April 1, 2025 • 40 mins
Ep. 209 Morgan DeBaun is a serial entrepreneur, executive and corporate advisor. As the Founder & CEO of Blavity Inc., the leading digital media company for Black culture and millennials, Morgan has grown the company into a market leader for Black media, reaching over 100 million readers per month through a growing brand portfolio which
includes: Blavity News, 21Ninety, AfroTech, Travel Noire, Shadow & Act, and Blavity TV.
Her book, Rewrite Your Rules: The Journey to Success in Less Time with More Freedom, is out today.
Follow Will Lucas on Instagram: @willlucas
Follow Black Tech Green Money: @blacktechgreenmoney, @btgmpodcast
Learn more at AfroTech.com
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Will Lucas here in Black Tech, Green Money. I am
in New York right now and away from the studio,
so this one's gonna sound a little bit different. I'm
here for the Afro Tech meet up. We've been going
all across the country. We've hear Chicago already, We've here
Atlanta today, We're in New York and Miami, coming up Seattle.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
We're gonna be all over the place this year. But
I'm so excited to bring you this episode.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
I'm talking to Morgan Debonn who's a founder and CEO
of Blavity and afro Tech, and she's an author.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Now Rewrite Your Rules, which is out today, is April first.
The book is out today, Rewrite Your Rules.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
The Journey of the success in less time, with More Freedom,
And the book asked this question and it provides an answer.
What if the path to fulfillment isn't about doing more
but redefining what matters most?
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Check out the episode.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
So on a recent episode you dropped, you started off saying,
you know, if you're going to ask for a million dollars,
are you willing to invest a million dollars into yourself?
And I think that's kind of like revealing to some
people when they think about, oh, hey, I need to
go raise money for this, Like if you have the money,
would you put your own money in? Like when you
thought about that? And that to that conversation, what is that,
(01:08):
you know, trying to get people to think about when
they think about raising money.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Most people want to raise money because they don't want
to be uncomfortable. They want to pay for them, set
their salary, they want to quit their job, they want
to have some sort of comfort. Entrepreneurship is not comfortable.
There's nothing you can do. There's no amount of money
that's going to make you comfortable when you decide to
(01:33):
be an entrepreneur. And I think that a lot of
people have glamorized it because of social media. When you're
thinking about raising money or you're thinking about growing your business,
the real question is how much does it cost to
beating this solution, to bring this solution to the world,
And not cost because you need to pay yourself, but
(01:55):
actually the cost of building the product, the cost of
building a team, the cost of growing this thing for
a solution to solve a problem. And notice I didn't
say to bring this product to life or to build
your brand or do all this soft stuff. You know,
so many people run around the world with these beautiful
decks and these beautiful websites, and then you ask them, well,
(02:16):
how many people are using your product? And the answer
is zero? Yeah, we got it about that.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
Yeah, yeah, I mean speaking to that, Like, what does
momentum look like in the early stages, because I think
so often we get caught up just doing a bunch
of stuff and you have you know, it encouraged us
to have a bias toward action, But like, how do
we know that we are focusing on the right things.
What does momentum look like?
Speaker 3 (02:40):
Yeah, momentum has the game has changed. You know, Momentum
when I was first starting the company is completely different
than now. You know, people expect if you're going out
to raise money, people expect your business to be break
even or profitable. They expect that your product already has traction,
and traction means you already have users and customers, that
people are already trends out with you. So gone are
(03:02):
the days where you could just have a napkin and
an idea and raise half a million dollars. Yeah that's over, okay,
And the reason is over is because the cost of
creating a company is so cheap. Now anybody can make
a company. Anybody can file for a Delaware ce corp.
Anybody can use AI to help build an MVP of
(03:23):
a product. Or you don't even have to be able
to code anymore to be able to build an app
or bring a bring a website to life. So the
barrier to entry is so much lower.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
Was it ever real for us? The napkin idea and
raise a half a million dollars? A million dollars?
Speaker 2 (03:37):
You know?
Speaker 3 (03:37):
I know one black guy who had a whiteboard and
was very storytelling with the vibes and raise money. I
know maybe two people that were able to do that.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
Yeah, so it is possible.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
Yeah yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
And so I think about because I watch a lot
of your content and if you are not following Morgan
on Instagram, if you're not a part of her, you
know channels you need to get in there, especially if
you are trying to a scale a small business. But
I think about because I'm asking for a friend here.
This is one of those asking for a friend questions.
You know, you talk about as quickly as possible moving
from operating tasks to CEO task, and you know, I
(04:14):
get that. It's like working on your business and in
your business. Is how I translate that. You know, if
I want to be a crafts person, you know, then
you're not talking to me. That's that person's they want
to own a job. But I'm not talking about You're
not talking about people who want to own a job.
You want to own a business. But I think my
question is like, what is the mindset shift that has
to happen when you start something because maybe you're passionate
(04:35):
about it, maybe saw a market opportunity, but you find
yourself doing a lot of the work and you would
love to delegate tasks off, but there's a myriad of
reasons why you feel like you can't.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:48):
You know, when I talk to most people, and when
you look at small businesses in this country in general,
the average small business has an employee of one. Yeah,
so most people are operating like solopreneurs. They don't have
secondary contractors. They are self employed and they're a solo entrepreneur.
(05:09):
And the challenge was this is that your income, your
revenue is completely capped by only what you can do.
Right if you're in the services industry, it's only how
much time do you have to deliver that service. If
you are building a product, it's how much time do
you have to go and fulfill that product? And that
(05:30):
at some point can no longer scale. You only have
twenty four hours in a day. And for people to
be able to get to the next level in their
career and also to actually fulfill the dream of entrepreneurship,
which is freedom, freedom of time, freedom of not having
to limit the amount of income you can make because
of what your bosses. The salary band is. If your
(05:51):
real goal is freedom, then you can't operate and not
spend time being strategic on how you're going to grow
your business. So CEO tasks versus operating task is this
framework that's really important. It basically helps you outline how
do I identify every single thing that i'm doing that
(06:12):
technically somebody else could be doing. That's your operating task.
So you're operating right now. You're filing the invoices, you're
posting on social media, you're calling all the clients, You're
doing every single little thing, filing the taxes in your
work life or your personal life. You're picking up the kids,
you're making dinner, You're doing all the things you're doing
your laundry, and then you have your CEO task. What's
(06:35):
your task that only you can do? Tasks that either
bring you joy but you never want to give up,
or tasks that are uniquely your responsibility as the CEO
of your life or the CEO of your business. And
so for someone like you, will that might be setting
up the locations for your new events. That might be
(06:57):
setting the menu for your business, your rest that might
be deciding what guests come on this podcast. You're setting
the strategy. Once you set the strategy, somebody else can
execute the work. So the real question for small business owners,
and the real question for people who are listening to
this is, well, I'm broke. How can I pay for
somebody else to do the thing? Well, AI, there's so
(07:18):
many tools, there's so many apps, there's so many systems
that exist to be able to take away some of
that automation that you're doing manually and start to make
it more efficient for you. So what tools can you
use in order to be able to get that done?
And then the next thing is, Okay, where's your tribe?
What are the people around you that you can start
to delegate to. This might be your partner. This might
(07:39):
be your husband, this might be your neighbor, this might
be your mama. I don't really care, but somebody that
gets somebody else to do it if you can't.
Speaker 4 (07:45):
Afford some else do or you just drop the ball
and you say we're just not going to do these
things because here's the thing, You'll never ever be able
to grow your income and grow your revenue if you
are the only person doing operating tass just won't happen.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
Yeah, I mean you've picked up one of them. There's
three reasons I can think of is why people don't
do it either you picked up either is I can
do it cheaper, but there's also I can do it
better or I can do it faster. Those are like
three reasons why people don't delegate off those tasks. And
from your perspective, why doesn't that message seem to resonate
(08:22):
far enough with our community.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
I mean, I think there's a lot of fear with
what if they get it wrong, then I've lost money,
I've lost time because I got to do the work anyways,
or I lose money because I paid somebody else to
do something it didn't get done. Now I got to
do it and have the resources anymore. I messed up
my cash flow. And I think that fear is what
holds most people back because they don't want to be uncomfortable.
(08:45):
They don't want to be in a situation where they're
doing somebody else's work when they're like, I should have
designed myself in the first place.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
You know.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
The challenge with that is that if you always have
that mentality, if you're not ever willing to be in
that uncomfortable zone where you are relying on somebody else
to get something done, then you're never going to get
to the next level. You're never going to get to
the next level. So, yeah, you might need to learn
how to hire better. You might be really bad at hiring.
