Dismantling Survival Narratives with Minda Harts

Today’s guest believes strongly that we can't just survive anymore, we've got to thrive. In this episode, we are joined by Minda Harts, blogger, best-selling author, and the 2020 Linkedin Top Voice For Equity In The Workplace. Minda recently published her third book You Are More Than Magic: The Black and Brown Girls Guide to Finding Your Voice and explains what it means to ‘take one’s space’. She explains why she feels that Black and Brown girls especially need to hear this message, why she felt she needed to shift her focus from adults to teens, and how her experiences as a teen made her want to address this topic. Tuning in you’ll learn about Minda’s writing process, why she chose to conduct roundtables in preparation for this book, how she learned the writing craft, and how she came to see herself as an artist. To hear how Minda overcame self-doubt when told that there was no audience for her book, her top go-to hacks for finding fresh inspiration, and many profound insights from this inspirational person, tune in today!

Key Points From This Episode:

•    Why Minda Harts decided to write a book for young people and how this is different from writing for adults

•    What it means to ‘take one’s space' and why Black and Brown girls need to have that exhortation in particular.

•    How Minda’s own experience as a teen made her want to focus on this topic.

•    What inspired Minda to conduct roundtables in preparation for writing this book.

•    How Minda learned the writing craft and came to see herself as an artist.

•    Why she aimed for a conversational style with her writing.

•    The specific moment when Minda realized that she was an artist.

•    What it was like to be told that there was no audience for her book and why she persevered anyway.

•    How she used a blog to find her voice as a writer and how she knew it was resonating with people.

•    Thoughts on the value of posting consistently and how to come up with ideas.

•    How her habits have changed and how she finds fresh inspiration and new material.

•    Thoughts on self-doubt, how Minda overcame it, and why she sticks to her recipe.

•    How she is overcoming the learning curve to adapt her material for different formats and finding ways to stay relevant.

•    Minda’s recent epiphany on the difference between survival tools and tools to thrive.

•    Minda’s go-to hacks, tips, or tricks for fresh inspiration.

Tweetables:

“I think sometimes in the Black and Brown communities, we hear phrases like ‘Be seen and not heard’ and some of those narratives. So I wanted to dismantle some of those survival narratives and give them new narratives that they can thrive on.” — @MindaHarts [0:04:17]

“I realized that I was an artist because I was inspiring other people by my work. Whenever we're able to inspire creativity or have people think differently or modify how they’ve once seen a certain perspective, that’s art, that's inspiration.” — @MindaHarts [0:12:08]

“I realized that my words were powerful and I realized that my voice was tied to somebody else's freedom. That's why I continue to do the artistry that I do.” — @MindaHarts [0:14:15]

“Right after George Floyd, I started thinking we can't just survive anymore, we've got to thrive. And what are those tools that we need to do that? As I think about my work and my art now, it's all about the ‘thrive’, it's all about the freedom. No longer feeling confined by anything.” — @MindaHarts [0:32:51]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

Minda Harts

You Are More Than Magic: The Black and Brown Girls Guide to Finding Your Voice

The Memo: What Women of Color Need to Know to Secure a Seat at the Table

Right Within: How to Heal from Racial Trauma in the Workplace 

Jeremy Utley

Marcus Hollinger

EPISODE 18 TRANSCRIPT

“MINDA: I understand that there are certain ways I need to get to other audiences, right? There are certain things that I'm going to have to do differently. I will say this, because I am always trying different spaces, and all of this is very new, even for me, because it hasn't even been that long. It's been less than four years. I wrote three books in almost three years. So a lot has happened in my life very quickly. I'm still trying to figure all this out. But what I will say is, I always let my curiosity be larger than my fear.”

[00:00:33] JU: Welcome to The Paint & Pipette Podcast. My name is Jeremy Utley, and it’s my job to illuminate the tactics of world-class performers across domains. As a day job, I teach at the Stanford d.school, helping students learn what it takes to come up with ideas. But I’ve realized I need to stay in the classroom learning myself and this podcast is my classroom.

