Morgan DeBon (0:00)

Hey, everyone. I'm Morgan debon, a passionate entrepreneur and life advisor. With the Journey podcast, you'll discover that success isn't about the destination, it's about the journey. I'm sharing stories of amazing people who've taken control of their lives. Join me on my own journey to discover the secret sauce behind reaching success. With permission from no one else. Hi, guys. Okay, so I thought we would do a little catch up. It's been a while since I've recorded a personal video, so I wanted to just give you a little May update. So it is May. That means it's middle of Q2, and I get this question a lot. Let's start with the executive orders and how it's impacted the business. So, interestingly enough, on the media side, business is doing fine. Our clients, our partners are advertising. I think that the tariffs reach everybody out. But, you know, depending on when you get this video, Trump keeps changing his mind every two to three weeks. So everybody's kind of staying on their toes, which is. Is one thing. The second thing that's going on is our clients for Afro Tech, who we usually have over 100 plus clients at AfroTech, usually like 150, 200, sometimes 300. And they are slow to make a decision, which generally is okay because we understand they need more approvals. They need to change the language of some things, they need to amend some terms. But generally Afrotech is growing and has an amazing community been going around the country and doing happy hours in different cities. So we did Charlotte, New York, Miami, Chicago, Atlanta, Dallas. We have Detroit, Seattle, San Francisco, Houston, I think D.C. coming up. They're popping, you know, so it's been really fun to just kind of be with people in their cities and just hear from the ground up, like, what's going on. And what it feels like is that a lot of workers in tech are kind of like, they don't feel like their companies are that loyal to them. They're not sure what it means to be at a company who doesn't prioritize diversity. And I just want to remind anyone who's in that situation, if they're feeling like, do y' all want me to be here or not? The answer is most likely yes. You know, there's of course, some toxic companies, like, if you work for Elon Musk and you work at Tesla, like, no, he doesn't care. He doesn't necessarily want you to be there. But outside of, like, that, most people want to do the right thing. They just don't have the cojones. To do it. Okay. So y' all don't need to jump ship just because your team or your company didn't release a huge DNI statement like keep your job, especially in this economy. I am slowing down on book tour. So my book came out April 1 called Rewrite your rules. If you haven't got it yet, what are you doing? No. Thousands and thousands of you all have gotten it, are reading it. You're tagging me. I love getting all the tags every day to see where this book is going with you on the airplane, on vacation, in the gym, in the car, on audible. So it's been so great to see all of the things that you guys are starting to change in your life. I've had people email me talking about, you know, they've hired their own personal chef for the summer or they hired a stylist finally to help them get their image together, or they decided they actually wanted to take a sabbatical. Because I talk about my own little sabbatical that I did many years ago. And it's just so refreshing to like hear people not just read the book, but like, what actions are they taking? You know, I didn't write this book as a tell all behind the scenes of blavity. Like that wasn't my objective. I think a lot of people were expecting that. It was like the blavity story. And I'm like, blavity is not thick. I need you to know how you can get to the next level. Okay. And yeah, so it's just really fun. I really appreciate the reviews. So if you haven't given me a review, five stars on Audible, Goodreads or Amazon. It's very, very helpful. Very, very helpful. Cause it just helps you stay ranked. Especially cause we're not in launch mode anymore and summertime books are like very much vacation fictiony. So having a non fiction book still like kind of be in the summertime launch is not the easiest thing to do. Wouldn't recommend it. Actually one thing on launching. Cause I got this question a lot. There is a lot of nonfiction black girl written books that launched this spring. We had Lovey Alencia, Monique from Maille, Daria Burke. We had Dr. Key Holman, Carolyn Wanga. I feel like a lot of people launch books in like a very short period of time. And maybe, maybe this is confirmation bias because I just was never paying attention that much before as someone who wasn't an author. And I buy books, but I don't buy like 30, 40 non fiction books a year. You know, maybe it's always been like this. But to me, that felt like a lot. I feel like I need all these publishers to coordinate better next year or always, because I know y' all was tired of us being like, please buy my book. Please buy my book. Now, some of you all who are watching this didn't even know I had a book. I'm not quite sure what to do with that. Besides to say, if you enjoy any of my content, if you enjoy any of the information I give you, the tools that I give you, the methods that I give you, you should buy the book because it's in there and it's like a workbook. It's like a do this, do this, do this, do this, do this if you want this outcome kind of book. So, yeah, that's my shameless plug for the day for rewrite your rules. Moving right along. Yeah, the tour