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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.

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Hey, y’all I’m Shontavia Johnson, and this is another episode of the Shontavia Show, where I want to help you build a business and brand that you love. And I’m recording this today because it is really hard out here right now. I haven’t released episodes in a couple of weeks because I’ve, I mean, I’ve been feeling all the emotions. I’ve been mad. I’ve been sad. I’ve been exhausted. And it’s hard to talk about building a brand and a business that you love when you don’t even know how much your life is valued in the country that you’ve spent your entire life. And it’s hard to know what to do. It is hard to muster the energy to continue on this journey because there’s so much serious racial injustice and oppression happening both in the United States, where I live, and around the world, it seems like we’re at a tipping point in global history.

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And I have been struggling. I’m not even gonna lie to you. So I…some of, you know, I’m a parent. I have three small children who are under the age of 10 and just, I look at them sometimes and I want to cry. I look at them and I just don’t know what to tell them. A few weeks ago, we were watching the SpaceX launch on CNN and we didn’t watch it live. We watched it a little bit later. And as we were watching, they cut to commercial break. And when they came back from commercial, it immediately cut back to the George Floyd, the video of George Floyd being murdered in a Minneapolis street. And this is a video, like I don’t even watch these videos myself. I have a practice of not doing that because they really kill something in my spirit each time I watched them. So I don’t even watch these videos most of the time.

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And I hadn’t even seen it. And I was sitting there with my children who are all under the age of 10. I have a toddler, I have a kindergartner and I have a daughter who is in elementary school. And they saw that video for just a couple seconds, but they saw it and they were terrified.

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Like my, my son was asking if his daddy might be killed by police. My daughter started crying. She wanted to know why the police were hurting that man. She wanted to know if he was okay. She wanted to know too, like, is that something that could happen to us? And I didn’t have good answers to those questions for her. I still don’t have good answers to those questions for her.

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And if you’re listening to this and you are not black, if you’re listening to this and you don’t have children, there’s no way I can make you understand just the pain and the exhaustion that we are feeling navigating all of these things.

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And it’s hard, it’s, it is so hard. And like myself, I live in the United States. I live in the United States in a southern state, in South Carolina. And we live in a pretty diverse neighborhood, but a couple months ago, as we are in this very diverse neighborhood, our neighbor across the street was yelling or having some kind of argument with two black men in the middle of the street for maybe a good 20 minutes or so.

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And he was yelling at these black men and he was calling them n*****s. And he said it multiple times. And my children heard every word of this. This is a word they have never heard in their lives. They wanted to know why this man was shouting. They were scared. And then as this argument, I guess, was dying down, I really don’t know what was happening, because we tried to shield our kids from what was going on.

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Our neighbor came across the street and rang our doorbell. And so my husband and I had this conversation about like, should we call the police or should we just ignore him? And our decision was, we are not going to call the police because if they come, they may make a mistake.

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They may think that we are, the problems or that these two black men who were arguing with our neighbor was the problem and somebody might get hurt.

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And that might sound a little ridiculous to you. But for the past couple of weeks, we’ve seen multiple instances where black people were the parties trying to call the police or trying to flag down the police and the cops ended up placing them in handcuffs and roughing them up. And so this is just like so much to take in and deal with, particularly with children, because we’ve been trying to talk to them about the fact that no, all police aren’t bad that we do not want to live our lives in fear, but we have to just be honest, that we could end up in a situation that is very dangerous. And it’s a struggle.

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It is– I mean, I am exhausted. It is a struggle to figure out just how to live, like let alone build a business and a brand that I love, but just to live.

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And I’ve been so just spending the past couple of weeks, so entrenched in thinking about how do I come back? Like you guys might have noticed, I have not posted any podcast episodes for the past couple of weeks, because it’s impossible for me as a black woman in the United States, as a human citizen, to just go on with business as usual. And I have been so incredibly frustrated and disappointed with other businesses and entrepreneurs who have done this. People want to ignore this. Like it doesn’t exist. Like we can just go on with business as usual. And that’s just something I cannot do.

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And I just applaud like other people who’ve been calling out these folks who were going on with business as usual.

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If you’re a business owner and you are taking black dollars, I think you have to be sensitive to black needs. And there are a couple of, of experts, gurus, whatever you want to call them who have really made some missteps in this space. And I’ve been so grateful for entrepreneurs like Rachel Rogers, who’s a black woman in North Carolina. Who’s built a million dollar business, who has called them out, who has said, this is not appropriate. This is no longer tolerable. This is not acceptable for you to take our money, but not want to hear our issues and not be real legitimate allies as we navigate this time in American history. And so as I’ve been watching all this, I’ve been trying to figure out what is my contribution, what is my way that I can help people through this time in this space, especially people who are new to business.

