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Hi everyone, I'm Hilary Kerr, the co-founder and chief content officer of Who Up Wear,
and this is Second Life, a podcast spotlighting women who have truly inspiring careers.
We're talking about their work journeys, what they've learned from the process
of setting aside their doubts or fears and what happens when they embark on their second life.
Today, I'm joined by the founder and CEO of Blavity Morgan DeBon.
While working it into it right out of college, Morgan quickly realized
that she wanted to build something herself.
As she grew frustrated with the media landscape,
she and her co-founders set out to create Blavity,
a tech and media company by Am 4, Black Millennials.
Along the way, Morgan raised $12 million from top DC firms,
making her part of the only 2% of women who received venture funding in Silicon Valley,
and less than 1% of Black founders.
Today, the company is a full-on media empire with a growing portfolio of brands
that reaches over 250 million monthly readers.
And if all of that isn't impressive enough, Morgan also runs professional network conferences like Affrotech
and she consults for massive global companies like Pepsi and American Airlines.
Morgan's current work is a far cry from her early days at Intuit
and her path to building a leading media company is beyond inspiring.
Now, on Second Life, it's Morgan DeBon.
All right, Morgan, you ready to do this?
Let's do it.
Okay, excellent.
So we like to start at the beginning on this podcast.
What did you study in school and much more importantly?
What did you think you were going to be when you grew up?
So I went to Washington University in St. Louis
and my final degrees were political science major with a double minor in entrepreneurship and education.
That's a heavy load.
Yes, I was an active student.
And then actually when I first got to college,
I thought I wanted to be a healthcare manager.
I wanted to manage hospitals and be like the head administrator of a hospital
and build a hospital businesses.
My dad's a doctor and I knew I didn't want to be a doctor,
but I had it fully detached myself from like,
what my parents wanted me to do and what I wanted to do.
So I was like, well, maybe I'll major in healthcare management
and very quickly within the first semester, I said, oh, no, no, no.
I got to get out of the B school and move to art and sciences
and take my time with this.
The untethering process of who you are and who you should be
and who you want to be from familial pressure expectation dreams
is a complex one that I feel like is ongoing.
Always ongoing, always.
Yeah.
So I've read something wild about you,
which is that you started investing in stocks when you were in middle school.
How in the world did you start that as a hobby or get interested in it at all
at such a formative age?
You know, actually in elementary school,
this is nuts in hindsight, but in elementary school,
I was in a program that was like the gifted program for kids
and one of the things that you did was there's a stock market game
where you would trade fake money and trade stocks.
So that was when I first got exposed to like the competitive nature
of who can get the highest returns with fake money.
And then a couple years later, when I got into middle school,
my parents had investments in the stock market and my grandmother
and I remember my grandma getting dividend checks in the mail
and she explained to me what dividend checks were.
And I was like, oh, you just get checks in the mail.
This is fascinating.
Like you don't work, but your money does.
But your money is working for you.
So like, you know, I think that I just had a family that was really transparent
about money and transparent about how to leverage the cash that you have
so that you can make more money and have your money make money.
Then the third thing that I think ultimately took me over the edge
was that when I would get gifts from my parents or grandparents
if they said, you know, here's a $50 check for your birthday or for Christmas.
They said you have to put half in savings.
The other half you can spend it on what they called bubble gum money.
So you could spend it on bubble gum.
We won't say anything like you don't have to get approval.
Whatever you want, you can buy it.
But if you invest the other 25, we will match it.
And so my $50 all of a sudden became $75 or more
because I could put all 50 in the stock market and they would have matched it.
So I was a hustler at a very young age.
I was like, oh, I can do that math.
Like this is a good deal for me.
And so that was the beginning of the end.
When it comes to me being someone who really tried to build different wealth
income streams and different things that would provide equity and assets
that accrue over time without me having to work harder.
I love your parents.
Please tell them, thank you for me.
That is so amazing.
But also like so important to have those conversations.
My husband and I talk about it all the time about the curriculum
that we want to teach our children before they move for school or work or
whatever it is they do.
And you know, it's like how do you make a perfect tomato sauce?
And how do you invest and how do you think about money?
All of these things are important and I'm so delighted that you got some of that
education from your own family early on.
Okay, let's go back to college.
So political science, but then also entrepreneurship and education.
Where did you think that was going to go?
And then did that line up with where you actually went after school?
So I wasn't quite sure.
I was either going to be a teacher who then tried to change the world through
being a principal and a school administrator and like one student at a time.
Or I was going to be a politician, you know, St. Louis is a very political city.
And it's relatively small.
So you kind of your life or I thought I was going to be a life or Missouri and.
So I was like, okay, I could be a politician.
I actually took the else that and dabbled in whether I was going to go to law school or not.
But then as I got to know the legal system.
I got to understand different histories of different political systems.
And also similarly on the education side, I got to spend time in the public school district in St. Louis,
which was unaccredited at the time and also work in Kip charter schools as well.
Because you have to do a certain number of hours as a teaching minor.
I realized that the most powerful people were the business people were the people who were donating to the institutions who were sitting on the boards.
I was on the board of trustees for Washoe, I was student body president.
So I got to see how the university worked.
And I said, oh, this is all money.
This is all about money, but you don't realize that when you're like 20 years old,
you think people are doing the things because that's what they're supposed to be doing.
Not because so and so donated and so and so's kid and so and so's this and that.
And so I learned about the power structures of this country and capitalism.