[00:00:56] MARCUS: Hey! I’m Marcus Hollinger. I lead marketing and creative at Reach Records, an Atlanta-based Independent Record Label. I’m also co-founder for Portrait Coffee, where we are seeking to reimagine the picture that comes to mind for folks in specialty coffee. I’m so excited to pull up my desk alongside my good friend and fellow learner, Jeremy, and I think y’all are going to love what we have for you this season.

[00:01:27] JU: We've got some amazing stories on deck, and we can't wait to dove in and learn alongside you.

[00:01:32] MARCUS: Grab and pipette and your paintbrush and let's make something beautiful together.

[INTERVIEW]

[00:01:41] JU: All right, Minda Harts, welcome to the Paint & Pipette Podcast. It is so glad to have you here.

[00:01:48] MINDA: Happy to be here. Thank you all for inviting me.

[00:01:50] JU: Did I say, it is so glad? I am so glad.

[00:01:51] MARCUS: It is. Yeah. We are so glad, so glad to interview you.

[00:01:57] JU: Yeah, definitely. We want to hear about your latest book. We know you just wrote a third book, and you happen to mention something, right, before you hit record that I wanted to dig into, which is it's for young people. I was curious to know, why did you decide to write a book for young folks? How is it different than, how has it been different than writing a book for adults?

[00:02:19] MINDA: Thank you for asking. My latest book is called, You Are More Than Magic: The Black and Brown Girls Guide to Finding Your Voice and previously, I had been working on books, The Memo and Right Within, for women of color, anybody who feels they're on the margins in the workplace. So I'm talking a lot about workplace issues and the writings that I do, but when I thought back to my 15 year old self, when I thought back to the 14 year old me, what did I need to hear? I just needed to get back in my DeLorean and go back to the future and provide our young girls the tools they need to show up and take up space now, that they don't have to wait till they're 18 or 21 to show up and speak their truth.

I wanted them to have the tools they needed right now. So this book is really special, because I know how important our youth are. It's not enough to say they're important or like Whitney said, “Children are the future,” if we don't give them the tools to be their best self. So I'm excited about this book being out in the world.

[00:03:14] JU: That's amazing. You mentioned a phrase in particular that I wanted to key on. You said, “Take their space.” Tell us more about, what does it mean to take one space and why do especially Black and Brown girls need to have that exhortation in particular?

[00:03:29] MINDA: Absolutely. One of the things, Jeremy, that I did when I wrote, You Are More Than Magic. I didn't write it from this place of, “When I was your age. Let me tell you all the things.” I actually did roundtables across the country with Black and Brown girls and ask them what their pain points are. What do they want to get across? Then I wrote from that perspective. So one of the things, one of the central things that kept coming up is that they just didn't feel seen or when they did speak up, they felt dismissed in those sorts of things. I know how that feels as an adult Black woman in the workplace, in America, in and outside of my home. It really broke my heart that they were feeling this way even at 13 and 15.

I wanted to encourage them to you can take up space, however much space you need, but you have to decide how much you want. Don't let anybody box you in, right? I think sometimes in the Black and Brown communities, we hear phrases like “be seen and not heard” and some of those narratives. So I went to dismantle some of those survival narratives and give them narratives, new narratives that they can thrive on.

[00:04:30] MARCUS: I'm super thankful to even get exposed to this work that you're doing. Jeremy and I are surprised, both men. When you talk about those experiences of not being seen, I'm wondering, and probably be good for our listeners too, was to bring this to life or to bring some specificity to it. Was there a particular story that resonated with you based that as you narrow down on this theme, you said, “Hey, you know what? This is it. I've got to focus on this topic.”

[00:05:03] MINDA: Yeah. Well, one of the, it was my own story, too and there's. I saw myself in them, right? Even though I was much older than them. When I was younger, my parents moved from Southern California to a rural town in Illinois. I moved from a very diverse school and neighborhood to being the only the only Black girl in my class, sometimes the only student of color in my entire school. So that's very isolating when you're no longer feeling like you're seen or you have to be what your white friends want you to be and you're still trying to grapple who you want to be as a teenager, and it was very hard.

