Keith: [00:00:02] All right, Akeelah, it's great to see you, it's been way too long. How are you? [00:00:05][3.2]
Akeelah: [00:00:06] Keith, it is fabulous to see you. It has been a long time. I'm so glad to be here and I'm really thrilled to talk to you today. [00:00:11][5.5]
Keith: [00:00:12] Awesome. Yeah, it's been, I think, over two years since the last time we saw each other. And you've continued to grow your company, Little Global Citizens as the CEO and founder. Tell us a little bit about Little Global Citizens, what it is, what it does. [00:00:23][11.6]
Akeelah: [00:00:25] So we were children, subscription box company and we teach kids about cultures of the world, one country at a time. I created a Little Global Citizens to help foster open mindedness, global cultural awareness and young kids by helping them to build an understanding of the world and, quite frankly, a lot for the people in it. So what we do is every two months we send families an exciting box that teaches their child about a new country, and we bring it to life by highlighting all of the most important aspects of that culture. And we do it in a fun way that's tangible and accessible to kids and makes it enjoyable for a whole family to get involved with. We put crafts in there. We put games, recipes, music, storybooks. So if your child is building a replica of the Great Wall of China, they're learning about Chinese culture. They are learning about Russia, that designing their own Faberge egg or cooking a traditional Nigerian stew. How we make it fun and hands-on for kids to learn about this big, beautiful world that they're a part of. [00:01:29][64.2]
Keith: [00:01:29] It's so cool. And what I love most about your collection is that there are hands on activities. There's the audio visual, but there's also the kinetic learning that happens with that. What age group is this designed for? [00:01:39][10.4]
Akeelah: [00:01:41] So we actually have worked with educators. We designed the boxes for ages four to 10 year olds. And part of the reason that we start kids off very young is from as young as six months old, kids are able to see differences in skin color and by ages two to three kids are actually noticing differences in gender, race, skin tone. They're not noticing these things as negative. They are just noticing differences. And it's a very impactful time for us as parents and educators, teachers, grandparents, mentors to help shape a child's view of people who are different from themselves, who look different, speak a different language, wear different clothes and eat different foods. It's a very, very informative time, and we can have such a positive impact by exposing kids to different people and cultures and lifestyles at that age. [00:02:37][56.0]
Keith: [00:02:38] Something I saw in an interview that you said I really loved, and I'd love to have you peel back a little bit more is learned from not about learning from different cultures and not about cultures. What does that mean to you and what that means to the company? [00:02:48][10.9]
Akeelah: [00:02:50] So I think there was become a much bigger focus right now on the need for children to have access to diverse stories, diverse inputs in their life. But I think we have to be really careful about what the way that we do that and something that I learned when I was coming up with a Little Global Citizens. I spent some time with a lady called Dr. Carlotta Pen, and she is an author of diverse children's books, and she also has a PhD in diversity and education. And one of the things that we talked about a lot was how children need to learn from other cultures, not just about other cultures. Instead of looking from the outside in as an outsider and observing this kind of specimen style. It's important to teach children that all these people around the world, they have amazing cultures, they have amazing homes, lifestyles, it may be very different from yours. And here is what you can learn not learning about them as an outsider. Obviously, the best way to have that interaction is for your children to go out in the world and meet people who live in Kenya and live in China, live in Ghana. That's not always possible, feasible for so many reasons. You have a daughter. You know how traveling with kids is not the easiest thing in the world. [00:04:17][86.8]
Keith: [00:04:17] We tried doing it right. Like, you know, pre-COVID, we did try to get her out there and see the world. I've told this to a lot of people, but one of the tricks to getting your kid out internationally is before two years old, they don't charge you for a plane ticket. Right? So we tried to take advantage of that as much as possible and just keep her on her lap or keep her in a bassinet. But then COVID did hit, and so we haven't traveled anywhere in two years. Have you seen that? That has changed kind of the interest that people have, the curiosity that I think you mentioned earlier and kids is always going to be there are people tapping into your books and your packages a little bit more because they can/t travel now? [00:04:53][35.1]
Akeelah: [00:04:54] So I think there's been a couple of things. The whole interest in ensuring the kids have a global awareness has amped up over the past two years. Obviously, not being able to travel has meant that families who do understand the importance of giving your kids a global and cultural education, they have been limited. So we did see a big influx from that audience. There's also the kind of very pragmatic side, which is that kids have not been going out, socializing, going to school this March. And so parents were left looking for something easy, convenient, fun, interesting, exciting that they could bring into their home and kind of have a fun experience when they're not able to actually physically go out so much. So there's been a couple of different things at play, but we've definitely seen a huge growth over the past year and a half, and it's been really fascinating to see. And also, as a parent myself, it was one of the most frustrating things because as I was seeing such a need in families since March last year. March 16 specifically the last day that kids went to school before the spring break that never ended. But you know, for me, as a business owner, I had all the stress and horror of dealing with COVID, dealing with how am I going to keep my kids safe? My kids are home. But on the flip side, I was seeing such a need from other families to have something delivered to their doorstep. Convenient, keep the kids entertained. Parents are working. You need something that a child can open themselves and be somewhat engaged in on their own. So I think that was probably the most difficult six months as a business owner of knowing that there was such potential for our business as it was such a need for families. While I have my own two little boys at home who are running amok and going wild, and I can't take my eyes off them for a second to do a conference call because they're getting into who knows what the pantry and peanut butter and all sorts of things. So it's been kind of a an interesting time to have a business that serves families and serves kids and also brings something of the world into your home. [00:07:17][143.3]