has been super dope. I've got a couple more speaking engagements this week. Heading to Boston as well this summer, which I'm really excited about. I think we're doing something with UPENN or something in Philly. So if you want me to come to your city, you want me to come to your company, you let me know, and the team will figure it out. What else is going on? Oh, I'm pregnant. Do I see there's a baby in here? Yes, we have a baby bump. So having a baby. This is baby number two. We're very excited about it. I've had a pretty straightforward pregnancy. I didn't even know that I was pregnant. I know. Don't be me. But I didn't know I was pregnant. It took me, like, many, many weeks to be like, what is going on? And to be like, yeah, I wonder if I'm pregnant. And I took a. Here's the story, really. So we were going to brunch, and we go to brunch every Saturday, and we were trying a new restaurant that has stairs. It's on 12 South. I live in Nashville, Tennessee. And so I was carrying my son up the stairs, and I was, like, so fatigued. I was like, I can't carry him. Like, you would need to carry him, Josh. You need to get this baby and carry him up the stairs. And Josh was like, what is wrong with you? Like, he is not that heavy. And you need to get your endurance up because you have to go on book tour, and you can't be this baby crying about this is heavy. And I was like, I understand that. But in this very moment, I need you to take this child because I cannot carry him and walk up the stairs at the same time. And then they wanted to go to, like, the art museum and all this stuff. And I was like, I don't have it in me. I'm so tired. And I felt like maybe I wasn't eating enough or like it was just a stress because we were dealing with all the Afro Tech executive order stuff or like, I don't even know. But Josh went to the gym that Sunday morning, and I literally remember saying that morning, like, if I can't figure out why I'm not feeling well, then I'm gonna need to go to the doctor. And in that moment, I was like, I gotta take a test. So, yes, I took the test while he was at the gym. He got back from the gym, he walked. He walked into the kitchen, and my face was like. He was like, what's wrong? Because I. I had, like, propped up the phone to film, like, a cute little I'm telling you video. But I was like, I'm not feeling very cute. So I. I just told him, and he was like, oh, that's exciting. And I was like, is it, though? Because I have to go on tour. We're obviously very excited, but I think it's important to share these emotions. I was like, I have so many things to do. We were going to Europe this summer. We were going to. We have our wedding in August. You know, Afro Tech obviously is in October. I was like, it's just. Yeah. So I was like, all right, boo. Well, we here. And you know when you take a pregnancy test, the lines are like levels of, like, darkness based off of how pregnant you are. This line was like, like, black. Like, this line was like, oh, baby, you're very pregnant. You are not. Like, you are, like, months pregnant. So I went to the doctor later that week, actually. I texted my OB guy and was like, hey, girl. She was like, Morgan. I was like, hey, sis. She was like, let's go. So I got an appointment later that week. We went in, and, yeah, I was like, seven or eight weeks pregnant already at that point. So we at least got through the first trimester pretty quick. That's upside. Anyways, we're excited about it. Two kids was always part of the potential plan. And now the kids are going to just be, you know, two years apart, and it's going to be great. So we are back in planning mode for bringing a new baby into the world. All right, so I asked you guys to ask me a bunch of questions. So I've got the questions here. Okay. This is actually a lot of questions today. Usually y' all don't really be answering them. Can you see that? You see that? So many questions. Okay, so let's get to it. The do's and don'ts of fundraising for startups. Easy question. Okay, so if you want to raise money in this economy, a few things. One, have a clear understanding of why you want to raise money. You can't raise money because you just want to pay yourself a salary. That's not going to help you raise the money because VCs don't want to pay you for the work that you were already going to do whether you got paid or not. So it doesn't help grow the business to another level. So you need to raise money so that you can grow the business. Basics of venture capital here's what's really important for you to know. Number one, when you're raising money, you need to make sure that your company is venture backable. So is your company something that if I give you a dollar, you can give me three to seven dollars back in five to seven years? Because that's generally the average time frame that a investor has to return their investment back to their limited partners, their LPs, their investors. So it's important that you understand the economics of the entire deal that you're getting into. And I didn't understand this when I first got into it. Like I understood it enough, but I didn't really understand how the back end of the system worked for the vc. So I was like, this is free money. I don't have to give it back. It's like, I mean, you kind of do. You had them down. It's not like legally obligated, but you do have to do your best to give it back anyways. So the second thing is to make sure that your startup, your business and your product is actually ready to scale. So a lot of times people want to raise money to