Taking The Entrepreneur LEAP!
Hey Beauties! This past Friday I had the pleasure to be apart of my very first panel. LISTEN!! When I say that I was so nervous about speaking on this panel not to mention that it was also streamed LIVE ONLINE. Honestly the day of the event I just kept telling myself…Turkesha you got this! Not to mention that I had been asking God for the past few months to open up the flood gates of heaven to panel opportunities. LOOK AT GOD!!
So quite naturally when The Church Collection asked me to be apart of their StartUps 101 Panel I jumped to take full advantage of the opportunity. Just in case you’re wondering let me give you some background information on The Church Collection:
The Church Collection is a company that helps you fine tooth your vision. They are instrumental in helping you cultivate the pursuit. Have you ever found yourself asking the question, How do I start ? Is it worth it? Sitting in discouragement, you politely throw your vision away in the closet! UNIIL NOW!! The Church Collection is designed to help solve your problems by providing faith-based resources to all generations! When you become a member of the church collection, you have access to a growing hub of faith-based services. You will be able to choose what services you need to help in your pursuit of growing and expanding the faith-based community.
So…now that you’ve been formally introduced to The Church Collection lets jump into our panel discussion with our moderator Jai Tee, CEO of The Church Collection. I Thank God that the panel showcased a plethora of entrepreneurs from all walls of life all making major moves in business.
I had the pleasure to share the panel with Erskine C. Johnson III (Actor/Producer), Ramona O. (Blogger/Stylist) and Jelani Boykin (Promoter/Personality).`It was amazing to learn about how we’re all thriving in our God-Given Talents and Gifts while building our brands. I’m sure you all have seen Erskine on “The Game” and AtlantaFX which actually just won an Emmy literally this month. His story is so unique and real. Erskine is from a family of Football athletes and although he went that route of playing sports and going to college off of a scholarship he knew at an early age that he wanted to be an actor.
Ramona is an amazing Blogger/Stylist who found her passion for fashion while in high school she discovered that name brands did not have cute plus size clothes and this was the start of “Tall And Dope”. Ramona would thrift and find unique pieces where she would take them to a seamstress and create her own fashion styles that became a hit with her peers that was the start of her creating her own brand.
Jelani was a promoter working as a celebrity/night party event promoter but his passion was always reaching the masses through prayer and church leadership. He discovered his passion at a young age and eventually over time took the leap, stepped out on faith and gave God room for him to fulfill his passion. Long story short, God made room and he’s currently over small groups in the ministry and still promoting but for Christian events.
My story is a bit different. I was employed in Corporate all of my life with the dream of climbing the Corporate Ladder which I was very successful at but one day I found myself unemployed. I then went to work in our family own hair care business where I was immediately immersed in branding, social media on a global level, marketing and product placement. Keep in mind that this was hands on training combined with me reading every marketing/social media/branding book that I could get my hands on as well as attending seminars. My goal was to learn everything that I could about this area. I went on to create viral platforms for the brands and build a brand for a baby hair care line that’s currently sold all over the world. Wait? It gets better! To my surprise I found myself again unemployed after 4 years when my Father decided to sell our brands. Trust me there was no time to think and since I was already blogging part-time while working full-time I decided to give it a go full-time. A few years later McIvy Media was born. What stuck out amongst us was that although we all come from different backgrounds with different experiences the two things that we all had in common was giving God room and turning our passion into paper.
The Startup 101 shared our individual stories as well as collectedly guide the audience through seeing creative ways that they could implement strategies to take their business to the next level. We found that at the beginning of our panel many people felt “STUCK” but after the panel they all walked away with a fresh look at their ideas and plans for their businesses. We all agreed that “YOU SHOULD JUST JUMP! TAKE THE LEAP!
STAY TUNED FOR THE NEXT STARTUP 101 PANEL!