have you ever been in a situation where
you think I really need X and so you
search high and low and nothing and so
you go into the shops and nothing and
you look online and nothing and you
think to yourself that’s really annoying
I can’t believe nobody’s doing that I
really need it
do you stay annoyed maybe you post a
rant on Twitter but do you actually do
anything about it about this time seven
years ago I was working in a consulting
project which I really didn’t like with
a manager who taken a strong disliking
to me I was bored
frustrated and annoyed but all of those
things are a really good motivator when
you’re trying to figure out what you
want to do next because the truth was I
had always wanted to be an entrepreneur
and I knew I wanted it to be in fashion
but not necessarily clothes and I’d been
working on a few different things and
nothing was quite working out and then
after years of never being able to find
tights that actually match my skin tone
or a nude which actually matched my nude
it sort of came to my head it was very
simple I was going to create a company
which did lingerie and hosiery that
worked as a nude for woman of color and
I remember sending off the text to one
of my really good friends saying I
figured out what I want to do when I
grow up and that was just the start I
realized pretty quickly that I was going
to need to save a lot of money to start
my own business and so I decided to
switch industries and go back into
finance and by the end of that year this
was in 2011 I was working in a swanky
new job in private equity fundraising
and it was great I really liked my team
I bought a new iPad I bought a few do
designer dresses and life was really
good
now moving ahead to 2012 and it was the
summer of the Olympics and so I was in
New York for work and I was living at
the time with a friend from university
and I shared this idea with her and she
thought it was fantastic and so when I
came back to London I was really really
excited and you know was ready to start
working on this company but work got
busy and as happens I got distracted
again and then in May 2013 I got a late
birthday card and across the front it
said it’s time to start living the life
you’ve always imagined and on the inside
was a really lovely message from my
friend mirror and she said how proud she
was of me and how she was so looking
forward to this company and how she
couldn’t wait to see me on the cover of
Forbes one day and needless to say that
was the kick that I needed and the next
day I registered the company I started
the registration for the trademarks and
I started reaching out to manufacturers
and from that moment on I was like a
woman possessed and it was wonderful and
I would sleep with the notebook beside
my bedside table because I’d bolt up
awake around 4:00 a.m. with different
ideas of what I wanted to do for the
business and over the months I attended
different lingerie trade shows and met
my manufacturer and I won’t go over all
the details of research and development
but it is a pretty amazing thing to see
something that’s been in your head come
to life and once I’d gone to the factory
to inspect the goods then I started to
focus on the photoshoot because at the
time I thought Nubian skin was going to
be ecommerce only and so I knew that the
images had to be amazing and the
photoshoot was so much fun and we had
amazing images and then I went away on
holiday and at the time I had about 50
followers on Instagram and maybe about
10 followers on Twitter and I hadn’t
really thought about how I was going to
market this company which if you are
going to start a business that’s a
terrible idea you need to have a
marketing plan but I put this image up
of four girls who were in our lot first
collection of lingerie
and I went off on holiday and halfway
through the holiday my phone started
buzzing and I looked at my Instagram
account and I had a hundred followers
and I realized that’s not very
impressive now for back then back then I
was a novice and I was really excited
that 100 people cared about what I was
going to be doing at the end of the week
I had a thousand followers at the end of
four weeks I had 20,000 followers the
campaign had gone viral and I didn’t
really know what that meant until it
happened to me
BuzzFeed did an article about her saying
we were redefining nude and then the
mail online and the independent
contacted us for image rights and our
followers kept growing
then Tandy Newton tweeted about the
brand in Kerry Washington retweeted an
article about it and it kept growing and
growing and growing and all of this was
happening in August 2014 and September
2014 and we didn’t actually have a
product yet and the e-commerce site
wasn’t live but we had a blog we kept
people updated with what was going on
and then in October 2014
Nubian skin com went live I had done it
I had a seat at the table and I had
spent so much time up until that point
worrying about getting there and
actually attaining my goal and once I
was there I had to figure out what do I
do now as human beings we put so much
emphasis on attaining there are
countless books on getting what you want
how to get rich how to become a CEO hard
to start your own business how to get a
bikini body and that isn’t a bad thing
having goals is wonderful and getting
them is great but for any given goal
that we do have we need to ask ourselves
three important questions the first what
are you willing to give up the second
what will you do once you get it and the
third what do you have to gain
we we all have goals and sometimes we
have goals because there’s a true
passion and sometimes we have the goal
because we like the idea of it or what
we think is going to come with it and
other times we have goals because it’s
what’s expected of us and I’m not really
going to say what I think is or isn’t a
good motivating factor but we do need to