(09:11):
I was bad at hiring when I first started this company.
It was not good at writing job descriptions and setting
up the right interview structure or setting up the right onboarding.
You're going to be bad at stuff. So I think
more people need to get comfortable being bad at things.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
Yeah, yeah, you make me think about a comment.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
I was talking to a friend of mine who's who
owns several businesses wildly successful, and you make me think about, like,
what if you are the secret sauce though in your business,
like what if people buy partially at least largely because
of you? And I think about, you know, bringing into
you know, a home for me, like with toll house.
You know my vision for a toll House, which is
(09:50):
a private social club. We have five bars, five lounges,
the coffee house, cigar lounges, jazz club, the whole coworking space,
all that. And my vision was to build like the
Soho House for communities that will never get a Sohol house,
like there was maysent Midwestern communities who had the people
and probably had the money, but would not be on
Soho House as radar. And he said, part of the
(10:12):
reason why this works in Toledo is because it's you
doing it and you don't necessarily scale to Indianapolis or
Cincinnati perhaps. And so I think about listening to you
talk like what if you are the secret sauce, how
do you then scale?
Speaker 3 (10:30):
Well, if you're the secret sauce, then the question becomes
how do you save more time so that you're only
doing the thing that is your secret sauce? So you know,
what are the other things that will Lucas is doing
that you ain't got to do. That are your operating tasks,
but you don't have somebody else doing them. So if
you were only spending forty hours a week doing your
secret sauce, you could be traveling to Cincinnati, you could
(10:52):
be traveling to Chicago, you could be doing all these
other things, but you can't because you're sitting tied to
a desk doing all these operating task So I'm just
saying my perspective is that, like anything that people want
to do, like you can do whatever you want to do,
but you have to be willing to delegate. You have
(11:15):
to be willing to bring other people along in your
journey because that is what is required to live an
extraordinary life. Now, you want to be boring, You want
to not grow, You want to do the same thing
every single day. You want to be you know, ted
on cash flow, you want to be trying to ask
somebody for a two percent raise every six months. Then
(11:35):
stay where you are. But you're probably aren't going to
like me.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
Yeah, I guess.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
I guess that's a fundamental question, Like who is the
book for? You know, rewrite your old rules, re write
your rules.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
Yeah, when I wrote this book, rewrite your rules. Took
me about five years to write it. And I wrote
this book because I felt like I was meeting so
many people who are at a crossroad, so many people
who are doing really good, like they've got a lot
going for themselves. They followed all the steps, they went
to good schools, they got a great first job out
(12:09):
of college, and now they're in their mid thirties or
early thirties, and they're kind of like, how did I
get here? And I can see the path forward and
I don't like it, Like I don't want to keep
going down this path that I was set out on,
whether because I just followed the momentum of what society
was telling me I was supposed to be doing. But
(12:30):
they feel like there's more for them, and they're not
sure how to make decisions to make sure that they
don't keep going down that path. They're not sure to
what should happen first. Should I take slow down a
second and start dating seriously so that I can eventually
find my match and have a kid. Should I quit
(12:53):
my job and become a full time entrepreneur, but then
I take a big income, hit out responsibilities. Or should
I get rid of my not be a full time
content creator because it was booming, and now I actually
have no time. I'm working all the time just to
make ends meet, and it was easier when I got
a direct deposit every two weeks. Maybe I should go
(13:16):
back to work, right, Like, there's just so many decisions
that we're constantly making, and we don't we're not using
a system to help ourselves make the best decisions with
the data and the infrastructure to feel confident with the
decision that we're making. So this book is a tool
to help you do that. This book is a tool
to help you feel confident with the decisions that you're
(13:39):
making so that you can literally have more joy and
more freedom and enjoy the process that you're going through
instead of all this anxiety around am I making the
right decision? All that's indecision that happens because there are
a lot of choices in this world today.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
What did you learn differently when you were started building
your mancha more mancha versus when you're doing the journal
like that. I imagine there's things that you learned, like,
I don't want to do that again, so I'm gonna
do that differently.
Speaker 3 (14:11):
Yeah, So I have so many field businesses, you know,
The thing about field businesses is that nobody ever sees
them except for like the five customers that you had. Okay, yeah,
if you if you go to this warehouse. Oh my,
I've wasted so much money shipping things from warehouse to
warehouse in this country, just trying to reduce my rent.
But I've had so many field businesses I can't even
(14:36):
mention them. So I had one journal company, so we
were we were. I thought that the world must have
my journal, which was a mix of like a mole
skin but a slightly more structure, okay, And I felt
like you had to have this, so I built it.
It was printed in India. We've paid all this money
for this beautiful leather and all this stuff. Then my
(14:57):
second field business was a skincare company called it Rose Essentials,
and I felt like, again, this was like seven years ago.
I felt like skincare was the new frontier. That like,
in the same way that black girls were spending so
much time in injury on our hair, that we were
going to spend so much time and injury on our skin.
And I wasn't wrong. That trend is true and that
has definitely come to fruition. I underestimated them out of
marketing that was attached to me as a person for
(15:20):
the skincare business, and same thing for the journal. These
weren't things that I was willing to constantly be on
social media about. I wasn't gonna wake up every morning
and be like, look at my skincare routine. And I
was like, I'm the freaking CEO of a multimillion dollar company,
Like I don't have time to be on Instagram in
the morning showing you my skincare routine.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
That makes sense, you know.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
What I'm saying. So so that was the market wasn't
aligned with how that what works with my life love, right,
So that was the biggest thing. And then for a
more macha. Now it's nothing for me to wake up
in the morning and make a macha, like that's actually
(16:00):
within my workflow, right, Like it's easy to be like, hey,
have a morning macha with me and like let's talk
about whatever, right or like literally, you know, like it's
just part of my flow in a way that I
don't mind having a camera on it. And you know,
one thing when you're building a brand is you want
it to be you gotta set the company culture and
(16:20):
the brand equity, but I very quickly put a bunch
of non black people on the more Macha Instagram page.
I think back in the day, I was just so black, militant, righteous,
like black black, black black, It's gonna be a black
skincare company. It's gonna be a black you know, notebook company.
Well moremcha. I'm like, I don't care if you're green, blue, tall, short,
(16:42):
I do not care. We hired a cute little blonde
girl to be in our videos tutorials, like we're shipping
it out to influencers all over the country, moms, everybody,
you know. So I think that was the other thing
is I changed my go to market and really said
like let me, let me get out of the way
because I know myself and I don't want to be
(17:03):
in front of a camera every day.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
Yeah, that makes that makes total sense. You know.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
I'm like, again, I've been waiting for this episode for
so long. I've been building up these questions because I
feel like, there, I'm gonna tell you the problem that
I have, and I imagine a lot of people have
this issue. It's like you hear people like you talk
and solutions and things that you should stop doing.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
Things you should start doing.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
And then what your my brain says is like, but
there's nuance to my situation that her answer doesn't solve
for like, there's always like, you know, but they don't
understand because this thing over here, you know, And so
I wonder, like, what do you what do you hear
when I say.
Speaker 3 (17:42):
That, I just hear excuses. I mean, there's always going
to be something that's special about somebody's scenario. But the
fundamentals of business are always true, and the fundamentals of
self development are always true. You're You're your biggest limitation
for growth. The difference between will looks today and will
look this, who's got ten million dollars in cash in
the bank. It's the same with Lucas, so that it's
(18:07):
your brain. Yeah, it's your ability to think through problem
solvings at a strategic level. It's your ability to bring
other people with you so that they become problem solvers
for it, right, Like that is the limitation. But it
all starts with you. And that's why I'm in my
work smart framework. The first module, the first thing that
(18:28):
we talk about is you. It's like, before we can
go delegate to everybody else, what are you doing, Like,
what does your calendar look like? If I looked at
your calendar today, Will, And I said, you.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
Don't want to look at that, No, I do.
Speaker 3 (18:42):
I said, Will, what do you want to do? How
much money do you want to make next year?
Speaker 2 (18:48):
This year?
Speaker 3 (18:48):
How much money do you want to make this year?
And what are your like deliverables for yourself? What are
the things that you want to get done this year
to put out into the world. And then I looked
at your calend under and said, well, how are you
spending your time? I can guarantee you they do not match.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
Yeah, yeah, you're probably right. You're probably right, they don't match.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
What's the biggest rule you had to be write for
yourself young life?
Speaker 3 (19:16):
I think the biggest rule I had to rewrite for
myself was when I realized that nobody is grading me.
