Dare to Think Purple

Danielle Kristine Toussaint

• Publisher: New Degree Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781636760742
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Commerce
• Subtopic: Les femmes dans le monde des affaires

One in five businesses don't make it past two years. Another 45 percent don't survive to five years. The odds are stacked against women and founders of color who set out to create viable companies and create social impact.

Addressing these issues, Dare to Think Purple is the ultimate survival guide for women and new majority founders on a mission to make money and make a difference. It provides an honest look at what it takes to survive the first five years and beyond in social entrepreneurship.

Featuring vivid and candid still-in-progress success stories of women leading social ventures, you will be inspired to dream and dare. Whether you are just starting out, at a crossroads, celebrating a victory, or mourning a setback, Dare to Think Purple, will give you the boost you need to persevere.

Chapter 1:

Be Clear

“Lack of clarity often feels stressful and frustrating, like wandering in a dense fog or in a dark room. We follow those who have a clear vision, plan, or process, a metaphorical flashlight that gives us the confidence to move forward.”

—Heather C. Ingram

Being clear, simply put, is knowing who you are, what your guiding values are, and where you’re going. It’s the opposite of being lost, confused, or stuck. Clarity is refreshing in a sea of uncertainty. It allows us to stay the course and remain on track even when the going gets rough. Without it, we would never get to our destination. Or even worse, we might not recognize the destination if we did arrive there. A clear vision helps us conserve our most precious resources: time and energy. Some may argue it is far worse to waste money in a failed venture, but you can always make more money. We can never get back time or energy once spent. As you let that sink in, let’s now consider how to achieve this clarity that so often eludes us. It starts with asking the right questions.

Who Are You?

Sometimes I ask my clients, “Who were you before the world told you to be someone else?” Invariably, what surfaces are the moments in their lives of gentle or not-so-gentle redirection by well-meaning people toward what they thought was the more acceptable path. It’s the little girl who says she wants to be an artist when she grows up, hearing artists don’t make any money and maybe she should become an art teacher or architect. She knew who she was before hearing she was wrong. After a lifetime of redirection, it’s not surprising many of us end up far off course. But it’s deeper than that, as this is something we do to ourselves as adult women too. From my experience working with dozens of women across various industries, something happens to us that talks us out of being ourselves.

Too often, I’ve observed women leaders pause for what often feels like an uncomfortably long time in our sessions when I ask them questions like “Who are you?” or “What makes you uniquely qualified to lead?’” or “Why should people work with you?” Most of us don’t ask ourselves questions like this often, but these are exactly the questions in the minds of our potential clients, partners, and funders. If we want to attract the right people to help us advance, we must inspire them to come along with us. The answers come from within us. When we start to pay attention, we often find we have had them all along. Take Julia, for example.

I believe it should be a given, and not a luxury, to make a living doing what you love. As an artist, as a founder, as a refugee, as a mother, I simply cannot rest until my story is no longer the exception.”

—Julia Zeltser

Sometimes the way we get clear on who we are is by discovering who we are not. Julia Zeltser is cofounder of Hyperakt, a Brooklyn-based creative agency specializing in design for social change. Going down the wrong professional path led her to discover her true calling as a social entrepreneur. Her story exemplifies how finding clarity within oneself can be a catalyst for success.

Parents often make the ultimate sacrifices for their children, which was certainly the case for Julia. When she was fifteen, her parents, both in their forties, left behind their careers and everything they knew and immigrated with their two children to the United States from the Soviet Union. Now, as a mom of three looking back on that time, she sees it all a bit differently.

The magnitude of what that transition meant for my parents was lost on me. From my current vantage point, though, as a mother of three now past the age my parents were when they made that decision, their act of selflessness and courage looms larger-than-life, as do my feelings of gratitude and indebtedness to them.

Julia’s family was able to relocate because of the generous support of a network of nonprofit organizations, including a refugee agency that helped Jewish families from the former Soviet Union. Her first few years in the country consisted of culture and language immersion, and her focus was on her future. From an early age, she felt drawn to the arts, but when the time came for college decisions, her parents had some apprehensions about whether becoming an artist would be lucrative enough.

They wondered if I could make a living, which was a reasonable concern. My parents had to take low-paying jobs to provide for us, and earning a living was a daily challenge. To her credit, my mother didn’t project her fears onto me. As an artist who was never able to pursue her dreams, she reasoned the entire reason to move her children across the globe was so we could follow our dreams, and she refused to crush those dreams now that we were here. So she encouraged me to study what I loved. That encouragement led me to attend the Parsons School of Design. It was the first environment I had ever been in where being different only made me more like the others around me, and it was liberating.

The freedom Julia discovered in college was fleeting when she reentered the real world. She struggled to conform to the norms of a traditional work environment. Within a few years of trying to hack it in the corporate world, she teamed up with a friend from college named Deroy Peraza, and together they started the firm called Hyperakt. I met Julia and Deroy over a decade into their journey as cofounders, and from an outsider’s perspective, it would seem the firm had always been clear on its mission to change the world through design. Julia tells it differently.

Something was still missing. Our most joyful collaborations were with nonprofit organizations and mission-driven companies. Still, we relied on business from lots of other clients—some of whose values were different from our own. Around our five-year mark, this tension became overwhelming, and we decided to do something about it. Over the next five years, we made an intentional decision to move in a different direction.

Hyperakt turns twenty in September 2021. Julia says it still feels young and fresh because they were reborn the moment she and Deroy clarified their vision for impact. Julia describes working with organizations like those that helped and supported her in transitioning to America as both professionally energizing and personally edifying. More than that, aligning the firm with her core values took them to new and unexpected heights.