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Like if you’re just starting a business right now, and this is hard, this is a hard thing for some brands and businesses to do. A lot of people want to keep “politics,” if you will, out of their business. I don’t think this is a political issue at all. Racism will never be a political issue to me, but it’s hard.

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And so what I want to do with the Shontavia Show for the next foreseeable future, I don’t know how long is I want to talk to entrepreneurs who are connecting their work to social justice. And I don’t mean in like some superficial way, posting a black box on their Instagram page or whatever. But people who either before all of this happened were already connecting their businesses to social justice or people who, white, whatever, whatever race, but especially white folks. Like what are you going to do, moving forward, as an entrepreneur, as a business owner, as a brand to stand against racism, to be anti-racist, to stand against oppression, to speak out against oppression?

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And so with the next foreseeable future for this show, I’m going to be talking to entrepreneurs at all levels, from all backgrounds who are doing this, who are struggling through, who, who are either black themselves and trying to figure out the best way to move forward, or if they’re not black, how they’re going to be allies and not just performative allies, because this is important.

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Like there’s no excuse right now to, to not do something. Everybody has a role to play. And I kind of feel like if you’re not with me, then you’re in the way, like, either you say affirmatively, you’re going to be with me or you just get out of the way. That’s just how I feel about it.

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If you disagree, reach out to me, so we can– actually don’t reach out to me. If you disagree that we’re just going to have to agree to disagree.

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So, so with this show, that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to be talking to people no matter what kind of business they have. Like you don’t have to be some social activist to support social justice causes.

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And this is, in the history of the United States, Black entrepreneurs in particular have been increasing, have been not just increasingly committed, I shouldn’t say that. Black entrepreneurs in this country for years have been committed to bettering not only their personal station in life, but also the collective experience of black people and other people in this country.

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One of the best examples of this was Thomas Jennings. He was the first black person in the United States that we know about to receive a patent from the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

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And this happened in 1821. This was a black man born free in New York, first black person we know about to get a patent in the United States. And the reason I say the first one we know about is because the patent office actually doesn’t keep demographic statistics about who’s filing patent applications. So he’s the first one we know about. And he was a clothing company owner. He owned a clothing company and the patent he received was for a dry cleaning process. But he got that patent for that dry cleaning process. He started a business. He became one of the largest clothing company owners in the city of New York. And he made a lot of money and he would use that money to not just like improve his own station in life. He married a woman who was born a slave in Delaware. He bought her freedom.

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He bought the freedom of his children, and then he not only did those things, but he supported social causes that benefited the collective black community. So for example, his daughter, who was Rosa Parks before Rosa Parks was born, was discriminated against in a public street car. She was made to get off of a street car because she was black. And so Thomas Jennings funded litigation that ultimately ended the segregation of New York’s public transit system. And they were well connected. Her lawyer, the daughter’s lawyer, when they filed this lawsuit, her lawyer went on to become the president of the United States.

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And so Thomas Jennings would use his social status to build these types of opportunities that would create better lives for all of us. He also helped found an organization that was like the precursor to the NAACP. He helped co-found the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, which is an institution not just in Harlem, in New York, but also for black people around the United States. It is a leader in in its community and also for other people.

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And so we have a collective responsibility to do the same things. I firmly firmly believe that. So I want to talk to people who are also equally committed to these things. And this is important. And let me explain why this is important and what you can start doing now. Before I start reaching out to other people and talking to them, I want to give you some suggestions.

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I saw two articles recently and I’ll drop a link in the show notes to both of them, but I saw these two articles that basically provide suggestions to brands and business owners so that they can, during this time navigate everything that’s happening. So the first article– they’re both from Business Insider, but the first article was written by a woman named Bethany Byron, I think her last name is. And what she does is share tips for how companies can be better allies and avoid being ridiculed on social media.

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The second article also in the Business Insider is by a woman named Jennifer Ortakales. I think, I don’t know how to pronounce her last name.

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But her article, similarly, was about five steps to navigating your brand messaging during this time of civil unrest so that you don’t lose customer trust. And these two things are so critically important. So this first step, like what do you do to build customer trust is important.

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Now I also want to know not what just do you do right now, but what is your longterm strategy? But I want to start talking about what some of these suggestions are.