be thinking about what are we willing to
give up and I’m gonna let you in on a
little secret I love money
I love comfort I love nice shiny
expensive things and honestly just
talking about it makes my heart beat a
little bit faster and when I was young
my mom used to say to me a day you
really like nice things when you grow up
you need to have a good job and my mom
is a very wise woman before I started my
company I worked in finance and I had
clients who were really impressive and
very intelligent and I loved being
around that but I also very much enjoyed
having the means to go on lovely
holidays and buy nice things and not
really worry about money now a good
indication of whether you really want
something is what you’re willing to give
up to get it as I mentioned previously I
had gone back into finance with the goal
that I was going to save to start my
business but it was really hard for me
to save and there was a jimmy choo sale
going on and i remember calling off one
of my friends and telling her and
complaining about how hard it was to
save money and she wasn’t particularly
sympathetic and as a response she
invited me to come over to this
apartment she was staying at and this
apartment belonged to an old boss of
hers and this woman’s apartment was
insane and the best bit was her walk-in
closet the pinnacle of which was a shoe
closet
she had an entire wardrobe dedicated to
designer shoes and as I’m sitting there
literally salivating over the shoes my
friend slams the door shut in front of
me and says you will never have that
because you don’t save needless to say
that was the kick that I needed to stick
to my savings
and I thought I was actually in a pretty
good position by the end of it I saved
up quite a lot of money to start my
business I’d also put aside an emergency
stash because a girl’s gonna need some
things when she leaves her job and once
I actually launched the business I
thought I could exhale but that’s when
things really came into focus because
once you start a business you have to
run a business and I soon found out that
my business liked money a lot more than
I did this was the reality of the
situation I had left a job in a lovely
office in Mayfair and was now working
from an attic with a slanted floor about
the size of my bathroom I had no job
security
I missed the weddings of two of my
really good friends one in India and one
in Kenya because I couldn’t afford to go
and I didn’t have the time I was dealing
with customer complaints I was my own HR
admin and cleaning woman I spent all my
money literally every penny even the
emergency stash I had stress like I had
never known to exist I was being
rejected again and again and again and I
was terrified that was the cost of
getting what I wanted and to be honest
if when I was starting out somebody had
given me a laundry list and said this is
what it’s gonna cost for you to get what
you want I’d have probably looked at
that list and said you know what I’m
good that moment when I realized that
this is what it meant to get what I
wanted changed everything and it changed
my perspective because I had wanted to
be an entrepreneur when I thought it
meant being my own boss and making loads
of money and I had expected every day to
look like this
but my reality was that my day-to-day
more often than not looked like this and
that’s actually a very flattering
picture because I will refuse to show
anybody pictures of me when I was trying
to build my warehouse now basically I
had delivered this baby and I couldn’t
give it back and I needed to figure out
what was I going to do when we have a
goal we need to think about what are we
going to do when we actually get it
maybe you’ve always wanted to be a
teacher well what kind of teacher are
you going to be or maybe you want a
promotion to be a manager or what kind
of manager are you going to be or maybe
you’ve just always wanted a puppy well
what do you do on that puppy vomits all
over your cream-colored carpet or maybe
you just want a certain amount of money
in your bank account well once you get
it what are you going to do with that
money when we reach our goal we have to
own it and sometimes owning it is
actually more daunting than the getting
of it when I first started my business I
told a handful of people my immediate
family my boyfriend who’s now my husband
and a few really really good friends and
after the campaign went viral and I
started getting approached by different
reporters I would sign off every email
team Nubian skin and when the first
articles came out they all referenced
the founder and I wouldn’t tell people
who the founder was and I was terrified
because I felt that if it was a failure
then that was a reflection on me and if
it was if people didn’t like it then
somehow that was a reflection on who I
was but here’s the thing standing in
your position owning it really staking
claim to it is when you start to really
live your goal and I was so scared when
I put it out there that it was me
find this company but that’s when I
realized the importance of showing up
because the woman that I created this
company for showed up for me and they
taught me that it was really important
that it was me a young black woman who
had seemed that the lingerie industry
had ignored us for so long and did
something about it
my showing up meant some things to so
many other people and while I was hiding
behind my company I was giving up all
the power that came from really standing
in my position and showing everybody
else that just because you’re taken for
granted doesn’t mean that you can’t do
something about it I was really
fortunate to live a part of my childhood
in Lagos Nigeria and so I saw people who
looked like me in positions all the time
the president was black The ministers
were black the teachers were black my
headmistress is black the lawyers were
black the doctors were black I saw a
woman owning their own companies whether