Keith: [00:07:18] Yeah, you know what I love about it is the diverse things that are offered in each package. How do you bring those together who are you collaborating to make sure that this package is fulfilled? [00:07:26][7.8]
Akeelah: [00:07:28] So this was not my area of expertize. The idea from the business came from my own experiences in my life and then having my own child, but the arts, the crafts, the education aspect was really not my area of expertize. And I think if I had thought about it any longer, I probably wouldn't have embarked on the business because, you know, people obviously go to university for years to study art. Study education. Study child development. So I think one of the most fortunate things that happened for me was having great resources at hand. My son's teacher, who is a Montessori teacher, is also a world traveler. And so I was able to work really closely with her and collaborate at the beginning as we were coming up with what is age appropriate for four to 10 year olds as a wide age group. How do we make something that goes in a box tangible, exciting fun? And how do we make sure that the materials are different in every single box that goes out so there's not repetition? Kids are always excited, the contents of fresh, and how do we make sure that it's touching on all the different and relevant developmental skills that you, as a parent want your child to be constantly working on and learning from? I don't know if you know anything about the Montessori philosophy, but it very much is focused on the whole child. Teaching the whole child not just the basics of education, but also a social, emotional learning and culture is a really important part of what the Montessori curriculum teaches children. So being able to collaborate with that teacher. And now I also work with an art teacher and art director. Those collaborations have been essential, essential, and I've just I've learned so much more than I ever dreamed I would. Starting a business from the child development and education aspect, that's awesome. [00:09:27][119.5]
Keith: [00:09:28] And you know, I think for so many people, solopreneurs or dual partnerships, there's often this thinking from others that, oh, you're doing it on your own, you're kind of pulling yourself up from the bootstraps. But it sounds like there's a lot of collaboration. I know in my experience it's the collaboration that's key not only from the people helping to build the projects, but also the other people that are solopreneurs are kind of small partnership small businesses. Have you found a community of like minded folks that are helping you out, maybe not just with the actual production, but maybe kind of the sanity part of running your own business? [00:09:59][31.2]
Akeelah: [00:10:00] Number one, you're telling me there's a sound as you fall to your own business. I have no idea about that. Let me know what you found that I would like to buy some of that. So interestingly, I have been fortunate to have tapped into the local community. Florida is very much focused right now on supporting small businesses, tech businesses, women led businesses. So I've been very fortunate to have tapped into that community. Our business, currently as a part of a collaborative called Embark, which is all different stage businesses with it, has a goal of as a collective helping from a resources standpoint, an advisory standpoint and also that community aspect. Interestingly, I've actually tapped into a lot of people that were a part of my previous life and advertising community. So one of the first things that I did when I realized there was a lot of support that I was missing, is I tapped into some of my old friends that I used to work with in the advertising industry and three women. And I started kind of like a weekly, just like a support group. We had some fun names I won't share because they're too cheesy, but we were all at different stages in our careers, starting our own businesses, starting around consultancies. And so we would just get on the phone. And even though everything that we were doing was so different, we would just brainstorm but mainly support each other. We would talk each other up. We would share opportunities. We would constantly, if you learn something new on Instagram just forwarded along if you saw a great article that you knew would help their business forwarded along. But also a lot of the emotional support reminding each other, Hey, you did great. You were just interviewed for this. You won this award, you wrote this article. All the things that I think when you start working on your own, you don't really give yourself credit. Yeah. Great point. I think that is the hardest thing that I found. Maybe you've found the same because what you're doing never feels like it's enough. You've never reached where you want to be. There's always opportunity to serve more families to engage with more kids. For us to be in front of more teachers, more eyeballs. You always feel like there's more, more and more you could be doing. Nobody ever stops to say Well done. You've sent out boxes to thousands of kids around the country already. [00:12:33][152.5]
Keith: [00:12:33] Yeah, that's an important fact. [00:12:34][0.9]
Akeelah: [00:12:35] It is. I mean, do you find like you have a support system? [00:12:37][2.6]
Keith: [00:12:39] A bit. Yeah, I think, you know, one of the things that I, you know, over the last three or four years I've realized, you know, my business partner says this and I love it is like, you know, the further you got on the corporate ladder, the nastier it would get and the harder it would get. And, you know, kind of the less friendly people would become. But what I found on the entrepreneurial side is especially where you're not competing against others in the same line of business. People want to help and people want to confide and especially they understand because they're running through the same thing where they don't have that support system, right? Like two things. One, like we worked together at BuzzFeed for the folks that are listening, you know, for about four years and we would have that outlet of let's go grab a drink and talk about this and say, Hey, I'm struggling with this. Are you struggling? That's as well, that it didn't have to kind of like, be a manager, it could be somebody else that was at your wavelength. And then too, we were both in sales where it was very clear cut. If