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That Girl Radio
Are you constantly daydreaming about the person you aspire to become? Do you crave the dream job, the ideal partner, and to feel the absolute best you've ever felt? Then you're in the right place. That Girl Radio is here to support and guide you on your journey to realizing your true potential.
Here we don’t settle for mediocrity; we pursue "that" life you’ve always envisioned. Hosted by Rikki Lee, your that life coach and bestie, explores a wide range of topics, including personal development, spiritual growth, physical wellness, and mental resilience.
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That Girl Radio
Who's That Girl: Brittany Antoinette's Blueprint to Being Well in Business
Welcome Brittany Antoinette, the founder of The Idea Girl and Not so CEO as she joins us on That Girl Radio to celebrate Women's History Month in our series "Who's that Girl." Brittany unpacks her entrepreneurial journey, emphasizing the synergy between gratitude, meditation, and journaling to create the perfect storm for both personal and professional growth. Her daily routines set a powerful precedent for a conversation swirling with the importance of self-care, discipline, and how learning French dances into her vibrant lifestyle.
Brittany and I waltz through the evolution of our careers, reflecting on the shifts from fashion to brand design and from freelancer to founder. She reveals the strategies she's adopted for personal balance and wellness, noting the vital role of practices such as meditation, journaling, and maintaining physical health for mental clarity. The conversation pivots to the empowering tale of Brittany's The Idea Girl, emphasizing the crucial role of community in her success and the importance of setting boundaries, seeking internal peace, and the transformational journey from a freelancer to a CEO.
As we wrap up, our discussion crescendos with empowering dialogues on building wealth, navigating burnout, and the art of creative inspiration. Brittany's poignant account of her company's challenges and triumphs underscores the importance of sound management and the value of learning from failure. We close with an exploration of community building, designing a life that mirrors one's creativity and spirit, and how personal connections can be the bedrock of professional growth. Tune in to an episode that offers powerful stories, strategies for self-care, and the inspiring journeys of women crafting their own unique paths.
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Hello everyone and welcome back to that Girl Radio. It is your lovely host here, Ricky Lee, also known as that Girl, and you are now tuned in to your weekly supplement to help you design and live your dream life. It is officially March and you know what that means. It's Women's History Month and I am so excited to be kicking off a series on the pod entitled who's that Girl, in collaboration with various women that are breaking the glass ceiling, building their own tables and rewriting the blueprint for success To kick off this series in the best way.
Speaker 1:I have a very special guest here who is near and dear to my heart, my personal muse and constant source of inspiration Brittany Antoinette. Brittany is the founder of the Idea Girl, a boutique design practice for fashion, beauty and wellness brands Specializing in brand strategy. Since 2017, Brittany has worked alongside bright-eyed founders to take their business ideas out of notepads and get them onto shelves. With helping launch over 100 brands and campaigns for startups and major figures, her work has helped clients acquire retail placement and press by the likes of Sephora, West Elm, Urban Outfitters, Macy's, Vogue and many more. She wishes to further her mission through Not so CEO, a creative business school for founders on the path to being self-made without compromising self-care. Brittany, welcome to that Girl Radio.
Speaker 2:Welcome. There was such an amazing warm welcome. Thank you so much, ricky. That was just like can I have you do my bio every time?
Speaker 1:Of course I would love to be your traveling host. I'm so excited to see you. I just want you to know that she is like the embodiment of the rainbow. There's just so much color in her space. She's just so like. Everything is just so bright and vibrant. I'm just like living for it.
Speaker 2:Oh my God, my heart is so full. I am so grateful to be here. This is just such a perfect way to kick off my Friday. I can't stop cheesing For those who can't see me. My smile is ear to ear right now.
Speaker 1:I love to see it Well before we get started. I like to break the ice just with a little fun, and I feel like you can tell a lot about a person by their morning routine. Every successful person has a morning routine. So what is your that Girl morning routine?
Speaker 2:So first thing I do when I wake up in the morning is I grab my phone and I scroll on social media, okay, for about a few minutes before my subconscious kicks in is like, girl, you know not to grab your phone first thing in the morning. So as a human, I make mistakes and I put my phone down very quickly and then I actually get into prayer. So I actually pray. I actually always do a prayer of gratitude every single morning. I don't pray asking God and my ancestors for things.
Speaker 2:I just literally just tell them everything that I'm so grateful for. I'm grateful for the discipline you gave me, I'm grateful for your direction, I'm grateful for your protection, I'm grateful for all the skills that my ancestors have passed down to me, the gifts, the sacrifices that they've made for my bloodline. And then I meditate. So I'd like to meditate. I love to meditate for about maybe like 15 to 20 minutes, because anytime I do it for like five to 10 minutes, I'm like is that it?
Speaker 2:And I'm just like I want to do this a little longer. So I love to meditate. Sometimes I do a guided meditation, but lately I've been doing just sound and just listening to my breath. It's a great way for me to just allow my energy and especially extend my practice of gratitude through my meditation. Then I journal. I am it's so any, because I'm like all my death. So when the girlies be like you know, journal, I'm like listen I journal, journal.
Speaker 1:Okay, this is not a game.
Speaker 2:Okay, this is not a game. Like I journal. Like I journal whether it's me, sometimes I feel like I will. I sometimes do reviews of like things that happened, like the day before. But I, because I journal first thing in the morning, or I'll write down messages in my dreams, or I'll write and talk about a dream that I've had. There'll be times where I feel like I'm getting direct guidance from a source, and it might just be information that I'm getting that I need to not only just keep to myself but share with others. Sometimes I also write about my future life, like today I was in Paris, okay, looking out my veranda sipping my cup of English breakfast tea with milk. I love to journal. It gives me a chance to really flex my imagination and also reflect. Then, from there, I like to. My other favorite form of social media is Pinterest. I love going on Pinterest first thing in the morning because I like to build my dream life.
Speaker 1:I like to do more and grow my dream apartment.
Speaker 2:So I feel like Pinterest is a great source for inspiration to get your energy high. Keep your energy up, rather than looking at other people's lives on Instagram and tic-tac. What else do I do in the morning? I go to the gym typically by the afternoon, so, like early afternoon, that's the best time for me to go. Where there's no one waiting for machines, I can be in and out. I love to work out, I love moving my body, and that's pretty much my morning routine. Eat some breakfast.
Speaker 2:But that is my morning routine. I feel like it's really quick, simple, easy. It makes me feel fulfilled, it fills my cup, it fills my fuel tank so I can get going for the day. Because, you know, before I pour into anyone else, I have to pour into myself and you can't pour from the end of the cup so.
Speaker 2:I make sure that I actually take my mornings very seriously and do everything that I need to do to make me feel 100. Oh, and I practice French. That's one thing I've been learning French for like a year now.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh, she's like an onion.
Speaker 2:Oui, j'ai pas les Français. That's my goodness. Yes, I've been learning French for like close to a year now, and it's amazing. It's a great way to flex your brain.
Speaker 1:I was obsessed with the show Emily in Paris because you know she's a marketing girlie in Paris doing her thing. I love Emily in Paris, all of that. Girls watch Emily in Paris, especially the marketing girlies, because it's just a dream reality. It's like, of course, I would love to be flown out the country to build luxury brands. Like who wouldn't want to do that? So shout out to her and also shout out to you, because once you guys hear about Brittany's career, you're going to be like, oh, she's of the likes of someone like Emily in Paris. We're going to get into it. So, while sitting here with me today, I met with Brittany the founder, a brand strategist and awe-inspiring creative. But tell me a bit about the dreamer you once were as a kid, and did she imagine herself where you are today?
Speaker 2:Wow, oh my God, this is so touchy, so young. Brittany was very fearless, extremely imaginative.