build their product and I hear that a lot. And I get it. You're like, I don't have the money to build the product that I want to build, so I'm going to raise money to be able to build it. And here's the thing, the threshold for like how advanced products need to be to raise a pre seed or age around the funding these days is pretty high, much higher than it was when I started raising 12 years ago. You know, I raised, I've raised over $12 million in the last like when I first started. I haven't raised since 2018, 2018 or 2019. Something like that. Back in the day, Google Ventures led my Series A. But one of the things that's important is that with AI, there's a lot more tools that help you build a product and get further along for much, much cheaper. So the expectation from a venture capitalist is that you're able to get much further with less money and you should be further along earlier in your startup journey than maybe I was or other people were, you know, three or four years ago because of all these AI tools that help with coding and building and also being able to hire like distributed teams. So that's the next thing. You gotta be far along. And then the third and this one. I really hate to tell you because I feel like it really sucks that this is a new benchmark, but they expect you to be break even or have a path to profitability. And again, I know you're like, path to profitability. If I have profitability, I would need to raise money. Exactly like the VC is trying to de risk their risk so much that they're trying to basically say, if I give you a dollar, you will give me back three to five. Right. And their willingness to take risk in a market where it's hard to get debt, meaning it's hard for their limited partners to make their money back. It's hard, it's more expensive to operate in this type of economy. They are reducing their significantly, which means they want to make sure that these companies aren't just going to constantly need all this money to grow, that they're going to be able to sustain themselves at some point and grow revenue, because that's a really important benchmark for exiting, as well as profitability is also a benchmark for exiting. Again, this wasn't the case. I mean, companies could like IPO and lose millions and millions and millions of dollars a year many years ago. And that that threshold has just changed. So it's important to know these things when you're considering raising venture funding. It's also important for you to just decide you need financing or do you need venture funding? Because there's lots of different ways that you can get money into your business. And maybe just angel investors is a good way to do that versus traditional vc. Okay, someone asked about imposter syndrome. You should watch the interview I did with Fawn Weaver about imposter syndrome. Cliff notes. She doesn't believe it exists. So we talked about that. A method to finding team members and co founders. Hmm. So to find co founders, I mean, I think your co founders need to be people you already have a relationship with and that you already work with because it's such an intimate relationship. You really are considering their personal life, their goals, their ambitions, their personal finances. I mean, it's a constant negotiation, very much like you are in a relationship with that person. And you got to know when to lean in and push them. You got to know when to fall back. It's a lot of balance. I mean, I felt like at times my co founders, I was closer to them than I was my own favorite family because we really had to operate together during really, really tough times of the company. So I think finding a co founder isn't really the right question. It's really like, how can you, with the people you already know, have them help you in your business? A co founder title, I wouldn't give it out willy nilly. Like, I believe that you can have people who are equity partners, equity advisors, people who earn their shares over time, which is called vesting. So let's say you want to hire me to help you grow your business. You're like, oh my God, Morgan, I love you so much. I really want you to help me grow my events business. I know you know a lot about events businesses. Will you advise me? And the answer is like, probably not. Because I don't have time to just work for free. And I definitely don't have time. Even if you were going to pay me a thousand dollars an hour, I actually don't have time to do that either. That's still not enough, like return on investment for me because that's not like I have 20 hours to give or 10 hours to give a week. So I will work for equity. If someone says, cool, I will offer you 3 to 5% of this company. Here's the deadlines, here's the milestones. That's something I would actually consider. 