you hit your number or not, you know, you had a scoreboard that you can look at every quarter or every half or every year, and you'd said, OK, I'm exceeding the expectations here and I'm being rewarded for it financially, but also with potential promotions and things where when you're an entrepreneur, you might make up that number or you might have that number, but there's no kind of gratification that comes with it externally or additional bonuses or anything like that. So that part was also hard for me, coming from a world where it was very, very clear cut. Whether you're doing well or not and trying to find those folks that can kind of balance and kind of better understand like, OK, why does that matter to you? Why do you need to have a W at the end of every quarter? Right? I think that part has been really different in the entrepreneur world. Have you seen a similar thing because you're a very successful salesperson and sales manager? Do you see the same thing with that wanting for the gratification of sales numbers or revenue numbers or specific goals? [00:14:20][101.4]
Akeelah: [00:14:22] I feel like because we are a B2C company. Yeah. You know, the revenue gets checked every single day. I'm constantly looking at those and having been in sales for a long time. You know, obviously those goals are really important. But I feel like it's a lot of the intangible things that are missing. And like you said, it's it's the interaction with the team is feeling like you're all working together for the same thing. It's feeling like you're all achieving the same goal. I think the hardest part of doing this on your own is it's mindset. If you wake up and you're feeling great and you're feeling strong and you've got a fabulous podcast going on with Keith Hernandez today, you wake up and you're jazzed and you're ready to go. But if you wake up and you get a customer email that says, Hey, I have some feedback and you might not like this, it's hard not to take those things very personally. If somebody knocks what you're doing, how you're doing it, when you're doing it, how timely of a fashion you're doing it. There was absolutely nobody else to turn to. So you do take it very personally. But I think I've been very fortunate having my team of women that I've always kind of gravitated to, and we've been doing this for nearly three years now. And then with the collective that I'm a part of, I have kind of like a one to one mentor. And, you know, sometimes she gives me great, amazing feedback on the business. Sometimes we'll sit and do brainstorms and have business ideas and all the times. It's literally just for me to give her a downloads, just get it off my chest because nobody else knows or cares about the business as much as I do. And she will just listen to me, talk through issues, and sometimes you just need someone to say the words out loud to. And you've talked yourself into your answer. Absolutely. But you need to say the words out loud. I never realize how important it was to say things out loud. [00:16:16][114.8]
Keith: [00:16:17] I've had a career coach and I've really enjoyed it just for that reason, right? Of just getting things out, you know, maybe they're not fully formed, but they start to form and have somebody respond and listen where, you know, I think one of the hardest parts is you don't know other people's motives for listening, whereas a career coach or mentor is there, you feel a little bit more of a safe place with them. Why do you think the knocks hurt more than the praise is? Feel good? It's something that I've also noticed, right? Where, you know somebody might say something on Twitter or there was little knocks tend to kind of wear on you a little bit more than the high praise that friends or colleagues would give you. What do you think that's all about? [00:16:54][36.3]
Akeelah: [00:16:55] I think for a lot of people that are used to being successful and used to being achievers. I think that when it is your own business, you just cannot help but take everything personally. I think it's quite hard unless you have a team with you to sit and look at those comments, and often they can be constructive. But it takes a really strong person to be able to take their own personality and own ego out of it and to subjectively look and see, is this person actually telling me something valuable or they venting their own issues? And I think with social media, there's so much of that. People feel quite happy to comment on an article you've written or Facebook post, and people definitely are more brutal. I think when they're anonymous than they ever would be if they were standing in front of you having a conversation. So I think you have to learn to take some of those things with a grain of salt, but it hurts at the beginning, whether the comments are valid or not. [00:17:59][64.4]
Keith: [00:18:00] Yeah, and you're like, Whoa. There was a time when I was about three years ago where I wrote something about Donald Trump, and Huffington Post had me write an article and I was getting thousands of tweets and death threats and all of this stuff. And what I realized was they were just finding things on my Twitter profile and using them against me. And so I deleted all of my tweets because I was kind of like freaking out. I was like, Oh my God, this is crazy. And all I had left was a little picture of me in a little blue suit that I wore to a friend's wedding and five tweets in a row just made fun of my suit. And I realized that it's because they had nothing else, because none of my tweets were around anymore. So this one guy was like, Look at you with your fancy suit. That doesn't seem like you're too worried about money now. And I was like, Oh, it was a really good realization for me because I was like, They have nothing else on me. I deleted everything else. And it really changed my perspective on social media and changed my perspective on kind of when people reach out because you're totally right. So often, the people that are reaching out have other things going on in their life of other emotions that they're kind of carrying on them. It's easier to be cynical, it's easier to be negative. You know, we're finding this all out with the Facebook papers that are coming out. It's way easier to kind of stoke hate than to offer hard praise. So I'm with you on that. [00:19:16][76.4]
Akeelah: [00:19:17] Well, I think it's interesting a lot of small business owners and. Entrepreneurs will say that the first or the most valuable hire that freed up the most of them mind space is hiring somebody to do customer service. [00:19:30][13.4]
Keith: [00:19:31] Interesting. So you did that, you hired customer service. [00:19:33][2.0]