Making this shift wasn’t easy. Julia and Deroy worried about whether or not it would be financially viable or sustainable to work exclusively with nonprofit and impact organizations. Were they naive to think they could be so choosey? What became clear, though, was there really wasn’t any other viable choice. Julia knew who she was and whose daughter she was. Her own parents’ fearless pursuit of opportunity, their willingness to wade into the unknown with a belief something great was on the other side, was a powerful motivator in the determination to steer her ship toward alignment with her core values. She hasn’t looked back. Not only that, but she also looks forward to a future for her own children where they won’t even have to make such a choice.

My husband and I often discuss our hopes and our dreams for our children, the way I imagine my parents must have discussed my brother and me. We don’t worry about whether or not they’ll have the opportunities to pursue their passions. That feels like a given, but we know it’s actually a privilege. I believe it should be a given, and not a luxury, to make a living doing what you love.

For Julia, design is a form of advocacy. By helping organizations tell their stories through stunning visuals and provocative digital experiences, she helps them grow their revenue, connect with supporters, and ultimately amplify their causes. All of this is possible because she pursued her dreams and stayed true to her passions. It’s possible for you too. To be values-driven, though, you have to know what your values are.

What Are Your Guiding Values?

“I feel very lucky I get to work with two of my best friends. We work crazy hours some days, but it always feels like play. This sense of friendship even extends to our clientele, as clients become co-creators, and part of what we like to call our ‘team of angels,’ who help support large events and productions.”

—Erica Taylor-Haskins

When we are out of alignment with our values, we feel it. When we are clear on what guides us, we show up as our full selves—authentic and powerful. We are led by an internal compass, which means we make decisions with greater ease. We are grounded, and other people will sense this about us. Mostly, though, being clear on the values guiding us all along helps us when challenges arise because it helps us find our way and stay the course.

My first Amtrak ride was from Union Station in New Haven, Connecticut, to Penn Station in New York City to attend the annual leadership conference hosted by the Jackie Robinson Foundation. On a Friday afternoon, I met my friends Mike and Lauren, who were also scholars, at the front gate of what is known to Yale undergrads as “Old Campus.” We hailed a cab and headed off together for what would become one of our most valued annual traditions.

Established in 1972 by visionary philanthropist Rachel Robinson, in memory and honor of her legendary husband Jackie Robinson, the foundation provided substantial scholarships over four years and invested heavily in personal and professional development. Everything about being a scholar felt special, from the selection process to the welcome receptions. Many of us had stiff competition in our high schools and often felt like nothing we did was enough because there was always someone somewhere else outdoing us. We carried that pressure with us onto campuses where it was easy to feel unimpressive in a sea of excellence. I know I wasn’t alone worrying about how I would fare in much larger institutions where not many people looked like me.

Growing up, I wasn’t aware of class differences. I felt spoiled in love, and my parents worked really hard to give my brother and me what we needed and most of the things we wanted. My mom and dad were both known for being generous, and from a young age, I knew it was important to share with people who had less. College was a rude awakening. It didn’t take long to figure out what generational wealth was and to understand my family didn’t have it. I felt this difference most acutely when I was in new spaces, like walking through the grand halls of the Waldorf Astoria dressed in a formal gown, headed to the annual Jackie Robinson Foundation banquet as a freshman scholar. By senior year, something that had initially seemed so intimidating now felt routine. Gone were the questions of whether I belonged or any hint of insecurity. I had gotten comfortable, and actually quite good, at networking with anyone in any room.

Looking back, it was those early professional development experiences that prepared me to successfully navigate my career and later entrepreneurship, where so much opportunity is still locked away in closed spaces guarded by gatekeepers. My heart bursts with admiration and appreciation when I think of Rachel Robinson and her daughter Sharon Robinson. Scholars and alumni felt their loving presence. Through the community they nurtured, I learned I was not alone, and I gained a forever family, many of whom I call on to this day. Erica Taylor-Haskins and I met as freshwomen before her name had a hyphen at what was our first of many networking weekends, and we’ve tried not to miss them since. Her attendance record is better than mine. Watching her build a company over the past decade has been instructive for me in the power of being values-led.

For Erica, it all started over drinks. She and her two friends, Liz and Adette, met in college when they sang together in GW Vibes, a student-led acapella group at their alma mater, George Washington University. Their friendship had always been fun and easy. A few years out of college, all three women lived in New York City and led very busy adult lives with real jobs, committed relationships, and rent to worry about making. At some point, they started getting together routinely for happy hour after work. On these occasions, they did what girlfriends do over drinks: catch up and commiserate.

During one of their usual meetups in 2010, they chatted about their careers and discovered they were all longing to get back the creative spark they had shared during college. Liz was recently married, and the experience of planning her wedding had started her dreaming about the possibility of curating unique, beautiful events for a living. By the end of that conversation, their experience design company, TINSEL, was born.

Over a decade later, Erica credits their bond of friendship as the glue that has kept them together and sustained their thriving business. They fiercely protect each other and their team’s psychological freedom, nurturing a community of support where dreaming was always possible. They endeavor to closely curate their community of partners with people who understand the power of friendship. Their team is a wildly diverse tapestry of humans from all walks of life, and diversity and inclusion have always been the cornerstones of their hiring and team-building approach. They didn’t explicitly discuss being a social justice brand, though they were disrupters from the start. The founding team looked radically different from most in their industry. An all-woman trio who identifies as Black, White, and Latinx have, by their very decision to work together and share power, been a challenge to the status quo.

Everything about how they run the company underscores their commitment to standing up for what they believe and speaking up, from using their...