YAPClassic: Morgan DeBaun, Your Startup Survival Kit for VC Funding and Leadership

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0:01:23 Welcome back, my dear young end-profiters.
0:01:27 Today we’re showcasing an interview I did last year with the remarkable Morgan Devon.
0:01:32 Morgan is a serial entrepreneur and the founder and CEO of Blavity Incorporated, a leading
0:01:36 digital media company for black culture and millennials.
0:01:42 When 18-year-old Michael Brown was killed in her home state of Missouri back in 2014,
0:01:45 Morgan was working at a technology company in Silicon Valley.
0:01:50 She was unhappy with her job and disappointed with the media’s coverage of the events unfolding
0:01:51 in Ferguson.
0:01:54 And then she decided to change course.
0:01:58 She co-founded Blavity, which became a leading digital media company.
0:02:02 And guys, her entrepreneurship story is so inspiring.
0:02:05 She started it all with an email newsletter.
0:02:08 I love her story, I can’t wait for you guys to hear it.
0:02:12 And starting her business and eventual media empire from scratch meant that Morgan had
0:02:15 to learn from the School of Hard Knocks.
0:02:19 In this episode, she and I talk about how to navigate some of the most challenging parts
0:02:24 of founding a startup, including how to pitch a VC firm and how to work effectively with
0:02:27 your investors and backers once you do land them.
0:02:31 Something that I know nothing about as a bootstrapper, so I really enjoyed learning from her.
0:02:33 I think you guys are going to love this one.
0:02:36 Let’s get right into the tape.
0:02:41 Morgan, welcome to Young and Profiting Podcast.
0:02:42 Thanks for having me.
0:02:43 Excited to be here.
0:02:45 I’m so happy to have you on the show today.
0:02:50 I think we’re going to garner a lot of life lessons from your journey, and you’ve accomplished
0:02:52 so much at such a young age.
0:02:56 And it seems like a lot of your success really comes from being able to effectively straddle
0:03:01 so many different environments and communities from Silicon Valley to St. Louis, where you
0:03:02 grew up.
0:03:03 So let’s start here.
0:03:07 How did your childhood in St. Louis impact your outlook on life today?
0:03:14 Yeah, I was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri, middle of America, very like American
0:03:15 values.
0:03:22 I think that one thing about being in the Midwest is people work hard, but also maybe
0:03:25 don’t make it to where they want to go.
0:03:33 So this kind of idea of hard work pays off, and if you just buckle up by your bootstraps,
0:03:36 it’s what you’re taught, like living in America, and that’s what they say.
0:03:40 But in reality, it’s not just hard work.
0:03:43 And I saw that, and I think I observed that time and time again, and when I eventually
0:03:49 moved to Silicon Valley straight after graduation, I went to Wash U for undergrad and moved out
0:03:54 to the Bay Area, I was like, “Oh, this is not about hard work at all.
0:03:59 This is about access, opportunity, yes, you need discipline, yes, you need to be focused.
0:04:01 You know, there’s all these different things you need.”
0:04:06 But it is not just about brute force, and I think that’s one of the things that I really
0:04:10 encourage people to reconsider as they’re building towards their financial freedom and
0:04:17 their wealth journey or their business, because this hustle culture, I think, has messed up
0:04:19 our perception of what’s possible.
0:04:25 I love that, and I know that in your work, you often talk about code switching throughout
0:04:26 your childhood.
0:04:30 How you always had to sort of be a certain person in one place and then switch off in
0:04:33 a different place depending on your environment.
0:04:36 And I think a lot of people who are listening to this podcast, they might not even know
0:04:37 what that means.
0:04:39 They might not understand that people have to do that.
0:04:40 So talk to us about that.
0:04:46 Yeah, you know, I am a black woman, and I grew up in a diverse set of different sets
0:04:47 of schooling.
0:04:50 You know, I went to a Catholic all-girls school.
0:04:55 I’m not Catholic, I’m Christian, but, you know, that’s a very different type of Christian.
0:05:02 I then went to a primarily white institution, WashU, where the black population was four
0:05:10 to six percent, depending on the year, and I always view the ability to be one of the
0:05:15 underrepresented groups as an opportunity to, one, learn how other people think other
0:05:22 cultures work, and then, two, also re-establish a really clear grounding of who I am, not
0:05:26 just what society has propelled me to be.
