No, has nothing you know has nothing to do with me, So that that's the lesson know is about that person's ability to respond.
Welcome to she Pivots, the podcast where we talk with women who dared to pivot out of one career and into something new and explore how their personal lives impacted these decisions. I'm your host, Emily Tish Sussman. Fitting Omi Bell into one intro just might be impossible. The CEO and founder of Black Girl Ventures is no stranger to pivots. She started her career studying computer science as a single mom,
later going into teaching as a K twelve educator. She founded her first side hustle, developing websites, and from there she just couldn't stop. Despite the multiple challenges life has thrown her way, She's handled each with grace and determination. Omi is a community builder, mom of three systems disruptor, spoken word artist, nonprofit executive, educator, and so much more.
Despite Black women making up the majority of entrepreneurs and small businesses in America, they only receive point zero zero zero six percent of venture capital dollars. Through her company, Black Girl Ventures, she has transformed the way black and brown women founders get access to social and financial capital. A quick note before we jump in, Omi asked us to preserve some details about her children that we had
discussed in the interview, so to respect their privacy. You might hear some quick cuts in the audio where we had to take out identifiers. Enjoy.
I am Shelley Owe, me La de Bell, but I go by Omi. I'm the founder CEO of Black Girl Ventures. And you know it's always so trucky to say, what do you do? I do so much, We'll like black Girl Ventures, the company I started. Also just a huge advocate for women, so women being empowered me and I love that it's is she pivots because I'm fiviting a million times. But I've been thinking a lot about that. How do I when people say who are you? Because now I'm thinking about, like, who am I outside of
this work that I do? And am I constantly defining myself by the work and like and then how does that make me feel about the achievements?
Right?
Whereas like, oh, no, I want to win this award.
I'm hoping that Forbes come out with a fifty on the fifty because I missed the thirty under thirty.
Time frame you know what I'm saying.
It's like that kind of stuff where you just get sort of obsessed with the achievement from the work.
Okay, so let's just let's do a quick like stage setting. So and backup, Where did you grow up? How did you grow up? Give us, give us some childhood background.
Yeah, so I grew up in North Carolina, from Durham, North Carolina originally, and I grew.
Up very middle, middle of the middle, middle class. That's not funny.
It's like very middle middle two parents, a little brother, you know, the like two parents, one point five kids, dog house, Like that was really how I grew up. It's funny because like I grew up in a very middle class environment and then as an adult because of my life, vivoted because I had a child at seventeen so and part of that was rebellion. My mom became very religious, So I had a pretty free childhood, just
do what I want. So, you know, like my mom was never like a cause I told you so, or my dad was never like a stop talking kind of person. Like they let me talk as once as I wanted to, and my mom would answer all of my questions. So it was a pretty free childhood, and then somewhere around middle school, my mom became very religious and she started going to Pnecosta Church.
So I thought, okay, well, like if this is what God.
Wants from us, like women don't were bands, women don't look like this or say this, so act like this. So the time I was in maybe seventh grade to like ninth grade, I didn't wear pants. I was the girl at school with the long skirts and a tendis shoes on who didn't curse so do anything bad because
God was just gonna damn me to hell. And so I followed that for a long time, and then finally I started thinking, like, God can't be this small, Like you mean to tell me, out of all the billion people in the world, you just checking out for me. And then the one thing I do is gonna send me to hell, Like come on, y'all for wearing pants, Yes, and that would be the one thing. Like that's not gonna So I started I went through a phase, actually
are really challenging. So later in like after college, challenging everything with the Bible, Like so if you say man should look like a man or woman should like a woman, because that was a scripture that I used to say women shouldn't wear pants. I'm like, but if I wear women's pants, so I still look like a woman.
Like what are we talking about? Right? So high school I just started rebelling.
Forget that, you know. I started like school all the time. I was smoking weed every day. I was wrong, crowd, I was. It was just wild, and I did what I thought was the thing that my mom told me to do.
You would have sex. Comes talk to me. So I did.
I say, Hey, I want to have sex, and she was like, well, let me pray about it. So while she was praying about it, I was doing it. And I got pregnant, and it really changed my whole world.
When I first spoke to Omi, one of the things she said was that she had something inside of her that just made her believe that things would work themselves out.