Akeelah: [00:19:34] We are in the process of hiring someone to do customer service. For me because we're a consumer product it is really valuable for me to see questions that come through and comments that come through and need to know what the points are that we're not addressing on the website, what is not clear for people to understand. So I've kept a close eye on that, but a lot of people say that's the most valuable thing because it just kind of like it lifts that weight off your minds. And kind of it will eliminate any of the negativity. But I do worry that if I wasn't keeping an eye on it myself, I would miss opportunities to improve or grow. But I can totally see why. That's one of the first things to go for people. Yeah, because they they don't want, they don't want that. [00:20:20][46.3]
Keith: [00:20:21] Yeah, they want to get mired in that, right? So you've now been at it for four years, correct? Three or four years. [00:20:26][5.2]
Akeelah: [00:20:27] Yeah, this is going to be our fourth Christmas. I think that's how I measure it. Q4 is obviously the big quarter for us. [00:20:33][6.6]
Keith: [00:20:34] That's great. And so what are some of the lessons that you learned year one that looking back on it, you can laugh at yourself and say, Oh my gosh, I can't believe I didn't know that when I first started off this business. [00:20:43][8.9]
Akeelah: [00:20:48] Can I say everything? So having had a career in digital advertising, I had never been involved with a physical product. So there were just so many, very steep learning curves there. We were lucky when we started the business. We did kind of a soft launch with friends and family who, you know, I've just been telling about this concept. I'm going to teach my kids about countries and cultures. I'm going to do it through these boxes. We're going to make them fun, interactive, engaging. If you're interested, let me know. So we started with about 80 subscribers the first month. So the good thing about that was we were able to kind of test everything I physically, my sons and I read every single story book that was under consideration for the box. We physically tested and did every single craft, every single game, every single recipe that was in that box. We still do that to this day, any time we're developing a new box. I tested on my kids. I tested on friends, kids. So I'm very fortunate that I have like a built in test audience of my own family and friends. So that was really valuable but just learning about the physical product. This is a product for kids, so you need to make sure that all of the items that go inside are safe for children. It needs to have appropriate warnings. You need to get all of your legal sorted out. You need to actually find suppliers for every single tiny product that goes in that I had no idea how much time it takes to source, you know, 50000 sequins or 100000 pompoms. [00:22:23][95.2]
Keith: [00:22:24] That blows my mind, too, because I've talked to a few people who have now built physical products and just the a vetting and figuring out who should be building these products. How did you go through that process? How did you find the right people? [00:22:36][11.5]
Akeelah: [00:22:37] So at the beginning, physically sourcing supplies because we were small quantities was using kind of third party retailers. As you get to bigger volumes, you need to be going direct to the source. So instead of using, you know, you're going direct to the producers of paints and. Markers and sequins and pompoms, sometimes those are overseas I try to use US based as much as possible, but that in itself was a pretty big learning curve. Learning how to cut out the middleman and go direct to the source. So that was a big thing. And then obviously, there's the reliability of your suppliers, which has been thrown up in the air this quarter and last quarter. So keeping tabs on useful and reliable quality suppliers. It's a whole job in itself, and it's definitely something that I have probably spent more time on Earth than I ever would have dreamt I would. Because you're always looking for quality, you're looking for value for money, you're looking for something that will have longevity in a family instead of just throwaway items. So that was a huge learning curve I knew nothing about. I was the person who goes and buys my stuff at Target. The kids like to buy it. It's already packaged. It's easy. But now all of a sudden I'm the person who is making the packages and making a convenient, fun activity for the kids. [00:24:02][84.8]
Keith: [00:24:02] Do you now have a new appreciation and eye for when you see packages, packaged goods that you didn't have before? [00:24:07][4.8]
Akeelah: [00:24:07] Yes, yes I do. But I also know what's happened on the back end so I can kind of try and filter out just the glamor of the packaging and see what's actually inside. But the other thing that was a big transition for us was going from the physical production of the boxes ourselves. I used to stand in my kitchen until midnight. Physically putting pompoms in a bag, putting markers in a bag, putting clay in a bag. Till you get to a volume where that's not feasible. And then you have to outsource. And I think outsourcing is one of the hardest things as an entrepreneur that you can do. You have to release so much emotionally, physically. There was a big learning curve. When you take somebody on board, you have to train them to do it. You have to kind of take away the assumptions that you have in your head from having been doing the business and knowing all the nuance and intricacies, you have to realize that somebody knows nothing about your business, right? They don't necessarily have the same start to finish mentality that focused on the task that you've given them. So that, I think, was the biggest learning curve. We went through a few different production houses, warehouses that was a big learning curve and then even getting the warehouse that we have up to speed now has taken a lot of back and forth, a lot of time of me standing showing them. What do I mean when I say your bags half full? There's nothing worse than a kid starting a craft and realizing that, you know, there were two pompoms missing because that's ruined the whole day for that child. So you have to really sync up and not leave anything to nuance. So there's been a lot of time I didn't know anything about warehouses, suppliers, any of that supply chain stuff. So huge learning curves all around. [00:25:56][108.4]
Keith: [00:25:56] It's so fascinating. And would you say it has to be trial and error? It sounds like right in this early stage of doing it. The only way to learn if a production warehouse is going to be good is by giving them a shot. Is that correct? [00:26:07][11.2]
