Anne T. Griffin, a product professional in tech and founder of Pivot Grow Hustle, shares her experience starting a business during the COVID-19 pandemic while working full time.

This conversation was AWESOME! Anne is very open about how she got started, what helped her the most, and the biggest mistakes she’s made.  

As a tech professional, Anne has worked with companies like Microsoft, Comcast, and Mercedes-Benz. She’s also guest lectured at Columbia University, Morgan State University, and the University of Montreal. 

One of Anne’s superpowers is attracting amazing employers and organizations. Many of the top companies on the planet have, unprompted, reached out to her wanting to hire her. 

With this background, Anne realized she could package her natural ability of attracting employers to help other people. So, during the COVID-19 pandemic, she created her business, Pivot Grow Hustle.

The business’s flagship offer is the Attract Your Dream Job course, which helps professionals attract and apply to jobs they love with more confidence and less stress. 

If you’ve been wondering about whether you should start your business, especially during the pandemic, you MUST listen to this episode. Anne drops some gems. 

Show Summary

• 7:00 Why the COVID-19 pandemic motivated Anne to start her business

• 8:07 Why Anne stopped giving away her intellectual property and started her own business

• 9:56 How Anne’s Pivot Grow Hustle business helps tech professionals find their dream job

• 16:54 The first steps Anne took when she decided to start her business during the pandemic

• 18:11 How the Brand and Business Academy helped Anne get started the right way

• 23:32 The two things Anne would have done differently

• 33:41 Why you shouldn’t quit when the timeline doesn’t meet your expectations

Show Notes:

Where to find Pivot Grow Hustle

Course: https://pivotgrowhustle.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/pivotgrowhustle
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pivotgrowhustle/

Where to find Anne T. Griffin

Website: https://www.annetgriffin.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/annetgriffin
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/atgrif/
LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/annetgriffin/
Tech2025: https://tech2025.com/our_team/anne-t-griffin/

Watch Anne’s Brand and Business Academy testimonial: https://youtu.be/zHLQ_0GrgAA

More About Anne T. Griffin

We Got Next with Anne T. Griffin : https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/we-got-next-with-anne-t-griffin/id1364451513?i=1000457345094

Anne Griffin – Time for Your Come Up: https://thedrwillshowpodcast.simplecast.com/episodes/anne-griffin-annetgriffin-time-for-your-come-up

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Shontavia Johnson (00:00):

What’s up, y’all. Welcome to The Shontavia Show, where my goal is to help you start a business based on your life’s vision. This ain’t gonna be your daddy’s business advice. I’m laser focused on entrepreneurship in the 21st century, vision and breaking the traditional mold. If you can get with that, you can get with me, be sure to visit shontavia.com for more episodes, blog posts, and other content. Thank you for listening. The show starts now.

Shontavia Johnson (00:36):

Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Shontavia Show, where I want to inspire you to make more income and impact with your big ideas. And I am really thrilled to have with me today Anne Griffin. Anne thank you so much for joining me.

Anne T. Griffin (00:50):

Thank you. Shontavia, I’m thrilled to be here today, especially as an alumna of the brand and business Academy.

Shontavia Johnson (00:57):

Awesome. Well, we’re going to get into that too, but before we do that, let me introduce you to everybody and is a human and product manager in that order. She’s also a product coach and a career pivot coach. She’s built her product management career working at all kinds of organizations that you’ve heard of like Microsoft, Comcast and Mercedes-Benz. And she’s currently working at a, as a product manager at a fortune 500 company. And also as the chief product and curriculum officer at tech 2025 and outside of her, nine to five, and as a side hustler, she’s got a couple of different things she’s doing, including through Griffin product and growth. She’s the chief product coach there. And then also through pivot grow hustle, and we’re going to get into all of that. And how are you doing in like this last month of 2020?

Anne T. Griffin (01:47):

I’m actually doing great. And a lot of that is because I learned some work-life balance lessons, the hard way earlier in the pandemic. So I am being a lot more intentional about how I balance just my life and all the side hustles going on.

Shontavia Johnson (02:08):

Smart. So, so, so smart. You know, I believe in that and blocking out all the noise, putting on those blinders and it looks like you have figured out, like you said, how to do that really well. And I’m wondering about your background. So you’re in tech, you’ve worked with all these big companies. Where did you grow up? What is your story? How did we get here?

Anne T. Griffin (02:29):

Yeah. So I’m from a place where most people never suspect that I’m from I’m from Minnesota originally. Both of my parents are actually in STEM. My mom is a retired floor chemist. And so basically organic chemist. My dad is a retired electrical engineer. He actually just retired on Monday 41 years at his job. Yeah. So excited for him. And so they always encourage me to be in STEM. And I always really love technology. Even though when I was growing up, it was like, you know, dos programs with like little black and white, you know, things on the computer screen with the computer. She had to turn on from the switch in the back. You know, and, but all that stuff used to really interest me. And I went to college for engineering, not being a hundred percent of what direction I wanted to go in, but I remember the year I went to college was the year the iPod came out and I remember thinking it would be so cool to be the person who gets to decide how that works and what features are there.

Anne T. Griffin (03:35):

And everyone, you know, loves it when it comes out. And I didn’t know what product management was back then, but that’s what I do now. Like that exact thought of this as would be so cool to do and build these types of things is what I get to do now, which you know, I’m really happy. And being in technology really helped me be able to go down this path because I had the technical background. I knew how to talk to the technical people, but I took a lot of different types of courses even while I was in, in engineering. So I learned a lot about the non-technical aspects of tech as well.

Shontavia Johnson (04:10):

No, that’s cool. I mean, I feel like, so I got an engineering degree too, and I did not get exposed to like all the things you can do with a tech background, right? Like you can be an engineer or you can be a product manager, you can be an intellectual property lawyer, you can do all these different things. So how did you get to the point where you went from like your engineering degree to product management? What was the like door that opened that showed you? You could do that with your degree.

Anne T. Griffin (04:41):

Yeah. So when I was in college, I had like a loose association with our campus recruiter for Microsoft. And there was one day where I was talking to that recruiter about something completely unrelated. And I guess the way I was explaining it, made them think, huh, I should ask her about an internship because she asked me, would you be interested in an internship at Microsoft? And I was like, yeah. I didn’t actually study computer engineering. I studied industrial and operations engineering. I still had to learn to code and everything, but not necessarily the typical type of engineering major Microsoft hires, but they hired me as an intern into this role called a program manager. And I didn’t know, I still hadn’t heard the term product manager. And if you’re in the tech world you’ll know Microsoft program manager is actually our product managers.

Anne T. Griffin (05:30):

And in that internship, I was like, this is awesome. I was having a great time. I got to design things that would, you know, help with the future of analytics of some of the products I got to help with things that were going to impact future API APIs. And I knew then that that’s what I wanted to do for my career, but it still took me a couple of years outside of college to like, you know, learn about product management in terms of how other parts of the call it and what that looks like and how to kind of get back on track. Because when I graduated, I also graduated during the great recession. The job I actually got was an it consulting because that’s what was hiring. So I eventually found my way into proper product management and that’s kind of how my story and the product started.