And I decided that it would be a faster route to me influencing the people in my community and the world that I cared about the most.
As they say, follow the money, right?
I love the money.
Okay, so tell me then about graduating and getting your first job.
What were you looking for?
Did that change through the job hunting process?
Yeah.
So I had a couple of internships in undergrad.
I interned with United Way of Greater St. Louis, which was really awesome because I got to meet all the nonprofits.
And United Way was just a huge player in the St. Louis city.
And then I interned at a startup in St. Louis.
It was a tech startup and it was this guy named Joe Wagner.
He's super smart, really outgoing.
He spent a lot of time in Silicon Valley and founded a bunch of schools and then moved back home to St. Louis with his wife and kids and built his startup.
And I was like, oh, I like this.
This is a blend of platform technology, innovation.
There's no rules, you know, if you can make it and people use it, then you can get going with it.
And I was a junior at the time I was taking the LSAT, you know, I was still had it figured it out yet.
And I said, well, where do you think I should go when I graduate that will accelerate my learning curve?
Where I will be able to get skills that will help me be successful regardless of which pathway I pick.
I love that this is also like the way that you wanted to optimize those birthday checks and make that money work harder for you.
You also wanted that in your career already, even when you were still in undergrad, that is amazing.
Hillary, I knew that I did not want to work when I was like 50.
I was like, I know long time I'm going to go hard for specific period of time.
And then I love it.
And yeah, I made a commitment to myself to your point earlier on in my life that I was going to go as hard as possible in my 20s.
And then in my 30s, luckily, it worked out.
But in my 30s, I was going to, you know, live a little, right?
But yeah, so he said Singapore, I said, all right, black girl Singapore, that's not going to work.
I'm not moving to Singapore.
I was like, give me your number two city that still got like a huge opportunity.
And he said, Silicon Valley, San Francisco.
Now, I knew literally almost nothing about Silicon Valley, but I started to learn and follow sites and blogs and people.
And I just applied for a job at a company that built mint and turbo tax because I just filed my taxes for the first time.
And I loved personal finance.
So I had met yelling at me every week that I was overspending in budgets.
And the company is called into it that makes both of those products.
And I applied on a whim.
I knew nothing about target schools or anything.
I mean, was she with not a target school for into it?
And I got the interview, flew out to Silicon Valley and said,
oh, you guys have palm trees and dogs and snacks?
I mean, I got the job.
Could you talk a little bit about target schools for folks who are listening to this and might not know what that means?
Yeah, so typically big companies have schools where they invest a lot of money on campus recruitment.
So they can understand the curriculums and perhaps even influence some of the curriculum for different jobs that they're hiring entry level talent into.
And then they also get insider knowledge on who are the top students every year.
And kind of a first look at the best talent.
It's a power exchange.
And so wash's top at the time, it's changed.
But it was like deloitte or management consulting, target corporate places in the Midwest, Minneapolis, etc.
A company in Silicon Valley is not coming to Missouri for their top talent regardless of how good the school is.
They're looking at engineering.
They're looking at MIT.
They're looking at places in California.
So I think part of my life has been not knowing all of the rules and just being like, I'm just gonna fly and just believing in myself and also being okay with getting a know and not taking that personally just being able to say like at least I tried at least I submitted at least I gave it a go.
So you got the job.
I assume this means an immediate move to the West Coast.
What was the job?
Tell me a little bit about it.
I mean, that's a culture shift to put it mildly out imagine.
A huge culture shift.
I was a member of a program called their rotational development program, which doesn't exist anymore.
But it was for entry level talent who was high performing to get mentored by senior executives and then you rotate for two years around the company.
And my first job was a product manager for an app.
Again, nothing about that app store and innovation and how you build products and user design user experience.
I mean, I was learning everything from scratch and I loved it.
And then after three to four months, you're on to your next role and you keep rotating.
So that sounds like a really amazing program though because then in theory, you would sort of get a full lay of the land and then departments and employees.
Hopefully I would imagine in perfect world can like self select and mutually select each other of like, okay, when the program's done.
This is the area that I want to go into, right?
Yes. And then for big companies, it also shows in a spirit of youthfulness and innovation and people asking a lot of questions to now four groups of leaders who've been in their role for 10, 20 plus years.
So it was a win-win.
Ultimately though, what's fun about this program is I think very few people still work there.
Almost all of us have become entrepreneurs.
Interesting.
And I get it because you expose this so much.
It's such a young age.
It's like, wait a minute.
I can go do this.
That is fascinating.
It's like an off the record MBA in that way.
I'm basically I'm so I will wrap them till I die because I'm so grateful for that exposure.
And they really invested in me.
And ultimately, I want to go in a different direction.
But I do think my contribution during those two years was good enough.
I think we had a transaction.
It was fine.
You did great. I did great.
Yeah.
That's a good way of looking at it.
Okay.
So of all of the different areas, was there anything that stood out to you?
We were like, oh, I could see myself doing this as I move forward.
Or were you already starting to think, okay, I'd like to be an entrepreneur.
This is just cementing it.
Well, I wasn't quite sure on full-time entrepreneurship yet.
You're too practical.
Yeah, I wanted to be financially stable.
Like I kind of was like, I don't know.
Like I'm not going to be the girl who lives in a car.
Like I admire people who really like risk it all.
That wasn't going to be me.
Me neither.
I'm a Virgo hard pass.
So I wasn't quite sure.