Speaker 2:I was a young creative director, as I would like to say, and my family would like to say my grandfather, my grandfather's father, was actually an artist. He was a painter and I believe that I got a lot of my skills from him. Honestly, all of my grandfathers, my grandmothers I am literally my ancestors wildest dream. So as a kid I would make people draw for me. I would be like draw me a house or draw me a car and in my mind I wanted like the real life thing. And they would draw me a little rectangle with two circles and I would throw a fit and say this is not a car and I would just grab the paper and like walk away. Little did I know I was in training to become a creative director. I would instruct people to act out scenes in books for me. I would act out scenes in books. I used to sing. I would do so much. And I remember in kindergarten we were told that we need to figure out what we wanted to be when we grow up. For a little school project, you know little, something simple. But I thought so deeply as a child. So when they asked me, what do I want to be when I grow up, I told them a ballerina and a dentist. Because I didn't. I felt like I didn't have enough time and really and truly I did not know what I wanted to be when I grew up. So I thought about that question every single day for the rest of my life. And so I got to the second grade and I remember just sitting down and I heard a voice say to me you need to design some clothes, because I remember I wanted new Barbie clothes and I wasn't going to get new Barbie clothes until Christmas. So I just heard a voice said design your Barbie clothes. And I said OK. So I opened up my notebook and I started designing clothes and the feeling that I got was just so fulfilling. I remember slamming down my notebook and saying I'm going to be a fashion designer and, mind you, I'm seven, had no clue what that was.
Speaker 2:I'm growing up in the 90s and from that day on I actually stuck to my promise of wanting to become a fashion designer and I started illustrating and taking illustration a lot more seriously, especially by the time I got into junior high school. Right. And then I got into high school, I went into a fashion design program for high school. So I majored in fashion design and illustration. Fashion illustration is my first passion and I stuck, stuck it out, did draping, pattern making, everything that you can think of, embroidery, design. I did everything and my professor I'm sorry, my teacher at the time she told me you know, black women don't really make it into fashion industry, so maybe you should think about going into fashion merchandising and buying. And honestly, that is what shifted and changed my life and little did I know was preparing me for my adult role at the idea girl.
Speaker 2:So, my childhood self wanted to be a fashion designer, and then I grew up and became a brand designer.
Speaker 1:That is like so amazing, and I mean we're going to touch on this later. But when I look at women who I believe are that girl, they are women who are faced with the constant challenge of wanting or desiring something for themselves. But because of our identity, because of the fact that we're a woman, so many different obstacles steer us away from the original goal and in hindsight, when you look at that in life, it can be very discouraging. It's like my teacher told me I can't do what I said I wanted to do, so I have to pivot. But in all actuality, I see those moments as God protecting us and redirecting us into what our purpose is. And so for you to pivot away from fashion designing and find something that's even more fulfilling for you, which was brand designing, it's just all the more inspiring, especially for a lot of young women who are still trying to figure it out.
Speaker 1:They're listening. Just know that. It's okay, even if your original idea of what you were supposed to do isn't exactly what you're doing now. Just know that where you are right now is exactly where you're supposed to be. So, as you said, you're a brand designer and we know you've built some iconic brands. I mean guys like Topicals, range, beauty, baby, tress. I have been following along your story for so long and, before we dig into you building these brands, can you tell me about the journey to building the brand identity of Brittany, also known as the Idea Girl?
Speaker 2:I will. Let's dive into that. So what's funny is that my brand identity as to being the Idea Girl or being Brittany, literally just started with me being myself.
Speaker 2:So, I have been building brands since I was in high school. The first brand that I ever built was in the 12th grade. It was for a school project. I don't remember what class that this was for, but we were told that we needed to create a business. I love projects Anything as to where I can illustrate my skills, like my design skills I was with it.
Speaker 2:Everything else not so much.
Speaker 2:I wasn't the best student, but when it came to anything that was creative, anything I was going to put my all into it and that's where I shine.
Speaker 2:So for this school project in particular, we had to come up with a business, and I came up with a business called Genius, and Genius was going to be a gene bar or a gene store, and what we did differently was we carried every single pair of like designer jeans, because back when I was in high school I am a millennial Everybody was wearing true religion jeans seven for all mankind. Jeans like designer jeans was just a thing. But I was a little heavier on the bottom. I have a booty, so I always had to get the waist taken in on my jeans. So I just said what if I could create a store, as to where you would get on site tailoring and you can literally buy your jeans, take it to the tailor in the back of the show, in the back of the shop, and then you can walk out with a new pair of jeans or pick it up in a few days, and that was the first business that I ever designed. So Genius, kind of like genius like this is genius, but with gene.
Speaker 2:And it was my first business and I loved it. I thought it was so late, I thought it was so fire, because I looked at it as to where there was a problem that I experienced and I knew that other people experienced this problem some way. Uniclowe started doing it years later. I'd like to think they saw my idea joking, joking, but yeah, that's where I got my start. And then eventually I was doing just random like creative direction shoes for my friends. But I didn't know what creative direction was when I was younger. I just knew that I wanted to create the look. I wanted to create the feel. I wanted to direct everything from the scenery to the poses that the models did. And what was crazy was is that I ended up getting a job that year to be the personal assistant to the creative director at Ford models on the image board Paul Rowland, who I love and then I got a job that year to be the personal assistant to the creative director at Ford models on the image board.
Speaker 2:And then I got a job that year to be the personal assistant to the creative director at Ford models on the image board and Paul actually had me like plan his son's third birthday party and it was the first time I had to produce an event like when I mean, I handmade the invitations, handmade the party bags, to the point where when the parents came to the party, they were looking for me specifically to know why was an eye making a business of designing these invitations and whatnot? And I was just like, honestly, I just did this for my boss. I just how it happened to be understand arts and crafts and it's a talent, but I really didn't know what I was doing back then. So years later I realized that I was a friend that everybody came to. Whenever they needed their hair done, nails done, I was the creator. When someone was looking for a specific fashion garment, they knew to come to me because they knew that I can find it, because I understood fashion terminology and I knew how to use SEO to my advantage in order to find what it was that they were looking for. And it just got to a point where everyone came to me for everything and I'm like you know what I was sitting.
Speaker 2:This is the time when I was working at a as a marketing manager at a car dealership, at a Honda car dealership, and I literally said to myself I'm gonna call myself the idea girl.
Speaker 2:Everyone, come for everything.
Speaker 2:I'm literally the idea girl and I literally took that and I ran with that and I want to say that was in the summer of 2016 that I came up with that and it's stuck ever since. But the idea girls actually just built off of me and my way of being and my authenticity and my thinking process and my ability to generate solutions and generate ideas. So I am the idea girl and that's where it came from in my brand identity is just me being me. You can see from my wardrobe, behind me, the flowers when you were mentioning about my vibrancy, and the rainbow and the colors. That's who I am. That's who I've always been and it emanates in everything that I do. You can tell when I've designed a brand, so much so when people, when they people see brands that look similar to what I've designed, they're like, oh, brittany did this and I'm like, no, it hasn't, but it just lets me know that I have my own style and my own way of doing things, which is part of who I am and part of the idea girl.
Speaker 1:Now, I absolutely love it so much. And for the listeners who are not aware of Miss Brittany, you need to go follow her. Tell them your socials, the not so CEO socials, as well as the idea girls, so as they're listening, they can scroll and see what we're talking about.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, yes. I always like to say if you want to be inspired by me, follow theideagirlco on Instagram, though it's where you'll find my portfolio and all my projects. If you want to learn from me, follow NotsoCEO. That is a community where I specifically teach everything on branding, wellness. I mean, it's all about, you know, working well. Then, if you want to, just, you know, follow me in my little life, you know, follow, she's that Brick, you know.
Speaker 1:Okay, that's where all the fun is, that's where all the fun is so follow me, guys, but both of you and I, I feel like we're in sync on being able to make our dreams a reality. You've built your dream body. You've built your dream career, like you've built all of these things, and for someone to be able to do that creation is not only like a career choice for us, it's a lifestyle. So, as we know, you do the fitness thing. You talked about doing meditation earlier and also journaling. Are those your only sources of balance or are there other ways that you like to find balance?
Speaker 2:In order for me to find balance, I have to make sure that I'm balanced first. So that involves me doing everything to take care of myself. Anything that I feel like amplifies my well-being physically, mentally, spiritually, emotionally. I like to make sure that I cover my basis right. So we have spiritual health, we have emotional health, we have physical health and we have mental health. So each of the exercises that I do is an activity for each part. So my spiritual wellness involves me praying and meditating. My emotional wellness is tied to my journaling and my mental health as well, because when you journal, you're able to really analyze situations sometimes and reflect, and before you get on the phone and you complain and you tell your friends everything that's going on, you can actually write it down and say you know what girl? You sound crazy, don't tell nobody this. It helps you figure out your own stuff.
Speaker 1:I'm one person I do not like drama.
Speaker 2:I drama is something that repels me, even if you my blood. Okay, I will cut you off.
