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A special thank you to my tribe, support system, and everyone who continues to show up for me in unexpected ways. Thank you to Jeanenne for feeling that my startup and business story should be told.
Thank you to my Mama and Daddy, who taught me to be Resilient. Even in death, you continue to give me life.
This one is for all the aspiring entrepreneurs and the entrepreneurs who have faced the ups and downs of starting something. It's for the team members who have stayed on throughout the journey to build something special even amidst the unknown. It's for the resilient builder in all of us.
Introduction
You can't always be first, but you can be better.
—Sevetri Wilson
Before the coronavirus spread across the globe, we were just settling into a brand new office in New York City and positioning our executive team to grow from there—all while maintaining our office in New Orleans, which allowed me to keep my promise to cultivate talent from the place I'm from.
See, the year 2020 was supposed to be a big deal. But then as the agony began of watching, as many of my friends and family were laid off or saw their businesses shutter, I started to realize that 2020 was definitely not going to be what I had bargained for. Then as the year progressed and with the aftermath of the last several months, COVID-19, the murder of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, as well as the protests across the world that would follow, 2020 was still a big deal! 2020 was a year of reckoning for many, forcing everyone to come to grips with the end of normalcy as we've known it. COVID-19 took with it jobs and security for hard-working families across the world. Here in the United States we were slow to respond, some even slower than others. On a call with an investor, we discussed how businesses would now be tested more than ever. Some of us would come out on top (those that were fortunate), some would stay flat (also fortunate), and others would close. The pandemic would test our ability to pivot or capture new opportunities, but more than anything it would test our sanity and ability to keep our teams going when everything around us was turned upside down.
This book is different. I hadn't imagined writing it while going through a pandemic and through our generation's version of a Civil Rights movement.
Yet, in this book I'm going to go there. I'm going to walk you through how I bootstrapped my first business to how I raised millions for my second company, all while retaining majority control; all while at the onset of a pandemic. My hope is that this book will offer something that was missing when I started building as an entrepreneur. I hope that it will shed light on what seems like the impossible, and bring new ways of thinking about challenges. I hope it is a bridge to the other side of your goals, a “how-to” guide of sorts that will bring about the awakening and push you've been looking for. I hope that it is both inspirational and aspirational. Never would I have imagined that someone like me, a first-generation college student who went to school on a full Pell grant, who grew up in a six-person household while her mother brought in a $26,000 yearly salary, would make it this far. There was no one to teach me the blueprint, but I hope to show you how I built my company from literally nothing while providing a ground-up approach, one where you can start from anywhere.
This book won't be an easy ride, but neither is business. Instead, I hope it will be a journey to economic and financial freedom through ownership, as that is what building a business has been for me.
1 Coming From Where I'm From
To be a woman you have to look like a girl, act like a lady, think like a man, and work like a dog.
—Leah Chase
Attending Louisiana State University (LSU) for undergrad opened up an entirely new world for me. I come from a small town about 45 minutes outside of New Orleans, the city where my mama and her family are from.
The first time I became really aware of technology was when I was in middle school, when my mother brought home our first computer, a Dell desktop. We didn't have the Internet, but my Mama would get these AOL dial-up cards for free. Now, obviously, I would be exposed more to technology in college, but I had no idea that my journey would lead me into tech.
At LSU, I met a professor who truly pushed me and many others to go beyond the thinking of the small towns we came from. Dr. Leonard Moore would likely have the single most impactful role in my life while I was in college—so much so that I added history as a second major. Yet, more than anything, he showed how someone could manage multiple opportunities. He had written books naturally as a college professor, but he and his wife Thais had also started a program for youth, and a youth church. He was living a life that I had never imagined was a possibility.