And then there's like a rhythm that we have that we don't know we have, like this formula that we lives inside of us. I think I wasn't thinking about my future. I was just thinking it will work out, Like whatever's going to work out. I'm gonna go hard on whatever I want to do right now, and then it will work out when I actually think about that mindset.
I probably had that a couple of times throughout my career, right throughout my life, where I'm like, I don't know what's about to happen, but I know all I'm about to put all.
Into what I'm doing right now.
And I'm never actually articulated in that way, but like, if I think about that feeling of right now is what I have. Right now is what I'm going to do, and you're not going to tell me how I'm going to live my life. I think I've carried that throughout my life, this moment of like, no, I'm going to go hard here and we'll see where it goes.
It'll be fine.
But after her conservative upbringing, getting pregnant at seventeen created complications and strains in her family.
So my dad was very upset and he blamed my mom and it was kind of the beginning of the end for them. And so my mom and I drew closer because of my dad and my mom kind of being in os over this pregnancy because my dad did not want me to have it, but my mom was super religious, so she's like, no, no, we can't do that. We can have an abortion and So after that went on and I just went hard. I negotiated with my teachers like, hey, I need to pass. I was dedicated
to graduating on time. I went to summer school, night school, everything I could do because just because I had been skipping school so much and got it all back together graduated on time. My mom was like, you're not going to be statistic. You're going to college. I'm like, oh okay.
So she attended North Carolina A and T University in HBCU and settled on studying computer science.
I like computers. I want to make money. They're gonna probably make money.
Let's go. And that was pretty much it.
But everything went into That's when that switch flipped of like hardcore. I'm gonna go hard. I'm gonna get what I'm coming for. I want everything that I want to achieve.
I want success.
It started there. It was like I'm not gonna fail. Nobody's gonna tell me I can't be something.
So I imagine there were very few women, very few women of color, very few mothers going through that.
What was that like?
Well, one, computer science is nothing like this game that you're having your head. It is super hard, and most people were dropping out in the first semester, and it was other kids that came from similar backgrounds to me. And actually in Maryland they teach computer science in high school, and like as an adult, I taught computer science at in the city of Alexandria at TC Williams High School because I saw the power of the kids that came from Maryland to school.
They already knew how to program and.
So it was like, oh wow, like I knew nothing about programming or that even computer programming existed in that way like the way that I actually learned it. And so it was community funding students, other students that was staying in it.
We were like, hey, we're going to bind together.
Between all the ones and zeros of coding. Only still had to juggle the demands of motherhood and child's care.
Well.
The first year, my oldest son stayed home with my parents and Durham and Greensboro's maybe like an hour away from each other, so I was able to like drive back home, come back, drive back, that kind of thing.
Between my parents and my oldest.
Son's dad, they would handle the childcare and it was kind of like weekend visits and like maybe come up sometime during the week.
But that bar was a.
Little hard, right because now there would going on two and I'm one or two, and I'm like in school and trying to manage that. By the time I got to my junior year, I ended up staying getting my own place.
The roommate, who just so happened to like.
Kids, Omi did what she did best. She created a community using the resources that she had at her disposal.
So I went and I found got government assistance for like a childcare voucher research.
And found a random lady. So between daycare.
And if I had to take a night class, and I can remember this woman's house and everything in my head, found her. She took my voucher, and so that was the way it was like going and getting as much assistance as I could. So it's funny, you know, you grow up feeling like you have to not ask for help, and then when you do ask for help, you may be shamed. So you don't want anybody to know you're own public assistance. You don't want anybody to know you
getting like social services and things like that. So I just went out and got every available service I could get food SAMP Section eight, childcare, vouchers, like everything I could do to keep myself afloat throughout my career, just for anybody listening as things I've done to get child care, like actually enter into groups or put my children in sports because of children in sports, and there's other.
Parents I would keep their kids, they would keep my kids, And.
So you actually end up networking your way through it in a way, and like figuring out when you know nobody in the city, you end up developing light levels of trust, networking your way through and finding a new community for yourself.
I do find that that there's like a real bond among parents that your kids get along with, that you trust, that you can like the feeling that you feel good about leaving your children with them and knowing that they will be cared for, and the reciprocity in it, I think does make for a very bonding relationship and community one percent.