Shontavia Johnson (06:18):

Huh? No, that’s cool. So like when I graduated from law school or when I graduated from undergrad, I didn’t know anything about intellectual property. I didn’t know what patents were. I didn’t know what a plaintiff was or anything, but it was somebody similar who said, Hey, have you ever thought about this, that open that door? And I feel like entrepreneurship is similar where, you know, like you’re solving problems or somebody says, Hey, and you really good at that. Can you help me with it? And then it turns into like a full fledged business. And so I’m wondering how you went from like your day-to-day work to deciding you’re going to start a side hustle or start another business,

Anne T. Griffin (07:00):

To be honest, one of the biggest reasons was COVID-19 I remember, so–. Yeah. So I had, I had a business that was more for my public speaking and that sort of thing, but it wasn’t like that was raking in massive dollars, you know? And I actually started my LLC because of you, because I was like, okay, if I’m, I’m going to start collecting checks for this, I should at least have an LLC, but pivot grow hustle and the business in terms of having my course attract your dream job that started because of the pandemic. And for years, I’ve actually been helping people with their careers for free people have asked me for advice. I’ve helped people get jobs. And the pandemic made me really think, Oh, wow. So what if, you know, six months from now the whole of corporate America, the whole of tech looks completely different.

Anne T. Griffin (07:54):

And let’s say, you know, it’s really super competitive to find a new job, but for some reason I were to lose my job, knock on wood. That doesn’t happen. But fortunately, you know, I’ve been fine so far through the pandemic. And I also honestly, was inspired by a lot by your podcasts and things that you talk about around intellectual property. And I had done talks with O’Reilly, you know, they’re great. And I had done other talks through other people, but I realized all the courses I had been teaching other things, you know, I didn’t own the things that I was doing in my digital footprint. And I realized, okay, so I’m giving everybody else a cut of me because I don’t want to do the work to start my business. And I could have been further along by now, even if I had started small and just been like, I’m not putting big expectations on myself. I’m just going to start, you know, where I am now. And I could have been further along before the pandemic hit. I just started somewhere. And so when the pandemic hit, I was like, no more. I need my own intellectual property that I own that the only cuts I’m giving out are like, when I pay for, you know, ConvertKit or I’m paying for these tools to run my own business. But the intellectual property itself is mine.

Shontavia Johnson (09:16):

Oh, that’s so smart. That is so, so smart. I love that. I don’t know why I thought you’d had, I thought your business had been around for a while, but I mean, it sounds like your first business was. Your speaking and consulting and all of that. So pivot grow hustle was the second business.

Anne T. Griffin (09:31):

Yes.

Shontavia Johnson (09:32):

You started this year.

Anne T. Griffin (09:33):

Yeah.

Shontavia Johnson (09:33):

Okay. Okay, cool. So the pandemic hits and you see all of this around and how did you decide that this was it? So you have like product management in your background, you have engineering and your background. Why did you decide that this type of company was it and what does pivot grow hustle do?

Anne T. Griffin (09:55):

Yes. So pivot grow hustle is really about helping people pivot in their careers. And one of the things that I get asked a lot about from professionals, especially people in tech or interested in, interested in going into tech is how, how do I find my next job? Like, how do I get past the interview stage? How, how do you, you know, get all these companies interested in you? And the other thing I realized is that I have a unique skill and that I have a lot of companies coming to me without ever applying, even when I’m not looking for a job during this pandemic alone, Amazon has reached out to me three times. Facebook has reached out a couple of times, Twitter’s reached out, Zillow’s reached out, Lyft reached out. Those are just the names that people know that doesn’t include the people that, you know, when people aren’t familiar with those brands.

Anne T. Griffin (10:47):

And I thought to myself, this makes sense, because this is an area where I already have a lot of people that are seeking out my advice for this knowledge. And it’s something that frankly I know I’m very good at. And so I was like, let’s start here. I could maybe start with, you know, some of them, you know, I can start expanding other parts of my business with the product management consulting and that sort of thing as well later on. But I was like, this is easier because everyone needs a job. And people know me for, you know, how I’ve actually been building my career, product management and tech and that sort of thing. And that is why they specifically come to me. So that’s why I started this business and why I was interested in saying I’m going to help people pivot in their careers, especially in that job search part.

Shontavia Johnson (11:36):

Cool. Cool, cool. Cool. So you started the business based on your expertise, based on where people were already coming to you, you put a price tag on it and started selling to people who were already inquiring about what you were doing. Yes. Is it so that’s cool. So that’s really interesting. So you start a business in the pandemic, teaching people how to get jobs. And I imagine, so like how hard is it right now to get a job in tech? Is it easy? Is it hard? I mean, it sounds like it’s been incredibly easy for you to have all these people reaching out to you, but what is it that you’re doing that’s different and how are you teaching people that and pivot grow hustle.

Anne T. Griffin (12:14):

Yeah. So it varies from person to person and some of this will depend on also how much experience you have, but also a lot of this is going to depend on, you know, what you’re doing to market yourself. And are you using all the tools at your disposal to get noticed? Right. And that’s one of the biggest things where for me, like I said, I’m not actually applying for jobs right now, but I have a lot of companies reaching out to me and I’ll talk to people who are interested in working with me and I’ll say, okay, so, you know, how are you using LinkedIn right now? And the number one answer I hear is I don’t really, I don’t really use it. Like I, you know, I’m not really sure what to update on it. I never post. And it’s kind of like defunct, right?

Anne T. Griffin (13:00):

It would be sort of like if your business website had information from five years ago, people were like, are you still in business? You know, what’s going on? Like, people don’t know all the things you’ve added since then. And that’s basically what people are doing to their LinkedIn. And the other thing about this is people don’t know how to translate their skills from their last job into the job that they want to go into, which is a definite job search. Let’s say blocker for people who are trying to pivot into new roles, which a lot of people are like not just new roles and this is a new job, but it’s saying like I was a data scientist and now I’m trying to be a front end developer, let’s say. And so I help people kind of identify like, what specifically are you doing wrong?

Anne T. Griffin (13:45):

Also helping people pick a direction, which I’m sure you run into that too, when people are trying to start their business. And they’re saying, well, I could do a lot of things here. Like you have to niche down, like, what do you want to do? Who do you want to do it for? And then niche down from there. And I have people that say, well, I’m, I’m kind of interested in product management, but I could do project management. But then I’m also kind of interested in doing, you know, customers like service things. And I’m like, you’re going to have to pick one and focus that on your job search. Because when recruiters, you know, check out your website, check out your LinkedIn, or you send them your resume. They’re going to say, I don’t understand what this person, why this person applied, or I don’t understand why they’re interested in this or even worse.

Anne T. Griffin (14:24):

They’re not going to understand how any of your experiences relevant. And so I really help people do that. And then also figure out, especially this is important for, you know, black people, people of color, and especially, you know, the intersection of women and non binary people is really how do you also find a company that fits your values? Because it says, attract your dream job. Your dream job could easily turn into a nightmare if you don’t vet them. Right. There’s a lot of things where people get into their dream job in quotes and then find out they have such a terrible culture. And like you can’t, you know, necessarily a hundred percent of the time predict that something is going to turn into a nightmare, but there are things that you can do in the process to properly interview that company back to decide, is this a fit for me other than the fact that they’re providing a paycheck?

Anne T. Griffin (15:15):

And then we also talk about negotiation as well, because a lot of people I talked to have either never negotiated or their imposter syndrome is so big, it gets in the way of their negotiation. And that’s the other piece we also talk about in the course is imposter syndrome, because I can’t really help you with all the things I just mentioned. If your imposter syndrome is telling you that you’re not good enough to get a job as a developer, you’re not good enough to try one more time for that PM interview. And you’re not good enough, you know, to get through these interviews. A lot of this is mindset. And so we talk about that so that people stop blocking their own blessings.