0:05:31 And I think learning that skill at a young age, whether I wanted to be the other or not,
0:05:35 forced me to have this resiliency, but then also have this ability to be flexible, so
0:05:40 when I moved into the workspace, I moved into different professional spaces, I was able
0:05:44 to say, okay, I know how these white boys in Silicon Valley move.
0:05:47 I know how the corporate industry moves.
0:05:52 I know how to have a conversation with someone who I don’t necessarily agree with their religious
0:05:57 beliefs, but we’re still able to have a connection and not necessarily be intimidated by moving
0:05:59 in and out of these different groups.
0:06:01 Yeah, that makes sense.
0:06:08 So I’m Palestinian American, really crazy time to be a Palestinian American in America,
0:06:14 and I grew up in a way where I feel like I had more privilege than maybe other Arab-Americans
0:06:15 had in America.
0:06:21 My dad was a doctor, he worked really hard, and then I felt like I have this extreme responsibility
0:06:28 to be very successful and sort of help other people along the way because I just feel like
0:06:30 I started off at a different place from other people.
0:06:32 Do you feel this same similar?
0:06:35 Because I hear that you went to private school and probably a very different experience from
0:06:38 other African-American people from that region, especially.
0:06:43 Yeah, you’re right, and I actually, my dad’s a doctor as well, so we’re not surprising
0:06:49 we kind of both wound up in similar but different, but yeah, I do feel like because I was able
0:06:56 to see the access of opportunity that I had compared to other folks, black folks who lived
0:07:01 in St. Louis specifically, I went to a public school all the way through middle school and
0:07:05 then private for high school, and so I was able to see all my friends from middle school
0:07:11 who didn’t make it, who didn’t graduate from high school, who had children really, really
0:07:16 young who are still in St. Louis right now and didn’t necessarily make it out of the
0:07:20 city, not that there’s anything wrong with staying where you’re from, but if they had
0:07:25 had a choice, I think they would have chosen a different life for themselves, and I think
0:07:31 that the internet and being able to have access to Silicon Valley has given me the chance
0:07:36 to say, okay, how do I build a platform to bring other people along and speed up the
0:07:41 likelihood and reduce that gap between if I had the opportunity and the access, I would
0:07:47 be more successful, I would have more wealth, more savings, more freedom, more control over
0:07:51 who I want to be and how I spend my time, so definitely I think that was a huge part
0:07:55 of how I wound up doing this.
0:07:56 Totally.
0:08:00 And so you ended up graduating at the top of your class at Washington University in St.
0:08:05 Louis, and that’s not exactly like a feeder school for Silicon Valley, so how did you
0:08:09 end up transitioning and going to Silicon Valley?
0:08:12 It is not a feeder school for Silicon Valley at all.
0:08:14 People thought I was a little bit nuts.
0:08:20 This was, again, what, 12, 13 years ago, I mean, Silicon Valley was not really in vogue
0:08:28 like it is now, our startup life, and so I worked at a tech company in St. Louis, one
0:08:38 of the very few as an intern, my junior senior year, and I took the time to understand, okay,
0:08:42 how did this guy get all this money, like the founder was like, which is very confusing
0:08:46 to me because it’s just so not normal in the day-to-day life of what I was saying from
0:08:48 like entrepreneurs and business folks.
0:08:51 And he told me, I said, well, where should I go when I graduate?
0:08:52 Where should I be applying?
0:08:53 And he said, you should apply to Singapore.
0:08:57 You should go and look for companies in Singapore and try to get to Singapore post-graduation.
0:09:02 And I was like, look, this black girl is going to Singapore.
0:09:03 That’s a stretch.
0:09:05 What’s my number two option?
0:09:06 Okay.
0:09:08 What is my number two option?
0:09:13 And he said, okay, you can go to Silicon Valley, but there’s a lot of the dot-com wealth gain
0:09:17 has already been done, but there’s still a lot of room for growth there.
0:09:21 So I started looking at companies whose products I used.
0:09:26 And at the time, I was filing my taxes for the first time because I had my low internship
0:09:31 and I was making some money and then I was using Mint.com to manage that money.