And I think you understand each other in a way that maybe other people don't, especially like it was a single mom, So a single mom you kind of like, yeah, I'm dealing with that same thing.
I also couldn't make it pick up my kid, could you keep my kid? Oh?
Oh?
Like my kids coming out the bus, will you go to the bus? So even now in the building that I live in now we have a group of moms and so some of us do mourning bus duty and some people what we do afternoon bus duty. Or it was like, hey, like can you get my child from school? You're going to the school. All those kinds of things. Community is so important to me. It is like the number one thing I've learned to always build no matter where I am.
And she did build. Even after graduating and becoming a teacher at a K twelve school, she continued to find new side hustles, and so.
I started teaching computers. I started my first company with the other computer teacher. We started a well development company. And this is back in the day. I'm not trying to date myself, but this is back in the day when Adobe didn't own the suite of things. It was Macromedia.
I don't know we.
Remember it, but it was Macromedia back then, Okay, And so you had the sweet dream. We were flash that kind of thing, and so we would build websites and use flash or animation. But even during teaching, I worked so many different kinds of jobs. I was a nanny, I mean, as a teacher, you have to have a zize because you're not making enough money. America is not set up for you to be one person with kids. You need multiple adults. And it doesn't even have to
be marriage. It can be grandparents whoever. But you need more than one adult to raise even one child in America, right. And so a lot of times when I tell this story, I always say, like, my story is not a black story or a woman's story or a person from the South. Story, is an American story. There's so many people who are dealing with the challenges of I didn't marry, but I wanted a kid, right, and then what did that mean
for what I had to set up for myself? And so that challenge that I was facing around like I can't just be a teacher. Even though it's one of the most like appreciated, at least verbally appreciated jobs in the country, it's most underappreciated, I think when it comes to the work that we're doing with America's children, and the pain that you get.
Will only continue to hustle and find her purpose. Her kids were also on their own journey.
I have two trans children. My son transitioned right after high school, which I was really nervous about because going into college just so many changes, and they're like, are you sure you want to do it right now while you're also going into college.
I'm glad you asked me about it, though.
So my other child is non binary, but bro now's day and she honestly, for me, my biggest fear when my son decided transition was I didn't raise you to be a black man, and so I didn't get an opportunity to like instill these you gecided by the beliefs.
You need to do these things.
You see these things happening, so where you need to move this way, you need to be this kind of proximity to women or not this kind of proximity to women.
You need to think about when a woman is saying this is what you mean?
Like I didn't get that space, and so I felt handicapped a little bit in my motherhood because now I'm like, oh, gosh,
what if it gets wrong as a black woman. Not to say that police won't harass you as much, but you're still a woman, and so I think there's certain things that you can feel through and not maybe experience the same way men will and so that really scared me, and I think for my child who's non primary, I was more worried about scrutiny and like, you know, whether or not they would be accepted and like how that would look.
There are two different schools.
Somebody said and graduated from North Carolina Anti, which is where I went with a SBCU. My other pot they are at George Mason. Totally different environment. You know, it's a PWI predominantly white institution, so it's totally different. Even the level of acceptance is different or the level of questioning is a little different because it was also being in the South, so getting access to tea like getting access to as South around getting access to the doctors.
That would like be able to do the blood.
Tests and things like that, like you would have to come back home to kind of get easy access to it and not kind of like where could I go? Even the down to things like the you know, the gender gender neutral bathroom situation.
Right, It's like now he has.
To be on campus while bunch of students are just feeling like, you know, no, I don't want to I want to go to this bathroom.
I don't think it should be gender, nuture, bathrooms.
For whatever reasons, other oppression and trauma that we've dealt with just as black people, right, I mean both. I would say it's the same generation, so everybody's a little bit progressive, so it's not so bad in the differences.
I think interestingly enough.
Though, my middle child, they're dealing with more race things versus my oldest son, who didn't have to deal with more race things, but maybe had to deal with more gender or LGBTQ things, So it's like they're both having to deal with things in a way. I don't know, it's interest in journey as a mom, you know, Yeah, did.
You have that same feeling when your child came out as non bordinary did you have that same feeling of not preparing them? I honestly don't know how I would prepare a child for the world as non binary.
Yeah, oh lord, we need a couch, So I am.
