Flossin’ Formulas for Success

By Fawn Aberson

According to the Census Bureau Statistics, and average of 1.7 million new business are launched each year. Of those, less than fifty percent will survive three years, and only 25% will be around in ten years. We uncovered insights from four company heads. Two of the stories are first time Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) running relatively young companies with less than ten years in operations. The other two are from seasoned veterans with more than 30 years longevity. Combined these leaders have seen most of what exists under the business world sun. If you have recently launched a business or are thinking of doing so you may gain valuable insight, save yourself some severe headaches, find comfort, or gain a much-needed inspiration boost from their shared experiences.

CEO: Shawn Prez

Company: Power Moves Incorporated Street Team and Event Management

Longevity: 4 years

The Beginning:  Ten years ago, I started as an intern on the street team for the new company named Bad Boy. I was making $30 dollars a week, when they felt like paying me. They were a young company just trying to keep their doors open and we were all there for the love. We believed in the movement and we were trying to make history. After a year and a half on the street team, I moved to the office and began running the national teams with Puff. Four years ago, with Puff’s blessing and still remaining the promotional arm for everything that Puff does, I began Power Moves Incorporated.   

The CEO:  When you work with a man like Puff for so many years, you start to understand different things about life and about people. He does not live for this lifetime. When he is doing things, he is writing his place in history and he is in touch with his legacy. He is writing a script that our kids and our kids’ kids will understand. He is looking beyond his own death. He is able to attract people because he is doing things for something greater than his own celebrity appeal. He does not think small. I always felt that in my soul that I hated to lose, he taught me to channel that and with every fiber of my being to decide to go all the way.

The Recruits:  We look for people who are pacemakers, trendsetters, and hot in their perspective markets. Maybe they wear a certain style of tennis shoe or use a certain slang word. Maybe people look to them for what is hot and coming out next. We look for people who have the public’s ear and who are respected before getting down with us. They are people who want to be marketers even if not working with us.

Credibility:Our uniqueness is in our ability to impact the streets. Whether that is Harlem, Los Angeles or Boise. We have thousands of techniques. What makes us different than traditional advertising is that we are really about getting on the ground and getting the consumer on a one to one, hand to hand, and peer to peer level. What is the most effective way you have ever been marketed to? Probably word of mouth. Someone tells you something. We are in the lifestyle places where people are going to be. It is more intimate and personal. I don’t think that we are the end all and be all. We are just one component, but we are crucial because everything starts from the ground up. Then we do the big stuff. This generation does not want to be dictated to. With this new generation of consumers, you have to market to them in a way that makes them feel like they are not being marketed to.

Growing Pains:When we started, everybody just started giving themselves all kinds of crazy titles. It was fine at the time, until we started expanding our client base. Then you start to realize that though you had great people, some were under qualified for their jobs. Your VP of marketing is not really a VP of marketing and that your VP of new business might know everybody in the music industry, but our business had gone beyond music. We needed real VPs with certain relationships. It was hard to come back, especially with people you started with, and have that talk like, “listen there is definitely a place for you in this company, it just can’t be with that title because with that title comes real responsibility. I cannot have clients call in and it takes more than a day or two to get back to them. I had to start having conversations that I did not want to have. Some got mad, accused me of going “Hollywood” and left the company, some I made the very difficult decision to let go, and others readjusted themselves into the system.

Delegation- Letting go so you can Grow:I think that everybody is in one-way or shape a control freak. I did not come into this knowing how to run a business. If your aspirations are much bigger than you are and you are really trying to take your business somewhere else then it is almost like being a parent, when you have your first child you are raising your kid the way you see fit.
Our business is our baby, this is our vision. I have had the hardest time delegating because coming up I did everything myself but then your baby grows and gets bigger than you. You cannot handle five, six, seven clients consecutively running a one man show so you have to learn how to delegate. More than that you have to learn how to pick your people so that you are comfortable putting the responsibility in someone else’s hand. I learned to delegate because if I did not, my company would not have grown. I have also learned that I am only as good as the team that I have with me. You have to find the most qualified people so that it can run independent from you. I am getting to the point where my name is attracting business but once we are in the doors, we still have to bring the goods. I cannot do that if my cousin “Ray-Ray” has the account. I try to pick my people wisely but as soon as I realize that they are not working, I need to let them know. I do not like to fire people and I do not like to take people’s income or dreams away from them, but at the end of the day, I have to think about this business. If you have qualified people around you then delegating becomes easy.