Speaker 1:I will love you from afar, you feel me.
Speaker 2:But, one thing you're not going to do is just start my piece because it's really peaceful over here. But journaling itself just helps me uncover a lot of things about myself. It helps me say the things that are in my head out loud on paper, and working out in particular not only helps me physically, it helps me mentally. There are days when I feel like I'm just stuck in my head, or days I wake up because mental health is everything Right.
Speaker 2:Like I remember one day my little sister told me she stayed home from the school because she wasn't feeling good mentally, like she felt sad and she was like, well, my mental health needs to be treated like something like breast cancer. And when she said that, I was just like you know what. That's so true, because the brain controls every single organ in our bodies. We need to take care of our brains, and you can mostly only do that through rest, right, you can mostly do take care of our brains through crossword puzzles, thanks to exercise the brain. You need your brain. What's your brain? That you're legally dead? You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:Well, I think it's really important to control your mind because if you don't, our outside forces, our environments, can control our minds for us, from the music that we listen to to the food that we ingest and put into our body, from the people that we hang around to our thoughts and our memories that stay with us. So it's really important for me to make sure that I'm balancing myself in those ways and, most importantly, I feel like this is very important Connection, friendship Right, I love my homegirls. I have a very close friend group. We're very tight knit, but I also have individual relationships with people. My grandfather always used to tell me that you will never find another friend like you and I was. I never understood what you were saying when my early twenties. I'm like you're such a hater. You don't know what you're talking about. You know.
Speaker 1:God rest his soul.
Speaker 2:My grandfather always used to tell me that, and I got older and I realized that how can I be a friend to everyone else if I'm not a friend to myself? So, balancing, having that balance including boundaries right, Like if I told you I was going to go to a party on Tuesday, and Friday comes and I'm not feeling good, I'm going to let you know, girl, I ain't going to this party.
Speaker 2:And it's not because I don't love you, but it's because I know I'm not going to be my best self when I'm here. I'm not here mentally, I'm doing other things. But that comes as you go. You get older because I used to be a little people. A little people, please a girl.
Speaker 1:Oh, I'm getting over that. People pleasing sent me to the hospital and that's. That is a a whole podcast episode I can do and I will entitle it people pleasing sent me to the hospital because child it's, it's self deprecating, it's a way of truly just walking out on yourself in order to show up for others, and I think that is but backwards and I'm sad that our culture kind of ingrained, set into our minds at a very young age, especially as black woman, because as the backbone quote unquote of the community, we're forced to swallow the pill of enduring a lot of pain and unnecessary bull crap in order to make everyone else Okay. And it's like why do I have to deal with that? Why do I have to please everybody? Why do I have to hold my tongue and not speak up for myself? Cause I saw it TikTok one time and it said that I stopped keeping the peace because I had to realize whose peace was I keeping.
Speaker 1:While I'm over here trying to calm the waters around me, I'm creating an internal war within myself and then you become very resentful and like just bitter, and I'm like I can't live like that. I need peace around me in me, flowing through me at all times, and so that's just balancing every single part of your life, being extremely intentional about the color of my home, very intentional about my style, like how I express myself in every facet of my life, what I'm feeding myself, what I'm listening to, what I'm reading, and I feel like, as creatives, we understand the necessity of creating our dream lives, developing a new blueprint for what is necessary We've gotten into your life, how you're doing things for you, how you're creating balance. But I'm sure a lot of the listeners want to know what was the journey like to building the idea girl and what has been some of the pros and cons of being, or going from freely? Answer to CEO.
Speaker 2:Ooh, this is a good question. My journey to building the idea girl was not easy, but it was very transitional. Right, you start from the bottom. Everything is always transitional, so I started from the bottom of not really knowing what I was doing. All I knew was that I wanted to be doing something, and I didn't care what it took to get there. And what I mean is that you don't have to step on people's toes. You don't have to step on people to get to where you need to be. I like to think of myself. I'm a very kind-hearted person, so my therapist even told me that she's like. You know, your problem is that you're doing everything from a heart, space and world that is very cold, especially a city that's very cold, and that's why you end up hurt a lot of the time and your boundaries feel like they've been stepped on. And so, for the listeners, who don't know.
Speaker 1:She lives in New York, so that's why she said it's a city that's cold.
Speaker 2:Yes, New York is very each-you-up. Spit you out, but you will come out tougher than ever. And I'm very proud of being from New York. I'm a Brooklyn girl throwing, throwing, throwing born and raised, so New York itself is the city that a lot of people come to to find themselves to climb the corporate ladder, to climb the creative ladder, to expand their network. New York is so many of these things to people.
Speaker 2:And at least for myself. I found it to be very difficult to travel within circles and to find that group of friends, because you know they do say that your net worth is your network.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 2:I found it very difficult for me to find my network in the beginning and then eventually I kind of found my niche. So when I first started the Idea Girl, and even when it came to first finding clients, I made sure I put myself in the right rooms, meaning that I was going to events where there were people that I would love to work with. I was going to women's events, women-centered events, entrepreneurial events. I was going to wellness events. I was going to beauty events. I was in the rooms with people that I felt were aligned with me and aligned with my mission as an individual. So with me going to these events, I met many different people.
Speaker 2:I met the founder of Basebutter Shaneeel they're no longer in operation, but that was one of the first companies that I did the branding for, especially when it came to product. It was like my first time really doing a product-based brand, which I am very grateful for that experience. And I met someone else there who I was throwing events with. So by going to these events and putting myself out there, I stopped using the excuse as to where. Oh, I didn't know anybody, I didn't know how to get started and I literally threw myself out there and decided to figure it out. I had to figure it out. I would look at the things that I've done in my life and I said you know what you got this? If you can learn something as complicated as forensic chemistry, you damn sure can figure out how to navigate your way as an entrepreneur.
Speaker 2:So I also at the time had friends who were interested in entrepreneurship, so I would work on various projects with them. It would be things from as small as doing a Snapchat filter, because that was the thing back then. If someone had an event, we would do a little Snapchat filter and whatnot. At the time, I would do social media graphics because, again, I was working at a car dealership as a marketing manager, so that's when I really learned things about marketing Facebook ads, social media ads. So that was the thing back then. And, again, it started off really small with what I was doing and it started to become just word of mouth. In addition to me posting my journey and sharing on Instagram behind the scenes and the things that I was doing, I was very engaging with my audience. I would take them behind the scenes.
Speaker 2:I would show them the things that I was doing. I would capture and document my journey as someone who didn't know what they were doing. But I guess that made it look good and I think because I was so unafraid to be seen trying that it inspired a lot of other people around me. So, continued, I remember I ended up getting a job. So this is what really kind of kicked off the idea girl. I got a job working at a very large luxury fashion retailer and I ended up getting a job on the project management team. I knew nothing about project management.
Speaker 2:I literally took this job on a whim. I was living with my ex-boyfriend in Florida and we were going back and forth and I was like you know what? I'm just going to leave. And just like that, I got a phone call for me to come to New York for a job interview. Like, literally, god was just like yeah, girl, we out, bye. Okay, we out, we out. And I remember I will never forget this. This was in 2017.
Speaker 2:And one of my best friends, because I was so broke I had left my other job at the time to pursue the idea girl full time and I really didn't know I was doing it, but I just refused to be in an office with an verbally abusive boss Girl. Do I have stories? So I picked up everything. My friend gave me the money for my plane ticket to come to New York. I went on a job interview for a marketing role at the company and literally as soon as I left the building they told me that I didn't get the job. Like as soon as I left and I remember just like walking down the street and I walked all the way from like Midtown, all the way to the West Village and I said to myself don't worry, there's going to be something better for you.
Speaker 2:I remember just leaving with this energy, like there's going to be something better for you. I happened to stay in New York for a week, literally got a call one day hey, brittany, can you actually come back? There's another role in a different department and I went that same day for that interview and got hired on the spot.
Speaker 1:So I was at that job I was at.
Speaker 2:I look at God. So I was at that job for about three months. It was for a temp role on a project management team for a fashion company. So I learned everything there needs to know about project management and I did not know how or why I got on a project management team. But let me tell you something. This role set me up for the idea girl, because project management is one of the biggest skills you need in order for you to be a creative director. People think creative directors just create no baby. You got to manage. You got to manage the production. You got to manage. Okay.
