'm about to text you like help me
Speaker 4: get yeah, okay, I yeah.
Speaker 1: And I just feel like doctor Edward's like, we can't
Speaker 1: let this stop us, Like I can't let a little
Speaker 1: bit of like hesitation. And Tamara is one of those
Speaker 1: groundbreakers who's been there and understands the language, and can
Speaker 1: we can like someone that we can trust. I'm like
Speaker 1: my friend now too, but like someone that can make
Speaker 1: you feel a little bit more comfortable pushing forward, because
Speaker 1: I'll be damned if I let that stop me from
Speaker 1: like really helping me create this vision.
Speaker 6: It's not going to stop you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, amen, you either.
Speaker 1: All right, well, Thanky'll thank y'all so much for joining
Speaker 1: me at the Brown table at Brown Ambition, doctor Kristen
Speaker 1: Edwards that I is going to trip everybody else. You know,
Speaker 1: your mom really did her big one with that. She
Speaker 1: was like the challenge and tamyor Watkins of butda. Thank
Speaker 1: y'all so much for joining Brown Ambition.
Speaker 3: Be a fan.
Speaker 1: Make sure you check the show notes. I'm going to
Speaker 1: put links to their socials and where you can shop
Speaker 1: and you know, buy their products and check out all
Speaker 1: their resources in the show notes.
Speaker 3: And thank y'all.
Speaker 1: I hope that you'd take care.
Speaker 6: Thank you,