Black business perception in White Corporate America: They (White corporate America) are not always that familiar with the urban (Black) demographic way of thinking and so they have turned to us (Black promoters) for insight. What has happened is that some have talked a good game but could not deliver the goods. The results have been some burned bridges. In my heart of hearts, I always try to deliver exactly what I say we can deliver. If you are going to have a real company that grows and you see it continuing long after you decide to step down, then the company has a life of its own. You have to set the ideas from the beginning and do quality work from the beginning. You also have to know your limitations. All money is not good money. If my company has too much on our plate and we cannot deliver, we will pass on a project because we will not be effective. You have to be prepared to turn down work for the greater good.
I am extremely hands-on. Anything coming in or going out that has my name on it, I have to know. When you think of street teams, you think of people who are not the most business like, but we are a real company. Even though I have to stay authentic and credible and relate to the streets, I am also going into boardrooms with huge corporations. You may see me in Nike boots and Sean John jeans one moment, but I have to throw my suit on and get my white man on for real the next. If people are going to entrust you and hand you a big check than they want to know that the job is going to get done. You have to deliver reports when they are supposed to be delivered and you have to be able to quantify exactly how many and what kind of people you reached for them.

Turning a Negative Brand into a Positive One:From a record label standpoint, you have to get better acts that are relevant and connect with the consumer. Publicity or spin control is all in the way you get their story out there. However, the product has to be good. Human nature is that people want to roll with the winners. Look at Vanessa Williams she won the crown and they tried to defame her but how did she fight back? By making hit records. You can live pass your past, but you have to have the goods, you cannot market what is not there.

Most memorable marketing campaign-
The Vote of Die campaign: I remember when it was conceived that everyone told us we were crazy and that it would not work. We would never get the 18-25-year old to vote on a large scale. Everything we did was alternative. We got young icons to wear these shirts vote or die, and it woke up a generation. It was one of the most successful campaigns ever for that age group. 

Daily Practice:I thank God every single day at some point. I never want to be a fraud to God, for instance, when things are going bad and that is when I am calling His name. I remember to thank him during the good times and try to recognize the small victories.

Lavetta Willas CEO DADA footwear

Longevity: 8 years
Gross Sales:

The Beginning:Grew up with sports, played basketball at the University of Notre Dame. My parents were teachers both with MBA’s. They fostered an environment where education was fun. They taught me to have a good work ethic: be responsible. Getting into the shoe business was the path that I was destined for. In my third year of law school, I was running my own small apparel business. I would buy hats plain from the garment district and get an embroiderer to do the stitching and then sell hats at Loyola Law School bookstore because up until then there weren’t any items like that. A mutual friend, Duane Lewis and Dennis Chang were working on a line called DADA, which was sport apparel. Lance Sampson and I became a split off the LLC doing DADA footwear. With my engineering and sports background, I felt the shoe industry was a great fit. My mom was like ‘Why don’t you get a real job?’ Because I had a law degree and I had an engineering degree. I replied, ‘believe me mom every day I use both of them.’ I was doing my own corporate papers my own trademark stuff. It was the engineering degree that kicked in and helped me with the shoe design.

Finding the Niche:I think our niche is to be an extension to bigger companies. Sometimes as a smaller company, you can infuse some excitement into larger corporations who have gotten slow and disconnected from their consumer. You are seeing a trend where larger companies are looking for smaller companies who have expertise in a certain area and then outsource to those smaller companies.

A Woman in Charge:My business is primarily men. Initially I looked at is an advantage. I was an athlete so I could talk about the football game. Coming here everybody was in my space and saying you know you got the company to where it is right now, but this is a man’s business you should really hand it off to some guys. To be honest I started to second-guess myself, thinking, “Wow, maybe they are right, I have never run a shoe business before.” Then I thought a lot of people who start a business did not have that experience before they started. I am smart enough to go out and do the research. It took about three months of wrestling with my confidence and then I got over it. Now I feel being a female allows me to bring a fresh and different perspective.

How to pick a good employee:You can look at a resume all day, because it can tell you if they are educationally prepared and what experience they have. However, at the end of the day it is really hard to tell what kind of work ethic that person has. An important observation I have made when looking to employ people, is that if you don’t have work ethic, you can’t learn it as an adult. If you didn’t get it when you were young, you can’t teach a 20 or 25-year-old. A good indicator that I use is whether that person was involved in any kind of athletics. I feel that if you have played on team sports then you had to learn how to be a team player. To me, sports teach you things you cannot learn in school, such as work ethic needed to push your body and mind to the limit. Other than that, it is difficult to know until you can see someone in action. I recommend putting people on a probationary period because the real test is when they get on the job.