5, 10% depends on the company, depends on how big it is, depends on its revenue. But the point is you can exchange equity for sweat equity. Meaning there can be people who invest their time, their energy, their efforts into this business that if you can't afford to pay them, you're paying them in equity. So they're earning sweat equity. That's totally fine. Especially in the early stages of business. If you're going to raise money, then they're going to probably want more equity because they're going to get diluted over time. But here's the key and here's something that I think is super important under any circumstances. If you're going to give someone equity, it needs to vest over time. Because a lot of times people start hot and heavy, they really put all their effort into it and then it's difficult. Surprise, surprise. It's hard. It's hard to build businesses, it's hard to grow your company. It's hard to get above certain thresholds. So you need to have equity that vests over time. Two years, three years, four years. Our standard at Blavity is four years. But we're really big and we're established. So if we were younger and we were trying to get over a bigger threshold, it might be two years. And if they don't hit those milestones or if they leave or you fire them before, they only get what they've earned. This is key. This is key. Okay? These are things people don't tell you. So if you're going to add someone to your team, you don't have to give them the co founder title. You can make them an advisor, you can give them a big title and pay them in sweat equity. In terms of finding early employees, if you are looking for employees who are technical, you need to go the places that technical people are going to. So if you are a non technical founder and you're trying to build a business and you need someone who's technical, whether that's like a designer or a product engineer or whatever, then you need to go to the places where those technical people are going. So Afrotech is a great place to find co founders. Any of our meetups, the conference itself, you can go. If you're younger, in college, go hang out with nsbe. All the computer science guys and girls go where the engineers are. And you got to remember they have a lot of choices. So you have to make yours really interesting and careful, compelling for them. And they're probably also going to hedge their bets. They might be working on three or four projects at once, which is again why you need them to earn their equity over time. So even if you're doing cash, you might want to do a blend so that you're really making sure that you know they're delivering on what you have set out to get for this transaction. I hope that's helpful. Okay, what else? What roles did you hire for at first as you expanded and why? I talk about this in my book in the how to grow your team like a CEO. And the first person I hired was an assistant actually, because I was a person and my co founders were the people who were making the most money for the business. So we were the ones who were what I call the rainmakers. So when you're deciding who to hire. You can hire one of two categories. Category number one is if you are the person who makes the most money for your business. If you're the one who closes the deals, gets the clients in the door, you're the one at the top of your sales marketing funnel, then you are going to need to save your time so you can spend more time making money. So you want to hire someone who can help with all of those operating tasks that you're not able to get to because you're too busy making money for the business. Okay, then let's say you're like, you have made as much money for the business as possible and now you have like, no more time to go make money. You need more help there to get to the next level. Then you might want to hire someone in marketing or sales that drives the top of the funnel or someone who closes. So you could be like, hey, let me go get the leads, the relationships, and then I'm going to pass it over to this person and then they're going to actually help you close the business and then take the relationship to the next level. So for most of you watching this or listening to this, by the way, you can Watch this on YouTube if you're listening to this on my podcast. But for most of you listening and watching this, you're the biggest rainmaker in your company and your business, especially if you're a solopreneur. So you need to hire someone who helps you save time. But the key, the key is that when you have that time back, you're not going in chaos gardening, you're not going and watching Netflix. You're using that time that you just got back to go make more money. Because that's how you're going to offset the, like, expense of hiring a person. So that's how I think about making first hires. My first hire was an assistant. Then we hired like marketing folks, people in video to fulfill the campaigns that we were selling at Blavity. And then from there we hired a salesperson pretty quickly after that, kind of all in the same cohort. Because what happened is I raised our first half a million dollars in funding and so we could make more than one hire in like a two to three month period of time. So that's what I did. I didn't want the money to run out, so I hired some salespeople to help us make more money, Some of which are still at Blavity today. Shout out to Shane, shout out to Simone. Others have moved on to big and awesome things someone said. Please talk about the transition to soft life. Here's the thing. I think soft life is over. Like I don't, I don't know that I ever really prescribed the soft life. I think that you can find more time for yourself and you can be willing to not work and live so hard. But I don't really believe in like we should just be in soft life mode. Perpetuity. In perpetuity. Is that a real word? Yeah, I don't really believe that you should be in soft life mode forever. Like I, I don't think that's realistic. So I think that people have to decide what season they're in, what pace they want to grow in. I live a life that I'm well taken care of. I take good care of myself. You know, I had an hour massage yesterday. I getting my nails done later today. I also Woke up at 6:30 and started working by 7:30 and have meetings until 4, you know, so I work hard, but I