Speaker 2:There's so much more you need to do so. At the time I was still doing idea girl work. Anytime anyone's back was turned. I was working on little social media graphics, working on little newsletters. I was like dude, that was my thing. After a point in time, I started designing newsletters for people. So you know, making my little 125, 110 per newsletter and making $500 a week at Calvin I want to say I was only 26 at the time. I want to say I was about 26 years old at the time.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 2:I'm doing all of this and I wanted the job at Calvin so bad. I wanted oh, I'm saying the name of the company- I wanted the job. I went, whatever I was working at Calvin Klein, whatever I was working, I wanted the job so bad because I was working at the time this one, raf Simmins, took over and I was working for 205 West 39th Street. It's the brand that they. They rebranded Calvin Klein collection, which was their high end collection, into 205 West 39.
Speaker 2:And I remember I was in the sex trees team and project management and I wanted the job so bad, I wanted to be a project management assistant so bad, and it was almost like I abandoned everything that I was doing with the idea girl. So I feel like the universe was like yeah, you want this bad, this job so bad, huh, you so scared to do things on your own right. Surprise, you're fired. And I literally got fired the day before Thanksgiving and I remember just like whoa, I was so shocked, even though the office conditions.
Speaker 2:I mean you can talk about that another time. But literally two days later I had to dog sit for my friend while he went to Atlanta. I got a message from somebody and they were like hey, do you design newsletters? And I'm like, yeah. She's like, do you think you could design these newsletters for me? So I'm like, okay, cool. So she hit me up, he ended up speaking and it went from me designing her newsletters to me doing a whole rebrand.
Speaker 2:At the time did not know what the hell I was doing. I just knew I was doing a logo and I had to do a Shopify site, and I've never designed a Shopify site before in my life. I learned how to design a Shopify site and that was for my like one of my first real clients, and she's still one of my clients. I do every single rebrand for them. I'm not sure if anyone is familiar with the brand. You've probably seen it called Lily's Closet. That was my client. That was my first client. Lily literally hit me up and took me from designing newsletters to designing full blown brands. That was essentially my first client and I have been doing everything for Lily's Closet since 2017. So this was literally two days after my job that I started working, losing my job. I started working with Lily and the retainer of what she was paying me replaced my salary plus more working at Calvin.
Speaker 1:Oh okay. So there's a lot that I want to unpack here because I, like people don't understand. I love God so much. You just don't understand, and I feel like there are so many women who hold on so tight to the idea of what they think is right, what they think is, like security, right.
Speaker 1:And to step out on faith and to do your own thing takes a crazy amount of faith. They can move mountains, but you also, you almost have to be delusional to think that you can manifest your prayers, you can bring them to reality, because you cannot do it on your own. And to know and see that you, for a second, thought like, oh, I'm meant to be a project manager, but God's redirection was his reinvigration of the God idea he implanted inside of you, which was the idea girl, he's like girl. We need to pivot back to that. Like I put you into this role, in this position, to learn a little bit, and now it's time to roll on back out. And sometimes I like to remind myself that God not only orders our steps, but he also orders our stops. So you know, in that instance, calvin Klein was a stop. It was just a stop along the journey that brought you back to where you needed to be.
Speaker 2:Yes, oh, my goodness, I love that so much because it was a stop. I needed to learn everything there was to know about project management, because I used to have to put together the calendars for the retail year from when we were going to have production done in China, arranging meetings, arranging strategy sessions. I had to do all of that for not only the year that we were in, but for two years in advance, which was not. And, yes, I literally used to physically put together these calendars, like with card stock, like with huge poster boards. I used to have to put these calendars together and block them out for the design team and I'm just so grateful because little did I know that two years later I would be building my own design team.
Speaker 2:So, it was. It was serendipitous, it was bittersweet because at the time I couldn't see the blessing. And then working with Lily's closet Lily is one of my. I love this one man that is my girl through and through my Scorpio sis.
Speaker 2:I that is my girl through and through. I adore her and she is just also just extraordinary and has taught me so much about business, even about learning about the profit first method. She literally taught me how to scale and I adore her so much. I'm so grateful for her and that opportunity that she gave me and working with Lily's closet and creating their emails, you know. Now she has a bigger team, you know, which is just even seeing her growth has just been inspirational and I literally now just come in as kind of like the offsite CBO, so it's like when it comes to just like the big stuff.
Speaker 2:that's now when I kind of step in and I'm like, okay, it's time to do rebrand, I'll do the rebrand, or it's time to redo all the emails and we need new cops. So I pretty much take on all the bigger projects, but mostly now we just hang out.
Speaker 2:you know, like now we're just now, we're just friends at this point, which is beautiful, but that was the foundation for me to turn the idea girl from just doing everything I knew how to do creative in to actually being a brand strategy and design practice and then from that project.
Speaker 2:I began working with base butter. Base butter introduced me to the founder of hyper skin, desiree, and I did hyper skin branding and when I first started I was like one of the only like black owned black female agencies that was working with black women and helping them develop their brands. I inspired so many other women to do the same and that was a part of one of my purposes. Right was to recreate the black wall street. So in my own little way, I was doing that and that's how essentially, I really started the idea girl.
Speaker 2:I went from not really know what I was doing to ended up getting this role in project management, then randomly getting my first client, and then what really allowed me to work with so many other clients was because I understood my processes, like I understood project management and how to move a project along, how to have milestones, how to actually get things done. Of course, it took for me to have projects that didn't go so well, to know how to manage them better. It just took for me to be like wait, I did this at Calvin Klein, oh my God, let me just use Asana figuring out the software and whatnot.
Speaker 2:When I used to work at the car dealerships, we had something called there's something called CRM, which is client relations management. So if you ever use the honey book or a Debsado, I learned how to use that with like Reynolds and Reynolds and Salesforce, working at car dealerships as a receptionist, because every client that came into the car dealership had their own profile, they had their own email, they had everything their contract in one place. So I literally took everything that I learned from all my other jobs and figured out how to transfer these skills into what I was currently doing Now as my role as the idea girl. Then it got to a point where I couldn't do the work by myself anymore. So I remember hiring my first two designers in August of 2019. And then from there, I started expanding my team, adding on more team members.
Speaker 2:When I first started, it was by myself, but for part of 2018, I would say, because I really was like full-time, full-throttle in 2018. Like, the day I got fired was the day before Thanksgiving. So since then I've been on my own completely. I've never looked back. I mean, I'd be looking at the salaries, since I was another life.
Speaker 1:I don't feel like giving up my life like that and the journey from being a freelancer to a founder.
Speaker 2:A lot of it has to also deal with what do you want right? And people think just being a founder is having this big team, but really and truly it's about being a leader and I feel like in my role as the idea girl, I was a leader. You know, I didn't sit there and talk about my employees and why they weren't doing the work that they did. I actually sat there with them and I helped them and I helped take them to higher heights and every single person that has worked for me literally has been well off. Like they have created their own businesses. They've created their own products and I'm so grateful to literally have just been there in the beginning of the journey to help inspire them to take that path of designing a life for themselves.
Speaker 1:And there's a few things that I want to harp on. For a second One, you mentioned not being afraid to be seen trying. I believe the best thing you can do is fail forward, like by all means, especially if you want to go from a space of being a freelancer to a founder. For me, my founder story started at 16, had a God vision planted inside me and I just went forward and I constantly battle with failing forward because I feel like so many things start to happen around me that start to shift my priorities and I'm constantly having to fight for, like what you said, what I want.
Speaker 1:What I want is to be the CEO of a globally known creative marketing agency and consultancy, and so that looks like prioritizing my priorities. The priority is the RICU agency, the priority is something like consultancy. Like that is the priority, not what everyone else brings to me, not the opportunities that are brought to my face. At some point you have to become choosy and that is the really hard part, and I think that's what separates freelancer from founder. Freelancer just takes whatever's brought to them, but the founder is like look, this is the vision, this is the mission, this is the purpose. If it's not an alignment, we're not doing it.
Speaker 2:That's having a brand. It's like when you're a freelancer you're just literally, it's just built on you, versus becoming a founder. You own a brand right. You have your own mission, you have your own vision. You have your own target audience, with the people that you feel like are aligned with you. Like I work with a specific set of clients, I mostly like working with wellness, beauty and fashion brands. That's my niche, because those are the things that I'm passionate about. You know what I mean, exactly so we do have to be picky and we do have to be choosy when it comes to the things that we want in our lives.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. And another thing you talked about is how every time someone works with you or the idea girl, it's like a springboard for their career. They catapult and they go somewhere else and they just flourish. And I feel like the most beautiful thing about girlhood and sisterhood for me, especially in my career, is that every single time I've ever gotten a extremely amazing opportunity, it was because of a black woman.