Shontavia Johnson (15:51):

Oh man, I wish I would’ve had you when I was like 25, because I said this on another episode of the show recently when I was growing up, I mean, I knew people who had like “good jobs,” but I didn’t know a lot of people who liked their jobs. I didn’t know that there could actually be a dream job. I thought, you know, you just go out and you get a job and that’s what you do. You complain and you have fun on the weekends. Yeah. And so it’s awesome that you figured out how to combine, you know, like these cultural indoctrination with how you actually go out and actually like find something you really love. So that’s awesome.

Anne T. Griffin (16:33):

Yeah. And I’ve, it’s a combination of learning the hard way. Having a really great coach and also having mentors because earlier in my career, I didn’t have the mentors. I didn’t have a coach. And so I learned the hard way and I combine that with what I’ve learned along the way from like coaches and mentors.

Shontavia Johnson (16:52):

No, that’s great. That is really great. And so when you decided, okay, here’s the thing, people are reaching out to me. I know there’s something here. I can start a business. What were some of the first steps you took to actually start your business, get it off the ground and like get going.

Anne T. Griffin (17:10):

Yeah. So one of the first things I did was actually do a little bit of market research and understand what aspects of, you know, helping people pivot in their careers and also help people. Cause originally I was just like, I’m going to help people pivot in their careers, but that can mean a lot of things. And so actually there’s a course I took and it’s not the one that you would think of, there’s actually one by this person called Mo that taught me a little bit more about like how to research. And some of the things that she talked about was like, you know, do research on book titles and other things that, you know, on these topics and see what keeps reoccurring and what are the people, you know, in the comment section or the review section say about those things.

Anne T. Griffin (17:56):

And so that’s where I first figured out. I’m like, okay, here’s a great place for me to start and niche down on like what it means to help people pivot and where people, you know, there’s the highest demand in what people need help with. And that’s where I started. And then from there kind of started being like, okay, there’s a lot of things I don’t know. Which obviously led me eventually to business sorry, the Brand and Business Academy. And, and that was like really important for me because I really needed to know more about like how this was going to work from intellectual property standpoint. Cause I’m like the whole point of having my own intellectual property is not just so I can have it, but also I need to protect it. Right. And I’m not a lawyer. It’s impossible to cobble this together from the internet because the internet is not a lawyer. I mean it might, some people might think it is, but it’s not. And you know, help guide me to the right resources and also just help refine some of the things I had learned in the, like the very initial stages of my business that helped me actually have a business that I could think of as like, okay, you know, I’m going to have ups and downs, but here are the things I need to just keep doing. That’ll help me be able to continue it and grow it.

Shontavia Johnson (19:12):

Yes. I’m glad you brought that up because, one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you was I knew that your business was newer. I didn’t realize how new. I’m excited now that it’s actually is like a 2020 baby, because, you know, so I think a lot of people when they’re working full time and they started business, they just try to Google their way out of it and struggle through. So I love that you talked about like taking courses and finding mentors and experts and you answered part of the question already, but I was just kind of ask you, like, how did you decide at what point that like Google isn’t enough that you need an actual course, you need a coach, you need a guide, you need somebody who can help you.

Anne T. Griffin (19:55):

I think I learned that even before I knew I was going to start pivot grow hustle. And I’m actually, I mean, I just, so everyone knows like, Shontavia did not have me say these things, but I literally reference a lot of things that Shontavia has said and posted because I mean, she, she has inspired me for a lot of things and also I’ve been following her for awhile. So like last fall you made an Instagram post about file your LLC. If you are receiving payment or you’re providing services for something file your LLC. And I asked you a question about, you know, like, why, why this is important if maybe like, I’m not necessarily doing something consistently. Like, you know, I don’t get paid every week for being a public speaker. Right. and then I was like, well, why can’t I necessarily do a DBA?

Anne T. Griffin (20:45):

And I was also like, I understand I’m not your client. So this is technically not legal advice. So you know, but you gave me an answer that helped me kind of better make a decision for myself. And that was something where, before I saw that post, I was like, I don’t really need an LLC. I’m fine. You know, I’m just going to keep collecting checks whenever they come. And, but that really opened a door for me to see the, like the tip of the iceberg of how much, I didn’t know. And so when I was like, I’m going to start a business in a pandemic you know, there’s just, there’s a lot of scammers out there. There’s a lot of people who steal things. I mean, it’s, I was ready for like a worst case scenario come fall. So I was like, how do I make sure that I am protecting my business and my intellectual property and, you know, make sure that this is something where again, like I can have this longterm for myself and like, thinking back to like, wow, like that one little thing about, you know, forming an LLC.

Anne T. Griffin (21:49):

I didn’t know. And I’m like asking what you weren’t a complete stranger cause I knew you through Tonya, but I was asking someone I’ve never met before in an Instagram comment for advice about an LLC, which, you know, maybe the 21st century, that’s not so crazy, but that also shouldn’t, I was like that shouldn’t be where I’m getting all my advice. So I’m like, if she’s given me great advice and that’s served me, I’m like, and now she’s offering an amazing course. I’m like, I should just pay her. And there are other people where obviously I’ve like paid for their courses and coaching. You know, just because I’m like there just so many missteps you can take that will be very expensive. Which I have done some little things here and there that were expensive mistakes. You know, they’re, they’re a lot more expensive mistakes I can make if I don’t talk to the right people and I don’t pay for their expertise.

Shontavia Johnson (22:40):

That is so, so smart. And not just because you’re talking about me, but you are so, so right about that though, especially about like getting bad advice online, especially from like Instagram or Clubhouse or Twitter or whatever. And I’m curious about, like, you talked about early mistakes you made, and I’m wondering if you could share to the extent you’re comfortable. Like what, what are some of those early mistakes? Did you get bad advice from somebody online at any point? And I’m asking that because so many people who listen to this show are like, where you were last year, I guess about a year ago, wanting to start something, Googling, figuring out a few things here and there and trying to figure out like, should I spend money on this or should I like just put my nose to the ground and like work on my business?

Anne T. Griffin (23:32):

Yeah. I think one, I think there’s like two things that I would’ve done differently. One of them is as much bigger than the other, the first thing, which is not as big as I think giving myself more grace and time where I put a lot of pressure on myself to get things off the ground, like very quickly. And some of that was because of the pandemic and fear and not knowing what was going on, you know, in this crazy year. You know, but a lot of that was really self-imposed and it wasn’t really necessary. And I think I could have done things you know, in a way that was less stressful. The bigger thing is we talked about this a little bit offline or like Facebook and Instagram ads. There, there are a lot of things there that I learned and some of it was not just like I was too early, but also like my type of product is not really suited for Facebook and Instagram ads.

Anne T. Griffin (24:29):

And we, and part of that is because Facebook actually got sued maybe a year or two ago because they were actually allowing people to discriminate against women and people of color. And so now they, if anytime you’re like, I actually want to filter into women of color or anything like that. They won’t let you. So I couldn’t actually reach who my perfect customer was, which is one of the things we talk about in the brand and business Academy. And so that was like one of the red flags I, you know, ignored cause I was like, I’m going to get enough traffic. It’ll be okay. And even though as a product manager, I understand the concept of warm and cold traffic. It, you learn it differently when it’s your money you’re spending. And especially when it’s a brand new business, right. When you have a whole marketing department in a fortune 500 company, that’s done this before and they know how to, you know, do what they do.