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So the first suggestion Bethany makes that I love. And it’s similar to the suggestion Jennifer makes, is decide against silence. It’s counterproductive and it can affect your bottom line. Take a stand and be loud about it. Be bold about it.

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And what I will say here, particularly for people who are allies, but not just for people who are allies, for black folks too, you have to be okay with getting it wrong. If you’re an ally, be okay with being an imperfect ally, you don’t have to be perfect. The goal really is to know, are you with me or are you just in the way?

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And, and that is important. That is so important. If you are not black and you’re listening to this right now, we want to know, where do you stand on these issues? It is counterproductive to just be silent. It is counterproductive to delete people’s comments when they’re commenting or posting in your communities. And we saw that recently.

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So there’s an entrepreneur who I follow, who I’ve spent thousands, and I mean, literally thousands of dollars, with her name is Marie Forleo. I, I love Marie Forleo’s work. I’ve quoted her on this show before I’ve quoted her in talks that I’ve given. But she did that. When, when her black community members wanted to, I mean, at minimum, talk about this in a Facebook group, her team went through and deleted comments and then got bold and defensive about it.

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And that is counterproductive, because if you are going to engage with people, particularly around their lives and their businesses, these are the things we are dealing with. These are the things that are real problems in our lives right now. So decide against silence. It really, I can’t tell–I cannot stress enough how counterproductive it is for you to be silent.

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I’ve reached out to some people who have spent money with people like Oh, what is her name? I’m going to forget it now. But there’ve been a couple of people who I’m on their email lists, not anymore, because I’ve subscribed, but I’ve said to them like it is really disappointing right now that the first email I get from you after all the protests and everything have happened, are just like business as usual, Hey, here, buy this. Like that is not just disappointing, but it makes me no longer want to support you and spend money with you.

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So step one, decide against silence. I know it’s hard. I know that it’s hard. You don’t know what to say. You’re afraid to get it wrong. Do some Googling. There are a lot of good folks, black, white, and everything else, who’ve made some suggestions for how you can make a stand at this point in time and it’s okay to fail. It’s okay to fail forward. It is okay to get it wrong, but the goal and be okay with realizing a lot of black folks are tired, like so tired.

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And we’re tired of being pandered to. And so some people may not like your first statement. They may not like your second statement, but your actions really speak louder than your words. And if you continue to show up, you are going to not only be better just in your business, but you will start to see. You may attract some new business because you have taken this kind of stand.

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The second thing, listen to your community and understand its reach, listen up and educate yourself. So these are both suggestions from both Bethany and Jennifer. Listen to what people are telling you, the people who are spending money with you, there’s a reason we’re providing these suggestions to you. We want to be heard. You may not realize how silent your black community members have been, and maybe some still are because we’ve not been heard. We’ve not felt like our voices and opinions are valid. So that’s the second step.

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Number three, don’t get caught up in hashtag trends. So there was this like blackout last week that I still don’t really understand. I saw a lot of people doing it. I refused to participate because it seemed just like a way to erase the black lives matter things that are happening. It seemed like a way to erase the pictures that were happening. And it got co-opted in so many different ways. So don’t just get caught up in hashtag trends. Don’t just do that and think, Oh, this is enough. Like you really have to say, these are the affirmative steps that I’m taking right now and in the future.

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And that really could be step number four, make a longterm plan. Like don’t just post the black lives matters hashtag I’m looking at you, San Francisco Forty Niners. Don’t just say black lives matter.

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Like what is the longterm plan to not just move forward, but, but to correct your past bad behavior, like, what are you going to do to say, Hey, we really own your BS. We own the things we’ve done wrong in the past. And here’s what we’re going to do to move forward.

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And then fifth and I alluded to this earlier. Don’t delete critical comments. It is okay to be uncomfortable. It is okay that you don’t like seeing the word racism or you don’t like seeing people talk to them, talk about themselves as being black or whatever. That might make you feel uncomfortable. But imagine what it’s like to be a black person in this country and live this every day. Imagine what it’s like when your nine year old and your five-year-old look at you and say, mommy, could my daddy be killed by the police? Mommy? Could the police come in here unannounced and accidentally maybe shoot somebody.

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Like, what do you think that’s like? If you don’t like hearing about it, imagine what it’s like to live it every day.