I thought that maybe just working at a really innovative company would
have been like sufficient for that bug in my energy.
So I worked at a company that they had just acquired and was one of the into
an employees that was helping to integrate that company and learn about that
company.
And it was called demand force.
And it was a startup in San Francisco.
So it was a very start-up environment, sales or floors.
I mean, literally like straight out of what you think Silicon Valley looks like.
The good, the bad, the ugly, like the yelling, the cursing, the men.
Yeah.
Actually are key.
All of it.
So I did that.
And I think through that experience specifically, I said, okay, now I really
believe that I could do something on my own because I'm seeing people who
had started a company five to 10 years prior.
And I'm like, you guys are okay.
Like I get why this is successful.
But I think that there's a lot of room here for other people to play is
to start a founder to create something and to build it to scale.
When I lived in the Midwest, I had this vision that there are people in New
York and people in San Francisco that they were these geniuses that they're
all these Steve job types.
I did.
And I really thought that they were special.
And the answer is I actually not what's happening.
They're just normal people just like me and you.
And therefore, why not me?
Why not you?
I love that you were able to see behind the curtain so early and say like,
if this person can do it, I definitely can do it.
So the idea period or the sort of like the incubation period when you're
starting to think about possible ideas, that's always fascinating to me
because it can be impulsive.
It can be very methodical.
It can be overnight.
It could be a long build over a decade.
Talk to me about what that process was like because I'm assuming like you're
still working your day job, but the wheels are turning about the future.
Let's just say right.
Yeah.
So one of my best friends and now one of my co-founders was working at Palantir,
which was another really fast growing company.
So I would meet up with him after work and just be like, what are we going to
build?
He also went to wash you with me.
So our first idea was this is going to be no surprise, but a calculator
that helps you calculate based on your income, how much you should budget.
And it's called budget for me.
So it was like you could input all your stuff and it would pop out like,
this is what you should do.
That one obviously didn't work.
But that was like the first like, okay, we should do something.
We should build something and from there, what really changed my perspective
and propelled me towards gravity was three things.
One, at the time, there was a ton of media companies that were really
scaling fast and it was very public and you could see it because
up where the was everywhere on your Facebook feed, bus feed,
vice, Mike at the time, they were literally scaling and they were raising
all this money and it was kind of this age of, this is the new media
and these are going to be the next time inks.
We know what happened now, but at the time, it was the new thing.
And I could see that there was a lack of any representation for the new
majority, for people of color, for anyone who didn't speak English.
There's a first language for like anything not mainstream at the time.
So that was one thing that was bothering me.
And then the second thing was I knew that if I was going to take a leap,
I needed to take a leap in something that I could immediately be an expert in.
So I felt like it had to be something that I felt confident,
talking into different rooms and saying, no, we're going to build this and it's
targeting this demo and I'm a part of that demo so that I could have the
self confidence to walk into those crazy rooms with these VCs and everyone.
And so black millennials, black culture, black audiences was something I
felt really comfortable with.
And then the last thing that really ultimately put me over the edge was the
death of Mike Brown, which was in 2014.
And again, I'm from St. Louis.
Mike Brown was shot in Ferguson, which is a part of St. Louis.
And I was shocked and frustrated and pissed off that black media did
not cover it fast enough because a lot of black media at the time was still
magazines that hadn't fully gone digital.
And it was very much like a grounds up movement, right?
It was Twitter.
It was vine at the time.
It was periscope.
I think it was any of the other tool, right?
It was all these tools of people making a decision to be a part of,
to contribute and to speak up.
And there was no platform, no brand, no clearinghouse of information.
We were all DIYing it on where do you give the money to donate to the
bail bond to get these people out of jail?
Where do you do this?
Where do you do that?
Yeah.
We were all guessing.
And so Blavidy started with a like, okay, this is a thing.
We need to accelerate.
Like I am committed to this.
I need to quit.
So that was in August.
I had resigned my job.
I think by October and November that same fall.
Whoa.
Okay.
Okay.
I didn't realize it was quite that fast.
That is terrifying.
Okay.
So let's go back a little bit again.
Talk to me about that transitional time because knowing what I know about
you, there had to be a financial plan in place.
That said, what was the work like?
Like how are you balancing the work during that transitional period where you're
like, okay, here's a catalyst moment in August that has sort of crystallized
all of the things that I'm already seeing and I'm aware of to leaving work
just a few months later.
How are you balancing your time and thinking through?
Okay, I'm at my nine to five during this time.
And then I'm working on this on the weekend.
Like what was your life like then?
And what sort of plan did you have in place financially?
Because there's no chance in my mind that you were just like screw it.
Let's just jump and that is said with love.
Yes, I receive it.
So January of 2014.
So earlier that year, I had said I'm percolating on something.
Right.
Like we're doing something and I had called Jeff and said,
we got to build stuff I called Aaron, my other co founder and Jonathan,
my fourth co founder and said, we're going to do a thing.
I'm going to take the financial burden.
You guys have lives and jobs and kids and things, but let's start meeting.
And Jeff and I met a lot because we were building the first version of the
product, but it didn't really have a center.
I didn't have a soul.
I didn't have like a grounding to it yet.
So we had a first version of the product, which is just a newsletter.
And it wasn't social justice focus.
It was just like trending videos and we were just trying to see what people
were clicking and what people were watching.
And the videos just went straight to YouTube.
Like we had nothing in the back end.
And then we built a version of the site.