Akeelah: [00:26:08] Yes. And I think if you've built your business and built your products on your own from the ground up, then you have a lot of insight into what could go wrong and what is the right way to do it. So you can go in there with a lot of very specific direction for them. But until you actually physically stand and they call it on the line until you stand on the line in the warehouse and you see people putting items into your box and pressing box and building the box and sealing the box, did you seal it correctly? Yeah. There's such minutia that when you're doing physical products, you can't even foresee until you watch somebody do it, you're like, Oh, no, don't take the box like that. Nobody will ever open it. You need one piece of tape that goes from the top to the bottom. It's mind blowing, and I'm so grateful that we have a good team now that's been with us for a year and a half. So they have history with us. We have history with them. We understand each other's jargon and language and terminology, but it takes a while and it takes a lot of patience on both sides. [00:27:09][60.4]
Keith: [00:27:09] Were you always that detail-oriented because myself, you know, something's a little bit crooked and all that? I'm like, Yeah, that's fine. Who cares? Let's move on. I'm always like, Big Picture, it's totally cool. Were you always that detail-oriented as this kind of a new skill that you picked up with the company? [00:27:21][12.0]
Akeelah: [00:27:22] This is definitely not my area of expertise. I had to become detail-oriented because I was standing physically building the boxes myself, and I just could not allow for any box to go out with an item missing because that was a landing back on my doorstep. That means I made an error. Somebody had paid for something and there was an error. So thankfully I can count the number of hours that I ever made when I was physically building the boxes myself. But no, that's not my forte. I am much more like you, a big picture person. I want to be thinking about the broad scheme of the business where it's going, how it's impacting children's lives, how it's going to impact the next generation. And that's why I'm grateful that now I can pass that off and know that there's a team doing it and they're all up to snuff. And that's their area of expertise. [00:28:08][46.3]
Keith: [00:28:09] That's smart. That's awesome. Yeah, I think that's advice that I always get from people is become an expert at it and then fire yourself from it, right? Like, get really good at it. So you know how to explain it, because if you can't explain it, no one will ever be able to do it the way that you want them to do it. And that's just going to be frustrating. So you moved from Chicago to Florida? Talk a little bit about that move. Talk to me a little bit about what went down to kind of get the groundswell going on, starting this company and leaving the corporate world that we both were part of. [00:28:36][26.8]
Akeelah: [00:28:36] So it's interesting you were talking about your business coach. When I moved to Florida, I was working as VP of sales at of the Midwest for BuzzFeed. And I had a business coach. And interestingly, through conversations with her, she made me realize that there were things I needed to reprioritize in my life and that there was a way that I could keep multiple things going at one time. I think I've been very tunnel vision that it was career, career, career, career and I've lived away from my family in England for one and a half decades and coming up to nearly two decades. Oh wow. As my father got older, I realized I needed to be closer to him physically to help him out, help my mom out. My dad is 87 now and he's doing really well. Amazing to hear. That's great. Yeah, he's I mean, he's he's walking. And I think part of that is, you know, having myself around, having my husband around, my brother now is here in Florida. You know, people always say that that sort of interaction with your family and your community helps, especially when you get older. And I've seen how that's had a positive impact on my dad. And so my business coach was a person who kind of pointed me in the direction and highlighted to me that it didn't have to be one or the other. These two things could live concurrently. There was no reason why I could not request to transfer and become a remote employee. So I did that and I was surprised and I was blown away at how it actually could function, because I've just always kind of followed the prescribed path, I think, in previous years. So. Moving out of the city, moving away from kind of like every day client facing interactions kind of opened things up in me, and then I had a lot of life changes. I had my first son, I had my second son and it really made me wonder how parents and mothers in particular do the type of corporate job that I had, where I was traveling a lot and managing people, and had very, very high sales goals. It was high pressure and high stress, and it made me wonder how people do that, balancing having children and being present for their children when I was expected to be on a plane leaving the house at 4:00 in the morning, coming home at 11 o'clock the next night. I'd missed two days. It was extra pressure on my husband do that in conjunction with having the realization that I would be interested in starting my own business. And for me, that was definitely an inflection point around the 2016 election when Trump was elected. I started reading a lot of stories about children being targeted in a racial fashion at schools. Yeah, and I just thought. I can't bring my children up in a world like this. I have to do something. This is not right. I don't want my kids to be a part of it. And I know better. So I need to do something to change it. So those things all kind of converged at the same time. And it definitely was an inflection point for me starting the business. And I think if those things hadn't all happened at the same time, I probably would have dragged my heels and maybe never even done it. I certainly wasn't prepared. Like I said, I didn't know anything about the consumer side. I didn't know anything about the product side. I just went for it and I learned as I went. And I think it was the best way for me to do it. Otherwise, I would have been too focused on making it perfect before I started, and it never would have gone anywhere. [00:32:14][217.6]
Keith: [00:32:15] Yeah, that's such a recurring theme that I've heard from smart entrepreneur successful entrepreneurs is, you know, they didn't just wake up one day with the idea and start going. And you know, that kind of myth of, you know, the eureka moment, OK, I'm going to leave everything behind. Do it. It kind of just dates for like a year or two. And it sounds like this was an idea that you had for maybe many years before you actually got it off the ground. Do you look at that time back and say, Oh man, I wish I started years before? Or do you say it's kind of good that I let it incubate in my brain kind of waited for this moment to make it happen? [00:32:47][32.7]
