Inksecure Podcast

A Legal Podcast Focused on Creating Wealth From The Fine Print

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Ep. 58 – Christina Brown Talks Brown Girl Love and Empowerment

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Brown Girls Love Power!  Such a powerful (and true) statement.  That’s the headline of today’s guest, Christina Brown, Power Day event.

Christina Brown is a style blogger and digital media expert and the founder of fast-growing style; beauty destination LoveBrownSugar.com, mommy destination BabyBrownSugar.com and digital empowerment community BrownGirlsLove.

In this episode, Christina and I talk about how she started her blog and moved from being a blogger to being an influencer, landing huge campaigns like Dove (and we talk about her reaction to their scandal), why she celebrates Brown women, and how she manages being a single mom of two small children.

Christina has been heralded as a “30 Under 30 Style Maven” by HelloBeautiful.com, a “Black Blogger To Watch” by TheRoot.com, a “Top 40 Style Blogger” by Essence Magazine, a Black Enterprise Magazine “Blogger Month” Honoree, a Wharton Magazine “Social Media Watch List” Honoree and she most recently became the first black influencer to become an international ambassador for Dove, featured in a worldwide TV ad and print advertisements.

Listen to episode 58 here.

Podcast Listening Options

Listen on Apple Podcasts and Stitcher

Join My Facebook Community

Are you looking for a community of supportive entrepreneurs working together to tackle their legal needs?  Then join the Legal-EASE For Entrepreneurs Business Collective.  Plus, I pop in with live videos now and then.  You can JOIN HERE.

Social Media Info

Connect on Instagram and Twitter:  @artsteele_esq

Ep. 57 – Simona Noce Talks Motherhued and Entrepreneurship

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“Everything can pause for a motherhood experience.”

Simona Noce is an accomplished Public Relations manager who has worked with some heavyweights, but her greatest achievement and her most important role is being a mom.

Simona is skilled and dedicated public relations professional with an intense passion for media, entertainment, and the execution of creative ideas and special events. She has pierced the world of both Hollywood glamour and the non-profits sectors in the D.C area.  Hailing from a 5 year spin on PR domination as an Account Executive at Allied Integrated Marketing, leading film campaigns on behalf of high profile clients such as Screen Gems, Universal, STX Entertainment, Sony Picture Classics, Faith & Family, and MOXY (Allied’s African American division).

She is currently a full-time entrepreneur running The Noce Model, a  PR & marketing strategic firm, focused on creative, entertainment, lifestyle, and tech brands.  She is also the co-creator of District Motherhued, Washington’s premier organization for millennial moms of color.

She recently launched The Momference which is a conference all about mothering and entrepreneurship as a mother of color.  Tickets sold out within a couple of weeks!

In this episode, Simona and I talk about why celebrating motherhood is so important, why having a space specifically for moms of color is necessary, and how to navigate entrepreneurship when you have young children.

Simona also shared some tips on how to get your business noticed.

  • Visibility – use social media to gain brand recognition;
  • Engage with your audience and use influencers to increase your brand visibility;
  • Share content that aligns with reporters or media outlets are looking for; and
  • Remember that reporters and media contributors are looking for content, so give them what they need.

Make sure to follow District Motherhued on Instagram for some great laughs and support.

Listen to episode 57 here.

Podcast Listening Options

Listen on Apple Podcasts and Stitcher

Join My Facebook Community

Are you looking for a community of supportive entrepreneurs working together to tackle their legal needs?  Then join the Legal-EASE For Entrepreneurs Business Collective.  Plus, I pop in with live videos now and then.  You can JOIN HERE.

Social Media Info

Connect on Instagram and Twitter:  @artsteele_esq

Ep. 56 – Tiffany “The Budgetnista” Aliche Talks Creating Her Legacy Through A Business Built For Black Women

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Tiffany’s story never gets old – because you can’t believe how much she’s overcome.  But then, she has the receipts – to the tune of almost 500,000 mostly Black women, who have followed her footsteps and are on their way to financial freedom.

Tiffany is quickly becoming America’s favorite, personal financial educator. The Budgetnista is the founder of the LIVE RICHER Challenge and the Dream Catchers, a community of over 500,000 women worldwide that work together to improve their lives through financial education.

Tiffany is the bestselling author of the books, The One Week Budget and Live Richer Challenge, and she and her financial advice have been featured on: Good Morning America, the TODAY show, PBS, TIME, The New York Times, Reuters, ESSENCE Magazine, Forbes, Fox Business, MSNBC, CBS MoneyWatch and has appeared on The Real a few times. She also blogs about personal finance for The Huffington Post.

