A lot of entrepreneurs may experience this phenomenon where they don't feel supported where they are from. The idea is that when people are too familiar with you they're not as attracted to you as they would be to someone they are less familiar with. This is also perhaps why you see statements like people support strangers before they support those they know. Even Jay-Z had a verse in his track “Boss” that said, “rather work for the man than to work for me.” Yet, there were times where I was really frustrated. In many ways, I'm still frustrated. I had been on all the lists—the LSU 100 fastest-growing businesses, all the 40-under-40 lists in and out of my state; I had joined the most exclusive boards. I had helped people secure powerful roles and jobs, and when they were in a position to help me never lifted a finger. I had won a Pulitzer Prize for public service. I had been recognized by the White House. I checked off all the boxes. Why was it still so hard for me to access resources?
Maybe one of the reasons I'm still here is also so that I can extend support to other entrepreneurs, the support I felt it took me a very long time to receive. The support I feel like I still don’t always receive.
When I started a tech company I knew I'd have to venture out of Louisiana if I wanted a chance at scale and to grow faster, and we now have a second office in New York City.
When I went out to raise capital for the first time, the journey was intense. I had never raised capital before, but surely once I showed investors how well my first company was doing and how I had bootstrapped it to seven figures and had already started to gain traction for Resilia, it would be a no-brainer. Right?
The idea of raising capital when I first started out in business wasn't even a factor. It just wasn't something you did where I was from. So, when I saw all of these headlines, with people more captivated with companies that had raised tens of millions of dollars, but not have the same enthusiasm or press attention for those who had made tens of millions of dollars, it was odd to me.
By the time I had closed my seed round I had made far more money in my first bootstrapped business than I had raised, but when news of my raising $2 million became public, it went viral. I was shocked. I wasn't on the tech scene. I was just in New Orleans building a company out of sight; so many people, especially within the realm of Black tech, had never heard of me, and because of this I seemed to have come out of nowhere. In reality, I had started my first venture almost a decade prior.
As a two-time founder, I know not to get caught up in the hype of it all. The way society moves today, they will crown you and then dethrone you in a New York minute. As the CEO and founder of a company, I start my day by literally just trying to get my mind right. On Sunday, I begin to prepare for my week ahead. I've found that going into Monday even a little more prepared than if I didn't do anything decreases anxiety. I know a lot of entrepreneurs and even individuals who have jobs and careers feel this on Sunday night, setting in right around 5 p.m. or so. A lot of entrepreneurs in general are like that when they're just coming up: they have anxiety on Sunday night because they know they're about to start the new week. For me it's definitely been one of those things where I'm very intentional in my thinking.
I started doing meditation and my friend Summer, and then another one of my friends, Jason introduced me to a guided meditation using Muse (a wearable brain-sensing headband). It helps me be very conscious of the energy I take in and give out. Most importantly it helps me focus and limit the normal distractions of the day—and how I move. It's about practicing mindfulness and trying yourself to let go negativity and calm your mind and body.
It's important for me to focus on what's in front of me and what's ahead of me. Entrepreneurship can be a lonely journey. You're going to be tested in many ways, especially if you are a minority. You really have to have the confidence to not be shaken, but even if your confidence is shaken, you can't let it break you.
If you're not confident, things will start chipping away at you little by little, and you start to realize that some of the issues you may be having really stem from the fact that you just lost your confidence somewhere along the way.
This can also potentially put you in a position of resentment or jade you in a way that you become a detriment not only to your own success but potentially to other people as well. That's why I believe that when women founders meet women investors or other women along the way who are harder on them than men, or treat them negatively, it's because of what they faced along their journey. No one should have to endure anything that makes them feel lesser than. So on the journey, be sure to treat others the way you would have wanted to be treated when you were in their position. Lift as you climb.
Because of experiences like this, I've been super mindful about ensuring that I connect with women, especially Black women, and being really intentional about how I can help within reason.
I felt that I was missing a lot of support. My father passed away when I was about 9, and then my mother passed away when I was 21, four days before Christmas. She had an aggressive form of cancer and within 3 months time she was no longer here. I was in grad school at the time and during her initial chemotherapy I drove the 50-minute trip every day to be with her at night. There is something about watching the person you love most wither away like she did that changes you forever.
The next year, after my mother passed, I went on to start Solid Ground Innovations. I was definitely in this space like okay, you know, can I do this? I've always been a person who believed in execution. I'd always been the person my friends could depend on and call on for anything. But could I start a business? From scratch?
Even though I had been “that person” in general, for me it really became about, what the next part of my life would look like. I had always been a pretty good student, an even better networker and student of people. And I'd always had plans for a better life, but many of those plans were aligned with wanting to create a better life for my mother, the life I felt she deserved.
When my mother passed away, I felt like that was taken from me. I wanted to give her the opportunity to really live, as she had worked so hard so much of her life as a single mother, as a loving sister and daughter, and I wanted her to be able to reap the rewards of what she had invested in me. With that opportunity gone, I had to really think about what I was doing all of this for. You'll have to ask yourself at some point the same question: What are you doing all of this for?
Not too soon after that, I felt I had refound my “why.” I wanted to build a company to help other people solve their problems. I wanted to build a legacy. I wanted to create opportunities via economic mobility offered to people in the form of a well-paying career that they loved and a company they could grow in.
I wanted my community to understand that just when they thought they couldn't make it another year, another day that things could still work out for them—that they could still lead a life they had imagined and a life they could be the architect of. I was also talking to myself, and I'm also saying this to you.
I wanted to help people, and not just those who were in my household. I wanted to go beyond that, and have a bigger impact on people's lives.
I wanted to create generational wealth.
That was the impact that my parents’ deaths had on me.
Yet, I know that losing someone close to you, whether that is in death or through some other form of separation, can be devastating. It can have a different effect, and many find it hard to recover. For me, my parents dying at a young age in my life made me work harder.
Also, in my subconscious, I realized I didn't really have anyone to turn to. I didn't have the normal home to retreat to, especially when you hear these stories of successful founders working out of their parents, basements or homes to get their businesses off the ground.
When I think about