One of the things that I kept, at that time, I couldn't articulate the feeling of isolation. I didn't have the language, right? So as I was hearing these young girls talk about wanting to be seen and not even a young age, they were telling me that they didn't want to be deemed as the angry Black woman. I'm like, “Dang, you already are being exposed to this type of language at 15 and 14 in class.” So for me, it was really important to let them know, you know what? We don't have to subscribe to that mentality and that everything you have is already inside of you. You just need to be reminded of that.

I wanted to write a book not just to them, but also to parents and guardians to say, “Listen to how you talk to these young girls. Think about how they receive the language that you're giving them, or how you don't treat them like you might treat your daughters, when you show up to school.” Hearing that in their voices and that angst that they're already feeling, I wanted to eliminate some of that so that again, letting them know that they deserve humanity, dignity and respect right now.

[00:06:36] JU: One of the things that I want to dig into, because it sounds these roundtables were a real important part of your own learning journey and inspiration for you. We talk about inspiration a lot here. It's one of the things that we come to often as it relates to creative practice. Certainly a book is a creative project. I mean, it's a massive undertaking. I’d love to know how did it come about that you said the way I want to get inspired this time is I'm going to do roundtables around the country. Because to me that's it's easy just to blow by that, but that’s an incredible, I would say, an incredible creative tactic. Where did that come from and how did you go about making sure that it happens that you filled your reservoir?

[00:07:20] MINDA: Yeah. When I wrote my first two books, The Memo and Right Within, I did roundtables and interviews with adult women. So, for me, as a writer, as a creative, I never want to really create based off of just my pain points. I also want to find out what other pain, what other people's pain points are too, right? To be able to provide them tools to eliminate some of these pain or angst that they're feeling, so again, I have been removed as a teenager for quite some time. When we were growing up, we did have issues that we were dealing with, but we didn't have TikTok. We didn't have social media the way we have now.

I didn't want to write again from, oh, when I was your age. I wanted to write from where they sit, right? So that they could see me as an ally, they could see me as a big sister. I didn't want to come off as this parent telling them what to do. So I was more careful and intentional with this book than I was my other books, because I knew if I get this right, then they can show up in the workplace ten times better than many of us have been able too. So it was really important for me to handle this book with a lot of care.

[00:08:24] JU: When you say, you don't just want to create from your own pain points, why is that? How do you balance? Right? Because you have your voice, you have your experience, and you're a steward of that. How do you think about balancing the pain you've experienced or the needs you've – I don't mean pain necessarily, but the need you've experienced and wanting to represent that, but then also say it's not just about my own experience. I want to learn about others, too. How do you think about weaving those two things together?

[00:08:51] MINDA: Yeah. Again, when I was writing the outline for the book, I said, “Okay, let me do the roundtables.” Here are some things that I think teenagers experience, because being a teenager, we all had the likability factor, right? How to make friends, all those sorts of things. Those are neutral regardless of race or age or demographic, but I also wanted to write it in a way where, okay, let's say making friends is a hard thing for teenagers, because you want to be like so much and sometimes you'll forfeit your own values just to get a seat at the lunch table, right?

I wanted to grapple with that, but I didn't want to just write from “choose your friends wisely”. I wanted to hear them talk about friendship. Then from there I could write my stories like, “Oh, I remember when I was 16 and I had this friend named Candy and God, I would do anything to hang out with Candy.” Even if that meant, whatever, whatever. So I started to reflect on my own experiences.

Then the other piece that makes You Are More Than Magic really special is that when I tell my stories, then I have this area in the book called Quick Cues, where I ask them to reflect on some of their experiences so that we're not just moving along. That was a fun story to read, but let's reflect on some of the situations in your friends group right now. I do that in every chapter.

