![]() ![]() You don't even know if you're conforming, and somebody from the outside might see you and say, 'Yo, why won't you be yourself?'" Reflect on your entrepreneurial journey And unless you identify what your voice is, you will never know if you're being authentic or not. "Unless you recognize the codes, you'll never know if you're switching or not. As he navigated these changes, Burleson assessed his voice and brand to stay authentic to his own style. ![]() The breadth of Burleson's professional career has spanned football stadiums, board rooms, and television studios, each with their own sets of cultural norms. Still, 82% of Black business owners say they behave differently with customers and vendors to avoid being stereotyped, according to a survey by Intuit QuickBooks. Code-switching can take a social and psychological toll. Staying authentic to your identity isn't always as easy as it sounds. support the most authentic version of that." And when it comes to your business, that's what people identify with when you talk about supporting Black business. "When it comes to starting a business, authenticity from the jump is important because it's better to have people adjust to who you truly are than you trying to adjust to what you think the needs of the people are," Burleson said. ![]() It's never too soon to share your authentic self, especially as a Black business owner, Burleson said. Rae has found a way to stay true to herself: writing down her priorities, practicing the conversation, then creating a dialogue to express her needs. If I knew I didn't want this the whole time, and I didn't speak up, then who else can I get mad at but myself." Then I started to realize that when I would see the products or the projects come out of that, there was nothing more frustrating than knowing I couldn't say something I didn't like,” Rae said. "I found that often I was a people-pleaser, to my own detriment. Sometimes that manifests as adopting a popular marketing strategy, emulating someone else's brand, or, in Rae's case, bending her creative vision to accommodate show producers. Be your authentic selfĪs a business owner, there's a real pressure to conform to the way that others operate. From their conversation, three key topics emerged for the audience of American and Canadian Black business owners: authenticity, introspection, and community. Rae and Burleson addressed head-on some of the pressures associated with running a Black-owned business. "Oftentimes, the thing that gets in the way of the stuff we want to accomplish is our own fears," he said. īurleson, the owner of several small businesses that he started during his NFL career, brought home Rae's message. Today, you might know Rae from Insecure, the HBO series she created and starred in, and you've seen her on the silver screen in Little, The Lovebirds, and The Hate U Give. ![]() Rae’s strategy - one small act of courage after another - helped her find the big-time success she aspired to achieve. In an open-hearted discussion on the first day of Black History Month, the pair of entrepreneurs shared candid stories from their experiences during the “QuickBooks + Mailchimp Fireside Chat: Issa Rae and Nate Burleson in a Conversation about Courage.” Breaking it down into bite-sized pieces was essential to building the courage and the bravery to go for the big thing." If I can achieve this step, then maybe I can do the next one. "Creating these little milestones and checking those off continually gave me the courage to know that I could do it. "Sometimes, these goals feel so out of reach," Rae said. But betting on herself opened the door to self-doubt. Rae decided to tell stories, one small step at a time, in pursuit of bigger ambitions like starring on the big screen and creating a television show. "For me, it came down to fatigue and frustration - 'Why isn't this storyteller doing this ? Why isn't this writer telling this story?' - until it came down to the idea that I have to do it if I want to see it." "There was just an overwhelming, almost suffocating, desire to tell a specific type of story," Rae said in a fireside chat with CBS Mornings host Nate Burleson. When writer and actress Issa Rae created the award-winning web series The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl in 2011, it was a true calling to walk the entrepreneur's path. ![]()
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