also make time for myself. I make time for my family. We're going to the farmer's market later, you know. So I think soft life is an over correction of what you really should be doing with your time and how you should be investing your energy to make sure that you're staying healthy and happy and having joy in your life throughout your world. I think sometimes also soft life implies somebody else is doing the hard work and I'm going to receive the soft life and I think that that's fine too, depending on your situation. It's good to be taken care of. I am taking care of lady. You know, I don't pay for groceries, I don't pay for the car. Couldn't tell you how much the car cost. Don't know the price of gas, you know. So I am recipient of not having to carry everything on my own. But I also think that's what true partnership looks like is there's things that I care that he doesn't have to think about. And there's things that he carries that I don't have to think about. And I wish that for all of you. And if that's what soft life means for you, then baby girl, congratulations. Soft life it up, sis. So yeah, did you guys watch Emma? Greedy be like, I don't believe in work life balance. I was like, ooh, Emma, I don't know about that. I mean actually I agree that I don't believe that it is possible to have a 100% balance in work and life. But that wasn't what she said. She said, work life balance is your problem, not your employer's problem. I think that for an employer, most employers are not trying to be bajillion dollar companies and grow super fast. Like when blabbity was growing 2x year over year. Yeah, there's no such thing as like, I'm leaving the office at 5. It was like, dude, you'll leave the office when you're done with what you said you were going to do today. We're not trying to grow 2x every year anymore. We're going 5 to 10% a year, you know, and I'm okay with that. So I'm hiring different types of employees. I'm not hiring employees that are going to churn and burn. I'm hiring employees who want to be here for three, four or five years that want to grow with the company, that don't want to burn out. That I literally look at sometimes in Zenefits, which is our, like, payroll processor. And I look at it and sometimes I'm like, yo, this senior leader hasn't taken a vacation in like six months. Like, what's good? You know? And I will slack them. Like, when are you gonna take a vacation? You know? So I do think it's on the boss and the employer to decide what your company culture is going to be. And then it's on the employee to decide if they want to be a part of that company culture and if they want to partake in it. And again, these things are transactions. So my employees also know if we're growing 5 to 10%, you know, only year over year, you can't expect your salary to double. It doesn't need to double because I pay you market rates. But six years ago, we weren't paying market rates, so your salary did need to go up 10, 20% sometimes in a year. And so that was the exchange, you know, that's what we were working for. Now people are kind of like, yeah, we're good. Like, I want to raise to keep up with the economy, but, like, I'm cool. I get to work remote. Nobody's on my ass 24, 7. Now if you're not doing well, this company or the market is really hard. Like right now the market is hard. So we are working harder right now. But everyone's okay with that because it's a season, you know, and if you're not okay with it, then you leave. And I'm 100% agree with Emma. Like, you don't have to work here. Like, you can go, please go. Like, you don't want to be here, go. Because there are thousands of applicants every day to work at this company. Thousands. There are people who have applied to every job under the sun. You know, I sometimes I look and I'm like, this person has applied to seven jobs. They really want to be here. Now they don't have any of the skills that I need. That's why they're not getting the job. But there's people who want to work at a company like this. And I believe in the abundance mindset when it comes to talent and people. And so if you don't want to be here, it is too hard. Everything is too hard, you know, to be around people who don't want to be here every day. So I do agree with Emma that, like, you should self select in and out of companies. And I encourage people to do that and to be honest with their managers about it. I've had employees be like, I want to make 20% more. And we've had to be honest and be like, look like this role doesn't have a pathway to that because of the economy, because of the market, and because of your skill set right now at this company, we will not be able to offer that in the next two years. Just being honest. You can decide if that's okay with you or not. Your decision. So I think it's okay to be honest with your employers, with your managers about what's up, especially if you have a good working relationship with them. If you're not performing, all things are out the door, then it's like you have no leverage. All right, I think that's my last question. Let me see if there's anything else. I guess this is my last thing. For anyone who's laid off. There's a couple questions in here about for people who are laid off or aren't happy in their current work life, like, what should they do? I think we're transitioning in this economy to more people being solopreneurs, starting their own business and even really highly skilled people. Because with AI, you don't need necessarily somebody working 40 hours a week to do something. Like we have people