[00:10:03] JU: Where did you learn your craft? I mean, to me, some of the stuff that you're talking about is I mean, truly it's exceptional writing tactic, strategy. Who are you learning from to inform how you think about crafting a work of art like this?

[00:10:19] MINDA: Yeah. I didn't see myself, Jeremy and Marcus, as an artist before I became an author, but it really is a creative process. I have whiteboards in my room. I have lots of paper, and I really do think about the art. I throw ideas on the papers that I'm writing on my wall and those sorts of things. Again, because especially for Black women authors to get traditional publishing deals, it comes few and far between when it comes to writing books like this. For me, I realized that I would – I knew that I would be opening up the door for a lot of new women of color authors. So I wanted to handle it very much with care. I wanted to talk in a way that it wasn't “Five points to do this. Then you do that.”

I wanted it to be very conversational, because the one thing that I hear in the workplace often is bring your authentic self to work. That's what I did to my writing process. I bring music, I bring pop culture, I bring those pieces of myself to where we're having a slumber party, we're chopping it up on my couch and we're having real life conversation. That's my style. I didn't want to mimic anybody else. Then other inspirations are people Toni Morrison. She wrote from The Black Gaze, not anything else, right? I'm very apologetic, unapologetic about, who I write for. I engage other readers. I want other people to read it, but my central focus is taking care and making sure that Black and Brown girls have a soft place to land.

[00:11:43] MARCUS: That's awesome, shout out to Toni Morrison, for that. I'm curious, cause you said prior to your writing you really didn't consider yourself an artist, which dose is best, I'm sure a lot of people wrestle a grapple with that. What changed about your perspective on what it actually means to be an artist or to comfortably perform art through writing?

[00:12:06] MINDA: That's a great question, Marcus. For me, I realized that I was an artist, because I was inspiring other people by my work. Whenever we're able to inspire creativity or have people think differently or modify how they once seen a certain perspective, right? That's art, that's inspiration, right?

The first time that I went to a museum and I noticed, maybe about ten years ago, I saw a Basquiat exhibit. When you see just different forms of art, you're inspired in different ways. That's what my writing and in research in even in my public speaking, I want to inspire people. And any type of art that – any type of format that inspires other people. I think you can call yourself an artist.

[00:12:49] JU: What was the moment you said, I really resonated with that comment as well. I can relate in a lot of ways. I didn't think of myself as an artist. What was the moment you realized you were? Can you think of a specific moment?

[00:13:01] MINDA: I would say probably my first book, The Memo: What Women of Color Need to Know to Secure a Seat at the Table. When I first got my book deal, I was told that, well, at the time there were five major publishers when I got a book deal and four of them told me that there was no or no audience for your book, that this book will never do well.

I grappled with it, because I had been a Black woman in the workplace for 15 years in corporate America. I know that there's an audience, right? But when you have certain faces and people at tables that don't understand your lived experience, they will create this narrative that there's no audience for you. Once my book did become a bestseller and still is a bestselling book, I realized, wow, people were reaching out to me saying that I thought I was the only one. I thought I was suffering in silence. That's when I realized the power of words, the power to inspire that people were having the courage to go and have conversations with their managers that they didn't. They were learning how to take up space, how to create boundaries. Again, I think any of our work, if we can inspire people to have to action, then you have succeeded.

Rather, you become a bestselling artist or not, if you inspire somebody to do something differently, to think a little bit differently. I realized that my words were powerful and I realized that my voice was tied to somebody else's freedom. That's why I continue to do the artistry that I do.

[00:14:23] MARCUS: That's awesome. I really appreciate that resilience. I definitely don't want to pass over that. You were told by most of the publishers going at the time that you didn't have an audience for what you were trying to which you were trying to put out there. What was that specific moment where you said, “Okay, I'm going to overcome that comment. I'm going to I'm going to push past that to get to the process of writing this book?”