Akeelah: [00:32:49] I think I wasn't ready before. I think there were a lot of things that kind of. With seeds throughout my life that got me to a point of realizing just how important it was for my kids and all the kids to appreciate and respect and gain an understanding of all the people in other cultures. It started with me being grown up in a multicultural household. My father's from Pakistan, my mom's from Scotland. I was brought up in England, so I was straddled cultures. My parents traveled with me as much as we could. We went to Kenya, Tunisia, Yugoslavia, Spain, France. So that was always a part of me, and I appreciated how important it was that I'd been places and seeing people. So things didn't surprise me. Seeing somebody who dresses different or eats different foods has a different religion. It didn't surprise me. It was just a part of life. It was all normalized for me. So that was always kind of a part of my own persona. And then when my husband and I took a year off and backpacked around the world, that was just a huge blast. And that was probably the biggest seed of foundation for the business. I didn't realize it at the time, but when I came back having met all these amazing people around the world, the one thing that stuck with us everywhere we went is that no matter how different the lifestyles were, people were so kind and open and generous and warm, and they were just all the same. At the core people are all the same. Similarities are so much greater than differences. [00:34:22][93.7]
Keith: [00:34:24] You did what I'd say 100 percent of people say that they want to do. But I would say less than three percent or two percent actually do, which is take a year off. I would say not mid-career, but maybe kind of at a point where you are accelerating and kind of going up the ladder. What was the impetus for that? Would you recommend other people doing that? Because so many times I talked to people like 29, 30, 31 without kids and they're like, I wish I could just take a year and travel and see the world now that I actually have a little bit of money versus when I was 20 or 21 and had to like Backpack. A. What made you both decide to do that? And then B, what would you tell other people who are thinking about what does that look like on my resume when I come back, [00:35:01][37.7]
Akeelah: [00:35:03] Do it, do it! [00:35:04][0.9]
Keith: [00:35:04] Before kids right? [00:35:05][0.7]
Akeelah: [00:35:05] Well, you know, there's a lot of families who do it with kids. I've started getting clued in to them as part of the business, and it's fabulous and fascinating, and I take my hat off and salute them. I could not do it with my boys because their just to wild. I think a lot more people do it than maybe you realize it's much more common in Europe to do it after university or before university. So the idea of doing it wasn't foreign to me. The reason I did it in my thirties instead of my 20s is basically my parents would not let me do it before university. I came from a pretty strict family in the household, so the thought of me taking a year off to go, you know, hanging out on the beach in Australia, not happening for me. [00:35:46][41.3]
Keith: [00:35:48] Like prove your worth a little. Show us shows that you can grow your career before taking that. Yeah. [00:35:51][3.4]
Akeelah: [00:35:54] They were worried. I would never come back and go to university if they thought I'd just be off having the time in my life. And anyway, so that didn't happen. After university, I moved to the state, so I had a whole new world to be learning about. But I'm really glad that we traveled in our thirties, and there's a couple of reasons why we had a little bit of money saved up, but two, it kept us off the young backpacker route. So the one thing that we wanted to make sure we did was we wanted to go as far and as deep into countries and cultures as we could and specifically countries that we knew it would be more difficult to get to on a vacation. So we didn't travel around Europe very much because we knew it's much easier to take two weeks and go to Madrid. It's much easier to take two weeks and go to Hamburg on vacation. We wanted to go to places like Burma and Lao. We went to Vietnam and we really tried to get off the tourist path as much as we could. We tried to live with families and immerse ourselves in the actual culture. So we did things like we lived with a tribe of people in a remote area in northern Laos. Those people are so remote that they don't trade in currency. They trade in walls of hair. Then a businessmen from China on a motorcycle comes through and collects once a month. Those people are that far removed. Those things are insanely eye-opening and very hard to come by. So we were really grateful that we had the opportunity to go deep there. We traveled all over Burma. It was amazing. [00:37:34][100.4]
Keith: [00:37:35] How did you connect with these people? Like, how were you able to build quick trust for them to open their doors and, you know, have dinner with you like that? [00:37:42][6.8]
Akeelah: [00:37:43] So I mean, a lot of the times we made ourselves accessible, so we took public transport, we took local busses, we took rickshaws, we talk to people everywhere we went, we bought a little guidebook because this was pre having a smartphone, this was pre everywhere being wireless. Literally, we would have to go and find an internet cafe in the town and often we would drive places there was no internet cafe or the internet was down. So but we would always have a guidebook and we would learn some phrases so we could talk to people. And we got really good at communicating with hand signals and gestures. But being in the places where real life people were, instead of being in the tourist circuit, we would always eat at food stands. We would go to food markets, we would eat at the fish market, we would eat the little plastic stool stand on the side of the road. And those were the best ways. Through doing that, we got invited to multiple weddings. We went to a wedding in Laos, but we kind of accidentally crashed because we were cycling by people just invited us in and all of a sudden we're dancing with the bride and groom. We're thinking, this is this doesn't seem right, they haven't done to their parents yet, but their dancing with us. But that was just how people were. We were open and people were very kind and receptive to us, and that mind frame it changed everything for us. It changed everything. And we saw other people who we would pass by over and over again and they would stay on the tourist circuit is very easy to travel the world and go to the beautiful museums, go to the beautiful restaurants, stay in the nice hotels. It's very, very much more difficult and you have to be much more conscientious and intentional about getting in to see really how people live and what their life is like. [00:39:32][108.3]