They're so different in the way that they are with other child it was like, oh, I'm gay, and I don't think you're gay, but I also don't think it's straight. Like I kind of knew that already before coming out a non binary, and I would tell them that and they would get offended. Oh well, mom, I'm identifying his gay. You should respect that. And I'm like, I do respect it. I mean I identify his bye to I'm like, I respect it. But I just don't think you're either one.
And I would say that for a while.
They would just kind of like whatever.
And then finally some when they came out as non binary, I think it's funny I'll say this and they know this. I think I'm having more challenges with moving the pronoun to she than I am about they, And I don't know why. That's something I need to think through what's happening with me, because I mean, like even with them, they always been mistaken for a woman, Like people have always thought that, and it's nothing.
Wrong with that. Like I'm fine with them identifying as she.
It's been a harder transition for me than my older son, where like first things first for me was the pronounce then the name. So it's like, let's work on me saying he, which it took a while to change it over.
This is the person that you here.
It's right, you've known every minute other life.
Every minute you know, it's kind of like the switchover. I think if the detrimental feeling that some bears are having. Then they're talking about it is this is the part that I wish the would talk about.
I wish they would talk about like.
Hey, I respect what you did, but these pronouns are hard to switch over.
I need your patience right totally.
We had a guest on last year who's one hundred and one.
I'm Betty Red Saustin and I'm one hundred years old.
I started my life out as her son David, and in the last five years I discovered that instead of a man that had feminine traits, that all my life I've been a woman pretending to be a man.
So that's been a difficult transition for myself, but also with my mother, who understood my oldest brother being gay, but this isn't a sexual thing. It's an identity thing, which is a different, totally different concept for her to grasp.
I know that it probably is just just as hard for you as for me, and you were someone else for most of your life and became a daughter in the last three years.
It's hard for me in many ways, but not the ways you expect. I don't have trouble accepting I have trouble because after all these years of calling you David, I expect you to call you Diana. That's that's That's about the hardest thing for me.
It's just the adjustment period. I feel like it's actually the conversation I hear among parents more so.
The adjustment period includes okay, let me lay some of it out. It includes the pronouns, it includes the name. It includes talking to them, and it includes talking to their siblings, and it includes talking to other people. And then literally people will in conversations tell you that's a boy, that's a girl.
Now you know what I mean. It's like I birth this person.
I'm pretty sure that it's okay if I tell you who it is, and so that transition it can be. It's an adjustment period. My son was a lot more lenient. I get it, mom, It's cool.
I am who I am. Other child was up and down.
Some days they might be leaning. Some days they're like, no, you're getting it wrong, and I'm like okay.
Onmi talks openly about the need for disruption in one's own life to create new experiences. In twenty fifteen, her life was thrown into disruption, forcing her to pivot but not after experiencing what she calls her quote rock bottom. I want to share this short excerpt from a profile on Omi in Refinery twenty nine. They write quote, In the next two months, her entire life flipped upside down.
Her engagement ended, leaving her on public assistance as a single parent of three, which she considers her rock bottom. So she went into fight mode, even pitching a tent in her living room to rent on Airbnb for extra income.
And I also get some contexts as so why I think it was such an anchoring moment. Right, So, like I am working this job at some patent search work and my boss caused me in as I say, I think you're amazing, but this is not for you.
Lays me off. I go home.
I call California psychics because it's some like somebody got to tell me something. It out money to hear from a universe, because now my life is like it's falling down.
It's the second time I've got laid off. And that's not what I do.
Right.
The woman she told me, when you find a thing you want to do, the money will come, and you're not going to be with that guy, which is my fiance at the time. Oh gosh, so now I'm like yay, but like what yeah?
What? So within two miles my entire relationship breaks down.
And that was where I felt the most rock bottom because it wasn't just a relationship rock bottom, which was that first relationship. This was my I'm not gonna get married. I now have three children. Now I'm a single band, which I never wanted in terms of like being a single band with three children, I never wanted it.
I want to pause here because between it all only had her third child. The story leading up to her third child is funny and complex and nuanced, and she shares her experience of choosing to have an abortion so that she had the ability to family plan, something that is common but not share nearly enough.
So I'm in a club, all right, That's that's where the best started. Yes, Yes, ultimately, I've been doing performance poetry. I was well known and burnt out like I was tired, and I said, I'm not doing I'm done last event.