Speaker 2:Oh, my gosh Girl, I would not be here. Let me tell you all the opportunities that I have gotten, the reason why I'm even able to be the idea girl, the reason why I'm able to be myself, is because of black women. Black women have paid me more than any corporate job I have ever had. Black women are the ones who remind me of opportunity. Black women are the reason why I'm even able to have this life. You know, I am them, they are me, we are, we Like. If it wasn't for us, if it wasn't for women believing in me, if it wasn't for women who look like me. But you know what? I created my business.
Speaker 2:I literally heard in the shower one day you need to recreate the black wall street. I'm like. First of all, who the fuck said that I'm like? Who said that? It was like the same voice as the kid who told me you're going to become a, you need to design your own clothes. It was the same voice. I'm guessing it was an ancestor. Right, I'm guessing it was an ancestor. And when I look at the things my ancestors have done, I'm just like, wow, it literally comes like being a fashion designer. My grandmother was a pattern maker.
Speaker 2:My other grandmother was a seamstress, like it only makes sense if this is my path and I'll get into that a little later, but I literally heard her voice. It was like you need to recreate the black wall street and I'm like what? First of all, what the fuck is black wall street? Coincidentally, I had an Africana studies class in college in my junior year at.
Speaker 2:Africana studies class, where I learned everything, everything about the history of Africa. I'm talking about the Somgai Empire, the Ghanaian Empire, the Malian Empire. This was before there was such thing as a mile, a Mali or a Ghana country. There were actual empires and the countries themselves were named after the empires. They were full blown empires. I learned about Monsimosa and how he had so much wealth. He literally disrupted and caused a depression in the Europe economy because of how much money he may have and the wealth that he was just giving out. I learned so much about that and I was like, oh my God. And then I learned about Tulsa, oklahoma, rosewood, florida. I learned so much about all these locations and learned about our history and I was just like wow.
Speaker 2:And I remember, around the time there was a lot of protests around. I want to say 2016,. This is when the Black Lives Matter movement started. And I remember saying to myself I was so frustrated. I was so frustrated from everything going on. And I remember saying to myself I'm going to do something different because I'm tired of protesting. But everybody has a job. Processing is equally as important, but I said I don't have to serve this way.
Speaker 2:What can I do? And literally I married the idea girl and I said I'm going to help Black people build businesses and I am going to help us shift the economic scale because the more of us, the more of us, the more entrepreneurs Black more. Now, not everyone's supposed to be entrepreneur. Let me just say that Not everyone's supposed to be entrepreneur. But ownership, ownership in general is important to us.
Speaker 2:Everybody owns something, every major family, from Louis Vuitton, gucci, prada, whatever. All of these companies are all families. Ford, the cars we use, these are all families and that's something that we need to understand. So my mission is centered and rooted in who I am and where I come from, which it resonates and connects to many other people, to who they are and where they come from. And my Blackness is what makes me great. My Blackness is what makes me creative, my Blackness is what makes me resilient, my Blackness is what makes me innovative and being a woman, you know, add that cherry on top of it all. You know, it makes me powerful and it makes me intuitive, it makes me magical, and I'm just so grateful for what my community has not only done for me, but what we've done for each other. We show up for each other buy each other's products.
Speaker 1:We root for each other and it's such a beautiful movement to be a part of One thing, as I'm getting older and I'm truly grasping, is that wealth is our birthright. You get what I'm saying. Like, we are wealthy in spirit, we are wealthy in history and spirituality, and so there is no reason why we can't go out there and get it. But we have to understand the grave responsibility of helping our brothers and our sisters and, like you said, everyone doesn't play the exact same role. But just play your part and focus on the one thing that you can do each day to be of a helping hand to your brother or your sister, and we will better the community by building bridges to one another each and every day. As you said, the start of your career started because a Black woman decided to build that bridge for you and give you an opportunity to show up and build newsletters for her, and now she has this e-commerce empire.
Speaker 2:Yes, she's killing it. She's killing it. But you know what, in order for someone to build that bridge, you got to show up, right? I kind of? I feel like sometimes it's like you know, even saying the universe, god, whichever you feel like you know using in this instant, but the omnipotent power that be sees everything. You, when you take two inches, it will take you two miles, okay, but you have to be willing to show up. You can't just expect to just be carried from point zero all the way to a thousand. You got to at least take five steps to be carried the next 500, because when you show up for yourself, the universe recognizes that and it recognizes what you're aligning yourself with and it will take you all the way you need to go.
Speaker 2:And it's funny because, speaking to everything, I had no intention of being an agency. Actually, I hated it. Wow, I hated it Right, and that's the God on his truth. You know, I just wanted to be the idea girl. However, I'm very grateful to see that I was able to run an agency, that I was able to manage a team and I proved to myself that I can do all those things, but that wasn't what I was originally here to do. I'm here to be beautiful, to create beautiful things and to help people see the beauty in themselves, and it doesn't mean that I need to own an agency in order for me to do that.
Speaker 1:So in 2022, you founded NotSoCEO, the professional playground, leveling the playing field to create better balance between being self-made and self-care. And episode one we just spelled how you scaled the idea girl to a team of 20, after five years of burnout, down to a team of one. So can you tell our listeners what that transition was like?
Speaker 2:Oh, absolutely, oh, my goodness, that transition is for where I am now, which is very happy and fulfilled and joyful.
Speaker 2:So I scaled my team and I originally did not envision myself running an agency. This was just me being Brittany, me being the idea girl. I had a talent, I was building brands, but it got to a point where I realized I couldn't do it by myself anymore. So I ended up hiring too many people way too early, way too soon. And another one of my issues is that when you're a people pleaser unfortunately which I find out later on is actually linked to daddy issues there's a rule right, be slow to hire and be quick to fire. And now I had amazing team members. But I've had certain situations with certain team members where I was so afraid of looking mean that I didn't let them go, even though my spirit told me to let them go. I went against it because I was so worried about how I looked to other people, versus what felt right, versus what I knew to be true, but my intuition could not prove it to me.
Speaker 2:And that's the problem with the mind. Right, the mind will play tricks on you. The mind is like oh, you can't look this way to other people versus. Your spirit's going to be like fire her. I mean, I ain't got no other reason to tell you but to fire her.
Speaker 2:Like your spirit will literally tell you in a few words, let them go. And you're like, why, trying to rationalize? Trying to rationalize Like even and this could even extend to relationships like right, like dating men there are some men that I knew it shouldn't have gotten that far. And my spirit would tell me things and I'd just be like, no, no, no, my mind wants to be right, my mind wants to be seen this way. I want to be a wife, so I'm going to endure the bullshit because I'm a black woman and I'm supposed to stick with my black man.
Speaker 1:Girl leave Leave.
Speaker 2:You're right. Is your son and you listening? If that's not, you in any way, girl, leave, leave that man, leave that man, ok. Or that woman, or what? Or they them there, ok, ok.
Speaker 2:And and when I was running my agency, I was so burnt out, right, I was trying to meet all these deadlines. I took on way too many clients, so it wasn't even, it wasn't even my team, it was me. I was the problem, I was the cancer. I was saying yes to every and everybody because I wanted to help everyone. And I remember my mom said something to me. She said the reason why you're so quick to run and try to solve everyone else's problems is because you're trying to avoid solving your own Girl. That hit me Good. My mom is a brutal, sad and serious. She won't tell you the brutal truth, ok. And I was just like, oh my God, right, oh my God. And she was right. Because then I listened to this TikTok this morning and it was like the reason why people always attract people that need help is because you see everything of the project, and I seen everything in the project and it was easier to build projects and build brands for people instead of focusing on myself and what I wanted to build for myself.
Speaker 2:So it got to the point where I ran out of money very poor money management, oh my God. One thing I'm going to tell people if you are going to scale and run an agency or run a business, the only two team members you need in the beginning, when you're first starting out, is an accountant and a lawyer, before you even hire other designers, before you hire anybody else, because you need one person to keep your books and keep your money together till you need a person overseeing these contracts. Ok, so that's very, very, very important for anyone that is starting out on their own Take notes.