[00:14:49] MINDA: I won't lie and say that I wasn’t discouraged, right? To be fair, there hadn't been any books like this out on the market by major publishers. They didn't think that it could sell. I wasn't famous, I'm not famous. So they layered that on that this would just be really hard to do. But what I realized was I have a voice. I just have to figure out how I want to use it with or without them. I knew that this art needed to happen. I'm glad that I did find a publisher that was willing to take the chance, but I just knew that somebody needed to hear it. I think every artist comes up against opposition, the ops.

[00:15:25] MARCUS: Yeah.

[00:15:25] MINDA: You're going to have your ops. It’s up to us to dismantle that. It's up to us to keep moving forward. So for me, I just knew that people needed to get The Memo, and I wasn't going to stop until I found it. The one thing as an artist, I think all of us are creatives, right? What for you won't miss you. So I just kept telling myself that, what's for me won't miss me. Whatever I'm supposed to be doing, there will be space created for that.

[00:15:54] MARCUS: I love that you said that specifically. I know that that's one of the main, you actually write about this. I've seen a few of your books. What was it like? What activities did you engaged to say, “I'm going to find my voice.” When we think about singers, they go up and they go and they say, “I can’t make it with a vocal coach.” or they go get with songwriters that make them feel comfortable and get in an environment where the authenticity can flow. What was that like for you as a writer?

[00:16:22] MINDA: Yeah. Well, a lot of people who may not know who come to my books or learning maybe about me for the first time today is, before I became a bestselling author of three books. I had a blog for five years. I had a lot of time to work out some of my creativity to find my voice. I started my blog in 2015, and every Monday I would put out this what I called, The Weekly Memo. Had you told me in 2015 that I would do this content every Monday about what I was experienced in the workplace, that thing and that eventually those blogs would turn into my first published book? I would not have believed you, right? But what we do as artists is you take control of what you can take control over.

I had access to the Internet, I had access to Mailchimp, I had access to score space. I leveraged what resources and tools were available to me. I just kept doing what I had control over, telling my story, figuring out what my voice was. I found that people loved the vulnerable and the authenticity that I bring to my art. I just continued to hone in on that.

[00:17:32] MARCUS: I love that.

[00:17:33] JU: How did you get. I just want to dig into that, because that is such, it's so beautiful. Very few people appreciate the work, the toil that goes in before somebody well known. I watched this a totally different subject, but Marcus and I talked about it the other day about Mr. Beast, he was a YouTuber. I don't know if you know Mr. Beast, but he's got 200 million followers. He's that is the biggest YouTuber. He had an interview recently, and he talked about how for eight years, he never made a dollar a day on YouTube. But he just kept at it. He kept at it. Now he's this huge phenomenon of people like how do I become like Mr. Beast?

The question is, are you willing to toil away in obscurity for eight years? How do I become like Minda Harts? Are willing to toil away in obscurity for five years? It's nobody wants that. They want The Memo, but they don't want to release The Weekly Memo, Right? I would love to know, how did you get feedback? I mean, because going back to Marcus's question about finding your voice, you mentioned you're putting stuff out there. You're using MailChimp. How did when something really resonated? How did you know when you missed? Was it like checking in internally? Was it checking in with your subscribers? What was that? Maybe give us an example of a time that it really worked or a time that it really didn't work, just so we can have practical.

[00:18:58] MINDA: Yeah. I really love that you said, that people aren’t willing to do The Weekly Memo First before they get to The Memo, and that's the honest to God treat, that a lot of people are not willing to do that early as grunt work if you will, or the grit that's associated with that. But when I first started my newsletter, it was me and friends and family as a subscriber base. It was very barebones, so this was an opportunity for me just to say, “You know what, when I have control over, here are some of the things that I'm experiencing in my current job. Let me talk about what it's to be a Black woman being a woman of color in the workplace. I just chose different topics.

For one salary negotiation, I talked about Mean Girls in the office. Every week and then I'd add tools for how you overcome these things, right? Not just so what was me, I have these mean co-workers, but what can you do to have conversations about it? Over time, I'd say maybe about a year of just writing this content and doing it. Then finally, as people started to find the newsletter, they would reach out to me and say, “You know what? I needed that salary negotiation advice. I needed that mean girl.” I got this mean girl, my mean girl in my books, I called her Kerry, and people would start messaging me. “I’ve got a Kerry too.” Those were the things that start –

[00:20:13] JU: That's great.