I'm doing.
My mom and I were bar hopping in Anams Morgan in DC because my mom is my rider Dough and I meet this guy. We have a one night stand. I will go to this morning, like, why are you see her here? I don't understand.
I need you to go.
I gotta go walk my cat or wash my tire or something like that. So he leaves, he leaves, I don't talk to him again. Two months later, I'm like, wait a minute, some is not right and I'm pregnant, so I have to call this guy out of the blue and say hey.
He's like, oh, I'm so glad you can't text me. I lost your number or whatever. He was surprisingly cool the entire time we met. We talked.
We agreed that we did not want that to be our child's story, but we would not have that child, and if we liked each other, we would continue to date and we would plan a child. And that's what we did. So I had an abortion with that child, and then we didn't talk for like maybe a month or two, and then he caught me out of the blue.
We started dating again.
We kept dating, dating, dating, light each other, hit it off, and we planned my youngest chiall Skyler.
So it was twenty fifteen and Omi's engagement had just ended. She was a single parent of three just looking to make ends meet. So she did what she does best and.
Built and now the life I thought I was about to live or thought I wanted. And to be honest, he was a settle. I mean, he's an amazing, amazing dad. I would never take that away from him. But we weren't necessarily right for each other. But it was a settle because I was just like, I'm getting older, you know now I've had this child over thirty, which I'm happy about, but like, it's time to just get with the best thing. You know that I you know, it's
an okay thing. The greatest is not you know, all roses, but like and to have that break down was like, oh no, I don't know if I'll ever find that again, or if I ever get married.
So you know what if it, I'm going all the way in. What can I do in my hands? What can I Like?
At that point, I was like, I'm not gonna fail. I'm not going to sit around. I didn't grieve that until about three years later because I was just like, I'm not doing I'm not sitting around and crying about this. Listen, at this point, I'm feeling like there is no plan in life ever right Like I'm at my lowest of low I am still on government assistance, and I don't want to be And I'm like, what, there's nothing Like
if I don't do something, nothing's gonna happen. And when I say every available skill from doing the T shirt shop that I built to building a tpe in my living room to like I was creating my own furniture, I was creating my own greeting cars. I was selling whatever I could think of the sell like. And it was like, by any means, that's I'm going to be successful.
What else can I do?
And I came up with a T shirt line, first one it was then LGBT line. It sucked, nobody bought it. It bombed, and then I was talking to the printer at the time and I said, you know what, it's made by a black woman.
I should put that on the shirt.
So I took the Maid in America logo pattern it and I made made by a black women pattern. After the Maid in America logo put it on the shirt. People loved it. It took off. My mom was my first investor. She gave me about ten thousand dollars of a retirement to put into the business. I used my tax return to buy my own machines, and now we're off. At first, it was just the made by Black Woman line, and then I said, you know what, I'm going to actually start a print shop and then I'm going.
To print for myself and print for other people.
So first I'm making like starting to make like about five figures just with a T shirt line itself. And then when I started doing printing for other people, this is when I started breaking six figures and getting.
More and more more capital and men.
I also started doing like merchandise, like print merchandise were like Google and Amazon, and those deals.
This is why I'm so.
Big on supplied diversity, because those deals are really what took me to higher six figures. Those deals is what got me out Section eight. And so I spent an entire year twenty fifteen, working my ass off to make as much money as many revenues. I made my own greeting guards, We vended as many places we could with the T shirts with the med and by Black Women T shirts. I started printing for like small festivals, like
smaller influencers that were growing at that time. We had their own T shirt lines, and I just started raking in as much revenue as I could to work myself off a section and I successfully did that, thank god.
And from there.
I ended up getting a contract with Google doing some community teaching people about marketing things like that, and then we're just now the trajectory is just going up.
How big was your team as you grew? Like what you said that you were in all these different like I feel like you would need like a sales team or operations again, a variety of industries to get into all of these places.
Yeah, you would think so. Right.
Actually, we're talking about my brother and my mom at that time and me and I'm dedicating all of my day to it, right So I'm doing the sales, I'm doing the emails, I'm doing the searching for the product that the people asked for. I'm doing the presentation I have to send them with the product on it. I'm
doing the print. Like Luckily, with that first investment and my mom gave me, we printed like two thousand Made by Black Women shirts and so we never had to actually do another run of those shirts because then I started using like Shopify and print for which could print it on his own.