Anne T. Griffin (25:23):

That’s great. When it’s you as an entrepreneur learning for the first time, even if you have some people helping you, if they’ve never marketed your type of product before Facebook ads and you know, you, again, these are cold leads and you’re not like prepared, you know, to spend that type of money for that type of lead. Especially again, if you’re a new business, your Facebook pixel actually has zero data about like what works and what doesn’t work for you. So it’s definitely a part where I would definitely say like it was too early fiscally in my business to invest in that sort of thing. But I learned a lot of lessons and I think it’s actually helped make me a better product manager in terms of learning more about like the different types of traffic and like how dramatically different they really are when you experience it firsthand.

Shontavia Johnson (26:17):

Yeah. So I’m so glad you brought that up. So I am not by any means a Facebook ads, Instagram ads expert. We don’t talk about ads in the brand of business Academy in part, because that is a whole genre on its own. Like it could be a whole PhD. Yeah. It really could around how you truly like niche down enough and using those strategies to get the type of results you want. And there are some courses I’m actually about to take one, some courses around like how to really master social media ads and ways to find people who you can help. And I think it’s so important that you’re talking about it in terms of, Oh, so like this is something everybody online says do, right, run Instagram ads on Facebook ads, but it’s really hard to do and taking bad advice can cost you money and time. And if you waste your time, you can end up in the complete wrong genre with all the wrong people. So I thank you for being transparent about that because it’s hard. It’s really hard.

Anne T. Griffin (27:23):

It’s really hard. And one of the things you actually said in brand and business Academy that I wasn’t, that I was like intentionally ignoring it, but a lesson I learned the hard way because I was just like, Oh my gosh, I’m so busy. I’m doing so much. And I really should have been like, I’m going to ignore all this other stuff and just focus here. Even if it feel feels. And I put that in quotes, like a slower way to, you know, grow the business is I really would have focused on building my email list. Right. I had like an initial kind of like seed on my email list. I had like maybe a hundred people to start, but really a lot of the things where you’ve said like, okay, like you should do videos or kind of do lead magnets and these sorts of things, or just make sure that you are promoting it at all and building it that way, because email list is where you make the money.

Anne T. Griffin (28:11):

And I was so inconsistent about sending out my email list cause I was doing a hundred other things. And I was just like, well, I’m doing these other things, so I’ll get to this and I get to it. It’s okay. I wasn’t pushing people to my email list during that time either. So it wasn’t even just, I wasn’t writing for it. I also wasn’t, I wasn’t actually adding anyone to it. And I think about now, like my email lists could have had more people that are my perfect customer by now. If I had just like focused on that piece of advice. And so for anyone listening major key alert, definitely, definitely.

Anne T. Griffin (28:54):

Shontavia always says this. And so I feel very silly, but you know, sometimes, sometimes you just learn, learn the heart and I didn’t meet the learn the hard way I just was like, Oh my gosh, I’m so busy. You know, but I learned the hard way about the email list thing. So, and Tonya said, Tonya Evans also has said this on Twitter. But when Shontavia tells you to do something, you better listen. If she gives you advice, anything, just listen to her.

Shontavia Johnson (29:22):

That is hilarious. I’m going to have you call my husband next and tell him that that’s funny. Yeah. That is hilarious. But now I’m not saying I’m always right about everything, but I do think like when you’re starting brand new consistency is so important and consistent– consistency where you own something, right? Like not investing so much into somebody else’s platform into somebody else’s money into somebody else’s stuff, but your own thing.

Shontavia Johnson (29:57):

So like, I don’t know how much money you gave Facebook when you ran your ads. But imagine if you would have just like taken all that energy and money and put it into your own intellectual property, your email list, your brand, your, all these other things. And I was going to ask you, like, what has been the hardest part of this whole journey for you this year? And it sounds like maybe the ads were one of those things, but I’m wondering if there are any other things like any other lessons learned, any other, like, really hard things that have existed for you as you started this year. Yeah.

Anne T. Griffin (30:32):

Going back to what I mentioned in the beginning about balance and not imposing unrealistic expectations on yourself. So unrealistic expectations in terms of timeline like launching a business and then expecting, you know, X amount of figures and X amount of months. That’s great. And some people do that. It’s not necessarily reasonable to be like, I’m going to have a five figure business in a matter of three months, you know? And that’s something where I’m like, Oh, I could really do this because I saw people online who purported to be doing that, but they don’t have the same product as me. I don’t even know if they’re telling the truth. Right. And they also might be burnt out. I don’t know what their relationship with their significant other or spouses, I don’t know, you know, what, you know, inner turmoil they’re going through. And just like kind of putting unreasonable expectations on myself or on yourself.

Anne T. Griffin (31:26):

But the unreasonable expectations I put on myself definitely kind of pushed me to the brink of burnout, which like, I never want to do that much all at once again. And it’s like, Beyonce is homecoming where she says, like, I really pushed myself to my limit and you know, I’m grateful for this experience, but I never want to work as hard again, you know? And that’s how I feel. I’m like, I I’m like super grateful for all the lessons I learned in my business this year. I feel like I probably got like two to three years worth of lessons and a nine month period of time. But you know, I’m grateful for those lessons. I never want to have to learn at that speed, like ever again.

Shontavia Johnson (32:10):

Yeah. I hear you. I remember looking at all these things you were doing and thinking, well, she’s either like going to spontaneously combust need to go to a wife or a month.

Anne T. Griffin (32:25):

I still would love to go to Hawaii. That’s actually going to going once, once, like the vaccines out I’m going to try to work from an Island for a month because yeah, I deserve.

Shontavia Johnson (32:39):

You do. You deserve and who is it? Is it Bermuda? I think who’s like recruiting Americans to come live in Bermuda for a years. Yeah.

Anne T. Griffin (32:47):

And it’s their, their application is only, I think it’s like under $300. Cause Barbados, I looked into theirs and theirs is like nearly 300, 300, $3,000. And I was like, that’s okay. Barbados. Like, I’ll see you some other time.

Shontavia Johnson (33:01):

That’s right. That is, that’s funny. That’s funny. But I love that you talk about giving yourself grace. Like that’s something I think I wrote to my email list a few weeks ago because it can be really tough to be out here. And like, like you said, you look at everybody else and you see what they’re doing and who is it? Is it Iyanla Vanzant who says comparison is the thief of joy. Somebody says that comparison is the thief of joy. And it is, especially when you’re starting your business and building and growing and your numbers don’t look the way you think they should and all those things. But I’m glad you kept pushing because you’re doing some dope things. Like it, it was all worth it.

Anne T. Griffin (33:41):

It was all worth it. Yeah. Like I definitely feel like my fall was like a major dip because I w I’ll say like, just honestly, like I was very disappointed with the outcome of like the ad situation. And there were, I’ll say there was like a brief millisecond where I was like, you could just shut it all down now. And I was like, but if I don’t quit now, I’ll actually probably gain enough people who are interested in what I’m doing. That this will be a viable business, but it just won’t be in the timeline that early pandemic Anne assumed that that, that timeline would look like. And I think that’s the thing is people quit when the timeline doesn’t look like the timeline they imagined. And I really realized that I’m like the Airbnb people, which their product, their product costs a lot more money to build than my product.