[00:20:14] MINDA: That started to let me know this way or that way. By the time I did get a book deal, I went back on all the years of memos I had written. I started to look at the analytics to say, “Oh, these were the ones that really stood out to people. This was the ones that they shared more frequently.” That's how I built my chapters off of those things.

[00:20:35] MARCUS: I'm really curious about in that span. You were writing this blog for years back in 2015. I'm really curious about at some point your lived experiences. The well could potentially run dry. What was your process for getting ideas to stay consistent?

[00:20:55] MINDA: Well, bitter-sweet Marcus was that in 2015 and then we went into the political issues that we had with the president in those sorts of things. So race was at the top of the ticket in a lot of and there was a lot of different things happening inside of the workplace and lawsuits and those sorts of things. I could get on Twitter at any given time and see people tweeting about things that were going on or taking it from the headlines and saying, “Oh, well.” For example, every year there's equal pay day, right? So then I would say, well, what about equal pay day for Black women? I'd start writing about how it's different than white women.

I just started to leverage those opportunities that I saw to say not all women experience the workplace the same. Let's talk about intersectionality, right? That's where I started to carve out my lane, because back then nobody wanted to have that conversation as much as we're talking about it now. I'm grateful that I planted those seeds early, because now even in the last four months, there's been so many books written about women of color in the workplace. I like to think that it was cracking that door open, saying this is important work so that it could usher in a next group of authors to be able to share their stories. 

[00:22:11] MARCUS: Now, that's awesome. I was listening to, I think, I was listening to an interview, Kevin Liles, he's a music entrepreneur. He was talking about, he's had this great success in the golden ages of Hip-Hop and things. He was a pioneer on the forefront of it. Now he's still finding relevancy in music. One of the things that he said was, well, he gave his method for to stay and inspired to do something new. I'm curious, you had the blog here. Now you've put out these three books. I'm very curious now, what have your habits changed from that time and how are you now keeping a diet of fresh inspiration and being able to respond, finding new things to respond to new material?

[00:22:54] MINDA: That's a great question, because I often say, “How can I keep it fresh?” Right? “How can I keep it relevant?” I'm always thinking about that. One of the things that I just did recently was create a production company called the Queen of Hearts Productions, because now I want to take my books and different things and start to build content in video and documentaries around this. So to continue to be an artist, but using all of the different methods and content that I have in my books and giving it to a new artist, because if you're a reader, then you may come to this. Or you’ve been experiencing a lot of issues inside the workplace, so you find my books, but let's say you don't know I exist, you don't know this work exist, but you come through music or you come through the docu series.

I just put out my first audio play for Women's History Month called The Memory Monologues. I took it in, re-imagined it. I do think that that is so important for artists to be able to reimagine your work and make it relevant to a current generation.

[00:23:55] JU: Was there ever a time that you felt you wondered, “Am I doing this right?” What did you do to overcome those fears or doubts?

[00:24:02] MINDA: Oh, yeah. I mean, for five years writing the blog or for years. I was like, “Is anybody even reading this? Or is this just therapy for me?” I wasn't sure what it was. Even because I didn't have a blueprint and because there wasn't anybody moving the way I was in this space and I was opening up a new genre of writing, I was nervous. I started to think about, “Well, do I have what it takes to be able to do this?” It was nice to not people know you and just write this thing and then do I really want to be public facing and be a voice for those who haven't yet found their voice?

Then I realized that it was bigger than me. I could not put the genie back in the bottle anymore. I had to make the workplace better than I found it. Now, I still sometimes question like, I'm not sure what I'm doing, but I just continue, there was something about my early stages that I continue to use that recipe, right? Because just like my dad, one of the things I love about him is he is so amazing at cooking. One of the things that people love coming to our home is to get his fried chicken and his homemade French fries, right? We like the recipe. That's what we come back home to his house. That's what people when they come to town, they're like, “I’ll eat your chicken in your fries.”