And in our first full year.
We ended up making Essence magazine Holiday Gift Guide, We had a baby infant one body suit and said made by Black women on it, and people just loved it, like, oh, I'm black, my baby's back, the baby's made by black women.
I'm like, that's not what I meant.
But yes, run with it, go buy it, you know, And so they were eating it up. And so it was that Black Friday and that like Christmas sale just went crazy wild in sales. So were you always cash positive? Like did you get loans or take investment for that? I did not other than my mom giving me that capital. I dan'te loans. Is that because at that time my credit wasn't great. I didn't feel like anybody would give me a loan. I did use scenes like a thirty
day net with my manufacturers. I did use like business credit at Costco. I did use credit, but loans note and then the only capital I took was from my mom.
So how did that transition? You transitioned pretty quickly from that into launching Black Girl Ventures.
So one of the things I say is interesting, I don't know if I ever articulated like this, but like there was something about the mechanism of making money that probably started while I was teaching, right which was just like I'm a money maker. Like I can make money, give me a couple of tools. I'm a money maker.
She shared in a Forbes piece, how just do it is more than a mantra, It's a way of life. She goes on to say, quote, my story of what I've built with Black Girl Ventures is the epitome of
just do it. It would be hard for someone to believe that a woman who had had a child at seventeen and another child at twenty one, graduates and becomes a computer scientist, but doesn't work for a tech company but rather a school system, works multiple kinds of jobs, and then one day grows a multimillion dollar nonprofit is going to change the world.
The news came out black women ever started business at six times in national average, yet receiving less than one percent of venture capital. So people aren't getting money to raise businesses to grow their business, but they are actually starting them right, And so I'm like, I could do something about that.
So they were got.
Rent parties, so doing a great migration when black people migrated from the South to all different parts of the country and Harlem. In fact, whiteland owners raised the rent and black people would throw parties in their homes now, and these weren't like any shabby little parties.
They would have like you're talking about, like.
Duke Ellington, lang Sy Hughes, fat Swaller, like Langsy Hughes at a little car that they would pass out with like little rhymes on it to invite people to come to the parties. And then they would charge at the door and they would use that money to pay the rent.
And so this.
Mechanism of like community centered crowdfunding essentially right crowdfunding.
Crowdsourcing was innate because where were you gonna go?
Right, You didn't have anybody, You weren't getting a loan let alone, if you were even able to enter a bank, you know, so those kinds of things. So that, yeah, it came from next.
Her launch plan for Black Girl Ventures was second to none. She put her idea up on meetup dot com and hoped a few people would show up.
None of this was deep thought.
So like when I was going back to like being that teenager that's kind of rebellious, I've probably been doing that the whole time.
Yeah, because none of it was deep thought.
It wasn't like, oh, how can I change the world. About thirty women showed up. We voted with marbles and goffee mugs. You like this person put your mom with marble in their goffee mug. I gave the money from the door right back out to the lady. I honestly didn't think much about it.
But she had set something great into motion, and one thing after another it started to grow.
Creates access to social and financial capital for black and brown women founders. There's lots of initiatives out there for minority founders underrepresented founders. We specifically focus on black and brown women. Another thing that makes us unique is that our event is specifically focused on assets of capital. So it's like Shark Tank with an audience, except everyone's a shark.
So everyone in the audience votes with their dollars.
So you could come and pitch a three minute pitch and walk away with two thousand dollars for your business. How would you guys experience here on black old bitchers.
I can't make it popularity?
And then I gotta deal with Google, another part of Google, not the one I had a contract with. I gotta deal with Google Cloud for startups. And then we started traveling the country, and so we went from like thirty women in the house, forty forty five women in like different spaces, eighted one hundred people, and we work to like two hundred and fifty three hundred people in Chicago, New York, in Atlanta.
Detroit, and really just the scale started happening from there.
Were you keeping track of your portfolio? Were you operating like a VC and taking equity as you were funding them?
We were not.