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And then finally, I want to speak to my black entrepreneurs and my black influencers. We have to speak our truth because that’s uncomfortable too sometimes. And I know that many times we exist in spaces where we could be exposed i we speak up, we might be fired from our jobs. I actually had this struggle in my own life a couple of weeks ago, I had to say to people, this is racist. Like there’s no other way to describe what’s happening here. And I was worried about that. I was worried about what people would think. I was worried about whether I might get fired. I was worried about whether I might lose opportunities, but, but we have to speak our truth.

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We have to let people know that this, like, sucks. Like, we are being killed in the street. You putting out a statement saying we’re all in this together is not helpful.

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Like people dying in the streets. We are worried about our children. We’re worried about the fact that we’re dying at two and three times the rate of the coronavirus than other ethnic groups. And so we, we, we need real allyship and we have to be willing as black people to speak our truth, to say, yo, this is not just uncomfortable for you. This is life or death for me, for my family, for my spouse, for my father, for my brother, for my sister, for my mother, for my uncle. And that is just the starting point. So this, these are the things we really, really just to start with, we have to do, we have to take a stand.

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We have to decide against silence. Number one.

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Number two, you have to listen to your community and understand their reach and educate yourself. Like don’t expect black folks to do the homework for you. Go out and educate yourself, listen to people when they speak, but go out and educate yourself.

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Number three, don’t just get caught up in these hashtag trends where you think you post one thing. Or you wear kente cloth, weirdly as, as you go take a symbolic vote .Don’t get caught up in these trends, like do the real hard actual work.

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Number five, number four, make a real plan, making a long-term plan for what you’re going to do differently and be loud and bold about what that is on whatever platform you have.

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And then finally, number five, don’t delete those critical statements, those critical comments, even if they make you uncomfortable.

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And then specifically for black entrepreneurs and black influencers speak your truth, tell the truth. Now people are finally listening. They’re seeing what is happening, not just to us, but to like the collective us. You know, so many of us who have these fancy degrees or fancy titles or who live in big houses or who have lots of money, white people assume we don’t deal with the same racism. We don’t deal with the same systemic oppression. We don’t deal with our neighbor across the street, feeling comfortable enough to yell the n-word multiple times in the middle of broad daylight, and then go knock on the door of the only black family on the street, right? Like we have to be willing to talk about these things, to speak our truth, because that is how people will realize just how much of a pervasive issue this is.

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And not just in the South where there used to be slavery. I mean, we see this entire revolution started in Minneapolis, one of the whitest States in the United States. So, so I, for my black entrepreneurs and influencers, for those of you who have the safety and have been empowered to speak up about these things, we have to continue to do these things. And I’m going to continue to do these things with this show for the foreseeable future. Every guest I talk to is going to talk about the ways in which they are committed to social justice.

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And I’m excited about the first interview, which you’ll hear about, which you’ll hear next week, which is with Ms. A’lelia Bundless, who is the great, great granddaughter of Madam CJ Walker. And the reason I wanted to talk about Madam CJ Walker and talk to her descendant is because Madam CJ Walker was an activist and a philanthropist.

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Yes, she was the first self-made woman millionaire in the United States, but she was so much more than that. She supported social causes. She helped establish a branch of the YMCA in Indianapolis’s.

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Black community. She would give scholarships to black colleges like the Tuskegee Institute. She would speak publicly. She would deliver lectures on political, economic and social issues. She helped organize a protest. So there was a protest called the Negro silent protest parade in 1917, along 5th Avenue in New York. And they were protesting lynchings and other racist things that were happening to black people in the South. This was a silent March of about 10,000 people and Madam CJ Walker as a black woman millionaire in the United States, one of the few at the time, she helped co-found and organize that protest. And so we have to be willing to do the same thing.

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It can’t just be about getting rich y’all. It can’t just be about making money. It can’t just be about, let me go get a big house and a big car and, and everything else. We have to be equally concerned about the collective condition of our communities.

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As we are about our individual bank accounts. That is what I plan to do. That is what I hope you plan to do. And you’re going to see a lot of that on the Shontavia Show, moving forward.

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Thanks y’all for listening and I hope you still rocking with me if you’re not still rocking with me, go with God, because I want people listening to me, I want people connecting with me, I want people in my community who understand these things, and if they don’t understand them, they’re willing to learn. So I look forward to, to, to this new series, to this new way of talking to entrepreneurs and talking to business owners, and I look forward to sharing with you the content from people, not just in the United States, not just black folks, but people all around the world who are connecting their entrepreneurship to social justice and to eliminating oppression around the world.

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Thanks.

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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.

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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.

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The Shontavia Show is a LVRG Incorporated 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. Mixing and mastering is by Daniel Gregory and the video is by GVL Media.