Nobody is Like, nobody is waking up in the morning
and saying you did a good job today. Nobody's waking
up in the morning and say you did a bad
(19:36):
job at that today. Like once you move out of college,
there's no more like scaling grade scale where everybody has
the same metrics of success. Yeah, And it took me
a while to stop looking for external metrics of success.
(19:59):
What do I mean by that? Like, when you enter
Silicon Valley, the metric of success is how much money
do you raise? Right when you enter into the workplace,
Especially in the time that I was there, it was
who's getting the best jobs, who's getting the best internal mentors,
who's getting the best products to work on, who's getting
(20:19):
the coolest products to work on? Like it was constantly
comparing to other people at your level to see am
I better than these people and my cohort at the
best Right, It's all arbitrary, it's all bullshit, like it
doesn't matter. So once I stopped letting go this desire
to be the best employee, I stopped caring and I
(20:42):
started to do what I wanted to do. When I decided, wait,
I don't need to keep raising money just because society
and Silver Value is saying you got to keep raising money.
You raise money and then you start raising your next
round while you're raising your current round, and you're hiring
all these people and you're burning through it, and then
you keep going and you keep growing. Once I said,
ah ah, I'm not doing this anymore. I'm done, I
(21:05):
did what I needed to do. I protected the company
I have, we have great investors, I've got the board governance.
Let's build a good company. Let's build a profitable company,
a profitable venture backed company five years ago. Yeah, yeah, right,
which was what was best for me and best with
my employees, and best for our community and best for
(21:27):
our audience. Once I made that decision, the level of
freedom that I had was just revolutionary and transform my
life because then you start to make decisions differently when
you're actually going for metrics that you demass the things
the definition of success, then it completely alleviates all this
stress that we all carry around with us to perform
(21:49):
at a level that we don't even care about.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
Yeah. Step, that's deep. You know.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
There's there's a description of the book where I'm gonna
quote this says, we come to see of your life
with this transformative guide to leaving hustle culture behind and
creating a more sustainable, balanced definition of success. And I
think about that because I remember this tweet. I saw
somebody else was talking about hustle culture and grind culture
and how that was bad, et cetera. And this tweet said,
(22:18):
the only people that talk about hustle culture being bad
and the grind culture being bad as the people who
already made it. Yeah, and I think about I wanted
to position that to you is because I've heard you
talk about you know, like, look, you've got to figure
out what works for your life and Morgan's made it.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
Like, how do you respond to that?
Speaker 3 (22:35):
Yeah? Yeah, I say there's a difference between hustle culture
and work hard. Hard work is necessary, like putting hours
in is necessary. Your ten thousand hours principle is a
principle that I completely agree with. So I think there's
a difference. Hustle to me is grind. So you can't
grind anymore, groupe force it, like push harder than everybody
(23:00):
else around you first and last out. Okay, that's hustle culture.
Work hard is let me put my best effort in
and be smart about how I'm doing that. So even
if I'm able, if I'm able to get the same accomplishment,
same outcome and deliverable as everybody else, but it took
me two hours less. I reward myself for that hard
(23:23):
work and the fact that I was strategic with my
effort to get the same deliverable for less time. That's
the challenge that I'm trying to encourage people to reconsider.
It's not about the amount of hours that you put in.
It's about the deliverable. Even with my own employees, when
someone's like, I'm working so hard, you know, I'm staying
(23:44):
up all nine, I'm doing this, doing that, I'm working
on the weekends, I'm like, why you shouldn't be? Like, like,
you shouldn't be That doesn't appeal to me. You don't
get brownie points for me. There used to be a
time where I felt differently where I measured my employee's
success partially.
Speaker 2 (24:03):
By who's in office late, who's.
Speaker 3 (24:06):
Working hard, from like a who's putting it the time
in Yeah, but I completely said, wait, screw that. I'm okay.
If Jeremiah over here takes seven hours to do something
even though it took Susie over here nine hours to
do that shows me Jeremiah has more potential and capacity.
(24:30):
So let's reward Jeremiah for that and then ask Jrmiah,
what else do you want to do? Right? And I
think I think that is a fundamental shift that we
all have to make, which is like, there's no brownie
points for literally burning yourself out and working all night,
(24:50):
all day, and that's not you don't get a badge
of honor. That's actually a weakness.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
You know, there was this study Small Business Administration put
out some time ago, and I remember it vividly because
it said eighty percent of black owned businesses are in
the bottom twenty percent of categories for revenue generations. So
we over index on landscaping, small restaurants.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
Hospitality exact exactly.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
We over index on that. And you know, I'm interested
in your thoughts on how we can think.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
Differently about that, how do we scale?
Speaker 1 (25:25):
And so I think about even barbershops, you know, like
there's no black owned Boricks or Supercuts, and I wonder why,
because we have so many barbers and hairstyles in our community.
Are what are we missing about that that your message says, like, look, guys,
there's a bigger opportunity out here.
Speaker 3 (25:43):
I think we have a collaboration problem. You know, I've
acquired three companies in the last ten years, and one
of the reasons I was able to do that is
because I view collaboration as a core like strategic advantage
that I have to peers. Why do we need three
(26:03):
different barbershops who all maintain the same overhead of leases
and payroll and insurance and equipment and HR systems, and
there's a lot of overhead. Ten to fifteen percent of
business's costs is just overhead that every single business has
(26:26):
to have. If you're all one company, then it's it's
that same HR person for the whole company, right, It's
the same creative team for the whole company. At Blavity,
it's the same talent team for the whole company. So
we're able to get economies of scale because we decided
to collaborate and bring other businesses in underneath the Blavity
(26:47):
in portfolio, and that has allowed us to then spend
more time doing our CEO task and less time doing
the operating task. So if all those barbershops were able
to say, you know what, I gonna set my ego aside.
It doesn't need to be called JoJo's barbershop and Becky
Q's barbershop and Data da Barbershop. We're gonna just be
called black barbershop, okay. And we're gonna have three black
(27:09):
barbershops in this entire city, and each one is gonna
be run by Jojo and them. But the back end
administrative work is going to be centralized. How much money,
more money could they have, how much more cash flow
could they have? And also time because you don't have
three barbershops trying to figure out barbers trying to figure
out how to run a business when they set out
(27:31):
to be the barbers and that is I think one
of the challenges is that it requires collaboration. Black folks,
we love to collaborate on everything else. We collaborate at church,
We collaborate on carpools, We collaborate on meals, family dinner,
we collaborate on funerals, we collaborate on weddings. We collaborate
on so many things. Fraternity sororities. We are good at
(27:53):
ruling by committee. We are good at coming together. But
something about business, there's not that many black acquisitions happening
and black mergers, and I think that has to do
with ego.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
What do you say to people who have multiple interests?
Speaker 1 (28:10):
They have multiple things going on, you know, when you
are trying to advise them in how to you know,
still live a balanced life in some way.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
But I have so many interests.
Speaker 3 (28:21):
I think there's a difference between interests, hobbies, passions, and
things that make you money, you know. So in the book,
we have this framework that I live by and I
encourage people to live by, which is the six pillars
of life. The six pillars of life, at any given point,
you can only be optimizing three of them. So the
(28:41):
six pillars are money, stability, Right, So money is are
you making enough money to do the things that you
want to do when you want to do them. Stability
is do you feel stable? Like, are you in a
place where you feel grounded? And if not, you need
to focus on that. These two things are kind of
your foundational pillars. Yeah, if one of them is off,
then you got to fix one of them. The next
(29:03):
one is wellness. Do I feel good doing the things
that I'm doing every day? Do I mentally, physically, spiritually?
Do I feel good? The next one's relationships. Do I
like the people around me? Am I spending time with
people that I care about? My Do I have a partner?
Do I have the family that I want? Do I
have the friends the church community that I want? Okay,
(29:25):
then there's passions. Am I doing things just for me? Right?
For me? It's painting. For others, it might be skiing,
it might be all types of stuff. Okay, And then
the last one stability, money, relationships, passions, wellness. Who am
I missing?
Speaker 2 (29:46):
Don't you got to buy the book to get the
last one? You got to buy book to get.
Speaker 3 (29:49):
The last I like that.
Speaker 2 (29:51):
I like that, that was good.
Speaker 3 (29:55):
I actually I'm like, no, I actually money, stability, freedom,
passions and wellness, freedom, freedom, freedom. I was like, what
am I missing? Are you the boss of you or
somebody else the boss? If you want to pick up
and travel the world, can you do that? Like? How
much freedom do you have in your life? Are you
(30:16):
an independent person? Or are you ruled by the systems,
the society, the people around you? And freedom is one
of those things that I think a lot of us
inherently that's what we're looking for. We're looking to have
more control over what we say and what we do.