Anne T. Griffin (34:34):

And they went for years and years, failure after failure, like at the beginning of their product, they had people pay it in cash. When you showed up to the Airbnb, you know, like no credit card, like no deposit, you know, straight to just showed up and they paid you in cash. And I was like, you know, if Airbnb can make cereal boxes during, you know, a presidential election to try to keep their business afloat, you know, after years of failing, you know, I think I can make it over a year into business for a course about, you know, skills that I’m very good at that help people actually get a job that will value them and appreciate them. So, yeah, I’m just grateful for it. All.

Shontavia Johnson (35:17):

Girl, that is a sermon. That is a message right there. That is a message. And you started a business in a panedemic.

Anne T. Griffin (35:27):

And my first, my first launch, I was actually running my first, my first launch. I was like, it was launched, but I was running the first set of the course while I was also simultaneously teaching a class about AI at Columbia. And I looked back and I was like, what did I decide? That was okay. Why couldn’t I have pushed that back? But you know, I learned things and I’m, I’m much more knowledgeable now than I was. You know, back when I was working a full-time job and teaching a course on AI and teaching people how to attract their dream job,

Shontavia Johnson (36:07):

You learn things that needs to be on a t-shirt. You learn things, you learn things. I love that. And I really, really love that. And I had no, like, I know we’ve been working together for just a short amount of time, but I haven’t been so impressed to just see how things have grown for you and how like people are getting increasingly more interested in attracting any job, let alone their dream job. So I know that like, what you are doing is going to pop sometime soon, who knows what soon means to your point about like, whatever your timeline looks like, but you’re doing dope stuff. You really, really are.

Shontavia Johnson (36:46):

And as you are like looking to 2021 and 2025 and 2035, whatever else, what is the future of your business look like this? I mean, you started in the middle of the pandemic at some point, will, you know, Lord willing be out of all of this. What does the future look like for pivot grow hustle for the attract your dream job course and everything else.

Anne T. Griffin (37:11):

Yeah. So for pivot grow hustle and attract your dream job, I see attract your dream job. You know, being like the flagship course, I know I want to expand it right now. It’s at the place where it’s only live. And I actually have a lot of people who are interested that are not I’m in the Eastern time zone us who are outside of the U S who are interested in taking it. But the time zone is a little bit of a challenge for them. Or the other thing is right now, I’m running this where I start the course on a specific date, and you can still watch the recordings of the class, but generally you’re doing this when I start the cohort. So I want to make it so that I can record this and you can take it from anywhere in the world at any time, whenever you feel like you want to gain these skills, gain this knowledge.

Anne T. Griffin (37:57):

And I also want to expand it. And the thing about recording this is it’s going to actually allow me to add a lot more bonus content. That’s going to help people because when you’re doing it live, like your attention span is only so long. Right? And so there is actually a lot of stuff that I actually have, you know, in my notebook that I want to add to this course, that’s really going to help people even more. I’m undecided right now in terms of, you know, what, what other pieces look like in terms of, do I want to offer other courses that are complimentary? Especially for people who are maybe like, I feel like I’m doing a lot and I don’t actually know what direction I want to go. We talk a little bit about direction in this course, but one of the things that I hear a lot from people who aren’t an exact fit for my course is I want to change my career, but I don’t know exactly what I want to do yet, which is not those people are not like a perfect fit for my course, because you kind of have to know where you’re going to be able to attract that dream job.

Anne T. Griffin (38:58):

So I’m thinking about like, how do I create a course that helps people better explore what their interests are professionally? And like, how do you do that while you’re still collecting a paycheck or, you know, what do you, can you do if you have to get another job that maybe isn’t your dream job in the process of still discovering what the heck you were trying to do professionally, right? Or like what even imagine what a dream job is. And so I really see the course itself Attract Your Dream Job, expanding, and maybe some like smaller courses, but I actually see myself offering other things. And I’m debating like if it’s part of Griffin product and growth, or if it’s going to be part of pivot grow hustle. But I also get asked a lot about people who are interested in going into product and there’s 1,000,001 product courses, but I’m really interested in kind of creating one that will also help like women of color or just women in general, who are interested in product hearing from another woman. You know, and so that’s another thing that I’m considering, and I’m not sure which of the businesses that will fit in with yet.

Shontavia Johnson (40:09):

Sweet. No, that’s a wonderful plan. And I cannot wait to see all of it happen. Okay.

Anne T. Griffin (40:14):

Yeah. I’m excited. I’m, I’m actually like truly excited because it is, it feels very empowering to know that whatever happens like with like any day job I have, I like don’t have to be that person where it’s like, Oh, I have to use my savings to bridge that gap between job a and job B, or have to like rush into a job that isn’t a fit for me. And so for me, a song where I actually very much love being a product manager, like if I don’t, you know, create my own startup, which I mean, we’ll, we’ll see you know, it’s really great to know that I have something that I own, that I can continue to help people with you know, and be able to have that also make me more independent and make me not have to worry about, okay, where is where if my job stops tomorrow, like where is my next paycheck coming from?

Shontavia Johnson (41:08):

Oh, amen. Income and impact. Yes. That is, that is that’s dope. That’s dope. Awesome. So, and where can people find you there’s so much, I want to say, I know we’re like way over time, but where can people find you if they want to take the course, if they want to reach out to you, if they want to hire you to speak about product management, how can people get in touch with you?

Anne T. Griffin (41:28):

Yeah. So if you are interested and attract your dream job, please go to pivotgrowhustle.com. That is pivotgrowhustle.com. If you’re interested more in my product management experience or emerging technology, you can find me at annetgriffin.com and that’s annetgriffin.com. I had to think about it for a second. I was like, wait. Okay. So there’s like, cause I sometimes say where it’s like G R I a double F I N. And I started saying that in my head and we won’t go there. I’ve already have you over, but those are the two places that you can find me.

Shontavia Johnson (42:05):

Excellent. And what about on social? On

Anne T. Griffin (42:07):

Social? Yes. So I’m on Twitter. You can find pivot girl hustle at @pivotgrowhustle. You can find me also @AnneTGriffin on Twitter. I’m on Instagram. You can also find @pivotgrowhustle just as is. And I’m @atgrif on Instagram for my personal stuff. So those are all the places. And I think, I think those are the major places I’m in. You can also find me on LinkedIn I’m at /annetgriffin.

Shontavia Johnson (42:38):

Excellent. Thank you so much. And this was wonderful. I’m so excited. We got a chance to talk today.

Anne T. Griffin (42:45):

Yes, same here. Thank you for having me, Shontavia.

Shontavia Johnson (42:48):

Hey, before you go, I wanted to make sure you know about the brand and business Academy, which is the program I created to give women of color, a formula for entrepreneurship to make more income and impact with their ideas. And I really created it for people who are working, but who have these big ideas. And they’re not really sure where to get started. The, the model is pretty simple. You watch videos on demand. You receive group coaching from me, accountability from me and strategies for me and the brand and business community. And then you start your business. And I really created it so that women of color, especially black women and Hispanic and Latino women can leverage their skills and knowledge through entrepreneurship. I want you to create economic independence. Y’all we live in a world where pay inequity is real, where people just do not want to pay us what we are worth or more.