In this episode, Tiffany and I talk about a bad investment she made at a young age, how she finally overcame the shame of her mistake, how she started the Budgetnista and why she is unapologetic about her growing business.

Listen to Ep. 56 here.

Podcast Listening Options

Listen on Apple Podcasts and Stitcher

Join My Facebook Community

Are you looking for a community of supportive entrepreneurs working together to tackle their legal needs?  Then join the Legal-EASE For Entrepreneurs Business Collective.  Plus, I pop in with live videos now and then.  You can JOIN HERE.

Social Media Info

Connect on Instagram and Twitter:  @artsteele_esq

Ep. 55 – Happy World Intellectual Property Day (with Art and Patrice of Creative Genius Law)

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Today is World Intellectual Property Day and Patrice and I have a special episode planned for you.

Happy World Intellectual Property Day!  As proud IP attorneys, Patrice and I give you a rundown of how we are doing our part to help creatives, especially creatives of color!

In this episode, we talk about our passion for helping creatives protect their intellectual property and how we can start using our IP to create legacies and build generational wealth.

We also discuss the newly added services to Creative Genius Law – including helping creatives renegotiate their copyright licenses and assisting creatives in properly enforcing their licensing agreements.

Finally, we touch on some popular topics like the Lina Viktor suit against Marvel for the unauthorized use of her work in the “All the Stars” music video and why Lauryn Hill can’t sing her songs!

Listen to episode 55 here.

Podcast Listening Options

Listen on Apple Podcasts and Stitcher

Join My Facebook Community

Are you looking for a community of supportive entrepreneurs working together to tackle their legal needs?  Then join the Legal-EASE For Entrepreneurs Business Collective.  Plus, I pop in with live videos now and then.  You can JOIN HERE.

Social Media Info

Connect on Instagram and Twitter:  @artsteele_esq

Ep. 54 – Somebody’s Always Watching (and Waiting to Bless You) – Quarter Lessons

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In order to move forward, you have to take a step back and assess how you’re moving through the process. Since it’s the end of the first quarter, I thought I’d give you a quick recap of Q1 2018.

I started the year out pretty strong, got hit by March and April – always really tough months for me, and learned a few lessons along the way.

In this episode, I discuss three lessons I’ve learned this quarter:

  • Plan ahead!  If you’re planning for January in January, you’re too late.  I procrastinated on planning my first quarter content and ended up not doing it until mid-late December.  I’m paying for that by having to work double-time to get ahead.
  • Is it a good decision for YOUR business?  I had a few incidents and collaborations fall through that made me realize everybody out here is making a business decision so I need to start doing the same.  That also means that when someone says No, it’s not that they don’t like you personally, it just may not be a good time investment or direction for their business.
  • Somebody’s always watching.  I know sometimes it can seem like we’re talking and no one’s listening.  As a result, we want to take shortcuts because we’re like “no one is even going to see this.”  Don’t do that!  In this episode, I talk about how a prominent entrepreneur who declined my request to be on the show referred my podcast to her customers.

The moral of the story is, plan ahead, mind YOUR business and be so dope that people want to bless you.

Listen to episode 54 here.

Podcast Listening Options

Listen on Apple Podcasts and Stitcher

Join My Facebook Community

Are you looking for a community of supportive entrepreneurs working together to tackle their legal needs?  Then join the Legal-EASE For Entrepreneurs Business Collective.  Plus, I pop in with live videos now and then.  You can JOIN HERE.

Social Media Info

Connect on Instagram and Twitter:  @artsteele_esq

Ep. 53 – Branding Strategist Maya Elious Shares Why Clarity Equals Impact

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One word comes to mind when I think of Maya Elious: message clarity.

Maya Elious is a personal branding strategist that teaches experts how to create curriculum-based content to grow & monetize their online brand.

She’s helped hundreds of students and clients launch digital content platforms like blogs, challenges, masterclasses, webinars, and courses so they could establish and monetize their expertise in the online world.

In this episode, Maya and I discuss why it’s important to really have one clear message and be absolutely clear about who you are speaking to.  We also talk about the real struggle that so many smart and very capable entrepreneurs with their inability to explain their value to their potential audience (that’s a real struggle for me).

And finally, we talk about Maya’s Impact 1K mission – where she set out to impact the lives of thousands of women, by encouraging women to use their voice, and share their message in the form of online content in order to reach even more women.

Listen to episode 53 here.