those were market stores or national
companies who looked like me so in that
situation race wasn’t a factor in London
and in many other places around the West
people don’t have that and so when next
time you’re thinking about maybe wanting
to publish a book or maybe you want to
go for a promotion or maybe you want to
start a business or maybe it’s just
writing that blog post don’t think about
that goal and abstract but really think
about what it might mean for the people
who look up to you because when you take
that position it has ramifications far
beyond just yourself and that’s when you
realize all there is to gain from it
because yes it’s costly and that course
may be emotional or financial or with
time but it’s also incredibly wonderful
when I moved into that attic that attic
was my Kingdom and I was so proud and I
felt like I was fulfilling something
that I didn’t even know there was to
fulfill and when I got emails from women
saying
thank you for showing me that I matter
you can’t put a price on that I’d always
felt really self-sufficient but once I
started my business I realized how much
help I actually needed and I’ve become
so much better at asking for help so
these this picture is of my cousins
David and domine and it’s probably about
midnight and I had moved from that tiny
little attic office into an office
warehouse and it was the weekend and on
Monday my one employee was going to be
coming in and we didn’t have desks and
so I called them up and said I really
need to go to Ikea and they came with me
and I had I care meatballs for the first
time and we bought a bunch of flat pack
furniture and then they came back to the
warehouse with me and helped me put it
up yes it costs a lot but you also
gained so much my heart has learned to
expand with gratitude for all the people
who’ve sacrificed for me and frankly I’m
still figuring it out there isn’t a day
that goes by that I am not nervous or
scared or vulnerable but also feel bold
and excited at the same time and I’ve
had more failures than I want to
remember and I don’t know how many more
failures that I’m gonna have but here’s
what I do know if we want our voices to
be heard we have to take a seat at the
table and I’m gonna say that again if we
want our voices to be heard we have to
take a seat at the table and sometimes
that seats already there and all we have
to do is step up and take it and
sometimes there isn’t a seat at the
table and you have to take your plastic
folded chair and drag it and sit it next
to a beautiful leather
ergonomic chair but you’re still there
and maybe the table moves and you need
to drag your chair to keep up with it
but you’re still there the important
thing is what impact you make while
you’re in that position and you may be
there forever for a decade for five
years
or just for a month but once you take
that seat
how will you own it once you have it
what are you going to do with it thank you
you think I really need X and so you
search high and low and nothing and so
you go into the shops and nothing and
you look online and nothing and you
think to yourself that’s really annoying
I can’t believe nobody’s doing that I
really need it
do you stay annoyed maybe you post a
rant on Twitter but do you actually do
anything about it about this time seven
years ago I was working in a consulting
project which I really didn’t like with
a manager who taken a strong disliking
to me I was bored
frustrated and annoyed but all of those
things are a really good motivator when
you’re trying to figure out what you
want to do next because the truth was I
had always wanted to be an entrepreneur
and I knew I wanted it to be in fashion
but not necessarily clothes and I’d been
working on a few different things and
nothing was quite working out and then
after years of never being able to find
tights that actually match my skin tone
or a nude which actually matched my nude
it sort of came to my head it was very
simple I was going to create a company
which did lingerie and hosiery that
worked as a nude for woman of color and
I remember sending off the text to one
of my really good friends saying I
figured out what I want to do when I
grow up and that was just the start I
realized pretty quickly that I was going
to need to save a lot of money to start
my own business and so I decided to
switch industries and go back into
finance and by the end of that year this
was in 2011 I was working in a swanky
new job in private equity fundraising
and it was great I really liked my team
I bought a new iPad I bought a few do
designer dresses and life was really
good
now moving ahead to 2012 and it was the
summer of the Olympics and so I was in
New York for work and I was living at
the time with a friend from university
and I shared this idea with her and she
thought it was fantastic and so when I
came back to London I was really really
excited and you know was ready to start
working on this company but work got
busy and as happens I got distracted
again and then in May 2013 I got a late
birthday card and across the front it
said it’s time to start living the life
you’ve always imagined and on the inside
was a really lovely message from my
friend mirror and she said how proud she
was of me and how she was so looking
forward to this company and how she
couldn’t wait to see me on the cover of
Forbes one day and needless to say that
was the kick that I needed and the next
day I registered the company I started
the registration for the trademarks and
I started reaching out to manufacturers
and from that moment on I was like a
woman possessed and it was wonderful and
I would sleep with the notebook beside
my bedside table because I’d bolt up
awake around 4:00 a.m. with different
ideas of what I wanted to do for the
business and over the months I attended
different lingerie trade shows and met
my manufacturer and I won’t go over all