And so this is now taking us to maybe June or July of that earlier summer.
My time was I would wake up in the morning at normal six a.m.
And I would have like one or two calls or like meetings in the morning.
And then I would go to work.
And then at five o'clock, I would then do my like San Francisco startup networking
thing and go to different events or conversations and have coffees and lunches
and things like that.
And then I would work on building the product late at night and on the weekends.
So that was the schedule was intense.
So at what point did you feel like, okay, the idea is crystallized.
And now it's time to really go.
I have some data.
I've landed on a name.
Yeah, the name was definitely crystallized probably like right before.
So like July, August, September.
We were live, but it wasn't anything that anyone was paying attention to.
When I quit, it wasn't because I was financially really ready to quit.
I mean, I had savings.
I had been spending the year eating like boiled eggs and oatmeal and bringing
my tupperware to work and getting all the food and like, I was saving, but I also
was spending money.
I was spending money on the engineers in India.
I was spending money on the writers and bloggers.
I mean, it was coming out of my personal pocket.
So I was saving and spending at the same time when I didn't make a dent.
And then very quickly after I quit my job, I actually decided I needed to get
a consulting job.
I think I could not actually afford to live in San Francisco where I needed to
be because that's the epicenter and also invest in the company and live.
We do what we do.
I had to freelance for a long time after starting who what where because I had
to eat.
Is that simple?
Got to figure it out.
Okay.
So at that point in time, what was your role at Blavety?
Like, where was the majority of your energy and time spent?
I mean, everywhere I was founder.
I don't wouldn't have called myself a CEO until much later on.
It's like CEO of what?
CEO of me.
So I would have considered myself a founder and what a even tiptoe around
that word.
I was the driving force of building a platform.
I was the product manager Jeff, my co founder was our CTO and building out
the back end.
I was the fundraiser.
I was the one socializing the business in the startup world and community
builder, right?
Like just making sure that we were accessible to the activists that were on the
ground in these different cities that were doing the work.
I was editor in chief.
All the writers reported to me.
I mean, everything.
And that's okay.
Right?
Like that's part of the journey.
We didn't raise money.
I wanted to bootstrap actually for quite some time.
I didn't feel comfortable raising money and I didn't want to participate
in the Silicon Valley actual infrastructure eventually.
I did raise, but I dragged my feet a bit there for about a year.
Talk to me about that because as women, the statistics are grim to put
it mildly.
I think it's less than 3% of women get venture funding within a year.
Within Silicon Valley or at all for black women, it's much, much less.
So at what point did you decide like, okay, this is something I need to do?
And the other piece, too, is you don't want to do it too early because
at least it feels like for women, there is a sense of like, I need to prove
this out and people need to see it proven out.
Whereas some men can just walk in.
It's like, it's a concept and here's $100 million, which I despise.
So what was the math on that for you?
So we were getting bigger.
We were growing and the expenses started to get too expensive for what
I could afford.
So the server costs, the engineering costs, and then we had really good
people that I cared about that were working on the websites that were like
writing articles, writing blogs, and I could not afford, you know,
you can get away with a little bit.
We're like, we're all doing this thing together.
And then it's like at some point, you're like, these people have kids in
life, like they need to make real money.
So it was an obligation to the momentum that we had that it was my
responsibility as a person who decided to start this thing to then legitimize
it with financials that could support its growth.
And I felt like the longer that I waited, we would have lost momentum.
And so I had to put my own fear, discomfort, all the things aside and
tried.
And the first time I fundraised, I failed.
I tried to go out and fundraise with black feces because I thought they
would get it.
You know, I'm like, you're black.
I'm black.
You get the problem that we're trying to solve.
There's no media company for this generation.
Look at all this money.
These other media companies are raising.
It's the same thing, but just for us, I thought it was a layup.
They all said, no.
And hindsight, I know why they said no now, because we're all friends.
They were not in positions of power at their own VC funds.
They were investors, but they were not managing partners.
They were not the decision makers.
And they had a limited amount of power within their own infrastructure.
We are all connected, right?
But at the time, they're the people with power.
And I'm the person who doesn't have any power.
So I didn't view it like that.
Right.
So I was devastated.
I mean, I was in tears.
I remember being on a call and like hearing that they were about to say
now and just like crying.
Even women's VCs were also in a similar situation where I was like,
oh, these are women are fierce.
Like you're asking me impossible questions for a company.
I just started 12 months ago.
Why would I know this data?
Right?
And I also get it.
Like they're going up against the guys too and their own industry.
But in the moment, I had no empathy for these people because I had millions
and I had negative dollars.
So that first round rough, what happened next?
So it looks my wounds for about like six weeks.
And I was still like talking to people and there was a guy who told me
have you looked at social impact investing?
And I didn't know what that was.
So I was like, I don't know what you mean.
And social impact investor is a type of investor who cares about the
public good that that company, that product is putting back out into the world.
So their criteria for investment tends to be different than a traditional institutional
investor that really only cares about the return that they're going to get for
themselves and their own investors.
So he said, we'll just talk to these people.
And I said, okay, sure.
I'll talk to them.
So I met with a fund that was a social impact investor for progressive companies
that were doing good for the world and doing good for democracy,
which I think Blavity does.
And it was two women venture capitalists.
They saw my numbers and they could not believe how big we were.
They were like, this is insane.
We had over a million monthly unique visitors at the time, which was like nuts
for no Facebook advertising, nothing, just pure organic.