Taking equity as we were funding them. It's been all grant so far. We absolutely count because when I look at the people that we funded now, so our twenty eighteen cohort in twenty nineteen cohorts, they're taking off. I mean I'm talking thirty under thirty getting bigger investment, answering it to the biggest accelerators on the planet. The companies are scaling like they're really taking off. And so now I'm looking at launching a fund because one we're proven
we funded over three hundred women at this point. Two I now know, hey, if I look in my twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen coores and now we're in twenty twenty three, I could prove that like with that consistent funding and resources they can scale.
Had we gotten equity, then what would we be now?
Twenty twenty had an impact on every business. I imagine both with the pandemic and with the murder of George Floyd that your business was probably kind of at the intersection. What was the impact for you?
Yeah, So twenty nineteen we got our first six figure believer, the You and Mary and Kaufmann Foundation. And a lot of times when people apply for grants, they apply with aspirations. We didn't. I applied with my actual business plan for scaling, and so when we got the grant, we were already full of force and like what a meant to scale?
And at that time, scale meant I'm going to train a bunch of different women in different ecosystems on how we do what we do, hand them a tool kit, and let them start doing it for themselves.
And so people.
Thought I was crazy, like, oh, you're gonna ge if your idea away, I'm like, listen, if everybody started to crow fund to pitch competitions, I could back up and do something else.
I've created an immense amount of change in the world.
Right, So I recruit twenty five women, five from five different cities, bring them to DC, We train them, show them the competition, everything we're ready to go to get ready, everything boomed.
We quarantine, and I'm like, oh my god, what are we gonna do?
So we start offering coworking on Wednesdays virtually, which still happens to this day. We start offering monthly support programs, support sessions for people in business. We start offering virtual bitch competitions at that point, and this actually the scale of service just went to a whole another level because now we can reach everybody on the planet. When George Floyd was murdered, it was the response, this is something I've never seen before in my life.
Like when I tell you, we was on calls all day long.
I was on calls from like eight am to like seven BM ketchup people from the West Coast. We want to give you money. We want to give you thirty thousand, forty thousand. On top of so that maybe that then there was moments of almost playing therapists to some white people who realized I had done enough. So I had people who are like, oh my god. I looked around. I realized my whole team is white. I have no
people of color on my team at all. And I'm like, I don't know what could have prepared me for this except for the life that I've had. We were already ready as Black or Adventures. Our programming was solid. We knew our offerings, we knew what we wanted to do, we knew like the mission was tight. We were already offering the program like we were tight. So we were ready for all of that. But the level of conversation that I had, I don't know that I thought that that would be.
What I was going to be talking about. Just people realizing like, I haven't done enough and I want to do more? How can I right? What can I do?
The influx of investors created opportunity after opportunity for her not only to grow Black Girl VREs, but to leverage her community building skills.
My relationship building muscle got stronger because I had to have empathy, but I also had to tell the truth just because it's me like and be authentic. So it's like, Hey, we're going to have this conversation, and here's how we're going to have it. I understand you looked up and now you realize, yeah, I've been doing enough.
What could that mean for how you could do?
What? You view as enough, like what is an I don't know that there's enough right that could have saved George Floyd that wasn't policy related, right, Like, so from an individual standpoint, let's think about what you can do.
And I think we became a thing to do.
But we also became like like coaching people in a way.
Like a thought partner, a thought partner.
A problem solving partner, a partner that I wasn't going to ding you or you know, give you what you should have. I was going to shake my finger at you because that's not productive, because I really do want you to have long lasting shifts and how you think about this right? Then there was places where I just pushed ass that I would have never pushed, like doing a Nike deal. They were presenting to me like, Hey, this is what we're gonna do. We're gonna do this.
I'm gonna have this billboard, we're gonna have visit it. And I'm like, okay, I'm gonna put you in the app like it was an amazing partnership. I said I want to be in a commercial and they were like, oh no, I don't think we can do that.
I was like, so what you're saying is not right now, and it just kind oflive. But I ended up in a commercial, right.
It may have been like three seconds, but I was in there again, Yes you were, so. I think that it really caused me to dig into and I still have relationships with those people to this day.
Just good people, Be a good person.
Be good people right, like in what the label good people means, like good hearted, cool, down to earth, able to talk to people, be empathetic.
You know that. I think that matters so much.
The Nike deal that only quickly mentioned is an incredible mural that is inspired by her poem Entrepreneurship is a boxing match.