Speaker 2:To have a service-based organization, and that's one thing. I can't regret it, you know I've done it, but I've learned and that's why I'm not afraid of failure, because you get experience and you get education out of it. So now I know better. When it comes to running my other companies and my other endeavors and projects, I wanted to do so again. I was the cancer right. I had poor. Poor even to the point where some of my team members was like Brittany, you know, this lady needs to pay more money. You know, like you, you you can't do this. I remember one of my team members, sophia. She said Brittany, you know damn well, this lady needs to pay you to do this project over again.
Speaker 2:But I was so help and people pleasing and I'm literally the person who destroyed my company Like I'm. I'm the person who destroyed it because I was so worried about how I looked to other people that I completely disregarded how I felt and what was right for me. And this goes back to what you were saying about people pleasing. Like I completely dishonored myself. I would forgo sleep, I would stay up and do overnight all the time. I was the smallest I'd ever been in my life, like I would think I was the time like maybe a hundred and 13 pounds. I hadn't weighed that much since I was 13 years old and it was all from people pleasing, taking on way too much, not saying no, wanting to help everybody but myself. And I got to a point where I looked at my bank accounts and they were all negative and I said to myself I can't do this anymore. I can't do this anymore. And at two o'clock in the morning I wrote a long email and told everybody on my team that I could no longer afford to run this company and I will take on all the projects by myself. And it was so painful to have to write this email. I remember crying, crying, writing this email.
Speaker 2:I was burnt out. I was in a very sucky relationship. I was not happy. I didn't have money and whatever little money that I had, I would have situations where I request feedback in 48 hours. I had clients that would be like I'm going on vacation and send they feedback three days sorry, three weeks later and I'm like that's not pushing the project back. So I literally was past the break-even point on projects and I was afraid to speak up. I was afraid to say you got to pay for extra revision and this is why this is essentially was the foundation for not so CEO. I was on the phone with my godmother slash therapist one day and we're talking and I'm like crying. I'm like, oh my God, I failed. Oh my God, I can't believe. I'm like the worst CEO ever. I'm like a not so CEO. And as soon as those words left my mouth, she was like oh my God. And I was like oh my God. She was like go check and see if that domain is available right now.
Speaker 1:She knew that was gold.
Speaker 2:So I went, I'm like, I got the Instagram account, I went and purchased the domain on the call with her and that was the beginning of not so CEO. The idea girl don't get me wrong is still alive. She's still alive. However, I take on projects that I want to do versus like. It's kind of like it's not my primary source of business nowadays. It's kind of one of those things, like if I see a project that I'm really, really, really passionate about it and I'm like, oh, I believe in you girl, I'm the guy, you know, I'm going to get on it, not so, ceo.
Speaker 2:That's my baby and because it has so much to do with my transition, and I knew that I was not the only person because black women are burning out, whether it's in corporate, whether it's in entrepreneurship. Black women are working 10 times harder. We're seeing 10 times less of the money, 100 times less than our counterparts. Forget about funding, don't get. I think, if I'm not mistaken, only 2 to 3% of women. Women get funding and amount for black women is way less Right.
Speaker 2:We're talking about women and getting access to capital. So I noticed like I needed capital, but it was so hard for me to get capital because I had a service based business and it was so hard to get grants and things in that nature. So I realized that there was a bigger issue at hand. The issue was was that women could not afford to pay creatives and creatives could not afford to live, and it was a huge issue.
Speaker 2:Now you know, I'll be transparent and say like, when it comes to like brand strategy projects, like I started 15,000 now versus working with a whole team. I actually charge that much because I've built my resume, I've done the work, I've been in the trenches. And not only that, my track record, which is my clients track records, is my proof of concept. So not only do I notice, it's going to work and you got my brain. This is, this is the proof to watch range beauty, when two investors on Shark Tank, to watch them get into the Sephora Incubator, to watch them win the $50,000 for the Glossier grant, all of those things. Let me know, girl pat on the back, job all done, you did it. I wasn't doing it for my name to be anywhere, I was doing it for them.
Speaker 2:Right, and now I'm at a point where I've done it for so many people, when are you going to do it for yourself? And this kind of goes back to my ego. Right, let's go back to checking your ego. Why do you feel like you're only valued by how you help people and not how you help yourself? What's crazy is my burnout was predicated almost, I want to say, three years before it actually happened, by this woman who's a spiritualist. I was at like a health and wellness event for one of my past clients back in the summer of 2019. The lady was trying to find me the whole event. She was like you and I got to talk. You had a little like man.
Speaker 1:Oh, hey, you know you get scared of those.
Speaker 2:She was like you got, we got to talk. We got to talk you and me. We need to talk outside and I'm just like who sent you? You know what I'm saying. So finally, at the end of the event because I remember there was a session of the event where a lot of the woman in the room were crying it was like this very deep meditative. I was probably one of the very few people in there who was not crying and I was holding somebody else. She told me you outside right now. She put me on a corner in Williamsburg and she was like I want you to hula hoop right now. I'm like, miss Stop. She's like do it right now.
Speaker 2:It's crazy is that she followed my voice for the whole event. I had no clue that this woman was blind. Right, had me go outside, had me hula hoop on the corner and I kept up the whole person time. I stopped and she was like how did that feel? I was like I'm so good, I felt focused. She was like what were you focused on doing? I said keeping the hula hoop up. She said good, because I want to let you know something the sun doesn't revolve around the other planets. The other planets revolve around the sun. Your problem is is that you're going to crash and burn because you're focused on helping everybody else but you and Ricky. I didn't take what she said so hard. I did not listen and everything she said ended up coming true. Years later I was burnt out. Actually, that was the start of my burnout. She identified it before my physical symptoms started showing, like having stomach issues. Stomach issues, man stress will mess your stomach up. Don't get me started.
Speaker 1:It really will.
Speaker 2:Me being exhausted, me feeling fatigued, no matter how much sleep I got. For years I was only getting four to five hours of sleep a night. I'm very proud to say, if you look at my iPhone and you see the sleep, it says at least eight to nine hours a night.
Speaker 1:Okay, I'm very proud, I'm very, very, very proud.
Speaker 2:But that was essentially the idea. I thought I was something that I wasn't. I wanted to be of service to everybody else. I wanted to be known as the helper. Since when is the helper celebrated?
Speaker 2:You know, Did I take the helper role because it made me feel like I was valuable to people? Or was it because I assumed the role as the idea girl Because I wanted to be seen as the person that helped everybody but I wasn't helping myself? Or did I do it because I was too afraid to launch my own brand? So I loved playing the background role to help everybody else because I was too scared of launching my ideas into existence. There was a lot of things I had to sit with, a lot of questions that I had, but running the idea girl was definitely a proud moment for me. I love every single person I work with. Every woman who was on my team oh, my goodness, phenomenal, phenomenal. Every person, whether we had a little clash or whatever. Every person that I work with. I'm very proud of them till this day and I only hope that they're proud of me. But I'm still in contact with almost everybody that I've ever worked with. Luckily, I haven't had any crazy fallouts or anything like that too much.
Speaker 1:Okay, good.
Speaker 2:But it was the start of a new journey for me, which is not so CEO, which is my baby, which means everything to me, which is my pride and my joy and my focus, and all not so CEO is, honestly, is the baby of the idea girl. I started something called the idea girl gang years ago and I realized, because not everybody was a client and not everybody was able to access my services, because money hello and I had people who wanted to just learn from me.
Speaker 2:So that's why I created the idea girl gang and then, you know, kind of went silent and then I brought it back to life in 2022, starting with the podcast, and now not so CEO is more so kind of like a school for entrepreneurs who want, who are very passionate about it, an idea and something that they have, and pretty much I'm just supplying you with all the tools that you need to help you get there along the way.
Speaker 1:And, for those of you who don't know, she has a the making the brand bundle. It's a really a creative textbook, and right now it's available for a certain price. That is a good price because if you're in college, you know how expensive textbooks are, and this is a textbook that's going to be able to help you actualize your ideas and manifest them and bring them to reality, because, as creatives, for us this is like second nature, but for a lot of you who are creatively tapped in, this will really help you build out those ideas and strengthen them. So can you tell them where they can find this, the making the brand bundle?