We had done our first conference and we had started to get like different insertion
orders that said, if you could do this, we'll give you this amount of money.
I didn't have the inventory to even give them because I didn't have the system
set up and the ads set up.
You know, so I could really paint the picture of if you give me $500,000, just
a little bit, if you give me a little bit, I can immediately tell you how
this will turn into growth and they did.
They invested in Blavity.
They were our first investor and then their LPs then closed out
the round and family offices and things like that.
And that was my first round of funding.
And then from there, we were oversubscribed.
You know, I've never had a hard time raising after that first round.
I think the first round is the hardest.
And also that ultimately though is a testament to you, the business you've
built and the product because by the way, I have interviewed enough people and
no enough people to tell you that subsequent rounds are not always easy
depending on the company.
So that is really a testament to what you're building.
So you take the money and assuming you had a very specific plan of like,
how you're going to spend it, how you were going to grow.
What was sort of like that checklist of like, it's going to go here and then
we're going to make this and then we're going to make this and then we're going
to make this.
It was people first because I felt like we had a really great team that was underpaid.
So it was people first.
We hired a video producer who's still with us today.
We hired salespeople because I didn't want to be dependent on venture funding.
Forever.
So I was like, I need revenue immediately.
My co-founder Aaron started setting up our sales process and what that would
look like when our first media kits were, I mean, it was a lot of just the
fundamentals.
And I also moved to LA because I wanted to build in a more inclusive city that
had more culture and entertainment.
So we got an office.
I lived in the office.
It was an artist loft in downtown LA.
We had two apartments right next to each other.
We broke down the wall in between, built a studio in the office.
I lived on one side.
Aaron was at B school at Stanford at the time because he had applied because he
wasn't sure if we were going to make it.
So he applied to B school in the middle of this, got in the Stanford.
So he was flying down and stayed in like a cubby in my room and then
the office was on the other side.
I mean, we were in the mud for a very long time doing the things that, you
know, start up life requires you to do.
When did things start to change?
When did you start to feel like, okay, not only do we have the audience,
but we're starting to really see traction on the revenue.
Yeah.
So just to recap, 2014, start the business officially late 2015,
raise money close the round and I'm like, it's lit.
You should have never given me 500,000 dollars.
I am going to the moon.
Yeah, right.
Hiresome people relocate everybody.
So yes, spring 2016 now, we did an event called Empower Her,
which was our first women's event in New York because I was having a
hard time selling digital advertisements because we didn't have the
infrastructure for it, but I didn't know that, right?
And so, but people were buying sponsorships of events.
And I think that's the other thing I would advise to any entrepreneur is
like, you should be married to the community and the people that
you're solving a problem for.
You should not be married to your solution because that will always,
always change and Evan flow.
And I've just seen so many people get too tired to, well, this is the
product.
Like, it's not.
It's clearly not the product that people want to buy.
So change it.
Yeah.
Okay.
So that conference was the first time where you're like, well,
here we go.
Yeah, we're doing, I think it was profitable.
You know, people attended an event, seeing people from the Internet and
bringing them in person.
You know, we had Levy.
We had Elaine Walter off before she was even EIC.
We had, you know, just like incredible black women that were our peer
group that were rising.
And then after that success, my team thought I was nuts.
After that in the spring, I said, we should do one, but for tech.
And that was the beginning of Afro tech.
And so that fall within five, six months, we planned the first Afro tech.
And then from there, now we're really running.
I'm like, I got all types of businesses now.
Different brands and it just explode it from there.
So one of the things I really love is the fact that you are an actual
full blown empire now.
You have, as you mentioned, a number of brands under the Blavidy umbrella.
So can you talk to me a little bit about how you knew it was time to launch
additional brands or like, is it that the RFP came and you saw an
opportunity that just hadn't fully formed yet or was it your own interests
would lead you?
And then it would grow from there.
What does that process been like?
It's a little of all of those three things.
One was there's an opportunity and we're uniquely qualified to play in this
white space.
Afro tech was that there was so many tech conferences, but there was very
few things for people of color and black people specifically.
And yet there was a huge amounts of innovation happening in the black
community.
And so I knew all the people at that point.
I knew the right views.
I knew the right folks and it's in my backyard.
We're doing this at the Westfield Mall and downtown San Francisco.
Like this is LA up, right?
Yep.
So that was something that we were uniquely qualified to put into the
universe.
And then I acquired two brands.
So we acquired Travel Noir and we acquired Shadow and Act.
And those were to your point, a result of there's a gap in serving this
industry.
And there's a demand from our client tells that I already have to reach
people with this interest group, whether that's Hollywood and entertainment,
travel, luxury travel, lifestyle, culture, and there were brands that
already existed that were the best in the business.
So it's going to take me a long time to build this stuff.
No, thank you.
I don't have seven years to build this.
Let me see if I can buy it.
So we did two acquisitions in a year, which was like crazy lady.
You are so busy.
Yes, this was 2017 now.
Yes.
I mean, it's like in between your own brand, managing your investors,
which is a whole thing of its own, doing two acquisitions, doing
IRL experiences and conferences.
Like this is a tremendous amount of work and also just like keeping up
the day to day.
How were you thinking through your life at that point?
And please tell me, had you stopped consulting at this point?
Or were you still consulting?
Yes.
At that point, so 2017, I definitely said I cannot do this anymore.
But I was 110% blabby.