And between those six you can only again focus on three,
(30:39):
and they change at different seasons of your life. When
you first maybe are having kids, and then your relationships,
your stability, and your money, which means you have no freedom.
You're not leaving the house at seven o'clock to go
to the bar with the boys. Because you're focused on
your three things. Maybe you're not able to make it
to your gym class. You know, will work out like
you use work out out and do to our workouts
(31:01):
on a Saturday because you're focused on your family. Right,
There's going to be other seasons where you're like, I'm
trying to get this promotion and I'm grinding super hard.
So you're on money because you really want to get
to the next level because you want to be your
own boss, your freedom. And then yeah, maybe that means
you don't. You are missing a couple of dinners, you
are missing so and so's birthday party, you are missing
so and So's wedding because you're really focused on your goal.
(31:21):
At any given season, these things are going to change,
and the question is just being able to audit your
life and say, wait, have my pillars changed and I
just didn't explicitly change my behavior to match them, which
is why I'm feeling resentment and I'm feeling frustrated.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
That's super good I'm thinking about.
Speaker 2 (31:43):
No, I'm going to use a.
Speaker 1 (31:44):
Sports analogy, which I shouldn't do, but there is You know,
you can tell a great athlete by if they make
the people around them better. Not only are they doing
great things, but the people around them are, and I
think about you like you are that person. You've been
that person for me, You've been that person for other
people who I know who.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
Are around you.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
And people make more money when they hang around Morgan Debond,
They have more all these things when they hang around
Morgan Devon.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
And how should we then audit our circles?
Speaker 1 (32:15):
Because not everybody can hang around Morgan Debond, So how
can we how should we audit our circle, you know,
with an unbiased view of like, look, I know I
like hanging around you, but this is probably not a
wise investment of my time.
Speaker 3 (32:28):
Yeah, yeah, there's something. There's a chapter in the book
around people and the people in your life and the
difference between mentors and advisors. Right, So I'm a lot
of people's advisor. I'm your advisor, Right, I want to
make more money? You call me. For a lot of people,
I'm their chief revenue officers, Like you want to make
more money. I'm gonna tell you how. I know. You
still got to do the work, Okay, So you got
(32:51):
to surround yourself. If your personal life doesn't have those
people who are motivating you and helping you get to
the next level, that's okay, you know, this. I don't
believe that everybody around you has to be transactional or
add value to your life in that way. I'm actually
completely cool with it. So all this social media that's
like catch you, audit your friends, your friends circle, is
a reflection of how big I don't believe that. I
(33:13):
think that's bullshit. Not everybody in your life has to
be adding value to You can hire and find advisors
who can help you get to the next level. An
advisor is someone who's already done it. And your advisors
may be a podcast, your advisors may be my book,
your advisor may be YouTube channels. Right, Like, there's so
many free resources and cheap resources for you to solve
(33:36):
a problem that you have from experienced people who've already
done it, experienced people who've already done I'm not talking
about these people selling online courses or the biggest business
they've ever run is the business that they're running on you.
Speaker 2 (33:50):
The online course. Yeah, okay, out there.
Speaker 3 (33:55):
So they are out there everywhere. So you really got
to be careful try to evaluate everybody in your life
against what do they provide back to me. I think
that it's important to not make everybody in your life
responsible for your own development. You're responsible for your development,
You're responsible for your growth. You're the person who's in
(34:17):
the driver's seat of your life. So just like when
I'm the CEO, if I have a deficit because I'm
a bad people manager, it's not my employee's job to
make me a better people manager. It's my job to
go find the resources, to go find the executive coaches,
to go read the books and become a better people manager.
(34:37):
It's the same thing in your personal life.
Speaker 1 (34:41):
I'm going to ask an EBC question every day carry
question like what is Morgan's What is in Morgan's every
day Carrie? What are the things that you've got to
have access to? Tools, software, things that you need within
an arms reach.
Speaker 2 (34:56):
To help you be successful day to day?
Speaker 3 (34:58):
The only thing I need is this my mobile phone.
That's the only thing I need. And the reason for
that is there's literally times where I'm like, I don't
even want to see a computer today. Like I used
to date a guy who literally I don't even think
he owned a computer, but he ran probably like two
or three multimillion dollar businesses, a huge venture fund, and
(35:20):
I just was fascinated. I was like, you don't make decks,
like you don't look at Excel spreadsheets, like you don't
need to get in there and chase some numbers or
something like. He was like, I have an iPad, Like
if I need to do something like, I'll do on
an iPad. But there's somebody else who's like doing the
grunt work and then I am tweaking the things, and
I was, I mean, this was very early on in
(35:41):
my career, so I wasn't at a point where I
had that much freedom. Right, our freedom was not one
of my pillars at the time, but it was aspirational
for me to say, Wow, I have that much freedom
that I'm no longer dictated by a device to get
my work done, to be able to produce content, produce value,
to be able to talk to my employees. And so
(36:01):
I've really created a systement at Blavity where I'm like,
if you work for me, you don't send me emails
like like slack me or nothing. That's right, Okay, don't
call me, don't text me. You're not gonna get texts
from Morgan Debon. You're not gonna get phone calls from
Morgan Debon, slack me bro even when we have vendors.
(36:23):
Our partners like the gathering Spot and Glavity are working
on something. I'm like, Ryan, you guys slack Okay, so
joint slack channel. Now there's a gallery spot, Blavity, joint
slack channel. Okay, Slack is my headquarters. We're fully remote,
but I can do everything from my phone, so that
is the biggest that's the only tool I need. This
(36:45):
could make you a millionaire right here, straight on your phone.
You don't have to have all this crazy equipment. And
that's that's just going back to fundraising. That is the
reason why just making money is now a new requirement
for raising money because it's so easy.
Speaker 2 (37:06):
What does success look like for you now? And now?
Has that definition changed for you over time?
Speaker 3 (37:12):
You know, I think it's tough to talk about success
for me now because I really have hit every dream
that I've ever wanted for myself in a lot of
different ways. And so there's actually a part of me
that's going through an exercise of pushing myself to take
more risk because I am so comfortable and I am
so happy and I am so fulfilled. I wake up
every day and I say, ooh, oh, it feels good
(37:35):
to be me. Okay, it feels so good to be me,
and I like that. For everybody listening to that, that
you have that level of contentment in your life, we're like,
ooh yeah, no, I do not want to trade with
anybody else. I feel good. I like the choices that
I make every day. I like I like the things
I stress about. The things I stress about, they're not
(37:57):
that big of a deal. Right. I'm not saying I
don't have days. I'm not saying there's not times when
I look at Blavity's P and L and I say, oh, man,
we made some mistakes here, we overspent here, we could
have pushed this harder, we could have hit these different goals.
I have all of those things. But I feel really
good about how we operate. I feel good about my
leadership team. I feel good about the fact that everybody's
marching towards a mission that matters. I feel good about
(38:18):
the fact that I wake up every day and I
can decide what I want to wear or not because
of how people are gonna judge me as a black
founder or black female CEO, but because of what I
want to wear today and how I want to present myself. Right,
I feel good about the things I think about, And
I think that is the truest definition of success for anyone.
(38:44):
How do you get there? For some people listening to
this that's so far away from where they are. They're
waking up every day dreading going into work that day.
They're waking up today feeling like, I'm so freaking cold.
Why do I live here? You're waking up in the
morning and you're just like, I'm exhausted. Did I even
sleep like I'm mentally exhausted and I just woke up.
(39:07):
You got to fix that. You got to like lean
into that tension and fix whatever the root is the issue,
whatever that root issue is, you got to fix that.
You don't have to live that way.
Speaker 2 (39:18):
April.
Speaker 1 (39:19):
First, we write your rules, The Journey to Success in
Less Time with More Freedom, Morgan Debond, Such a pleasure.
Speaker 3 (39:27):
Thanks for having me. Well everybody, I look forward to
hearing how this book transforms your life and you know
what things you discover about yourself along the way. My
hope is that you use this as a tool to
be able to make these decisions and to move quickly
so that you can have more joy.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
And more free Black Tech Green One is a production
to Blavity afro Tech, the Black Effect podcast.
Speaker 2 (39:48):
Network in Night High Media. It's produced by Morgan Debon
and me Well Lucas, with the digital production.
Speaker 1 (39:54):
Support by Kate McDonald say and Jada McGee. Special thank
you to Michael Davis in Love Beach More about my
guess at other tech this stuff it's an innovators at
afrotech dot Com.