Speaker 2:Yes, you can find the making the brand bundle on not so CEOco. Making the brand bundle is my pride and joy. I spent months working on this book and it is literally my exact process for building a brand from A to Z and just seeing people complete it. I have creatives by the book because there's a lot of creatives out there who want to freshen up their strategy. A lot of creatives also want to build their own products because sometimes, as creatives, you get tired of looking at your own ideas and sometimes you need another person to bounce ideas off of Creatives need to hang around creatives, because you cannot be the only creative person in the room.
Speaker 2:Okay, Another creative is going to help you take your idea next level, like, if you are a marketer, hang around other marketers, okay to help you expand on your idea. Okay, you need to hang around other people who think, if not bigger than you, then just as big as you.
Speaker 2:That's so important, but I also I'm coming out with. I have a whole bunch of other projects and things that I'm launching, because what I'm doing is the same thing as the idea girl, but just on a bigger scale. It made me feel horrible that I couldn't take on all those clients. I couldn't take one.
Speaker 2:Right, like girl I was taking on 20,. I remember one time I rostered with 20 people in a quarter and I was just like this is nuts, this is. This is insane. It was insane and I realized I want to help so many more people, right.
Speaker 1:How can I?
Speaker 2:do that? How can I make myself available to everybody? And what I've did is just make what I do a lot more accessible. I've made it much more feasible. I've made it more simpler. You know when it comes to building a brand and you don't have to spend $15,000 to get a brand strategy for me. You can literally buy my book, which is on sale currently for 209, but it's going back up to 299.
Speaker 2:Okay, I better get it while you can get it while you can, and actually it might not even stay 299, because I had a girl in my comment that said Brittney just made a Bible for y'all. This should be $500. In the comments, okay, someone was like, someone was like this needs to be $500. I'm going to get it while it's 299. And I am just so passionate about not so CEO in general, just because we all need a place as to where we can be self-made, but we prioritize self-care Right.
Speaker 2:So my business is not just about building a brand. It's not about just building the dream job for yourself. It's about also building that dream life for yourself being well pouring into your cup so that way you can show it for everybody else. You cannot pour from an empty cup, and that is one of my missions with not so CEO. We have a lot of burnt out founders out there. We're seeing a lot of people shut down their companies, walk away from it, because they just don't have the capacity anymore. Right, and I want to be that leveled playing field. Right, I want women to be able to not only prioritize making money, but also prioritize their self-care routines and rituals, their mental health, their physical health. So I do events as well. We did a Pilates event last year. Wellness centered events, educational centered events. But not so, ceo, is literally like the college that you wish you would have gone to if you could. Just, instead of picking a major, you pick an idea and literally you get.
Speaker 2:Oh, I love that the forces that you need in order for you to make this what you need and, of course, building it alongside a community. Hello, okay, god gifted me with. Everything God gifted me with is the power of bringing people together, and I just have a knack for introducing the right people. I just be like you need to meet this person. That is one of my gifts.
Speaker 1:And I love doing it. You talked about so many different things in the journey from freelancer to founder, to different founder, to self-care enthusiasts, and all of it has just been so inspiring for me. I met her at culture con and that me even being at culture con was like a whirlwind, because the agency I worked for the previous summer knew that I was an influencer and one of the staff members was like we should have her come and do interviews for Google. So I was like I was just excited to be there. I saw you and I was like girl, I love everything about you. I couldn't even say hi, I just was like girl, I love everything about you. You were like girl, I love everything about you and I was like this is crazy, this is insane. I have been watching this woman build iconic brands. I've been watching her build community and engagement and I've just never seen anyone do the things that you do.
Speaker 1:I was on your page doing my show notes and I found myself in your comments 185 weeks ago and I said love this. And it was under your brand identity for Topicals and you were announcing the work that you had done with another designer to build their packaging design and I was just like the way I've been a fan for years now. Like for those of you who can't do the math, that was 2020. 185 weeks ago was 2020. So to know that you have been building impact in community for so long me at that time, I was 18. I was doing creative work for about two years, seriously at that point, and I loved it. And I loved how you would create really unique branded trends on your social censoring. Everyone who was a creative might be a CEO, might be a freelancer. So just come and appreciate your art. And I remember there was one specific piece of content that you would do hashtag. That's my type. I loved it down. You would showcase the different typefaces with you. I loved it so much, okay.
Speaker 2:You are, ricky. You are first of all. I'm so grateful to know you. It's so funny because when I meet people, it's hilarious when people don't believe that I'm approachable. I'm the most approachable.
Speaker 1:She is y'all.
Speaker 2:There is. I'm probably one of the most approachable person when somebody comes up to me and you inspire me. You have to keep me from crying, okay, because I'm just like, oh my God, I just cannot believe that little Britney from 1998 who wanted to be a designer. I always just think back to that little Britney.
Speaker 2:And so who I've transformed into. It's just wild when people come up to me and they tell me that they inspire me and I'm not. I'm trying not to get emotional because impact is so important. We focus so much on money, we build businesses because we want to make money and we forget about transforming people's lives, impacting lives and I realized.
Speaker 2:By me being myself. I inspired people. I didn't even need to do the whole big agency thing. It wasn't about my accomplishments, it wasn't about any of that. It was just me actually inspiring people to take a chance on themselves, to bet on themselves, and I feel like that's the impact that I've been able to make is by me being myself, by me chasing after what I wanted and inspiring other people to do the same. I feel like that is just something I can't ignore.
Speaker 2:And community, again, it's really important to me, like the friendships that I've cultivated, the relationships, the connections. I don't even like to call it my network, because I don't even see it that way. I see it as like my tree. I see it as my tree. We have roots, we have branches, but it all stems from this one place, and I'm just so grateful just to everyone that I meet, everyone whose lives I touch and the ways in which they've been able to touch my life, and all the founders that I've worked with. Thank you to them for trusting me into helping them build what they've built. Thank you to you. I had no clue. Like you're 18 years old, I'm just like, oh my God. Because that reminds me and inspires me to continue to keep going. I cannot stop because there are more rings out there and I can't stop this.
Speaker 2:It didn't exist when I first started, and sometimes you have to be the first to do things if you don't see it out there. One of my girlfriends always says sometimes when you have an idea, it's like painting a color that doesn't exist yet and I was just like, well, she snatched my soul with that one. Every time she says that one of my girls Simone, love you, girl, love you, girl down. I'm always going to say your quote and always quote you on that, because she did one with that and the idea girl. At first I didn't know what color I was painting, you know, but it ended up being this beautiful rainbow and when you were talking about, that's my type. It's funny because I'm actually doing something with. That's my type again. Oh, I cannot wait to see it. You will be the first to know. But right now I'm assuming the role is not only just a leader, but also as an instructor, as an educator, as you know.
Speaker 2:I don't like to refer to myself as an influencer, but I would refer to myself as a taste maker, more than an influencer you know, because I ain't going to influence you, but I got great taste in my taste going, inspire you, you know, and making impact.
Speaker 1:I love everything about you and I told you at Coach Crown I'm like I don't fan girl a lot but, like in this moment, it's warranted because, like you said a lot of times, when you're looking out there and you have a God idea and you see no, no blueprint, it is hard to believe that what you want can be made a reality. And finding the idea girl for me was confirmation that like, wow, I can make a living off of my creative ideas. I can be not only a graphic designer, but I can be a life designer. I can help people actualize the things that they want for themselves and be intentional in every aspect of their life through their home, through their, through their style, through their spirituality, through everything. We can design that.
Speaker 1:And so from that I was able to take up space and hold a posture of like you know what I can do this, and so I always say it's important to show up because there's someone waiting for you at your destination. That's your purpose, and so you just got to keep trucking along because people are waiting for you. So I want to thank you for showing up each and every day since 1998 when you got the idea and every capacity, because it's it's paving the way for so many creatives. And you know you've clearly developed your own blueprint for success and built your own table where every version of you, along this journey that we've walked on in this episode, has a rightful place to sit. And I just want to know what was it like having to build that table and what do you foresee the new seats and like the new versions of Brittany being at that table?
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh for one, oh my God. Everything you said, like my heart is so full, like I'm about to have the best day ever, like you're an energy Ricky. It's just so infectious and so contagious and I just wanna tell you how amazing you are. I just wanna take this opportunity and say for you to just be as so vibrant and jubilant and youthful as you are and doing what you're doing. Like, thank you, girl, you better not stop, okay, even when you need to take a breath, just take a deep breath and just keep going, because you are needed out there. We need you out here. So, thank you like. Continue being that girl, okay, thank you.