the details of research and development
but it is a pretty amazing thing to see
something that’s been in your head come
to life and once I’d gone to the factory
to inspect the goods then I started to
focus on the photoshoot because at the
time I thought Nubian skin was going to
be ecommerce only and so I knew that the
images had to be amazing and the
photoshoot was so much fun and we had
amazing images and then I went away on
holiday and at the time I had about 50
followers on Instagram and maybe about
10 followers on Twitter and I hadn’t
really thought about how I was going to
market this company which if you are
going to start a business that’s a
terrible idea you need to have a
marketing plan but I put this image up
of four girls who were in our lot first
collection of lingerie
and I went off on holiday and halfway
through the holiday my phone started
buzzing and I looked at my Instagram
account and I had a hundred followers
and I realized that’s not very
impressive now for back then back then I
was a novice and I was really excited
that 100 people cared about what I was
going to be doing at the end of the week
I had a thousand followers at the end of
four weeks I had 20,000 followers the
campaign had gone viral and I didn’t
really know what that meant until it
happened to me
BuzzFeed did an article about her saying
we were redefining nude and then the
mail online and the independent
contacted us for image rights and our
followers kept growing
then Tandy Newton tweeted about the
brand in Kerry Washington retweeted an
article about it and it kept growing and
growing and growing and all of this was
happening in August 2014 and September
2014 and we didn’t actually have a
product yet and the e-commerce site
wasn’t live but we had a blog we kept
people updated with what was going on
and then in October 2014
Nubian skin com went live I had done it
I had a seat at the table and I had
spent so much time up until that point
worrying about getting there and
actually attaining my goal and once I
was there I had to figure out what do I
do now as human beings we put so much
emphasis on attaining there are
countless books on getting what you want
how to get rich how to become a CEO hard
to start your own business how to get a
bikini body and that isn’t a bad thing
having goals is wonderful and getting
them is great but for any given goal
that we do have we need to ask ourselves
three important questions the first what
are you willing to give up the second
what will you do once you get it and the
third what do you have to gain
we we all have goals and sometimes we
have goals because there’s a true
passion and sometimes we have the goal
because we like the idea of it or what
we think is going to come with it and
other times we have goals because it’s
what’s expected of us and I’m not really
going to say what I think is or isn’t a
good motivating factor but we do need to
be thinking about what are we willing to
give up and I’m gonna let you in on a
little secret I love money
I love comfort I love nice shiny
expensive things and honestly just
talking about it makes my heart beat a
little bit faster and when I was young
my mom used to say to me a day you
really like nice things when you grow up
you need to have a good job and my mom
is a very wise woman before I started my
company I worked in finance and I had
clients who were really impressive and
very intelligent and I loved being
around that but I also very much enjoyed
having the means to go on lovely
holidays and buy nice things and not
really worry about money now a good
indication of whether you really want
something is what you’re willing to give
up to get it as I mentioned previously I
had gone back into finance with the goal
that I was going to save to start my
business but it was really hard for me
to save and there was a jimmy choo sale
going on and i remember calling off one
of my friends and telling her and
complaining about how hard it was to
save money and she wasn’t particularly
sympathetic and as a response she
invited me to come over to this
apartment she was staying at and this
apartment belonged to an old boss of
hers and this woman’s apartment was
insane and the best bit was her walk-in
closet the pinnacle of which was a shoe
closet
she had an entire wardrobe dedicated to
designer shoes and as I’m sitting there
literally salivating over the shoes my
friend slams the door shut in front of
me and says you will never have that
because you don’t save needless to say
that was the kick that I needed to stick
to my savings
and I thought I was actually in a pretty
good position by the end of it I saved
up quite a lot of money to start my
business I’d also put aside an emergency
stash because a girl’s gonna need some
things when she leaves her job and once
I actually launched the business I
thought I could exhale but that’s when
things really came into focus because
once you start a business you have to
run a business and I soon found out that
my business liked money a lot more than
I did this was the reality of the
situation I had left a job in a lovely
office in Mayfair and was now working
from an attic with a slanted floor about
the size of my bathroom I had no job
security
I missed the weddings of two of my
really good friends one in India and one
in Kenya because I couldn’t afford to go
and I didn’t have the time I was dealing
with customer complaints I was my own HR
admin and cleaning woman I spent all my
money literally every penny even the
emergency stash I had stress like I had
never known to exist I was being
rejected again and again and again and I
was terrified that was the cost of
getting what I wanted and to be honest
if when I was starting out somebody had
given me a laundry list and said this is
what it’s gonna cost for you to get what
you want I’d have probably looked at
that list and said you know what I’m
good that moment when I realized that