Speaker 2 (40:04):
Video version of this episode will.
Speaker 1 (40:05):
Drop to Black Tech Green Money on YouTube, So tap in,
enjoy your Black Tech Green Money, Share us with somebody,
don't get your money.
Speaker 2 (40:13):
Decent love
Will Lucas here in Black Tech, Green Money. I am
in New York right now and away from the studio,
so this one's gonna sound a little bit different. I'm
here for the Afro Tech meet up. We've been going
all across the country. We've hear Chicago already, We've here
Atlanta today, We're in New York and Miami, coming up Seattle.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
We're gonna be all over the place this year. But
I'm so excited to bring you this episode.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
I'm talking to Morgan Debonn who's a founder and CEO
of Blavity and afro Tech, and she's an author.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Now Rewrite Your Rules, which is out today, is April first.
The book is out today, Rewrite Your Rules.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
The Journey of the success in less time, with More Freedom,
And the book asked this question and it provides an answer.
What if the path to fulfillment isn't about doing more
but redefining what matters most?
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Check out the episode.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
So on a recent episode you dropped, you started off saying,
you know, if you're going to ask for a million dollars,
are you willing to invest a million dollars into yourself?
And I think that's kind of like revealing to some
people when they think about, oh, hey, I need to
go raise money for this, Like if you have the money,
would you put your own money in? Like when you
thought about that? And that to that conversation, what is that,
(01:08):
you know, trying to get people to think about when
they think about raising money.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Most people want to raise money because they don't want
to be uncomfortable. They want to pay for them, set
their salary, they want to quit their job, they want
to have some sort of comfort. Entrepreneurship is not comfortable.
There's nothing you can do. There's no amount of money
that's going to make you comfortable when you decide to
(01:33):
be an entrepreneur. And I think that a lot of
people have glamorized it because of social media. When you're
thinking about raising money or you're thinking about growing your business,
the real question is how much does it cost to
beating this solution, to bring this solution to the world,
And not cost because you need to pay yourself, but
(01:55):
actually the cost of building the product, the cost of
building a team, the cost of growing this thing for
a solution to solve a problem. And notice I didn't
say to bring this product to life or to build
your brand or do all this soft stuff. You know,
so many people run around the world with these beautiful
decks and these beautiful websites, and then you ask them, well,
(02:16):
how many people are using your product? And the answer
is zero? Yeah, we got it about that.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
Yeah, yeah, I mean speaking to that, Like, what does
momentum look like in the early stages, because I think
so often we get caught up just doing a bunch
of stuff and you have you know, it encouraged us
to have a bias toward action, But like, how do
we know that we are focusing on the right things.
What does momentum look like?
Speaker 3 (02:40):
Yeah, momentum has the game has changed. You know, Momentum
when I was first starting the company is completely different
than now. You know, people expect if you're going out
to raise money, people expect your business to be break
even or profitable. They expect that your product already has traction,
and traction means you already have users and customers, that
people are already trends out with you. So gone are
(03:02):
the days where you could just have a napkin and
an idea and raise half a million dollars. Yeah that's over, okay,
And the reason is over is because the cost of
creating a company is so cheap. Now anybody can make
a company. Anybody can file for a Delaware ce corp.
Anybody can use AI to help build an MVP of
(03:23):
a product. Or you don't even have to be able
to code anymore to be able to build an app
or bring a bring a website to life. So the
barrier to entry is so much lower.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
Was it ever real for us? The napkin idea and
raise a half a million dollars? A million dollars?
Speaker 2 (03:37):
You know?
Speaker 3 (03:37):
I know one black guy who had a whiteboard and
was very storytelling with the vibes and raise money. I
know maybe two people that were able to do that.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
Yeah, so it is possible.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
Yeah yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
And so I think about because I watch a lot
of your content and if you are not following Morgan
on Instagram, if you're not a part of her, you
know channels you need to get in there, especially if
you are trying to a scale a small business. But
I think about because I'm asking for a friend here.
This is one of those asking for a friend questions.
You know, you talk about as quickly as possible moving
from operating tasks to CEO task, and you know, I
(04:14):
get that. It's like working on your business and in
your business. Is how I translate that. You know, if
I want to be a crafts person, you know, then
you're not talking to me. That's that person's they want
to own a job. But I'm not talking about You're
not talking about people who want to own a job.
You want to own a business. But I think my
question is like, what is the mindset shift that has
to happen when you start something because maybe you're passionate
(04:35):
about it, maybe saw a market opportunity, but you find
yourself doing a lot of the work and you would
love to delegate tasks off, but there's a myriad of
reasons why you feel like you can't.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:48):
You know, when I talk to most people, and when
you look at small businesses in this country in general,
the average small business has an employee of one. Yeah,
so most people are operating like solopreneurs. They don't have
secondary contractors. They are self employed and they're a solo entrepreneur.
(05:09):
And the challenge was this is that your income, your
revenue is completely capped by only what you can do.
Right if you're in the services industry, it's only how
much time do you have to deliver that service. If
you are building a product, it's how much time do
you have to go and fulfill that product? And that
(05:30):
at some point can no longer scale. You only have
twenty four hours in a day. And for people to
be able to get to the next level in their
career and also to actually fulfill the dream of entrepreneurship,
which is freedom, freedom of time, freedom of not having
to limit the amount of income you can make because
of what your bosses. The salary band is. If your
(05:51):
real goal is freedom, then you can't operate and not
spend time being strategic on how you're going to grow
your business. So CEO tasks versus operating task is this
framework that's really important. It basically helps you outline how
do I identify every single thing that i'm doing that
(06:12):
technically somebody else could be doing. That's your operating task.
So you're operating right now. You're filing the invoices, you're
posting on social media, you're calling all the clients, You're
doing every single little thing, filing the taxes in your
work life or your personal life. You're picking up the kids,
you're making dinner, You're doing all the things you're doing
your laundry, and then you have your CEO task. What's
(06:35):
your task that only you can do? Tasks that either
bring you joy but you never want to give up,
or tasks that are uniquely your responsibility as the CEO
of your life or the CEO of your business. And
so for someone like you, will that might be setting
up the locations for your new events. That might be
(06:57):
setting the menu for your business, your rest that might
be deciding what guests come on this podcast. You're setting
the strategy. Once you set the strategy, somebody else can
execute the work. So the real question for small business owners,
and the real question for people who are listening to
this is, well, I'm broke. How can I pay for
somebody else to do the thing? Well, AI, there's so
(07:18):
many tools, there's so many apps, there's so many systems
that exist to be able to take away some of
that automation that you're doing manually and start to make
it more efficient for you. So what tools can you
use in order to be able to get that done?
And then the next thing is, Okay, where's your tribe?
What are the people around you that you can start
to delegate to. This might be your partner. This might
(07:39):
be your husband, this might be your neighbor, this might
be your mama. I don't really care, but somebody that
gets somebody else to do it if you can't.
Speaker 4 (07:45):
Afford some else do or you just drop the ball
and you say we're just not going to do these
things because here's the thing, You'll never ever be able
to grow your income and grow your revenue if you
are the only person doing operating tass just won't happen.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
Yeah, I mean you've picked up one of them. There's
three reasons I can think of is why people don't
do it either you picked up either is I can
do it cheaper, but there's also I can do it
better or I can do it faster. Those are like
three reasons why people don't delegate off those tasks. And
from your perspective, why doesn't that message seem to resonate
(08:22):
far enough with our community.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
I mean, I think there's a lot of fear with
what if they get it wrong, then I've lost money,
I've lost time because I got to do the work anyways,
or I lose money because I paid somebody else to
do something it didn't get done. Now I got to
do it and have the resources anymore. I messed up
my cash flow. And I think that fear is what
holds most people back because they don't want to be uncomfortable.
(08:45):
They don't want to be in a situation where they're
doing somebody else's work when they're like, I should have
designed myself in the first place.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
You know.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
The challenge with that is that if you always have
that mentality, if you're not ever willing to be in
that uncomfortable zone where you are relying on somebody else
to get something done, then you're never going to get
to the next level. You're never going to get to
the next level. So, yeah, you might need to learn
how to hire better. You might be really bad at hiring.
(09:11):
I was bad at hiring when I first started this company.
It was not good at writing job descriptions and setting
up the right interview structure or setting up the right onboarding.