Shontavia Johnson (43:40):

And the Brand and Business Academy really takes all of the guesswork out of starting your business and starting at the very beginning at ground zero with growing your brand. And we do a few things. We give you that formula for entrepreneurship. We teach branding in an authentic and empowering way. We allow you to set a schedule that fits within your life, and then you get some amazing people in the community. Other women who are starting businesses all around the U S we set milestones and we create really a safe, culturally competent space for you. If that interests you visit brandandbusinessacademy.com. Applications are open now, and we’ll be getting started before the end of the year, so that you can go into 2021 ready for that new business and ready for that dynamic brand that I know you want.

Shontavia Johnson (44:31):

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of The Shontavia Show. If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to like, subscribe and leave a comment wherever you’re listening. You can find me on social media everywhere, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and wherever else @ShontaviaJEsq. You can also visit me at shontavia.com to find a transcript of this episode along with other show notes. While you’re there, please be sure to subscribe to my email newsletter.

Shontavia Johnson (45:00):

The information shared in this podcast and through my other platforms is designed to educate you about business and entrepreneurship. And I love to do this work while I am a lawyer, though, the information I provide is not legal advice and does not create or constitute an attorney client relationship.

Shontavia Johnson (45:00):

The Shontavia Show is a LVRG original. The show is recorded on site in South Carolina and produced at Sit N Spin Studio in Greenville, South Carolina .Original music and sound design is by Matt Morgan and Daniel Gregory. And the video is by GVL Media.

Well, it’s been a minute. Between the anti-racism protests, COVID, the 2020 election, #ENDSARS, and everything else, life has been one huge, unpredictable roller coaster.

Your girl has been watching, waiting, and taking some downtime. Some of it has felt like self-care. Some of it has felt like my old friend, procrastination. 

In this episode of the Shontavia Show, I wanted to talk to you about my hiatus, what I’ve been up to, and what I’ve learned about surviving and thriving in uncertain times. 

My basic suggestions in the episode are that, to survive and thrive right now, you should consider:

1. Educating yourself on something you’ve been thinking about,
2. Pursuing economic independence, and
3.  Doing good while being good to yourself (especially when it comes to giving yourself grace!).

These three things have really helped me navigate 2020–especially educating myself and learning from other Black women. Check out the links below for more.

Show Summary

00:01:34 Girl, where you been?

00:06:49 Join my new book club!

00:09:21 The first thing you can do to survive: get educated

00:10:38 The three courses I took to make five figures in five months

00:17:13 The second thing you can do to survive: pursue economic independence/financial freedom

00:22:15 The third thing you can do to survive: do good in the world and give yourself grace

(00:00):

What’s up, y’all. Welcome to The Shontavia Show, where my goal is to help you start a business based on your life’s vision. This ain’t gonna be your daddy’s business advice. I’m laser focused on entrepreneurship in the 21st century, vision and breaking the traditional mold. If you can get with that, you can get with me, be sure to visit shontavia.com for more episodes, blog posts, and other content. Thank you for listening. The show starts now.

(00:36):

Hey everybody. I’m Shontavia Johnson, and this is another episode of the Shontavia Show, where I want to inspire you to make more income and impact using entrepreneurship. And it has been a while. I know it’s been a long time since you heard from me last, it’s been about three months and I just have to be real with y’all. It has been a rough three months and it mostly has been a rough three months because of a principle I learned about a long time ago and was reminded about recently called upper limiting. So there’s this book by Gay Hendricks called The Big Leap. And it’s a book that I’ve read multiple times, but I need to go back and remind myself about the principles of the book pretty frequently. But one of the principles in the book is this concept of upper limiting yourself. And it’s basically, self-destruction where you get to a certain level of success.

(01:34):

You get to a point where you’ve got some good things happen, and then you basically do something self-destructive, or maybe not even self destructive, but you do something that stops the flow of those good things happening. And it is called upper limiting. And just to be real transparent, I feel like I’ve been upper limiting myself. Things were going really well. And the podcast was getting a ton of good interest, tons of amazing guests. And I just stopped. And I had all these excuses about why I stopped related to time. And one thing you may notice if you listen to old episodes or look at when the episodes were published, I stopped actually posting new episodes of the show right around the time virtual school started for my children. So it’s no secret. I’ve talked about it on the show. I have young children, and right now we are virtual schooling, all three of them, one of them isn’t even school aged, she’s a toddler.

(02:37):

And so it has been rough. And one of the things I was doing was telling myself, you know, I don’t have time to do that because I’ve got all these other things on my plate, which was true, but it really was a symptom of a bigger problem of me, upper limiting myself and not making time. And I was, instead of using the excuse that I didn’t have time when it really was a conscious choice on my part, which was fine. I am learning to give myself grace. That’s one of the things I want to talk about on the show today. And it’s been an interesting journey. I have been doing the virtual schooling, working from home at the same time because of COVID-19 and stay at home orders and sheltering in place for the health and safety of my family and myself.

(03:29):

And frankly, the past couple months, we’ve been really, really anxious about the election, the presidential election and the down-ballot election races in the United States. And so there’s been a lot going on and I just decided that I was going to prioritize myself. And I also really kind of decided that I was going to stop doing some of the things that I was doing. Like I was saying earlier, I now realize maybe some of that behavior was me getting in my own way. And I’ve talked about that a lot on my show. I talk about it a lot on my YouTube channel at shontavia.tv. I talk about it within the Brand and Business Academy, which is the training program that I’ve created, which gives an entrepreneurship formula to working professionals, especially women of color who want to start businesses. So there’s been a lot happening.

(04:29):

And I think I got in my own way a little bit, and that’s just being completely transparent. I think oftentimes, you know, we talk about the really good things that happen, but we are not as transparent when things aren’t necessarily that great. And so I want to make sure I’m being transparent and that’s not to say great things haven’t happened. I’ve gotten some amazing opportunities over the past couple of months, I was invited to speak at Google to a group of students. I was quoted in an article that was written by Harvard’s journalism lab. I got an invitation to speak to the Smithsonian as part of a black innovators and entrepreneurs week. So that’s really exciting that’s happening mid-November. So there’s a lot of good stuff happening too. I just have really postponed some of the projects that I typically would devote a lot of time and energy to, like the Shontavia Show, but I am back.

(05:32):

I am so excited to be back this, these next couple of episodes, and really the remainder of the episodes for 2020 are going to be amazing. I have interviewed some amazing entrepreneurs already. People like Steph Humphrey, who is a tech expert, who is a branding expert, who is a regular on Strayhan Sara and Kiki among other things. Also talked to Julia Rock interview, Latesha Byrd, just some amazing and dynamic entrepreneurs that I’m excited to share with you as we get back into the swing of things with the show. So that goes to show you, it’s not that I’ve not been working. I’ve recorded these dynamic amazing episodes with dynamic amazing entrepreneurs. We just haven’t really released them yet. So it is going to be a lot of fun from here on out. Thank you to those of you who reached out to me, who wanted to know where episodes were. I’ve got something for you.

(06:31):

Just stick with me for a little while. This is the first episode, and I think about three months as I was saying before, but I will not leave you again. We are going to continue down this path. The show has been just an amazing experience for me, and I’m excited to get back into it.