Keith: [00:39:32] Yeah, you have to have the curiosity, right? And I think that's where your company is starting to instill that, starting to build that up with the kids and show them that there's differences and in each of those things. Let's talk about the resumé thing because I have heard that from other people. They're like, I'm worried about what this would look like on my resume if I took a year off or two years off. Describe your experience because I feel like it was probably a highlight for you to talk about, right? [00:39:53][20.9]
Akeelah: [00:39:53] Yeah. I mean, I had no idea about Little Global Citizens at the time, but the advertising industry, as you know, is a very active and very social business. So almost everybody that I knew in the business, either my coworkers, my clients, they all knew that I was doing it. They were excited for me. A lot of people, I think a little bit jealous because, like you said, they had wanted to do it themselves. I didn't get any negative responses. Even my boss at the time said, Oh, good for you. I wish I'd done that ten years ago. Go, Enjoy. Have a wonderful time. I was very fortunate that our old boss at the time, Andy Wheatland, kind of followed my travels and as he knew I was coming to the end of my year, started teasing little comments about this great new place he was working, sent me some BuzzFeed quizzes, told me about some of the people he was hiring, and kind of teased that. My intention was not to come back and get back into the advertising industry but I was very grateful to find that all of my contacts and connections were waiting with arms open and interesting to hear what I'd learned, what had changed in my perspective. And I actually jumped straight back into the industry. [00:41:02][68.6]
Keith: [00:41:03] Yeah, that's great. And I think what I'm hearing there is like, I think so many people think because you talked about the career track and staying on, and I have to do the right thing to keep my career going the right way. People are human, and they actually appreciate when people veer off of that right, like you did veer off and you went to go do this other thing, and it actually made people lean in and go, Whoa, this is your interesting. I want to learn more about you want to know what's going on? Would you ever go back to the advertising world now? Would you go back to ad sales? [00:41:30][27.4]
Akeelah: [00:41:31] Ad sales? No. I feel like I had an amazing, amazing time when I worked in the digital advertising industry. I loved sales. I love my clients. I love my coworkers. I love the buzz. I love the excitement. I love the goals. I love that feeling. But I'm in a different place in my life now. It's not that I am not interested in the marketing side. I definitely am interested in the marketing side. I'm interested in the business side, the new business side, but I feel like my horizons have opened to be so much broader now that I think I would feel like it was a little narrow for me. I love the idea, and I've always loved the idea of start ups and businesses and watching them grow building them. I think that's what I enjoyed about sales. I wouldn't go back in the same capacity. I don't know. Never say never, never say never. [00:42:22][50.3]
Keith: [00:42:22] You don't want to shoot down the million dollar job if it comes your way. That's fair. What advice would you give somebody who is sitting there on an idea? You know, again, one of the things that happened with me and I've talked to a couple of other people ad sales jobs and, you know, corporate jobs pay darn well, and it's really easy to get kind of stuck in what some would call it. You know, the golden handcuffs of, you know, making really good money. Why should I worry about this thing? But I do have this good idea. If only I could do it. What advice would you give that person? [00:42:50][27.9]
Akeelah: [00:42:51] Yeah, and I use the exact same phrase myself golden handcuffs. I would say, Look at your financials, look at your financial situation because I think one of the most stressful things is losing that income and not knowing how or when it's going to be replaced. You need to know what your own personal one way is. You need to know what your own personal comfort level is and the comfort level of the other people in your life. I was very fortunate when I decided to make this leap. My husband was 110 percent behind. That's awesome. My family, my parents, my brother also very much supported me. My dad had his own business for my whole life. My mom's always had her own businesses. So I had that support. So I knew that I could do it and I would be OK. But I think you need to really think long and hard about that and not underestimate the power that that can have on you if you haven't thought about it and you haven't planned and prepped for it. So it's like a very pragmatic thing. The other thing I would do is start telling people, tell people you trust to get that feedback straight away, not just the people who are going to agree, but [00:44:01][69.7]
Keith: [00:44:01] also then they'll ask you about, Yeah, well, [00:44:02][1.3]
Akeelah: [00:44:03] then they'll keep asking you about it and then [00:44:04][1.4]
Keith: [00:44:05] they're going How's that going, and you're going Oh crap, I'm going to work on that. I haven't. [00:44:08][2.6]
Akeelah: [00:44:08] Yeah, it makes it real. It gives you impetus. It makes you feel like you have deadlines. That's why you know you need to have business mentors because it does make everything very real. So tell people you trust and listen to the hard questions. Listen to the negative. You need to know before you start asking people what your appetite for hearing any negativity is because some people just are going to manifest their own fears onto you. So go into it strong, go into it confident, go into it positive. And if you financially, you can support yourself for however long you've projected it will take you to start making revenue. Go for it. Why not? There's a whole world out there and if after a year you decide I don't really like this, just go back. Nobody is going to look negatively at you or criticize you if you go back to a career that you were comfortable and happy with. It shows that you have gumption. It shows you have creativity, it shows that you have confidence in yourself and you have a sense of leadership. So I would say, don't worry about burning any of those bridges or losing your previous career path if you choose to go back to it. [00:45:13][64.7]
Keith: [00:45:14] That's great advice. I love that your mother and your father both were entrepreneurs. What were they doing? What was their business? [00:45:19][4.9]