That's the thing that people like. They want that taste. So for me, I keep it all the way 100 and all the way authentic, because that's what people fell in love with from the get go. That's what I continue to use that recipe. The modality might change, but the recipe is still the same.

[00:25:35] MARCUS: I love that. I was listening to a podcast, [inaudible 00:25:38], who's San Francisco-based, Jeremy. The economist there was referencing a Jungle Brothers there, where he says it's all about getting the music across without crossing over. I hear that same thing in your story. I'm curious in terms of obviously was talking about that in the context of hip-hop. I'm curious in your situation and keeping the recipe to say our remaining authentic, but you're in a new space now with now television and things like that. How are you overcoming the learning curve to adapting your material or maybe is there a specific thing, right now that you're grinding your acts on to get more sharp?

[00:26:21] MINDA: Yes. I think that's because I am a business major first and foremost. I think very business minded. So when I think about past companies, I'll use BlackBerry, for example. I loved BlackBerry, right? You couldn't tell me nothing about a BBM message.

[00:26:36] MARCUS: Shout out to Drake days.

[00:26:38] JU: Come on, come on, take it back. I love it.

[00:26:42] MINDA: I loved it. Okay, you can tell me anything different, but you think about them. You think about Kodak. They were on the cutting edge of innovation. Then somewhere along the lines, it just didn't connect to the next piece of the puzzle. So I don't want to be left in my BBM's right? I don't want to be left on that. So I constantly am thinking, how do I stay fresh? How do I stay relevant? How do I continue to be a thought leader in this space? Actually, two years ago, knowing that at some point I wanted to get into film and TV. I started taking screenwriting classes at UCLA, and that was part of it. I want to be able to come to the table having some understanding of how things work.

For me, producing certain things on the side, so when I think about what this is, I'm constantly, how do I continue to be a leader where people are looking to me even if my books start, hopefully they'll be evergreen in some way, shape, or form. But you can see the trajectory. I know people are looking at my model, too. I want to encourage them to continue to stay relevant. You can't always just hold on to what got you there in 1988. It might still help, but –

[00:27:50] MARCUS: I love that.

[00:27:52] MINDA: How much better and how much more innovative you can be if you continue to follow the trends.

[00:27:57] JU: Yeah.

[00:27:57] MARCUS: I love that. Is there anything that you've noticed in that process that you say I have to unlearn? Have you ever say, “I have to unlearn this BBM tactic? In order to get good at this?” Could you tell us what one of those things might have been?

[00:28:18] MINDA: Well, right now I'm grappling with this, Marcus. I have not done it yet, because we're having a conversation. One of the things that people told me, because you're working in a young adult space right now with this book, you need to get on TikTok. I'm like, “Oh.”

[00:28:32] JU: That's scary. That's scary. I love it

[00:28:37] MINDA: I haven't crossed over. I've been trying to look for some TikTokers that I could pay to do it, but I'm like, I don't know if that's where I want to be, but I understand that there's certain ways I need to get to other audiences, right? There are certain things that I'm going to have to do differently. I will say this, that because I am always trying different spaces and all of this is very new, even for me, because it hasn't even been that long. It's been less than four years. I wrote three books in almost three years. So a lot has happened in my life very quickly, so I'm still trying to figure all this out.

But what I will say is, I always let my curiosity be larger than my fear. If I'm curious about something, I think I won't let my fear get in the way of it. I'll continue to hone in, read the books, go to workshops, always invest in myself, so that I can be a leader, because I think part of being a leader is being flexible, evolving, right? I don't want to have the same mentality that I had when I wrote those blogs in 2015. I want some evolution to happen. I think that that's important in business.

[00:29:35] JU: There's so many soundbites here, Minda that are just like, you're speaking to our hearts, bars, dropping in bars. Tell us about a recent, I think in terms of epiphany, realization, aha, breakthrough, what's the last time you felt, like in the matrix, I know Kung Fu, like you just, “What?” Tell us about that moment and then maybe tell us how you got there.