(06:49):

So during this entire COVID era. One of the things I’ve done is gotten back to my love of reading. And as I’ve gotten back to my love of reading, and I love reading business books, one of the things I found is that I just don’t see myself in those business books that everybody recommends. So one of the things I’ve done is created a book club for women of color entrepreneurs. And what this book club will do is help women of color deconstruct valuable lessons from the “most popular business and self-help books” while centering their own lives, their own stories and their own experiences.

(07:24):

If you’re interested in joining me, you can visit shontavia.com/bookclub That’s shontavia.com/bookclub, hope to see you there.

(07:38):

So one of the things I want to talk about today, really the thing I want to talk about today is surviving. So like I was saying earlier, I really feel like I was upper limiting myself because things are starting to go well. And, you know, I just exhibited a little bit of self-destructive behavior by stopping things that were going well, but simultaneously, I was surviving. We are in the middle of a global pandemic with COVID-19 right now, as of the recording of this episode, we’re in the middle of a very, very contentious post-election–and I don’t know if this is a conversation or conflict at this point–but in the U.S. Between the existing president, Donald Trump and the president elect Joe Biden. President elect Joe Biden has won enough electoral college votes to be the next president of the United States.

(08:40):

But the existing president, Donald Trump is not conceding that he lost. And it has caused, frankly, for me, a lot of anxiety about what’s happening, watching the news and seeing people fight and argue in the streets and all of that has been kind of nerve wracking. And then we still alsoare in the middle of anti-racist protests and the anti-racist movement in the U.S. There are also things happening around the world related to COVID related to police brutality and injustice. Wars people being killed in conflicts between countries. And it’s been a lot. It really, really has. So I want to use this episode to talk about survival and the thing I– the things I think entrepreneurs of color, especially, but even more, especially women of color, three things that I think you can do to survive this whole season that we are in right now.

(09:39):

So the first thing I think you can do is get educated. And I know just about all of my listeners are very, well-educated both formally and informally. You may have a few degrees, you may have a number of certifications or trainings or years of experience doing whatever you’re doing, or you may even be in college or graduate school or law school or whatever. But I want you to really think about where you need education right now, specifically as it relates to your ideas and your entrepreneurial endeavors. So I have taken some time to do a few things, even during these past three months, when I told you guys, I, I really kind of stopped doing some of the things that were working, but the thing that I’ve continued to do this whole year, including these past couple of months, or three months is educate myself.

(10:38):

I have taken at least three courses, and it may be more actually, I think it’s more like four or five courses related to things I wanted to learn. So earlier this year I took Danielle Leslie’s Course From Scratch. And Course From Scratch is basically an educational program that teaches you how to create an online course or online programs. And I took that course because I really wanted to figure out how to create systems around the work that I was doing with individual clients. I love doing work with individual clients. I loved my clients who I was working with in the past decade or so in my business, but I wanted to figure out how to help more people, how to create systems that would allow me to do that on a bigger scale. So I took Course From Scratch to learn, how do you actually build an online course? So that was the first course.

(11:31):

The second course I took was From Cash to Crypto, which is a course by Tonya Evans, who is a colleague, a business partner of mine, who is, I mean, she really is an expert in cryptocurrency. And so the most popular cryptocurrency you may have heard of is Bitcoin, though there are all types of cryptocurrencies out there, but I wanted to learn about these different types of financial systems and ways that I could participate. And I wanted to learn just what they were. If these were things I should be thinking about or not. I wanted to educate myself around that around just how to diversify my investment strategy. So I took that course from her. And then the final course I took was around creating systems in your businesses. So I mentioned, I took Danielle Leslie’s Course From Scratch to learn how to create an actual course and to Tonya Evans’s course around investment vehicles that are outside of fiat, which are traditional financial systems.

(12:34):

And then I took this course about creating systems in your business, which I’m trying to remember the entrepreneur’s name. Her name is Courtney Sanders. She’s an expert in building systems in businesses. So I took that course too. And so these courses cost me a few thousand dollars, but literally y’all in all of the courses I made my money back PLUS SOME. Just implementing these educational tools that I received from these courses. So all of these courses are in the high hundreds to the low thousand dollar range. And in all of those courses, with the knowledge I took, I made money. I got a good return on my investment within maybe three weeks of taking Danielle Leslie’s course and made the money back that I spent on her course, plus a bunch, probably 30 fold at this point, what I spent on the course.

(13:33):

And then From Cash to Crypto. One of the things I love about Tonya’s course, From Cash to Crypto, is it really teaches you not just what Bitcoin is, but how you can actually go about getting some, buying some. So she taught in the course how you go about buying Bitcoin. And I’m glad I did because when I started taking the course, it was about, I think one Bitcoin was about like $10,000 or so. And as we sit here today, I think it’s in the $15,000 range. So I’ve made money back consistently with the tools that I learned from Tonya’s course. And then even with the systems course from Courtney Sanders, I have made a great return on my investment just by building the systems that allow me to work hard once in my business, as I love to teach in the Brand and Business Academy building new systems that allow me to spend even less time on some of the day-to-day administrative email writing, posting online, that kind of thing.

(14:35):

So I can focus more on the other pieces of the business, including my actual clients and customers. So getting educated is so, so, so important, whatever that thing is, you want to learn, learn about it. Now I’m not saying go out and spend thousands of on a class or anything. Maybe you need to do that. Maybe you don’t. Maybe it’s something as simple as subscribing to a YouTube channel and watching videos or subscribing to an email newsletter, buying some books or whatever, but survival in this time, I really believe requires that we get educated. Including getting educated about political systems and political processes, because we really are sitting in a time in history right now, where the rules are going to matter a lot and the people who understand the rules will be able to best navigate what’s happening in the United States. And frankly, around the world, just getting educated is such an important thing for entrepreneurs to do right now.

(15:40):

So that’s the first thing, please, please, please get educated. That might mean taking a course. It might not mean taking a course. It might mean reading books, but please get educated. I think that will help you survive. The other thing I’ve been doing to educate myself is reading more books. So if you subscribed to my email newsletter, I’ve talked about this a bit. I’ve gotten back to my first love, which is books. I am a, I am a lover of books, a bibliophile. I love reading. I love tangible hard copies of books. I like listening to books and I’ve really gotten back into reading in 2020. And it has opened my eyes to so many different things, just doing more reading and engaging with the ideas of other people. And it’s got me thinking about how to implement those strategies and take those strategies to the next level in my own business.

(16:34):

So get educated. And it’s taken my mind away from some of the things happening in the world that are distracting me from my own focuses. Now, understanding, you know, we want to be engaged citizens. You want to make sure that you’re reaching out to and helping people who need help, but oftentimes we can get so caught up in the problems of everybody else in the world that we have no control over that we don’t take care of home first, right?

(17:02):

We don’t take care of the things that we want to do. We don’t pursue the ideas or the entrepreneurial endeavors. So getting educated is critical, especially right now.

(17:13):

The second thing you can do to survive, and please hear me out on this one, because when I say it, I think it may sound a little funny to some of you, but the thing I think you must do to survive in this time, I said it on Instagram a little bit differently, but what I’ll say on the show at least to start is we should pursue economic independence.

