But I was here and I felt like I had nothing to lose, and I mean that very literally. My mother had just passed away when I graduated college and I started my company six months after that, and for me it was like, you know, I had spent so much time wanting to create this life so that I could help my mother, I felt like she'd missed out on so much and she had given so much to her children. When she passed away, I really had to rebuild in many ways.
I had to reframe what it was that I was living for. I'd launch my first business, Solid Ground Innovations (SGI), in July 2009, but wouldn't make it publicly known outside of my clients until 2011, which is also when I started to see real growth within the business.
I experienced so many lessons down the road, and it's important to know that you will face a lot of challenges. I made money. I lost money. I had contract deals that, starting out, I would have never dreamed of. I had an employee steal from the business by creating fake vendor invoices. I was furious. I had to fire my own clients because I no longer wanted to work within a situation that was not designed for anyone to succeed.
Yet, if it weren't for these hard lessons that I learned within SGI, I don't think I would have been as prepared to start a second company. Without the success of SGI, Resilia wouldn't exist today.
When you're first starting off in a business you feel like you can't turn down work, at least not paid work. I look back to some of those situations and today I wouldn't touch some of the work we took then because it wouldn't make sense. Time is one of my most valuable assets, and you don't want to waste it on deals that aren't worth it.
Choosing to turn down some work was one of the most refreshing moments in business for me. I was coming into my own as a business owner and leader; I could take opportunities that were meant for me and pass on the ones that I thought were not. But it wasn't always like this. Early on I had to build my capabilities, and create a name in the industry, and prove that we could compete, so I was happy to do work to build my portfolio and resume. This didn't mean working for free, but it did mean that the rate I charged in 2010 was a fraction of what I charge today.
I also made a conscious decision to stay in Louisiana and build my business where I was from. Not once but twice. People are always floored that I've made this decision, but I'd been committed to creating an ecosystem for minority business owners, and those who I never saw get a chance to sit at the table.
Building a business in the Deep South as a Black woman is challenging—and that is putting it lightly. At times, I thought maybe it wasn't meant for me to be here. Maybe I needed to go somewhere else because I could grow faster, I could hire from a larger talent pool. Eventually I would open up offices in other cities to create this dynamic, but I stick with my initial thoughts on if you leave at the moment you taste success, then you never grow an ecosystem where things do grow faster, where the pool of talent does become bigger where you're from. I also grappled with the idea that maybe I couldn't be a “king” on my own land—something I would paraphrase when talking to my mentor about the biblical saying “no one is a prophet in their own land.” 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