[00:30:03] MINDA: I feel I have those moments like once a day like, “Oh, my God, I can't believe this is going on.” But what I will say is this, I think even writing my second book, Right Within, when I wrote The Memo, the first book, I thought about, okay, what are the rules of engagement that women of color need to know to secure their see or feel comfortable in a workplace when they're the only or one of few? But then as I started to think about that book, I thought it was the only book I was going to write. I said, “This is it. This is where I lay my head. I'm fine.” But what I realized was, how important healthy mindset is, how important are passing on new tools to the next generation, instead of passing on old survival tools. Once I had that epiphany about survival tools versus tools to thrive, my work in my innovation just opened up to me in a new way. That's how I was able to think about, Right Within.

[00:31:00] JU: You’re on mute. You’re on mute mode.

[00:31:01] MARCUS: Okay. I was going to say –

[00:31:03] JU: For those of you listening, right now, Marcus is gesticulating wildly, speaking quickly, and neither Minda or I, could hear him.

[00:31:12] MARCUS: My mind and my mouth moving so faster than my hands could unmute. That is how. Again, with the bar, we got to dive in on that. Can you please, for really, for our sake and for our listeners sake. Give us an example of difference between a survival and a thriving? I think that was the word that you use. Give us one example of what the differences between those two things are?

[00:31:38] MINDA: Yes. One of the things that I noticed is that when we are one of few or one of the only or in any situation, sometimes we're just functioning in survival. How do I just keep from drowning in a situation that I'm in, instead of necessarily learning how to swim, how to rise above it? Right? So I think for people of color in particular in the workplace, oftentimes we're just told work really hard, keep your head down, don't rock the boat. So we're just trying to figure out how to get to 5:00. That's the goal and do it work well, but what would it look like if we actually passed on tools to ourselves into the next generation on how to thrive? If something isn't working for you in the workplace, what would it look to have a conversation with your manager or with a colleague to create boundaries? That we don't have to keep surviving in every environment that we're in, that we actually could have a life of freedom, right?

You think about our ancestors, they never got to understand and experience true freedom, but we are in a space where we can. We can use our voice in ways that they were able to before. So let's not participate in our own oppression. Let's switch the gears. Let's use our voices in the ways that we can. So for me, my epiphany was in – right after George Floyd, I started think of we can't just survive anymore. We got to thrive. What are those tools that we need to do that? As I think about my work in my art now, it's all about the thrive, it's all about the freedom. No longer feeling confined by anything.

[00:33:07] JU: Man, there's too much here. Last question and then we should probably let you go so that we can wrap and be respectful of your time. But last question, what do you do when you need inspiration? I realize you have the roundtables, but what are your go to hacks or tips or tricks to get fresh?

[00:33:26] MINDA: I'm going to let you in on to that, a big secret. It's really music. I know, Marcus, will appreciate that. I am – I quote this in my bio all the time. I am a lover of grits and rap lyrics. It's rap lyrics that keep me inspired. I listen to, there's nothing that I can't do. I have to listen to rap music before I write. I have to listen to it in between and that's how I get my inspiration. It was what got me through corporate America all those days where I wanted to throw the stapler across the room. It was the thing that really just grounds me. I will say a line that I lean into for inspiration is by Jay-Z is ‘I’d rather die enormous than live dormant.’ I think about how I want to do things, and I would rather do it big and make moves, than just play on the sidelines and watch other people do it.

[00:34:15] MARCUS: On that note, she drops the mic with the – reference, cannot live. Wow. I love it. I love it.

[00:34:24] JU: Minda, this is an incredible, incredibly insightful and inspiring conversation. Thank you so much for making the time to talk with us today. We can't wait to share your gems with our listeners. Thanks for making the time.

[00:34:35] MINDA: Thank you so much.

[00:34:36] MARCUS: Awesome.

[END]