(17:37):

You should pursue economic independence. I should pursue economic independence. We need to be financially free so that if you are working in a job where you disagree with the way in which your company has made a stance or not made a stance against racist activity or against wrongful conduct or injustice in society, you can walk away from that without blowing up your entire life. You can have the freedom. If you have economic independence, that also means you have the freedom to say things that you might not be able to say if somebody else is signing your paycheck. So pursuing economic independence is a big one. The way I said it on Instagram was we need to get rich. And I believe that I believe we need to get rich. Entrepreneurs, especially people of color, women of color, black women who have entrepreneurial ideas, we need to get rich.

(18:36):

We need to be able to cut the check for causes we support. We need to be able to have enough money so that if we do say something that a client doesn’t like, or that an employer doesn’t like, again, it doesn’t blow up our entire lives. We need to get rich.

(18:51):

We need economic independence and not just for ourselves, but for the people we can help. Right? And I know this might sound a little tough right now during an era where I think 21 million people in the U.S. Are getting some type of unemployment benefits. In a time where 41% of black businesses have closed because of COVID-19. Where 25% of women-owned businesses have closed because of COVID-19. This is tough, right? Because we are living in a time that is hard for a lot of people. But, there are things we can do. There are ways that we can pursue our entrepreneurial endeavors, even though there’s so much economic instability around us.

(19:41):

So I encourage you right now. If you have an entrepreneurial idea, if you have registered that LLC or incorporated that corporation, pursue that idea, I think now is one of the best times to start a business–depending on the type of business it is and the way in which you can operate that business. We’re living in a time where people are at home, where people are working from home. So we might have a little more time because of not having to make that commute or not having to do some of the day-to-day things that we typically do. So I think now is an amazing time to start a business and people are having entrepreneurial success, even in the midst of COVID. You see black women like Rachel Rodgers and King Ashley Ann Jones on Instagram, who’s a marketing expert and others, Danielle Leslie is another one, who have said during this period, their businesses have crossed a million dollars in a day.

(20:44):

And so I think it’s possible for entrepreneurs to do really well right now, especially if you’re providing solutions to problems that are, are plaguing people right now. If you have a solution to a problem, especially a really good solution to a pressing problem, to a need that other people are having. I think you’re in a great position to do really well as an entrepreneur, even during this COVID era.

(21:12):

And this is especially true for women of color before COVID 89% of all women owned businesses that were started last year in 2019, were started by women of color, and black women were the largest demographic within that group. So we, women of color, black women, we are entrepreneurial already. We are more entrepreneurial than any other demographic group in the United States, more than men, more than white men, more than however you want to cut the, the, the gender and racial makeup of people, women of color, and especially black women, Hispanic and Latina, Hispanic women, and Latinas too, are leading the charge as it relates to entrepreneurship in the United States.

(21:57):

So pursuing economic independence is important, especially right now, as people are losing jobs, having to go back inside, if they ever left, like we basically have been inside. We haven’t left too much. But now is a great time to pursue your economic independence. Your economic freedom.

(22:15):

Now is the time to get rich, which leads to my third point. You shouldn’t get necessarily want to get rich just to fatten your own pockets. You want to get rich so that you can do good in the world. And while you’re doing all these things, make sure you also give yourself some grace. Right? And so I talked a little bit about giving yourself grace earlier when I was talking about myself and these past three months being so difficult. Yes, I was upper limiting myself. Yes. I took a lot of things off of my plate.

(22:45):

Yes, it is a very stressful period, but I also am learning every day how to give myself grace and say, you know what? Your best doesn’t always mean your absolute best. It means your absolute best today. And today might look different from tomorrow, which might’ve looked different from yesterday. So give yourself grace as you’re going out, making money and doing good. So what I mean by doing good doesn’t necessarily mean you have to go out and, you know, be Gandhi or Oprah Winfrey or a billionaire philanthropist, but do good, do good for other people. Maybe there are elderly people in your neighborhood who can’t go to the grocery store. You can go get groceries or order groceries and deliver them to their doorstep. Maybe it’s giving to charity, maybe it’s hashtag activism. So hashtag activism is something that gets a lot of negative vibes from folks.

(23:42):

And it gets a lot of negative feedback. Like it’s not really a difference, but think about how many times companies have gone viral for doing the wrong thing and changed course. Think about how many times a person has gone viral for being racist or sexist or xenophobic and lost their job. Think about how many times hashtags have spurred movements, whether it’s the Black Lives Matter movement or Defund the Police or like Bring Back Our Girls, raising awareness and those types of things with varying levels of success, of course. But hashtag activism works. And I won’t let anybody else tell me differently. You all know I spent a lot of years as an academic, as a law professor, I still work in higher ed, and in my research, which revolved around social media, entrepreneurship, social justice, and law. What at least I found in the research is hashtag activism can work. Being engaged online can work.

(24:46):

Donate to the runoff races in Georgia, help other people survive. You survive yourself, help other people survive. So I encourage you to do good, including doing good to yourself. If all you can do right now is survive, wake up every day and get the bare minimum accomplished, that is doing good, because you are no good to anybody else. If you’re not good to yourself, if you’re no good for yourself.

(25:13):

So I encourage you to do these three things, get educated, pursue economic independence, and do good in the world, including doing good to yourself.

(25:24):

Now I know this is a little bit of a different kind of episode for me, but I really have been thinking a lot about this as I have been figuring out the next steps for the show, for my brand and everything else.

(25:37):

But survival is so important right now. Yes, we can talk about marketing and intellectual property and all those other things, but you have to survive first, right? If you want to build a business that is going to survive and the way your business is going to survive, especially as you’re just getting started, is for you to survive. So I hope these suggestions help you. I hope something I’ve said has encouraged you to do these things. Get educated, pursue economic independence, and get rich and do good in the world and be good to yourself. Give yourself some grace.

(26:12):

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of The Shontavia Show. If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to like, subscribe and leave a comment wherever you’re listening. You can find me on social media everywhere, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and wherever else @ShontaviaJEsq. You can also visit me at shontavia.com to find a transcript of this episode along with other show notes. While you’re there, please be sure to subscribe to my email newsletter.

(26:43):

The information shared in this podcast and through my other platforms is designed to educate you about business and entrepreneurship. And I love to do this work while I am a lawyer, though, the information I provide is not legal advice and does not create or constitute an attorney client relationship.

(27:01):

The Shontavia Show is a LVRG original. The show is recorded on site in South Carolina and produced at Sit N Spin Studio in Greenville, South Carolina .Original music and sound design is by Matt Morgan and Daniel Gregory.

Show Notes:

• Join Shontavia’s Book Club : shontavia.com/bookclub
• Get The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks on Amazon.com
• Tonya Evans’ From Cash to Crypto course
• Danielle Leslie’s
• Course from Scratch Courtney Sanders’ Project Management Course

*Please note that the links in italics are affiliate links. If you choose to buy from these links, I will get a commission. This is at no additional cost to you. 

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Questions and Action: What step can you take today to educate yourself, pursue economic independence, and/or do good? 

After you’ve had a chance to watch the video, I’d love to hear from you in the comments section!

Please answer the questions relevant to your current situation:

1. Is there a course, YouTube channel, podcast, or blog that will teach you the fundamentals of what you want to learn about?

2. Are you paying attention to your money? Are there new revenue streams you should pursue?

3. Where’s the simplest place you can do good for someone else? What’s an easy thing you can do for yourself?

Please give as much information as you can in response to these questions. The real education happens when we teach and learn from each other!

Thank you so much for joining me to build your brand and business.

I am eternally grateful that I get to do this work with you and others like you!