Tough Days:I learned that you have to have a great product, but people make a business. When you are a CEO it is really tough to separate business from personal. When you are a small company, you become family with the people that work for you. And even if you weren’t friends when they started, when they join the company you develop a relationship. It is really hard to detach yourself from that and their wife or husband, and their kids and your feeling responsible for all of them. It becomes a family tree and you’re at the top responsible for all these people. Nevertheless, if these people are not doing their jobs, as much as you love them you have to separate. This is the one lone lesson that I got a grip on this past year. At the end of day, you can have love for people but as a businessperson, you have to make the right business decision. If that means letting them go, then that is what you need to do. It may not be right for your friendship but if you really do have a friendship then your friendship will go on. You cannot confuse the two, you have to be clear on what your goal is and make sure that everybody on the team is moving you towards that goal.

Delegating:It was a tough one for me, as a CEO you learn so many things about your personality. And either you’re going to deal with and evolve to be a better person or you’re not. I can do things very quickly and efficiently. Sometimes I feel like I can do better doing something myself rather than delegating the job. This is such a bad attitude to have because you have to empower your employees. So, I give project A to employee X and I may have one expectation of how it should be done, but they do it another. I have learned that as long as they get to the same goal in a timely manner, I have to be acceptant of that. That took me a while to get to that point. People used to tell me that my expectations of people are too high, and nobody is like me. You have to remember that if you want your business to grow you have to release the control issues and empower your employees.

The Key to Keeping Composure:Situations can happen and there are going to be some things that go down. If we would have had a reality show this past year, it would have been number one because we had so much stuff that happened. I do yoga and meditation, which is key to releasing tension and it has helped me to master a neutrality. You have to deal with the good and the bad things in a neutral zone so as not get caught up in the things that you can’t control.

Key to sustaining Power:
It takes a different energy to start a business than the one that it takes to sustain and grow it. When you first start a business, it is nothing, but passion and you are throwing everything into it and things somewhat happen naturally without any master plan. Then you get to a point and say, “Okay, I am here, and I have an established business. Now what is my marketing plan? What is my ten-year plan? Where do I really want to be and what do I want to do with this company?” It becomes a different energy. It becomes a different planning. You are looking at the issues of control and delegation and all of those issues that you know you need to have but don’t yet have, but you see it is what you need to take your business to the next level. I began researching other large companies. Alternatively, looking at things like would I ever want to take the company public? Would I be happy with a five hundred-million-dollar company verses a three-million-dollar company? Do I care if I don’t know all of my employees? If you are a billion-dollar company, then what kind of stores do I need to get my product in? Do I really want my product in those types of stores? You have to look at what do you really want to be when you grow up. The sooner you get the “Master Plan” the better off your company will be.

What Motivates:The love for what I do. I see people every day do things that they do not like to do. They have no passion for what they do and of course, that reflects in their work. When I see people at my own company that are trying to shift and do something else, I encourage them to go an explore that because if it is going to make them happy they are going to do a much better job at it. If you have your own company, you are going to have to work 24/7, so you had better love what you do.

Formula for Success:First, having a passion for what you do because that leaves you open to receiving ideas and accomplishing your goals.
Second, you have to be as prepared as you can be whether through education, experience or bringing in consultants.
Third, is that you cannot give up. The people who have the staying power, and sometimes that means financial, which may be tough, but also the mental staying power to know that there are going to be many blocks. There are so many days where people have told me, ‘you know what Lavetta, I do not think you are going to be able to do this’. You have to know you can do it and have the staying power mentally to push forward. It has to come from real deep, as they say in the meditation world fourth chakra. You have to manifest your ideas. You have to know it in your soul in order to keep going.
I have sat in lobbies for days and days and no one would talk to me. They used to have a chair in the Footlocker building called the Lavetta chair because I was there every morning. For days and weeks until somebody saw me. Now we are in Foot Lockers all over America. Persistence is the key. Then you have to pull all of these components together and motivate others and take your company to the next level.

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This article was originally published in Flossin Magazine. This article is edited by Edna Waters. This article is optimized for web by Steven Christian (Artist | Author | Podcaster).