You know, you could have yelled, hey, blabby, while I was walking down the street,
and I would have turned around.
Yeah.
I was fully committed and I was all in and I wasn't the best boss.
I wasn't the best team lead or culture definitely suffered.
It was not perfect.
There's people who are with us, I would say from 2016 to like late 2017.
And their version of me is probably like a monster.
And I would be like, yeah, like I was definitely a monster, you know?
And I say that in hindsight, obviously I've gone through enough reflection.
I've seen enough feedback.
I've talked to enough people to know that there are sacrifices that I made.
The hard part I actually think is pulling yourself out and knowing when it's time
to address the things that you have let go for yourself on a personal level,
my own personal health, my mental health, my social life company culture.
I mean, the list is long.
So those things are not without sacrifice.
Talk to me a little bit about your own personal development as a boss
and company culture and all of that because I hear you.
I mean, it's really difficult.
A, you are building company culture without having been exposed to a whole lot
of it in the grand scheme of things because you were so young.
You have all of these pressures and then there's also a whole leadership piece
of it with your own internal team.
How did you figure out how to evolve and grow?
And become a better leader throughout all of this because to your point,
like we all have different eras of how we lead at least what hopes
if one is continuing to evolve and grow.
I hope so.
Yes, I would definitely give myself different eras.
I think that I've been really lucky to have incredible business partners.
You know, I've got guys that I've known since I was 17 years old because we went
to college together and no matter how big my ego is that day, that week,
that year, they're able to say,
you're saying it stinks over here and we all knew that there was period of time
where it's like everybody's stuff is going to be a little stinky because we
got to just push through it.
But then at what point have we reached a threshold where we say it's time
to switch gears and to like improve.
And I think they were really good Aaron and Jeff specifically at telling me,
hey, we as a company have taken it too far.
We need to address.
We need to look at this.
Okay, hey, this feedback is getting louder.
We need to address this.
We need to look at this and our lives also have been flow, right?
You know, people go through ups and downs, breakups, babies, all types of
deaths.
And so having really close co founders was helpful for me because if I'm
out, he's in.
And then I would also say having a really strong board of directors.
I mean, there was a time for one of our employees who was fired, emailed the
board and they said, Morgan is out on first class flights to New York and
she's doing this and she's doing that.
And I was fundraising, which my employees didn't know.
So my board knew why I was out at the office, but to the employee, they're like,
she's not here and like it's chaos.
And the board was like, Hey, you have a perception issue.
Have you been doing town halls?
And I said, no, I don't have time for a freaking town hall.
And I said, you have to start doing these things.
You're too big now.
And so just having people who could say, it is not you.
It's the phase of growth or it's not the phase of growth.
It is you.
You have to be able to receive that.
And I mean, I definitely was defensive initially in some of the conversations,
but I care so much about our company and I care so much about the work we do.
And I care so much about the people who work for us that I had to get over it.
So when you started to reassess workload and involvement and realizing like,
I also perhaps need to make time to fill my cup up as well, because if you're
just giving and giving and giving and not taking any time for yourself,
you can't be a good leader.
You can't be a good founder.
You can't be a good employee, frankly.
So tell me a little bit about how you started to gain some balance back in your life.
Yeah.
The first thing I did was transition my mindset from like a founder to a CEO and executive
chairperson, which means that I am like responsible to certain different
responsibilities and being a chairperson, meaning that I'm responsible to my
shareholders and our investors and being a good steward of resources.
And so when I changed that mindset, I then said, I should pay myself for
because again, I'm working for someone else.
When you raise money, you don't own all of it anymore, right?
You keep going down.
But I am really an employee at this company.
And so I should pay myself.
And then I think mentally I had to work through because I was such a saver
and such a responsible financial person that I had to start letting go and
saying, you know what, the business is okay.
You can hire some people to do some of the things that you're doing,
because you're not actually that great at finance to hire a director of finance.
You're not that great at this.
You should hire a person to do that.
And you should live in a good apartment that's close to work.
You know, just some of the basics I had a gym in my apartment.
So I could actually work out all of the like simple basics of life,
eat, sleep, exercise.
That's where I focused.
And I didn't go to therapy at the time, although I probably should have.
Instead, I just spent a lot more time like reading books, doing meditation
and just again, some of like the basics of just re grounding myself.
And that was call it 2018 to 2019 that I was really getting back in the driver's
seat of like, okay, I'm not just a result of the momentum.
I am like taking more ownership and control of this giant thing we have built.
So what I'm hearing is you sprinted a marathon for four years and then finally
started to recalibrate.
Yes.
And then COVID hit.
And then COVID hit, which, you know, is not exactly easy to navigate
under any circumstances, let alone in a business that is in part built
on IRL experiences.
Fortunately, you were diversified.
So I'm guessing that it was not as devastating as it was for other companies
that fully shut down.
Tell me what that experience was like and what it taught you in terms of the
business.
Yeah.
We were ramping up to have just such a really fantastic year because I had
made all these changes and we had great leadership and we had all this money
and we were doing a good job.
You know, and then spring 2020, it was clear that we weren't going to be
able to have Afro Tech later that year in person.
And Afro Tech is a huge conference and global experience.
And it's also a big profit driver for us as a business.
It's a cash cow.
So I said screw this.
We're not doing a zoom.
We have to figure this out.
We still have to have Afro Tech this year because also George Floyd had been killed
at the same time period.
