I feel that entrepreneurship was in my veins. Do you remember starting or selling anything, from Girl Scout cookies to lemonade stands? I never did either, but I did sell candy for my school's annual fundraiser. Looking back, that was a form of entrepreneurship mixed with hustle, too.
In this book, a lot of lessons are transferable to mostly all entrepreneurs regardless of sector, though I'll spend most of my time focused on walking you through the steps of launching and raising capital for Resilia, the tech company I launched in 2016. If you want a more detailed description of how I built Solid Ground Innovations, the professional services company I started in 2009, I have an entire self-published book on that. called Solid Ground. But let's start from the top of my entrepreneurship journey. When I was 19 years old, I rallied up my friends to help me start an online newspaper that I would name B-NOW (Black News Our Way). I remember talking to my college professor, Dr. Leonard Moore, about the idea. I told him that I wanted to bring together students from Southern University A&M College, a neighboring HBCU (historically Black college or university), and students from Louisiana State University A&M, a predominantly white institution, where I attended school. He was all onboard and asked me if I had filed an LLC. He might as well have been speaking a foreign language, because I had no worldly idea of what he was talking about other than it was something I perhaps needed to run a business. There in his office he wrote me a check for $150. Looking back, I guess I could say he was my very first investor. He was at least the very first person who believed in me and gave me money for an idea. He also understood that there would be costs associated with my idea.
It wasn't until a year or two ago that I acknowledged B-NOW as what in hindsight was my first business. My first hires were also students at LSU. Terry and Jonathan created my website. Another friend created my logo. I suspect it cost a few hundred bucks at the time: $50 for a logo, maybe $200 for the website with all pages included. I even enlisted my friends to write articles and to act as administrators, and hired my friend Scott to take our photos in the recreational room of the west campus apartments. I had an all-hands meeting on campus as well in Coates Hall, where I enlisted other friends to write stories for B-NOW.
Maybe I didn't know it then, but I had created something special. A few years later, at 22 years old, I would start Solid Ground Innovations.
But I was now in grad school. My mother had passed away. I was consulting while I worked at an organization called Louisiana CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates) as an AmeriCorps VISTA member while going to grad school full-time. I know technically you weren't supposed to go to school during your AmeriCorps service, but it actually came very naturally to me.
At Louisiana CASA, I worked mostly on their advocacy programs and state capital projects. During this time an opportunity came about for me to start consulting for a new foundation, so I took it. This would eventually turn into an opportunity that led my work to receiving a Nobel Prize for public service, the Jefferson Award, and being recognized in the White House Report to the Senate on Volunteerism in America as the director of TTI, a nonprofit started by Tyrus Thomas, mostly running the organization, and an award-winning youth program we had created called C.A.T.C.H. (Caring and Actively Teaching Children Hope).
It was during these early days that I really learned how to operate an organization. So when I launched my first business to the public it felt right, even if I didn't feel 100% ready—though doing the actual work would prove we never ever really feel 100% ready. We just do it. We take the leap.
So, in 2009 I started SGI; we were a strategic communications and management agency with an arm called SGI Cares, which helped nonprofit organizations and grant makers such as the W.K. Kellogg Foundation provide capacity support via technical assistance to the organizations that they fund.
For nonprofits, we were acting as their back office in lieu of full-time employees. In my clients, I'd meet some of my biggest champions like Raymond Jetson the President and CEO of Metromorphosis, a nonprofit with a mission to transform urban communities from within.
When I first started SGI I didn't have employees. We were a true professional services agency and because of this we were able to stay very lean as a business. I began creating marketing materials (trust me, nothing fancy at all). One underutilized resource I leaned on was using our local state economic development office. There I was able to use state-funded programs to cover the cost of items I needed to start my business, such as marketing and collateral materials. I participated in programs that can be found within every state. In Louisiana it was called Economic Gardening. I'm pretty certain that at the time we went through this program, we were not as large as the other businesses. But we were able to take advantage of consultants to discuss opportunities related to sales, operations, and understanding our competitive landscape. Having experienced individuals to even just talk through my ideas with and get feedback from was a game changer. I always urge small businesses to take advantage of their local, state, and federal programs and the free resources they provide; if nothing else, at least find out what exists.
There are many ways to build a business. When I started SGI, there was so much I didn't know. I was so green, from state filing docs to understanding the operational and legal jargon to writing winning proposals that would ultimately land me my first clients.
There is truth to the saying “you don't know what you don't know.” This is the case for all of us when it comes to a subject matter that is unfamiliar to us. SGI was a strategic communications and management agency. Early on we heavily specialized in nonprofit management, hence where the idea for Resilia came from.
Some of the projects we took on then, I'd never touch today. I'm just being honest.
I know there is a lot of talk about getting your value and what you are worth. But when you are just starting out, and you are trying to get clients and prove yourself, as well as figure out your pricing, it's very possible there will be times you undercut yourself. Sometimes it will be worth it and other times not so much.
As I began to establish my credibility and footing, everything around me began to increase, including my rates.
One thing in business you'll have to look out for is “upside-down contracts.” This is where your cost to do the work exceeds the price you are charging, and thus your business loses money in the execution of the work. These types of agreements are easier to recover from when it's just you working on a project, but when you layer employees or other hired consultants on top it can be difficult to recover from.
A few years into my business, I started resigning from contracts because of this. Not because the clients were horrible, but because they didn't make economic sense. One of my close advisors told me a long time ago that you get into business to make a profit. This may be your first reason, or it may be one of many reasons after the initial passion and your purpose drives you to start it. Either way, it's a business for a reason.
As SGI started to grow, we started to reevaluate SGI Cares, the arm that focused solely on nonprofits. SGI was growing—a very uncomfortable growth, but growing nevertheless. A few years in, we had landed our first seven-figure, multi-year contract with a healthcare provider seeking to provide Medicaid services via a government contract. They found us through a state website that listed Hudson initiative–approved companies. The program encourages state agencies to contract with certified small businesses, as well as encouraging contractors who receive contracts from the state to use good-faith efforts to utilize certified small businesses in the performance of the contract. If that contract taught us anything, it was the importance of cash flow and billing. When you are dealing with government contracts and large agencies, the billing cycles are much longer. Yet, because of the size of the contract, you have to hire employees and/or contractors to do the work. We also had to execute media buying and other vendor purchases as an agreement of the contract. It's very important to have someone, if not yourself, who knows the intricacies of buying media and appropriately running a tight ship with budgeting and