Podcast Listening Options

Listen on Apple Podcasts and Stitcher

Join My Facebook Community

Are you looking for a community of supportive entrepreneurs working together to tackle their legal needs?  Then join the Legal-EASE For Entrepreneurs Business Collective.  Plus, I pop in with live videos now and then.  You can JOIN HERE.

Social Media Info

Connect on Instagram and Twitter:  @artsteele_esq

Ep. 52 – If You Want More Toys, Get a Job or Start a Business, So We Started a Business – with Collin, Ryan, and Austin Gill of Frères Branchiaux Candle Co.

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It’s National Siblings Day!  And there’s no better way to kick it off than with these gentlemen who took the step of not only loving their sibs to death (don’t we all?) but actually starting a business with them.

When Collin (11), Ryan (9), and Austin (7) asked their mom for more money (they were already getting an allowance) to buy toys, their mother (an entrepreneur herself), gave them two options:  get a job or start a business.  So, they started a candle company:  Frères Branchiaux.

It’s natural that the Gill brothers choose to start a business because their mother, Celena Gill is a lawyer and an entrepreneur with a booming e-commerce business and their father Patrick (who joins me on the interview) has an MBA – so entrepreneurship probably runs in their blood.

Joining me on the podcast are Collin and Ryan and their dad Patrick.  In this episode, we discuss why they picked candles, how they divide the duties, and their dad Patrick discusses how the business has changed the boys and how they’ve become a role model for their peers.

Frères Branchiaux took the 2017 holiday market by storm and have grown so quickly that their parents almost can’t keep up with them. They’ve appeared in more than 10 markets, they’ve been featured on Good Morning Washington, West Elm and have sold almost 700 products and made $10k in sales!  They also happily give a portion of their proceeds to the homeless.

You can catch up with Frères Branchiaux on Instagram

Listen to Episode 52 here.

Podcast Listening Options

Listen on Apple Podcasts and Stitcher

Join My Facebook Community

Are you looking for a community of supportive entrepreneurs working together to tackle their legal needs?  Then join the Legal-EASE For Entrepreneurs Business Collective.  Plus, I pop in with live videos now and then.  You can JOIN HERE.

Social Media Info

Connect on Instagram and Twitter:  @artsteele_esq

 

 

Ep. 51 – Pivot or Quit? Kim and Tim Lewis of CurlMix Share How Pivoting Brought New Success to their Business

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Remember that episode of Friends, when Ross, Chandler, and Rachel are carrying an oversized couch up the stairs and every time the couch got stuck, Ross would scream: PIVOT!!  Turns out the couch didn’t fit, but Ross was on to something.

Pivoting is what smart business people do.  Businesses evolve, your market evolves and many times the only way to save your business is to pivot.  And that’s what Kim and Tim Lewis of CurlMix did.

Kim and Tim launched CurlMix in 2015 as a DIY subscription box for curly hair.  The concept was based on the premise that (1) naturalistas want natural and as few ingredients as possible in their hair products; (2) many naturalistas want to know exactly what goes into their natural hair products, and (3) they want to mix it themselves, but don’t want to scour the internet for ingredients and come up with their own recipes.  Amazing concept and this describes me to a tee (since I speak for all naturalistas LOL).

However, what Kim didn’t expect is how much work it would take to get her DIY subscription box off the ground.  When she launched CurlMix in 2015, she launched it to a whopping two orders.

After contemplating quitting her second business, Tim convinced Kim to give it one more shot and this time around, she took no prisoners.  She contacted media outlets, bloggers, including Hey Fran Hey and Natural Chica, she got coverage in Refinery 29 and Essence and when they relaunched, they sold 100 boxes on their first day!

Since then, CurlMix has done more than 350K in business, have launched the CurlMix DIY party, city tours and have been featured in BuzzFeed, Refinery29, Allure, Essence, Ebony, ABC News Chicago, Naturally Curly and more.

They launched their first pre-mix line in March 2017 and that planted the seed for the much-needed pivot they just made in their business.

In this episode, Kim and Tim get very honest about some of the mistakes they made in their business, what some of their biggest challenges are and their light bulb moment that turned their business around.

You can catch up with CurlMix on Instagram.

Want to try CurlMix’s newest hand-crafted products?  Enter the giveaway below!

Listen to Episode 51 here.

Podcast Listening Options

Listen on Apple Podcasts and Stitcher

Join My Facebook Community

Are you looking for a community of supportive entrepreneurs working together to tackle their legal needs?  Then join the Legal-EASE For Entrepreneurs Business Collective.  Plus, I pop in with live videos now and then.  You can JOIN HERE.

Social Media Info

Connect on Instagram and Twitter:  @artsteele_esq

 

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