Speaker 2:You're welcome In regards to the table that I've built for one. It's accepting the fact that there are many versions of myself right and loving every single version of myself.
Speaker 2:There was the version of myself that felt like she failed running the idea girl. But I had to give that girl some love and say, girl, you did the best, you knew how, but what you had you know, and understanding that she, too, deserves a seat at the table. The founder of, not so CEO she definitely deserves a seat at the table. After everything that she's been through. The burnt out version of Brittany deserves a seat at the table, but the one that I'm really focusing on making room for at that table is seven-year-old Brittany, because seven-year-old Brittany deserves to have what she wants, which is to become a fashion designer.
Speaker 2:And, after all of the brands that I've built, I think I'm finally at a place as to where I have not only the knowledge but also the resources to make that happen. So I look at everything that I went through as the education that I needed in order for me to pursue my real job. So, yes, brand Designer is one of the titles that I have. Ceo is one of the titles founder but fashion designer is probably the most important title for me to have. I literally I came up, I said I was gonna be a designer. When I was seven, I came up with the name of my company when I was only 15. So hopefully.
Speaker 2:I'm talking about my line a few years from now on another photo set Girl Radio.
Speaker 2:And it's funny because whenever I tell people online I'm going in a new direction, everyone automatically knows and assumes it's gonna be fashion Like I used to share my illustrations online and I stopped and everyone's like are you finally doing your line? And I'm just like the fact that everybody is just so excited about this, but I'm so nervous about this. I told my mom I'm like I'm so scared to be a fashion designer and I was like I don't know why. This is the one thing I'm so confident with everything else. This is the one thing I'm the scariest to do, she said, because this is gonna be the first time in your life where you're not gonna be able to rely on your skills and not gonna be able to rely on anything else. But God, she's like this is so much bigger than you, right this is so much bigger Right.
Speaker 2:I'm really excited just to see like I surprised myself, you know, and I'm just really excited to see where I take myself. If I can build all these brands for other people, I sure as hell can build something for myself. Maybe I needed the proof, Maybe this was just proof that I could do it. To prove it to myself that is the version of myself that I'm preparing the table for is fearless seven year old Brittany, who knew what she wanted to do at the age of eight in 1998.
Speaker 2:That is my focus right now. So that's why I'm learning French, you know, like that is why I am really pouring into myself in that way and making sure that I have a very strong relationship with myself and having that wellness routine and handling myself like precious cargo, you know.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:I'm a fragile so I'm making sure I handle myself that way. So the industry and people around don't spit me up, you know. Chew me up and spit me out, you know so.
Speaker 1:Exactly, exactly.
Speaker 2:And Emily in Paris was one of my inspirations girl. That was another confirmation for me like, yes, girl, keep living French, keep doing it.
Speaker 1:Because I refuse to be like but she was, they didn't take her seriously. They're like girl, bye, bye. We wanted to take a meeting with you if you can't speak the French.
Speaker 2:And it's like oh, I try to practice every day. That's also part of my self care routine because it works your brain, girl Woo.
Speaker 1:I need to. I need to pick up a language, and it will be French, because I need to go abroad.
Speaker 2:Pick up something that you feel that is like like I feel like I've spoken French in past lives you know, so I pick a language that you feel like not it's only going to help your career, but it's also just you know, something that's useful Like. I found it to be a lot easier than I thought it was going to be, but yeah, that's part of my self care routine too. Because, before I learned it, paris will be that much closer to me. So Okay. Oh my gosh, I'm just loving this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's why I'm looking to spend the rest of my life. You feel me?
Speaker 1:So that's why I'm not even paying these men.
Speaker 2:No mind, here I'm like have you met an African Frenchman? I'm not interested. Baby, you don't speak French.
Speaker 1:Get out of here.
Speaker 2:Is that what you want to say? No, oh, I'm out. Ha ha ha ha. Douces, I just seen this TikTok where this girl was saying the problem no, the sky said this. She said the problem with dating is that women go into dating giving 100% and men go into dating getting 0%. And women go at 100 and they move backwards as to where, like you do things, as they take it away, versus the men you have to earn, and I'm like, oh my God, this is the boy map that makes sense. Why are we doing this Exactly, benefit of the doubt, instead of saying you got to prove this to me.
Speaker 2:So I'm the first one that actually makes sense. And you know, I believe in love, I believe in romance. I mean, even though I did learn recently because of TikTok shout out to TikTok that romance is actually invented by poor men to convince women as to why their heart was worth more than money. Girl, Wow.
Speaker 2:Exactly. It's like a whole conversation, like romance was invented by men in South of France to convince women that love and romantic gestures was worth more than money. Because, of course, men with money are the ones that got the women, because woman look at it as OK, I can have a baby with this person that I can, you know, I'll be taken care of, it doesn't even have to do with oh, he can buy me shoes and cars. It's worth. So Do you have the means to support a family?
Speaker 1:OK, let's get back to the roots of that.
Speaker 2:Wow, I was like wow, like this was just impressive, you know. So now I'm just in a phase in my life where I'm just like baby, if you're not helping me if you're adding on to me to buy.
Speaker 1:Like. I wish my younger Like.
Speaker 2:I want both. I love the TikTok. 26-year-old Brittany.
Speaker 1:I want both. I'm like. I want you to be nice and sweet and tender and kind to me, but at the same time, I have to be practical. I like nice things. I sustain a very nice life for myself at 21. You said you're charging $15,000 now for these brands and, like I said, black women are the springboard of my success. I was presented an opportunity at 21 to build a brand identity for $11,000. I've been doing this since I was 16. But it's just like to be at that point now, at 21. I'm like imagine where I'll be in five years. So I need to find a man who is just as ambitious. Wait, you're 21? Uh-huh, I'm 21. She's like I'm in shock I can't breathe.
Speaker 2:Hold on. So when I met you at CultureCon, you were only 18.
Speaker 1:Oh, at CultureCon, that was 2022. So I was 19 or 20. I think I was 20. Because I'll be 22 this week. Wait, you turned 22,. Ricky, I turned 22 June 4th.
Speaker 2:Oh, my goodness.
Speaker 1:Shock. I know Ray Shock.
Speaker 2:You are, so you just impressed. You are already impressive to me, but you just leveled up 15 times more Because I can't believe you're 21. Like I'm inspiring. I thought you being inspiring, ok.
Speaker 1:Thank you.
Speaker 2:I am literally. Oh my god, I am. Oh my god, am I officially an auntie? I'm like 12 years older than you. You're not an auntie need. This is age. Ok thank you. Thank you, I'm not an auntie, thank you, I would like to still be an auntie. Never could be an auntie. Get a young. This is what it's giving, because I'm like how do I look? 30 something, you know? Oh my gosh. No, I am just. I am Wow. Ricky, you are phenomenal, you are so phenomenal. Thank you, I'm hybrid.
Speaker 1:I'm hybrid. Well, thank you so much for coming on that girl radio. I'm sure so many of the listeners feel 1,000 times more full. This was a very fulfilling conversation. We learned how to balance, we learned how to fail forward, we learned how important it is to be rebuilding the Black Wall Street and how it's OK to pivot. And those are just a few of the takeaways. I'm sure they're going to be in the comments saying a thousand things more, but can you tell them again where they can find you, how they can connect with you?
Speaker 2:You can follow me at. She's that Brit, so that is me, brittany Entoinette. Hello. And if you want to learn from me and be a part of my growing community of founders and creatives, definitely follow Not so CEO on social media platforms. You can visit our site, notsoceoco. And if you just want to be inspired, check out some of the work that I've done before. You can check out the IdeaGirl.
Speaker 1:Theideagirlco. Ok, well, there you have it, guys. Thank you so much for tuning in to that Girl Radio, which is your weekly supplement to help you live and design your best life. If you're not already following the podcast on Instagram, it is just the name at that Girl Radio, and if you're not already following your lovely host here, ricky Lee, make sure to do so. I'm on all socials. I'm on TikTok at the Ricky Lee, I'm on Instagram at RickyLeeco, and you can also find me on YouTube dropping episodes to show you how to live and design your best life at Ricky Lee TV. I love you, guys, and I will catch you next week.