You're going to be bad at stuff. So I think
more people need to get comfortable being bad at things.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
Yeah, yeah, you make me think about a comment.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
I was talking to a friend of mine who's who
owns several businesses wildly successful, and you make me think about, like,
what if you are the secret sauce though in your business,
like what if people buy partially at least largely because
of you? And I think about, you know, bringing into
you know, a home for me, like with toll house.
You know my vision for a toll House, which is
(09:50):
a private social club. We have five bars, five lounges,
the coffee house, cigar lounges, jazz club, the whole coworking space,
all that. And my vision was to build like the
Soho House for communities that will never get a Sohol house,
like there was maysent Midwestern communities who had the people
and probably had the money, but would not be on
Soho House as radar. And he said, part of the
(10:12):
reason why this works in Toledo is because it's you
doing it and you don't necessarily scale to Indianapolis or
Cincinnati perhaps. And so I think about listening to you
talk like what if you are the secret sauce, how
do you then scale?
Speaker 3 (10:30):
Well, if you're the secret sauce, then the question becomes
how do you save more time so that you're only
doing the thing that is your secret sauce? So you know,
what are the other things that will Lucas is doing
that you ain't got to do. That are your operating tasks,
but you don't have somebody else doing them. So if
you were only spending forty hours a week doing your
secret sauce, you could be traveling to Cincinnati, you could
(10:52):
be traveling to Chicago, you could be doing all these
other things, but you can't because you're sitting tied to
a desk doing all these operating task So I'm just
saying my perspective is that, like anything that people want
to do, like you can do whatever you want to do,
but you have to be willing to delegate. You have
(11:15):
to be willing to bring other people along in your
journey because that is what is required to live an
extraordinary life. Now, you want to be boring, You want
to not grow, You want to do the same thing
every single day. You want to be you know, ted
on cash flow, you want to be trying to ask
somebody for a two percent raise every six months. Then
(11:35):
stay where you are. But you're probably aren't going to
like me.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
Yeah, I guess.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
I guess that's a fundamental question, Like who is the
book for? You know, rewrite your old rules, re write
your rules.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
Yeah, when I wrote this book, rewrite your rules. Took
me about five years to write it. And I wrote
this book because I felt like I was meeting so
many people who are at a crossroad, so many people
who are doing really good, like they've got a lot
going for themselves. They followed all the steps, they went
to good schools, they got a great first job out
(12:09):
of college, and now they're in their mid thirties or
early thirties, and they're kind of like, how did I
get here? And I can see the path forward and
I don't like it, Like I don't want to keep
going down this path that I was set out on,
whether because I just followed the momentum of what society
was telling me I was supposed to be doing. But
(12:30):
they feel like there's more for them, and they're not
sure how to make decisions to make sure that they
don't keep going down that path. They're not sure to
what should happen first. Should I take slow down a
second and start dating seriously so that I can eventually
find my match and have a kid. Should I quit
(12:53):
my job and become a full time entrepreneur, but then
I take a big income, hit out responsibilities. Or should
I get rid of my not be a full time
content creator because it was booming, and now I actually
have no time. I'm working all the time just to
make ends meet, and it was easier when I got
a direct deposit every two weeks. Maybe I should go
(13:16):
back to work, right, Like, there's just so many decisions
that we're constantly making, and we don't we're not using
a system to help ourselves make the best decisions with
the data and the infrastructure to feel confident with the
decision that we're making. So this book is a tool
to help you do that. This book is a tool
to help you feel confident with the decisions that you're
(13:39):
making so that you can literally have more joy and
more freedom and enjoy the process that you're going through
instead of all this anxiety around am I making the
right decision? All that's indecision that happens because there are
a lot of choices in this world today.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
What did you learn differently when you were started building
your mancha more mancha versus when you're doing the journal
like that. I imagine there's things that you learned, like,
I don't want to do that again, so I'm gonna
do that differently.
Speaker 3 (14:11):
Yeah, So I have so many field businesses, you know,
The thing about field businesses is that nobody ever sees
them except for like the five customers that you had. Okay, yeah,
if you if you go to this warehouse. Oh my,
I've wasted so much money shipping things from warehouse to
warehouse in this country, just trying to reduce my rent.
But I've had so many field businesses I can't even
(14:36):
mention them. So I had one journal company, so we
were we were. I thought that the world must have
my journal, which was a mix of like a mole
skin but a slightly more structure, okay, And I felt
like you had to have this, so I built it.
It was printed in India. We've paid all this money
for this beautiful leather and all this stuff. Then my
(14:57):
second field business was a skincare company called it Rose Essentials,
and I felt like, again, this was like seven years ago.
I felt like skincare was the new frontier. That like,
in the same way that black girls were spending so
much time in injury on our hair, that we were
going to spend so much time and injury on our skin.
And I wasn't wrong. That trend is true and that
has definitely come to fruition. I underestimated them out of
marketing that was attached to me as a person for
(15:20):
the skincare business, and same thing for the journal. These
weren't things that I was willing to constantly be on
social media about. I wasn't gonna wake up every morning
and be like, look at my skincare routine. And I
was like, I'm the freaking CEO of a multimillion dollar company,
Like I don't have time to be on Instagram in
the morning showing you my skincare routine.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
That makes sense, you know.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
What I'm saying. So so that was the market wasn't
aligned with how that what works with my life love, right,
So that was the biggest thing. And then for a
more macha. Now it's nothing for me to wake up
in the morning and make a macha, like that's actually
(16:00):
within my workflow, right, Like it's easy to be like, hey,
have a morning macha with me and like let's talk
about whatever, right or like literally, you know, like it's
just part of my flow in a way that I
don't mind having a camera on it. And you know,
one thing when you're building a brand is you want
it to be you gotta set the company culture and
(16:20):
the brand equity, but I very quickly put a bunch
of non black people on the more Macha Instagram page.
I think back in the day, I was just so black, militant, righteous,
like black black, black black, It's gonna be a black
skincare company. It's gonna be a black you know, notebook company.
Well moremcha. I'm like, I don't care if you're green, blue, tall, short,
(16:42):
I do not care. We hired a cute little blonde
girl to be in our videos tutorials, like we're shipping
it out to influencers all over the country, moms, everybody,
you know. So I think that was the other thing
is I changed my go to market and really said
like let me, let me get out of the way
because I know myself and I don't want to be
(17:03):
in front of a camera every day.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
Yeah, that makes that makes total sense. You know.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
I'm like, again, I've been waiting for this episode for
so long. I've been building up these questions because I
feel like, there, I'm gonna tell you the problem that
I have, and I imagine a lot of people have
this issue. It's like you hear people like you talk
and solutions and things that you should stop doing.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
Things you should start doing.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
And then what your my brain says is like, but
there's nuance to my situation that her answer doesn't solve
for like, there's always like, you know, but they don't
understand because this thing over here, you know, And so
I wonder, like, what do you what do you hear
when I say.
Speaker 3 (17:42):
That, I just hear excuses. I mean, there's always going
to be something that's special about somebody's scenario. But the
fundamentals of business are always true, and the fundamentals of
self development are always true. You're You're your biggest limitation
for growth. The difference between will looks today and will
look this, who's got ten million dollars in cash in
the bank. It's the same with Lucas, so that it's
(18:07):
your brain. Yeah, it's your ability to think through problem
solvings at a strategic level. It's your ability to bring
other people with you so that they become problem solvers
for it, right, Like that is the limitation. But it
all starts with you. And that's why I'm in my
work smart framework. The first module, the first thing that
(18:28):
we talk about is you. It's like, before we can
go delegate to everybody else, what are you doing, Like,
what does your calendar look like? If I looked at
your calendar today, Will, And I said, you.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
Don't want to look at that, No, I do.
Speaker 3 (18:42):
I said, Will, what do you want to do? How
much money do you want to make next year?
Speaker 2 (18:48):
This year?
Speaker 3 (18:48):
How much money do you want to make this year?
And what are your like deliverables for yourself? What are
the things that you want to get done this year
to put out into the world. And then I looked
at your calend under and said, well, how are you
spending your time? I can guarantee you they do not match.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
Yeah, yeah, you're probably right. You're probably right, they don't match.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
What's the biggest rule you had to be write for
yourself young life?
Speaker 3 (19:16):
I think the biggest rule I had to rewrite for
myself was when I realized that nobody is grading me.
Nobody is Like, nobody is waking up in the morning
and saying you did a good job today. Nobody's waking
up in the morning and say you did a bad
(19:36):
job at that today. Like once you move out of college,
there's no more like scaling grade scale where everybody has
the same metrics of success. Yeah, And it took me
a while to stop looking for external metrics of success.