at our company who are working 10, 15 hours a week just doing one thing, because that's all it requires. And they get paid a great hourly wage to do that. But I don't need a 40 hour a week person to just do this one function with AI anymore. And I think that for people who are laid off, you have to kind of decide, is my function something that's being disrupted Right now, And if so, what skills do I need to learn quickly in order to be a builder, creator, doer in this workforce for another company? I know it's hard when you're used to having benefits and a direct deposit every two weeks and, you know, the stability of working for an employer. I know it's hard to try to say, I want to be a owner, I want to be an entrepreneur. That is a really difficult transition if you weren't trying to make that transition, if it was just thrown upon you because you got laid off. And I think that there's a lot of people who've been unemployed for many years now, you know, over a year, two years, that have applied to hundreds, thousands of jobs where I'm like, man, what if you had spent that same energy learning a new skill or building something? You're never going to be able to get that time back, you know, and the outcome is still the same, which is in two years, you're still out of a job. You know, at least if you had spent some fraction of that energy on yourself, you would be in a better place, you know, versus being behind because you're not in the workforce. So I would just really encourage you to evaluate and be honest with yourself about. It's not a personal attack. You know, a layoff might feel like a personal attack, but like, what are the market conditions or the technology shifts? What's the top level, kind of insider trends that are driving a constriction in this role or this function? And what are the things that I can do that are in my power to make myself more interesting, more compelling, more of a leader, more of a manager? Or can I take my skills and offer it on a fractional basis to the people around me, to my network? We just did a very small layoff for a function. It was ad operations and it was heartbreaking to do because the people who worked at this company, they've been with us for a long time and they're fantastic people and they did their job. I mean, it wasn't a reflection of performance, but it was a reflection of the fact that ad operations is something that is increasingly cheaper and cheaper to do because of technology. When we were doing ad operations five, six years ago, it was a very manual process. It was a lot of effort to traffic these ad campaigns, to get it right, to make sure we were not over delivering or under delivering. It was just a lot of effort. It required a lot of manual labor in hand. So we had to build a big team. Now, with all these tools and automations and insights and all these different things. It doesn't require as many people to do the same job. And that is a technology disruption. That is not a reflection of the person. That's not a reflection of me as a bad business operator. That is a reflection of the reality. And I probably held onto that function longer than I should have. But these are hard decisions to make as a business owner. I think what's more difficult today is that because the market is bad, you don't have as much time to linger on these decisions. If the market is good, you can hang on to people you don't need for many, many, many, many months, quarters, seasons, and hope things change. But when the market is bad, you have to make decisions. So I share that. To say, if you are on the side of being laid off and your function is laid off, then really seek to understand. And if you can, ask the person, like, if any of those people had reached out to me and said, like, yo, why did this happen? I would first check with legal and hr, but like, I would have wanted to explain to them. So if anyone's watching this, I'm sorry. Also, this is what happened. But like, seek to understand the why, because it might give you information to help you make decisions about what your next move is. So, like, I wouldn't recommend these people try to go be ad operations associates somewhere else, because within six and 12 months at that company, maybe it's a bigger company so they move slower than us, they're gonna find themselves getting laid off again, you know, and that sucks. That really sucks. So that is my two cents. All right, y' all, as always, the Journey podcast here to give you the real information and not sugarcoat the things. I hope this is helpful. I hope this is insightful. If you're on YouTube right now, make sure you subscribe to the channel. I really appreciate you all. I appreciate you all reading the book. I appreciate the comments, the tags. I love it and I hope that you enjoy. If you want to join our monthly advisory calls, you can go to worksmart program.com or morgandevon.com and sign up for our monthly calls. We do monthly live chats. I answer all your questions. We have a good time. And it's typically the same group every month, about 50, 60 people, sometimes up to 100, just depending on what's going on or what the topic is. But I really enjoy getting to know you guys a little bit more behind the scenes, so make sure you check it out. All right, see you next time. Bye. Thanks for listening to the Journey Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode episode, make sure you leave a review and head to our Instagram and YouTube to leave a comment. I look forward to hearing how this podcast has made an impact on your own Journey.