Akeelah: [00:45:19] Well, interestingly, my dad was an accountant, and he never really enjoyed being an accountant. All of his life, he never enjoyed it. And so. That was actually good for me to know. I knew that he did it and it was his way of supporting our family, but I know he never enjoyed it. So when I found that I was in a position to do something that I would enjoy and feel is actually a real value and benefit to the world. I kind of felt like I had that strength because he stood behind me and said, Don't spend your life doing something that you really are not that passionate about. Go for it. I did that for my career. So important. [00:45:56][37.5]
Keith: [00:45:57] That's amazing. How about your mother? What was she doing? [00:45:59][1.6]
Akeelah: [00:45:59] My mom has done so many things. She walked with my father with his accountancy business. She decided to go retrain and be a PE teacher in school. She had her own private dance classes. Back then it was jazzercise and leggings and Jane Fonda. So I remember watching her come home study at night and then go out and take these workout classes with women. I used to go with her. So it was just always part of the blood. The lifeblood of our family was get out and do something hustle and change up your career. One thing is not forever. We invent yourself. We invigorate yourself and learn something new. [00:46:34][34.7]
Keith: [00:46:35] Oh, that's so cool. I wish I could see pictures of you and your mom in the Jazzercise outfits. Going and bouncing around and making it happen. Besides buying the Little Global Citizen subscription, what advice would you give young parents who are trying to instill that curiosity and empathy in their children? [00:46:51][16.0]
Akeelah: [00:46:52] I would say be very considerate in what you expose your kids to look at the books that they're reading. Make sure that the books you're reading are set in different countries, different cultures, different places. Be very considerate in where you take them to shop, take them to a little local store that is run by a female entrepreneur. Make sure that something really fun that my kids love to do. If we go to a Thai restaurant or a Vietnamese restaurant, we talk about the country and the culture before. We look it up. We look at the map, we look at dance. We learn a few words. I always encourage my kids to say hello and Thai or Vietnamese kids love that. And if the staff in that restaurant are from Thailand or Vietnam, they're so interested to find out that your kids are learning about their country and their culture. Think about the art that you take them to go and see, take them to festivals and think about how you talk about other people. That is probably the most important thing you can do lift people up when you're talking about them. Show respect, show curiosity, show interest in people's lives and lives and cultures. You don't have to know everything. If a kid asks you a question like, Oh, why is that man wearing a turban? Don't shush them. Just say, Hey, that's a great question. I don't know. Let's find out if it's something respectful. You can go and ask a person, people will be happy to talk to you. You want to go home and look up who wears turban. Sikh men turbans. Why do they wear turbans? Let's learn about it. Go in everything from a perspective of positive interest, positive affirmation. And that is how you will set that tone for the rest of your child's life. [00:48:39][107.6]
Keith: [00:48:40] I love that. So much. So how can people find out more about Little Global Citizens? Holiday season is coming up. We're hearing all these stories about supply chain madness, what should they do to learn more about your company. [00:48:51][10.8]
Akeelah: [00:48:52] Best thing you can do is go on the website. We have a Little-Global-Citizens.com. If you are interested in testing a box, you can buy just one box as a gift. We find that a lot of people, especially grandparents, are looking for interesting gifts that are beyond the regular toys that your kids have got stacks of in the playroom. So if you're looking for an interesting gift that will expose your child to a whole new mind frame, ask Grandma, Grandpa, or uncle or auntie to buy a subscription. Dive into an exploration of the world over the next year. [00:49:25][33.0]
Keith: [00:49:25] This might be a hard question, but what one? What country has been your favorite that you've produced so far? [00:49:29][3.6]
Akeelah: [00:49:30] Or I would say England. That was the easiest to produce. Maybe Kenya. With every box that we develop, we always talk to people from every culture. And with the Kenya box, I was very, very fortunate to be able to spend quite a bit of time talking to a Masai leader. So that was mind-blowing. My family's best friends are Kenyan. I've been to Kenya to spend, have him spend the time telling me what it's like to be a Kenyan child, a day in the life of a Kenyan child and give me that level of insight was phenomenal, and we translated that all in the box. We also worked on the Jamaica box with Devin Harris, who is the Jamaican bobsled original Olympian. The film Cool Runnings was made about, so he spent a lot of time with us. He recorded a really nice message for the kids when they were learning about Jamaica. We included his story book in the Jamaican box, and that was phenomenal. He's such a positive, upbeat guy, and he gave us so much time and really nice insight into his mind frame. [00:50:35][65.3]
Keith: [00:50:35] I love that so much. That's so cool. Yeah, my brother and sister in law live in Nairobi now, so I've been lucky enough to visit them a couple of times and have loved Kenya. Check out that box as well. Final question I usually ask everybody is a year's time from now. I'm not asking you to predict the future, but what would you ideally look back on and reflect going into your, it sounds like fifth Christmas. Some of the goals, some of the aspirations. What would you feel great about a year from now, [00:51:00][24.4]
Akeelah: [00:51:01] reaching more kids and having more opportunities to work with the education system? This is something very sorely lacking in the education system in America, not around the world, but most definitely in America. People do not talk about cultures or other people's countries anywhere near as much as they should, because it is imperative for your kid's success that they have a global outlook in the world that they're growing up in. So I would like to have more work under my belt with the education system. [00:51:33][32.0]
Keith: [00:51:34] Phenomenal answer. I hope you do as well for my kid's sake and for all the kids out here. Akeelah Kuraishi, founder and CEO of Little Global Citizens Thank you so much for being part of the show. It's great seeing you. [00:51:45][10.9]
Akeelah: [00:51:45] Thanks, Keith. It's been a pleasure to talk to you. [00:51:45][0.0]
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