(19:59):
What do I mean by that? Like, when you enter
Silicon Valley, the metric of success is how much money
do you raise? Right when you enter into the workplace,
Especially in the time that I was there, it was
who's getting the best jobs, who's getting the best internal mentors,
who's getting the best products to work on, who's getting
(20:19):
the coolest products to work on? Like it was constantly
comparing to other people at your level to see am
I better than these people and my cohort at the
best Right, It's all arbitrary, it's all bullshit, like it
doesn't matter. So once I stopped letting go this desire
to be the best employee, I stopped caring and I
(20:42):
started to do what I wanted to do. When I decided, wait,
I don't need to keep raising money just because society
and Silver Value is saying you got to keep raising money.
You raise money and then you start raising your next
round while you're raising your current round, and you're hiring
all these people and you're burning through it, and then
you keep going and you keep growing. Once I said,
ah ah, I'm not doing this anymore. I'm done, I
(21:05):
did what I needed to do. I protected the company
I have, we have great investors, I've got the board governance.
Let's build a good company. Let's build a profitable company,
a profitable venture backed company five years ago. Yeah, yeah, right,
which was what was best for me and best with
my employees, and best for our community and best for
(21:27):
our audience. Once I made that decision, the level of
freedom that I had was just revolutionary and transform my
life because then you start to make decisions differently when
you're actually going for metrics that you demass the things
the definition of success, then it completely alleviates all this
stress that we all carry around with us to perform
(21:49):
at a level that we don't even care about.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
Yeah. Step, that's deep. You know.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
There's there's a description of the book where I'm gonna
quote this says, we come to see of your life
with this transformative guide to leaving hustle culture behind and
creating a more sustainable, balanced definition of success. And I
think about that because I remember this tweet. I saw
somebody else was talking about hustle culture and grind culture
and how that was bad, et cetera. And this tweet said,
(22:18):
the only people that talk about hustle culture being bad
and the grind culture being bad as the people who
already made it. Yeah, and I think about I wanted
to position that to you is because I've heard you
talk about you know, like, look, you've got to figure
out what works for your life and Morgan's made it.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
Like, how do you respond to that?
Speaker 3 (22:35):
Yeah? Yeah, I say there's a difference between hustle culture
and work hard. Hard work is necessary, like putting hours
in is necessary. Your ten thousand hours principle is a
principle that I completely agree with. So I think there's
a difference. Hustle to me is grind. So you can't
grind anymore, groupe force it, like push harder than everybody
(23:00):
else around you first and last out. Okay, that's hustle culture.
Work hard is let me put my best effort in
and be smart about how I'm doing that. So even
if I'm able, if I'm able to get the same accomplishment,
same outcome and deliverable as everybody else, but it took
me two hours less. I reward myself for that hard
(23:23):
work and the fact that I was strategic with my
effort to get the same deliverable for less time. That's
the challenge that I'm trying to encourage people to reconsider.
It's not about the amount of hours that you put in.
It's about the deliverable. Even with my own employees, when
someone's like, I'm working so hard, you know, I'm staying
(23:44):
up all nine, I'm doing this, doing that, I'm working
on the weekends, I'm like, why you shouldn't be? Like, like,
you shouldn't be That doesn't appeal to me. You don't
get brownie points for me. There used to be a
time where I felt differently where I measured my employee's
success partially.
Speaker 2 (24:03):
By who's in office late, who's.
Speaker 3 (24:06):
Working hard, from like a who's putting it the time
in Yeah, but I completely said, wait, screw that. I'm okay.
If Jeremiah over here takes seven hours to do something
even though it took Susie over here nine hours to
do that shows me Jeremiah has more potential and capacity.
(24:30):
So let's reward Jeremiah for that and then ask Jrmiah,
what else do you want to do? Right? And I
think I think that is a fundamental shift that we
all have to make, which is like, there's no brownie
points for literally burning yourself out and working all night,
(24:50):
all day, and that's not you don't get a badge
of honor. That's actually a weakness.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
You know, there was this study Small Business Administration put
out some time ago, and I remember it vividly because
it said eighty percent of black owned businesses are in
the bottom twenty percent of categories for revenue generations. So
we over index on landscaping, small restaurants.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
Hospitality exact exactly.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
We over index on that. And you know, I'm interested
in your thoughts on how we can think.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
Differently about that, how do we scale?
Speaker 1 (25:25):
And so I think about even barbershops, you know, like
there's no black owned Boricks or Supercuts, and I wonder why,
because we have so many barbers and hairstyles in our community.
Are what are we missing about that that your message says, like, look, guys,
there's a bigger opportunity out here.
Speaker 3 (25:43):
I think we have a collaboration problem. You know, I've
acquired three companies in the last ten years, and one
of the reasons I was able to do that is
because I view collaboration as a core like strategic advantage
that I have to peers. Why do we need three
(26:03):
different barbershops who all maintain the same overhead of leases
and payroll and insurance and equipment and HR systems, and
there's a lot of overhead. Ten to fifteen percent of
business's costs is just overhead that every single business has
(26:26):
to have. If you're all one company, then it's it's
that same HR person for the whole company, right, It's
the same creative team for the whole company. At Blavity,
it's the same talent team for the whole company. So
we're able to get economies of scale because we decided
to collaborate and bring other businesses in underneath the Blavity
(26:47):
in portfolio, and that has allowed us to then spend
more time doing our CEO task and less time doing
the operating task. So if all those barbershops were able
to say, you know what, I gonna set my ego aside.
It doesn't need to be called JoJo's barbershop and Becky
Q's barbershop and Data da Barbershop. We're gonna just be
called black barbershop, okay. And we're gonna have three black
(27:09):
barbershops in this entire city, and each one is gonna
be run by Jojo and them. But the back end
administrative work is going to be centralized. How much money,
more money could they have, how much more cash flow
could they have? And also time because you don't have
three barbershops trying to figure out barbers trying to figure
out how to run a business when they set out
(27:31):
to be the barbers and that is I think one
of the challenges is that it requires collaboration. Black folks,
we love to collaborate on everything else. We collaborate at church,
We collaborate on carpools, We collaborate on meals, family dinner,
we collaborate on funerals, we collaborate on weddings. We collaborate
on so many things. Fraternity sororities. We are good at
(27:53):
ruling by committee. We are good at coming together. But
something about business, there's not that many black acquisitions happening
and black mergers, and I think that has to do
with ego.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
What do you say to people who have multiple interests?
Speaker 1 (28:10):
They have multiple things going on, you know, when you
are trying to advise them in how to you know,
still live a balanced life in some way.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
But I have so many interests.
Speaker 3 (28:21):
I think there's a difference between interests, hobbies, passions, and
things that make you money, you know. So in the book,
we have this framework that I live by and I
encourage people to live by, which is the six pillars
of life. The six pillars of life, at any given point,
you can only be optimizing three of them. So the
(28:41):
six pillars are money, stability, Right, So money is are
you making enough money to do the things that you
want to do when you want to do them. Stability
is do you feel stable? Like, are you in a
place where you feel grounded? And if not, you need
to focus on that. These two things are kind of
your foundational pillars. Yeah, if one of them is off,
then you got to fix one of them. The next
(29:03):
one is wellness. Do I feel good doing the things
that I'm doing every day? Do I mentally, physically, spiritually?
Do I feel good? The next one's relationships. Do I
like the people around me? Am I spending time with
people that I care about? My Do I have a partner?
Do I have the family that I want? Do I
have the friends the church community that I want? Okay,
(29:25):
then there's passions. Am I doing things just for me? Right?
For me? It's painting. For others, it might be skiing,
it might be all types of stuff. Okay, And then
the last one stability, money, relationships, passions, wellness. Who am
I missing?
Speaker 2 (29:46):
Don't you got to buy the book to get the
last one? You got to buy book to get.
Speaker 3 (29:49):
The last I like that.
Speaker 2 (29:51):
I like that, that was good.
Speaker 3 (29:55):
I actually I'm like, no, I actually money, stability, freedom,
passions and wellness, freedom, freedom, freedom. I was like, what
am I missing? Are you the boss of you or
somebody else the boss? If you want to pick up
and travel the world, can you do that? Like? How
much freedom do you have in your life? Are you
(30:16):
an independent person? Or are you ruled by the systems,
the society, the people around you? And freedom is one
of those things that I think a lot of us
inherently that's what we're looking for. We're looking to have
more control over what we say and what we do.
And between those six you can only again focus on three,
(30:39):
and they change at different seasons of your life. When
you first maybe are having kids, and then your relationships,
your stability, and your money, which means you have no freedom.