It's a eren It's three to four feet taller in reality. Its ropes are red, white, and blue. Its platform is blank stretched canvas. Commentators say, is.
Boot Forth being the brilliant and creative woman that she is? Omi made a short film about the poem and the five incredible black women business owners featured in her Nike mural. The mural is featured at Union Market in DC, and it's a constant recognition of the tireless work of black and brown female entrepreneurs.
Why is being a black woman entrepreneur different?
Entrepreneurship is a boxing match, So people don't know that entrepreneurs are always dealing with all these things. But in addition to doing this, you know, you're still a mom.
And I'm still never done. Entrepreneurship is a boxing match. We the women know how to say lights on our feets.
Was there a point that you can think of when you look back when there it was that moment when you thought, oh my god, I'm done. I can't get out of this moment, And now in retrospect you see it as the thing that helped you move forward and launch.
Probably my first fundraising call, I am right out in bush. I'm like, yes, and we do this and we have that and you know, and I'm like, I'm delivering what I feel like.
Is my best full arm pitch.
Okay, And the person, the Asian man at a Fortune five hundred company said, why would I fund you? I'm not a diversity and I'm like, the only initiative job is women. But it's all white women. So there's room for it to be all white women if that's what you want to do, and for it to be all black and brown women, then right, because I know that if you have room for this part. Then guess what,
We're going to be a great ad to your portfolio. Right, he wasn't here, and he's like, I'm in a diversity and I just don't see why this is different when I'm already funding and I just don't.
No, No, that sucks. You suck. This sucks, and.
I'm trying to do everything, like, well, you should think about it this way. What is this He's like, no, no, no, no, no, that set me up for now.
I was.
I felt terrible after that. I want to be clear. I was like, I suck at this. I don't think I'm ever going to be able to raise a dollar. But now, in hindsight, I'm like, that set me up for Like when people don't get it one you don't take it personal. A no means it's not the right person, not the right time, but not the right ask. Your no has nothing to do with me. And I take that and I teach that and I coach on that like no is not your seb effocacy needs to break down.
Yeah, no, it's not against your confidence. Yeah. So it was like, no is about that person's ability to respond.
So much of it is timing. Also, whether it's funding or partnerships or whatever. It is so much of it as timing that has nothing to do with you. When I had the concept for this show, it's the first thing I've ever done that's personal. And even though I had raised money before, I had had a show before all of that, this felt so vulnerable to go out and pitch this show because I wasn't sure if a media partner would want it. I wasn't sure if sponsors
would want it. I wasn't sure if an audience wanted to hear me talk about anything personally. That felt so vulnerable that it still is a little hard, but like, I have to separate the business from the content, and the content is me, but the business is the business, and the business can be about everybody else around me exactly.
And I think like being able to like just reshape perspective quickly is an entrepreneurial thing, right, because you got to be able to move quick. I don't have time to waddle in that but for so long, Hey give me forty eight hours that I'm over it. So I have a book. It's called Originate, Motivate, Innovate. Seven Steps for building a billion dollar Network. And I think that
when when I think about the network is everything? I tell people like, the network is everything, right, We're like, you're the When you get to a certain level of capital, your worth is the deal, not money in your bank account.
You know what I mean.
It's your worth is the deal. It's about the deal. But the deals come from the relationships, right exactly.
Okay, thank you so much. Can I give you a hug? Yeah, I'm Omi continues to thrive, building Black Girl ventures and giving out millions of dollars in grants. She just released her book Originate, Motivate, Innovate. Seven Steps for building a multimillion dollar business. You can find that anywhere you get your books. She was named one of the one hundred most Powerful Women in Business by Entrepreneur magazine and acknowledged
as a Rising grand Star by Adweek. She continues to be featured in publications like Forbes, Fast Company, Marie Claire, Inc. Magazine, and more.
For her work.
Omi is also the host of Omi's World, a serious XM show that has authentic conversations about business, culture and finance. She lives with her children in the DC area, making sure to regularly check in on her mural at Union Market. You can Find all things Omi on Instagram, at black
Girl Ventures and at Omi Bell Thanks for listening. She Pivots is hosted by me Emily Tish Sussman, produced by Emily eda Veloshik, with sound editing and mixing from Nina Pollock, and research and planning for Christine Dickinson and Hannah Cousins.
I endorse che Pivots