this is what it meant to get what I
wanted changed everything and it changed
my perspective because I had wanted to
be an entrepreneur when I thought it
meant being my own boss and making loads
of money and I had expected every day to
look like this
but my reality was that my day-to-day
more often than not looked like this and
that’s actually a very flattering
picture because I will refuse to show
anybody pictures of me when I was trying
to build my warehouse now basically I
had delivered this baby and I couldn’t
give it back and I needed to figure out
what was I going to do when we have a
goal we need to think about what are we
going to do when we actually get it
maybe you’ve always wanted to be a
teacher well what kind of teacher are
you going to be or maybe you want a
promotion to be a manager or what kind
of manager are you going to be or maybe
you’ve just always wanted a puppy well
what do you do on that puppy vomits all
over your cream-colored carpet or maybe
you just want a certain amount of money
in your bank account well once you get
it what are you going to do with that
money when we reach our goal we have to
own it and sometimes owning it is
actually more daunting than the getting
of it when I first started my business I
told a handful of people my immediate
family my boyfriend who’s now my husband
and a few really really good friends and
after the campaign went viral and I
started getting approached by different
reporters I would sign off every email
team Nubian skin and when the first
articles came out they all referenced
the founder and I wouldn’t tell people
who the founder was and I was terrified
because I felt that if it was a failure
then that was a reflection on me and if
it was if people didn’t like it then
somehow that was a reflection on who I
was but here’s the thing standing in
your position owning it really staking
claim to it is when you start to really
live your goal and I was so scared when
I put it out there that it was me
find this company but that’s when I
realized the importance of showing up
because the woman that I created this
company for showed up for me and they
taught me that it was really important
that it was me a young black woman who
had seemed that the lingerie industry
had ignored us for so long and did
something about it
my showing up meant some things to so
many other people and while I was hiding
behind my company I was giving up all
the power that came from really standing
in my position and showing everybody
else that just because you’re taken for
granted doesn’t mean that you can’t do
something about it I was really
fortunate to live a part of my childhood
in Lagos Nigeria and so I saw people who
looked like me in positions all the time
the president was black The ministers
were black the teachers were black my
headmistress is black the lawyers were
black the doctors were black I saw a
woman owning their own companies whether
those were market stores or national
companies who looked like me so in that
situation race wasn’t a factor in London
and in many other places around the West
people don’t have that and so when next
time you’re thinking about maybe wanting
to publish a book or maybe you want to
go for a promotion or maybe you want to
start a business or maybe it’s just
writing that blog post don’t think about
that goal and abstract but really think
about what it might mean for the people
who look up to you because when you take
that position it has ramifications far
beyond just yourself and that’s when you
realize all there is to gain from it
because yes it’s costly and that course
may be emotional or financial or with
time but it’s also incredibly wonderful
when I moved into that attic that attic
was my Kingdom and I was so proud and I
felt like I was fulfilling something
that I didn’t even know there was to
fulfill and when I got emails from women
saying
thank you for showing me that I matter
you can’t put a price on that I’d always
felt really self-sufficient but once I
started my business I realized how much
help I actually needed and I’ve become
so much better at asking for help so
these this picture is of my cousins
David and domine and it’s probably about
midnight and I had moved from that tiny
little attic office into an office
warehouse and it was the weekend and on
Monday my one employee was going to be
coming in and we didn’t have desks and
so I called them up and said I really
need to go to Ikea and they came with me
and I had I care meatballs for the first
time and we bought a bunch of flat pack
furniture and then they came back to the
warehouse with me and helped me put it
up yes it costs a lot but you also
gained so much my heart has learned to
expand with gratitude for all the people
who’ve sacrificed for me and frankly I’m
still figuring it out there isn’t a day
that goes by that I am not nervous or
scared or vulnerable but also feel bold
and excited at the same time and I’ve
had more failures than I want to
remember and I don’t know how many more
failures that I’m gonna have but here’s
what I do know if we want our voices to
be heard we have to take a seat at the
table and I’m gonna say that again if we
want our voices to be heard we have to
take a seat at the table and sometimes
that seats already there and all we have
to do is step up and take it and
sometimes there isn’t a seat at the
table and you have to take your plastic
folded chair and drag it and sit it next
to a beautiful leather
ergonomic chair but you’re still there
and maybe the table moves and you need
to drag your chair to keep up with it
but you’re still there the important
thing is what impact you make while
you’re in that position and you may be
there forever for a decade for five
years
or just for a month but once you take
that seat
how will you own it once you have it
what are you going to do with it thank you
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