So in the moment in which the rest of the world is pausing in the business
community, our company's responsibility and the reason we started in the first
place is more relevant than ever.
We actually need to ramp up and go into overdrive and take advantage of this
opportunity.
And so we built out a metaverse experience for our Afro Tech community.
Metaverses were not trending at the time, but we decided we needed to have that
interaction where people could dress up and walk around and talk to each other
and we built an entire world, which we called Afro Tech World and did really well.
Had a great year.
Had our biggest year and our most profitable year in 2020.
Wow.
That is remarkable.
So while all of this is going on, you also act as an advisor to some casual
brands that folks may have heard of like American Airlines and Pepsi.
How did you get into that?
How does that fit into like all of this other crazy workload?
And why is that something that you're still interested in?
Yeah, I view my work as a corporate advisor as an extension of the mission
that we already set out to do, which is to help advance the interests of people
of color, the inclusivity of this world and to help institutions think differently
and pressure them where needed and partner with them where needed.
And I had the opportunity to partner and to be an advisor with the sea level
executives at both of those companies.
I meet with them quarterly and we're talking the biggest airline in the world.
We're talking one of the biggest might be the biggest beverage, CPG in the
world, you know, global institutions having four meetings a year.
The impact is significant.
I can tell you there's plenty of people I meet with.
And I meet with them four times and the impact is insignificant, right?
So when I get the opportunity to say yes to something that can pay dividends
with the cause and the people that I care about and the mission
of why we started this company, you know, I take it and I reprioritize.
There's plenty of things I say no to because I don't think that it's really
going to do anything.
I think it's just tokenism or I think it's just for the press release,
like whatever, but these two are genuine because it's coming from the
top's down.
You know, it really is their senior leadership team and they want to listen.
They want to do better and they want to learn from me and other executives
that are on the advisory boards.
Does that information sharing go both ways?
Like do you feel like you get certain insights because, for example,
when COVID hit, who what where still had our line of clothing at target?
And it was really interesting to hear some of the insights in the way
that target was talking about things, quote, unquote, getting back to normal
and sort of like projecting things out, you know, they have obvious.
They have connections to government.
They had a whole lot of information that we did not have as little who
what where.
So it was fascinating, just little pieces that we would glean that way.
I'm curious about if that has been your experience,
even though you're the one doing the advising has that paid off for you
in other ways as well.
I've learned so much.
I mean, even down to how corporations are governed and understanding
corporate leadership styles at that level.
It's very different than a founders leadership style,
how people present the information, how the pre-read decks are set up.
I mean, just down to this little maybe gritty of how the meetings are run
is really interesting and a learning experience for me.
Yes, of course, we get access to insights and confidential information
and all that good stuff, which is helpful in making smart business decisions.
But that aside, actually, I think learning different methods of leadership
and communication has been really helpful because as a CEO,
I'm oftentimes the person setting the tone at my company,
95% of the time.
So it's rare that I'm pulled out and I'm the student,
you know, and I'm able to really get poured into and understand
that's not the intention of the meeting.
It's not like a coaching class,
but you can take it as such if you choose to.
And that's how I've also kind of absorbed that.
Everything's coaching as far as I'm concerned.
Like if you're not learning, if you're not absorbing, that's on you.
I mean, our partner in the clothing line,
every time we went to a meeting, the sense of ease that I would feel
because that CEO had come from Target from like 25 plus years.
Every document was perfect.
Everything was so well run and taken care of.
I realized, oh, this gives people a sense of ease.
Some of that felt like pageantry to me back in the day.
And then I realized, oh, no, it actually makes people feel confident in you.
It's so interesting.
Those funny things that you learn along the way.
Anyway, sorry.
This is not about me.
No, but I completely agree with you.
And I think that's important for people to understand.
If you're in a room and you're in a meeting and you don't actually even care
about the topic, you're like, this topic is so boring.
Switch your mindset to say, well, how is this person communicating?
Are they a good public speaker?
Do you like it?
Do you not like it?
What's everybody else in the room doing?
I mean, there's so many different ways to change your lens
of any opportunity that's in front of you.
That is a fact.
Okay.
So Morgan, your plea is really, really full and it has been for a very long
time.
I know that you're juggling so many opportunities and problems and solving
those problems and 97 things going all at once.
I can also imagine that there are also parts of the job that really make
your heart sing that fill up your cup so that you remember why you started
laffity in the first place and why you keep going.
I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about of all the stuff that you
work on.
Like, what do you really, really love?
You know, I just got our employee engagement survey back, which always
makes it a little nervous because we're fully remote now.
And so I just never know exactly how everyone's doing.
And one of the questions is like, do you feel attached to like the
laffity mission and values?
And it was like overwhelming, like 89% or something of people were
like strong yes.
And you know that implicitly, but you just never know it explicitly
as a founder and as a CEO.
And that really made me feel good.
So no matter what other issues we have operationally or
organizationally, the fact that people appreciate, understand and
want to participate in the mission is something that is really
important to me at the company culture level.
And the way that manifests itself is when I get people's ideas, right?
It's impossible for me to involve in every single thing for all five of
our brands at this point.
And we have people who run the different brands and things of that nature.
And so I'll read an article and it'll be on like Yahoo.
And then I'll like look, I'm like, oh, this is our article.
This was like a syndicated article from Afro Tech.
This is crazy.
So also just seeing gravity in the world naturally or like I was in
the airport and saw someone with the Afro Tech backpack.
And I'm like, that's so cute.
