Shades & Layers
Shades and Layers is a podcast focused on black women entrepreneurs from across the globe. It is a platform for exploring issues and challenges around business ownership, representation and holistic discussions about the meaning of sustainability in an increasingly complex global context. Conversations are wide- ranging and serve not only as a Masterclass in Entrepreneurship but also provide wisdom and tools for Successful Living. It is a space for meaningful conversation, a place for black and other women of color to be fully human and openly share their quirks and vulnerabilities.
Guests include prominent figurers in the beauty, fashion and wellness industries both in the Northern Hemisphere and the Global South.
Dr. Theo Mothoa-Frendo of USO Skincare discusses her journey from being product junkie to creating an African science-based skincare range. Taryn Gill of The Perfect Hair is a brand development whizz who discusses supply chain and distribution of her haircare brands. Katonya Breux discusses melanin and sunscreen and how she addresses the needs of a range of skin tones with her Unsun Cosmetics products.
We discuss inclusion in the wellness industry with Helen Rose Skincare and Yoga and Nectarines Founder , Day Bibb. Abiola Akani emphasizes non-performance in yoga with her IYA Wellness brand and Anesu Mbizho shares her journey to yoga and the ecosystem she's created through her business The Nest Space.
Fashion is all about handmade, custom made and circular production with featured guests like fashion designer Maria McCloy of Maria McCloy Accessories; Founder and textile/homeware designer Nkuli Mlangeni Berg of The Ninevites as well as Candice Lawrence, founder of the lighting design company Modern Gesture. These are just a few the conversations on the podcast over the past three years.
Shades & Layers
Celebrating 5 Years of Entrepreneurial Wisdom
We celebrate five years of Shades and Layers by reflecting on the top entrepreneurial lessons from dozens of women who have shared their journeys on the podcast. This special birthday episode distills key insights that transcend industry, geography, and experience level to help entrepreneurs at any stage of their journey.
• Embrace change - the pandemic forced entrepreneurs to adapt, from converting to remote work to pivoting business models
• Don't reinvent the wheel - learn from others' experiences and adapt their playbooks to your context
• Experience is the best teacher - no amount of planning substitutes for hands-on work in your business
• Don't walk alone - find community through co-working spaces, industry events, and online networks
• Take care of the back end - ensure financial and legal foundations are solid, using available tools and support
Thank you for listening! If you found this episode useful, please share it with your friends. If you have a moment, please give us a five-star rating and review wherever you're listening, so that others can find the podcast.
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Wow, how time flies. Can you believe? It's been five years of Shades and Layers. Happy birthday, shades and Layers. For this milestone, it's fitting to celebrate with something different. Not only is this a celebration, but it's a moment to reflect on the big lessons that have come from the dozens of women who have featured on the show. I hope you'll find it helpful for wherever you are in your entrepreneurial journey.
Speaker 1:I'm Gudlonos Kosanarici, and this is Shades and Layers, the podcast where black and other women of color entrepreneurs thrive. In case you're new around here, a quick rundown of what Shades and Layers is and why it exists. This platform was created to recognize and celebrate the underrepresented and underestimated women entrepreneurs that I kept meeting everywhere but didn't seem to exist in mainstream media. These amazing women have voiced similar challenges, regardless of where in the world they live, which industry they work in and how far into their entrepreneurial journey they are, from lack of access to funding to sexism, ageism and how to hire the right people. Their joys and successes have also resonated across the seas, from being able to change careers, being validated with customer support for following your passion and embracing a leadership position in your community by providing employment and being an inspiration for young women and girls. I'm excited to share some of the top lessons with you in this episode. I'm also excited to do this episode because it's my very first solo episode, so in the next few minutes I'll be breaking down the top five lessons from the last five years spent with my guests. There are obviously many, many, many entrepreneurial lessons, but I'm excited to share these five that keep coming up with every single interview. So let's begin Lesson one embrace.
Speaker 1:Change Shades and Layers launched in the middle of the pandemic and there was a lot of recalibration happening both for myself and my guests. So for me, I had just found out that our family would be relocating to the United States. We were living in Denmark at the time, so I had to embrace using Zoom for interviews. I had to convert a little cupboard into a home studio and had to broaden the scope of the guests who would appear. Many of my guests were working from home or operating under some form of restrictions because of COVID lockdowns. Some had to close their shops and pivot to online sales. Some had to take better control of their supply chain because of the impact the pandemic had on global trade. Remember how goods were stuck in ports for weeks on end. Yeah, that affected a lot of people who make physical products. Well, whatever choices entrepreneurs made during those crazy months, they had to all learn to do things differently. If you were selling in person before COVID today, you probably have an extra sales channel.