You're not leaving the house at seven o'clock to go
to the bar with the boys. Because you're focused on
your three things. Maybe you're not able to make it
to your gym class. You know, will work out like
you use work out out and do to our workouts
(31:01):
on a Saturday because you're focused on your family. Right,
There's going to be other seasons where you're like, I'm
trying to get this promotion and I'm grinding super hard.
So you're on money because you really want to get
to the next level because you want to be your
own boss, your freedom. And then yeah, maybe that means
you don't. You are missing a couple of dinners, you
are missing so and so's birthday party, you are missing
so and So's wedding because you're really focused on your goal.
(31:21):
At any given season, these things are going to change,
and the question is just being able to audit your
life and say, wait, have my pillars changed and I
just didn't explicitly change my behavior to match them, which
is why I'm feeling resentment and I'm feeling frustrated.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
That's super good I'm thinking about.
Speaker 2 (31:43):
No, I'm going to use a.
Speaker 1 (31:44):
Sports analogy, which I shouldn't do, but there is You know,
you can tell a great athlete by if they make
the people around them better. Not only are they doing
great things, but the people around them are, and I
think about you like you are that person. You've been
that person for me, You've been that person for other
people who I know who.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
Are around you.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
And people make more money when they hang around Morgan Debond,
They have more all these things when they hang around
Morgan Devon.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
And how should we then audit our circles?
Speaker 1 (32:15):
Because not everybody can hang around Morgan Debond, So how
can we how should we audit our circle, you know,
with an unbiased view of like, look, I know I
like hanging around you, but this is probably not a
wise investment of my time.
Speaker 3 (32:28):
Yeah, yeah, there's something. There's a chapter in the book
around people and the people in your life and the
difference between mentors and advisors. Right, So I'm a lot
of people's advisor. I'm your advisor, Right, I want to
make more money? You call me. For a lot of people,
I'm their chief revenue officers, Like you want to make
more money. I'm gonna tell you how. I know. You
still got to do the work, Okay, So you got
(32:51):
to surround yourself. If your personal life doesn't have those
people who are motivating you and helping you get to
the next level, that's okay, you know, this. I don't
believe that everybody around you has to be transactional or
add value to your life in that way. I'm actually
completely cool with it. So all this social media that's
like catch you, audit your friends, your friends circle, is
a reflection of how big I don't believe that. I
(33:13):
think that's bullshit. Not everybody in your life has to
be adding value to You can hire and find advisors
who can help you get to the next level. An
advisor is someone who's already done it. And your advisors
may be a podcast, your advisors may be my book,
your advisor may be YouTube channels. Right, Like, there's so
many free resources and cheap resources for you to solve
(33:36):
a problem that you have from experienced people who've already
done it, experienced people who've already done I'm not talking
about these people selling online courses or the biggest business
they've ever run is the business that they're running on you.
Speaker 2 (33:50):
The online course. Yeah, okay, out there.
Speaker 3 (33:55):
So they are out there everywhere. So you really got
to be careful try to evaluate everybody in your life
against what do they provide back to me. I think
that it's important to not make everybody in your life
responsible for your own development. You're responsible for your development,
You're responsible for your growth. You're the person who's in
(34:17):
the driver's seat of your life. So just like when
I'm the CEO, if I have a deficit because I'm
a bad people manager, it's not my employee's job to
make me a better people manager. It's my job to
go find the resources, to go find the executive coaches,
to go read the books and become a better people manager.
(34:37):
It's the same thing in your personal life.
Speaker 1 (34:41):
I'm going to ask an EBC question every day carry
question like what is Morgan's What is in Morgan's every
day Carrie? What are the things that you've got to
have access to? Tools, software, things that you need within
an arms reach.
Speaker 2 (34:56):
To help you be successful day to day?
Speaker 3 (34:58):
The only thing I need is this my mobile phone.
That's the only thing I need. And the reason for
that is there's literally times where I'm like, I don't
even want to see a computer today. Like I used
to date a guy who literally I don't even think
he owned a computer, but he ran probably like two
or three multimillion dollar businesses, a huge venture fund, and
(35:20):
I just was fascinated. I was like, you don't make decks,
like you don't look at Excel spreadsheets, like you don't
need to get in there and chase some numbers or
something like. He was like, I have an iPad, Like
if I need to do something like, I'll do on
an iPad. But there's somebody else who's like doing the
grunt work and then I am tweaking the things, and
I was, I mean, this was very early on in
(35:41):
my career, so I wasn't at a point where I
had that much freedom. Right, our freedom was not one
of my pillars at the time, but it was aspirational
for me to say, Wow, I have that much freedom
that I'm no longer dictated by a device to get
my work done, to be able to produce content, produce value,
to be able to talk to my employees. And so
(36:01):
I've really created a systement at Blavity where I'm like,
if you work for me, you don't send me emails
like like slack me or nothing. That's right, Okay, don't
call me, don't text me. You're not gonna get texts
from Morgan Debon. You're not gonna get phone calls from
Morgan Debon, slack me bro even when we have vendors.
(36:23):
Our partners like the gathering Spot and Glavity are working
on something. I'm like, Ryan, you guys slack Okay, so
joint slack channel. Now there's a gallery spot, Blavity, joint
slack channel. Okay, Slack is my headquarters. We're fully remote,
but I can do everything from my phone, so that
is the biggest that's the only tool I need. This
(36:45):
could make you a millionaire right here, straight on your phone.
You don't have to have all this crazy equipment. And
that's that's just going back to fundraising. That is the
reason why just making money is now a new requirement
for raising money because it's so easy.
Speaker 2 (37:06):
What does success look like for you now? And now?
Has that definition changed for you over time?
Speaker 3 (37:12):
You know, I think it's tough to talk about success
for me now because I really have hit every dream
that I've ever wanted for myself in a lot of
different ways. And so there's actually a part of me
that's going through an exercise of pushing myself to take
more risk because I am so comfortable and I am
so happy and I am so fulfilled. I wake up
every day and I say, ooh, oh, it feels good
(37:35):
to be me. Okay, it feels so good to be me,
and I like that. For everybody listening to that, that
you have that level of contentment in your life, we're like,
ooh yeah, no, I do not want to trade with
anybody else. I feel good. I like the choices that
I make every day. I like I like the things
I stress about. The things I stress about, they're not
(37:57):
that big of a deal. Right. I'm not saying I
don't have days. I'm not saying there's not times when
I look at Blavity's P and L and I say, oh, man,
we made some mistakes here, we overspent here, we could
have pushed this harder, we could have hit these different goals.
I have all of those things. But I feel really
good about how we operate. I feel good about my
leadership team. I feel good about the fact that everybody's
marching towards a mission that matters. I feel good about
(38:18):
the fact that I wake up every day and I
can decide what I want to wear or not because
of how people are gonna judge me as a black
founder or black female CEO, but because of what I
want to wear today and how I want to present myself. Right,
I feel good about the things I think about, And
I think that is the truest definition of success for anyone.
(38:44):
How do you get there? For some people listening to
this that's so far away from where they are. They're
waking up every day dreading going into work that day.
They're waking up today feeling like, I'm so freaking cold.
Why do I live here? You're waking up in the
morning and you're just like, I'm exhausted. Did I even
sleep like I'm mentally exhausted and I just woke up.
(39:07):
You got to fix that. You got to like lean
into that tension and fix whatever the root is the issue,
whatever that root issue is, you got to fix that.
You don't have to live that way.
Speaker 2 (39:18):
April.
Speaker 1 (39:19):
First, we write your rules, The Journey to Success in
Less Time with More Freedom, Morgan Debond, Such a pleasure.
Speaker 3 (39:27):
Thanks for having me. Well everybody, I look forward to
hearing how this book transforms your life and you know
what things you discover about yourself along the way. My
hope is that you use this as a tool to
be able to make these decisions and to move quickly
so that you can have more joy.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
And more free Black Tech Green One is a production
to Blavity afro Tech, the Black Effect podcast.
Speaker 2 (39:48):
Network in Night High Media. It's produced by Morgan Debon
and me Well Lucas, with the digital production.
Speaker 1 (39:54):
Support by Kate McDonald say and Jada McGee. Special thank
you to Michael Davis in Love Beach More about my
guess at other tech this stuff it's an innovators at
afrotech dot Com.
Speaker 2 (40:04):
Video version of this episode will.
Speaker 1 (40:05):
Drop to Black Tech Green Money on YouTube, So tap in,
enjoy your Black Tech Green Money, Share us with somebody,
don't get your money.
Speaker 2 (40:13):
Decent love
Host
Will Lucas
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