This makes me so happy.
And they have no idea who I am.
That's even cooler, right?
Like it's not dependent on me.
So I think that also gives me a bit of peace as well that like all
the hard work, all the sacrifice, all the ups and downs, the
perfections and the strong imperfections.
It's working out all in the right direction.
You know, and that gives me solace.
And then I think the last thing I would say is the ones that
actually make me tear up and feel like highly emotional is when a
small business owner or someone who gets a job will say like this
changed my life, you know, you featuring my small business,
changed my startup or four years ago, you gave my wife a ticket
as a part of a scholarship.
And now she works here.
And I'm just like, this is everything.
Yeah, those are the things that really make me happy.
It goes back to impact, right?
Like you're actually able to move the needle in a much larger
way, which is incredible.
So talk to me about success.
Talk to me about the future, like what does success look like for
you for this year, for next year, for five years from now?
Yeah, I mean, I think we're in a different phase, you know,
we're hitting nine years and a couple of weeks and going on 10
years of the business.
So I'm really thinking about how we scale responsibly, you know,
past a hundred million in revenue mark and what that looks like as
a legitimate middle cap company in this country as opposed to a
startup and it's just a different experience.
So growth stage and it requires different things of me.
It required different things in my leadership team.
So I'm studying that quite a bit right now.
On the personal level, I'm pregnant.
Congrats.
Thank you.
So Matt Lee's right and a huge fundamental shift in how my
time is prioritized and all of the things.
And I'm excited because my team is we're ready.
They're ready.
They're like, yeah, bye.
Like we got this.
We got this.
So I think there's a lot of things that will happen in next two
to three years, really hard to predict, but most importantly,
like my leadership, my learning and then making sure that our
team and our company culture is set.
So one of the things that we like to talk about on this podcast is
mistakes because everyone makes them and we don't always talk
about it, but it can be really rewarding and makes people
feel less alone to hear that people can mess something up and
then still figure it out.
So I'm hoping you can tell me about a mistake that you've made
at any point in your career and what you learned from it.
Sure, so many, I can tell you mistakes.
I made yesterday, let me think of one that's good.
Oh, I miss payroll.
I miss payroll once in our life at the company.
That was the most brutal mistake ever because it just impacts
people in ways you don't expect because you don't know what's
going on in people's personal life.
You don't know who's living paycheck to paycheck.
You don't know what's going on.
And you know, it's not really your job to kind of know.
You don't really want to know.
And I miss payroll because I had too much of an ego to
hire the right finance team.
I thought we had it.
We were growing really fast, but I didn't know enough about
accounts receivables.
We had a ton of money.
It looked like we were popping.
Like it looked like we were fine, but it's lumpy.
Oh, it's lumpy, very lumpy.
And because you're growing, so you're spending to like build
the things that the people bought, but then you're not getting
paid until, you know, maybe not 120 if you're working with
agencies.
And that was new for us because we had never gotten to that
deal size.
A director of finance would have known, right?
And accounts receivable specialists would have known.
And I made a mistake.
I would not understand.
And that was a huge.
It took me probably six and I months to build the trust back
with our team and maybe even some people never they probably
left just because they're like, she is in over her head.
And I don't blame them.
So now we have one of the best in class finance team.
I probably have over corrected in some places, but that was
definitely a mistake of like letting my ego and not
understanding our own growth trajectory and just making
the higher that we really could have made earlier.
So a lot of the folks who listen to this podcast are still in
their first life, they're doing something that they enjoy,
but maybe it's a little safe.
They might have that itch, whether it's to stay in their
industry, but change jobs or change industries entirely or
start their own thing, but they haven't done it yet and
they're nervous.
What advice would you give someone who's thinking about it,
but just hasn't done it quite yet?
My advice to someone who's still there, still before the
leap is to identify what your fears are and then just
address the top fear.
So if your top fear is stability, then figure out how you
can have stability and don't quit your day job, build the
thing, be willing to sacrifice something else.
I'm a firm believer you cannot have everything at the
same time.
Different phases of your life are for different things.
You're not a thing is forever and if you are in a grind
phase where you're trying to grow, you're trying to make a
leap, you're trying to take a step forward, then you need to
be willing to make some sacrifices for stability.
And that might mean two jobs and what's temporarily.
If you're like, I'm not risk it for us, I'll jump, I'll
leap, no problem, then okay, great.
Do you know where you're jumping to?
Do you have a really good plan?
Do you have the right people around you for that plan?
I'm all for the jump, but let's not jump into the box just
to say you jumped into the box, right?
A lot of people want the title, but I'm like, what are we
doing here?
So identify where your fears are, address them, heads on, and
then also know that like all that clitters isn't gold when
you're looking at us on social media and you're looking at
these stories, just know that there's a lot of stuff behind
the scenes that don't worry about what other people are doing
do what's best for you.
So my last question, it's also my favorite question, which
is if you could go back in time and speak with your younger
self and give her a little career advice.
What would you say?
I would say asking for help is not a sign of weakness.
It's a sign of strength.
And I would say it's okay not to know the answer to everything,
not knowing the answer and saying I don't know is a sign of
strength, not a sign of weakness.
Morgan, this has been such a pleasure on so many levels.
I am just in awe of everything that you have built.
And I appreciate your time so much, especially knowing
how busy you are.
So thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you for making
the time to sit down with me today.
Thanks for having me.
That was the founder and CEO of Blavety Morgan to bond.
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