Speaker 1:So life does demand that we adjust ourselves to reality on a constant basis and we must evolve as people anyway. But also sometimes things don't work out as planned. If you're open to change, however, whatever direction your experiences push or guide you in, it will count as serendipity someday. So initially I was disappointed that I wouldn't be able to interview guests in person, but eventually came to appreciate doing remote interviews for the podcast, which means that this podcast can be recorded from anywhere in the world.
Speaker 1:Lesson two there is no need to reinvent the wheel. This short and sweet lesson is one of the things that compelled me to start Shades and Layers. You can also learn a lot from other people's stories. As children, we copy our parents and peers to acquire invaluable survival skills and skills to thrive in life. So in the adult playground, not only can we choose to borrow someone else's playbook, we can also ask ourselves what skills did they need to get where they are what can I improve in their playbook? What should I do differently in my context? So the knowledge and information are always there, of course, but when the facts shape the story of someone we admire, that's when we understand it deep in our bones.
Speaker 1:Lesson three experience is your best teacher. As a follow-on to the stories that can teach us, you also must get your hands dirty. There's no better teacher than experience. In fact, you can make all the business plans, have the right mentors and associates, make financial forecasts, read all the books, but there's no greater teacher than experience. So what does that mean and what does it look like? Well, know your business inside out first of all, and figure out what you can do and can't do, and don't outsource before that, even in partnership, you need to figure out who's good at what and where, and how to fill the gaps, your mentors, conference workshops, business books and self-help books. They'll only take you so far. What you do hands-on is what will take you to the next level.
Speaker 1:Lesson four don't walk alone. Related to lesson number three is that you don't have to do entrepreneurship solo. After all, there's no such thing as a self-made success story. You need people. Shout out to Casey Ariel, by the way, casey, ariel Tobias now for running her Blaze Group coworking sessions way back when I was still developing this podcast. These were free to join and I met some amazing women through this network. So, find a community, and that doesn't mean anything big or grand, it doesn't even have to be in real life. So, yes, find a community. Lean on your friends or family, blood or chosen family and ask for advice from your mentors and other colleagues in the industry chosen. Apart from online co-working conferences and industry events I've found personally very helpful. For example, I've met some truly wonderful people at Creative Mornings, and there are many, many Creative Morning chapters around the world. The PRX Podcast Garage and various podcasting events have also been very helpful.
Speaker 1:Lesson five make sure the back end is taken care of. This is probably the most fundamental lesson. If you're a first time business owner or a side hustler, you find out pretty quickly that there are lots of balls in the air and eventually, something is bound to fall through the cracks because you don't know what you don't know. However, the one thing you do not want to fall through the cracks is the backbone of your business, and that is finance and legal. Trust me, I've been there, and there's nothing worse than missing anything related to finance, be it a deadline or an amount. And so nowadays, there are at least some tools, some software options to help you update transactions, keep track of your finances. There are also platforms to help you keep abreast of all the legal requirements and considerations of running a company in your industry, in your country. So use the tools at your disposal and customer support if you're struggling with any aspects. Your amazing website and online presence are nice, but they will cease to exist if the back end is not in order. And those are the five lessons.
Speaker 1:Before we wrap it up, let me give you a breakdown of my personal experience with all of this. So the conclusion that I have come to personally is that running a business is like being in a lab you test out different things until you find the one that works, and then you keep building from there. So once upon a time, I had two business partners. This was between 1995 and 2009. Hey, maria McLeod, what's up? Zeno? And we built this multimedia company called Black Reach Productions.
Speaker 1:We started out wanting to create a music and culture magazine. When that didn't work, we put it on the internet. When we were invited as cultural consultants in developing Channel O, which is Africa's equivalent of MTV. We were ready because we were already working with music and culture when we were invited to create our own television show. We were ready for that, having worked with Channel O, and by the time Tino went scouting for talent for Outrageous Records our very own hip hop record label we were ready and in a position to create something within that space.
Speaker 1:All of this to say that what you do today is practice for the future. So stay ready and it will be easier to embrace change and take the opportunities when they come. And that concludes this solo slash birthday episode. Thank you for listening. If you found this episode useful, please share it with your friends. If you have a moment, please give us a five-star rating and review wherever you're listening, so that others can find the podcast. Thank you for your support over the past five years. I'm Kutlanos, kosana Ritchie, and until next time, please do take good care.