0:09:35 And so I wound up applying to a company called Intuit, which has grown tremendously since
0:09:39 then and moved out to the Bay Area to work there.
0:09:45 So it was definitely not the pathway that was traditional for the cohort of people that
0:09:46 I was around.
0:09:52 And yet the beautiful thing about going outside your pathway is that once you get there, you
0:09:56 actually find a whole new tribe of people that did exactly the same thing.
0:09:58 I love that.
0:10:04 So when I got there was certainly a culture shock from a vocabulary perspective.
0:10:05 I didn’t go to Stanford site.
0:10:08 I didn’t know all of the things that people were talking about.
0:10:10 But the energy was my energy.
0:10:15 It was people who wanted to do big things, who wanted to build for millions and billions
0:10:18 of people, who wanted to make an impact at an early age, didn’t want to wait until they
0:10:22 were 60 to have a say.
0:10:23 And that was really energizing for me.
0:10:24 Yeah.
0:10:29 And it sounds like you did find a community, but were there any points in this experience
0:10:34 in Silicon Valley where you were treated like an outsider or felt like an outsider?
0:10:35 Yeah.
0:10:40 I think I found a community of people who were like-minded, but not necessarily who
0:10:43 I think had the social awareness that I had grown up with.
0:10:49 So because it’s a very homogenous community of mostly white and Asian men, we can talk
0:10:52 the talk about venture funding and tech.
0:10:57 But when it comes to, hey, why don’t we potentially put the product in Spanish?
0:11:01 It’s like, why would we do that?
0:11:06 You know, are like, when we do our user testing, why are the only people who use our tests
0:11:08 just stay-in-home moms in Palo Alto?
0:11:12 Maybe we should get some more diversity in our like UI/UX research study groups.
0:11:19 So I found myself having friction on the how to get things done and feeling like I was
0:11:24 explaining myself and educating them, these people who make 10X what I make, who are the
0:11:26 big bosses in the room.
0:11:32 And I made a decision at that point after a few years of like learning the game, oh,
0:11:33 this could be the rest of my life.
0:11:40 I could stay in corporate and be the girl who’s like explaining all the things.
0:11:44 But is that really, is that going to be the fastest way, one, for change?
0:11:47 Because I would only be at that company if I was doing it.
0:11:49 And two, is that how I want to spend my time?
0:11:53 Is that the impact that I want to make?
0:12:00 And that was the friction between loving my work, loving the ecosystem, identifying, you
0:12:03 know what, we’re not quite there yet, and then trying to figure out, well, what is my
0:12:05 role in this space?
0:12:06 Yeah.
0:12:12 And then I know around that time, you started to really see like an opportunity in the marketplace,
0:12:14 especially when it came to brown and black people.
0:12:15 What was it that you saw?
0:12:16 What gaps did you see?
0:12:17 Yeah.
0:12:22 So about two and a half, three years in, Michael Brown was killed in St. Louis.
0:12:29 So I was having a moment where I would go into my cubicle in downtown San Francisco,
0:12:37 and I would be heartbroken, just screaming internally at the computer, on my phone.
0:12:40 And meanwhile, the world’s just like operating like nothing is wrong.
0:12:41 We know how it feels.
0:12:42 I know how it feels.
0:12:43 I’m going through it right now.
0:12:51 You know, everybody’s just bumping along, and you’re like, hello, what is going on?
0:12:52 You know, and how can I be helpful?
0:12:53 How can I leverage my platform?
0:12:59 How can I use my skills, my unique set of skills to make an impact?
0:13:01 And I didn’t have a platform at the time, right?
0:13:05 I mean, I’m 24 years old, right?
0:13:14 But I did have skills, and I did have the ability to say, you know what, I now have some network.
0:13:22 Let me figure out how I can create a unique brand and company that is an advocate for
0:13:27 this group of people that’s often overlooked, and more importantly, doesn’t have the information
0:13:33 distribution systems that we needed to get information from place to place in an accurate
0:13:34 way.
0:13:38 It’s crazy that I’m saying this right now because it’s like the exact same problem is
0:13:41 happening in a lot of different communities.
0:13:42 And it’s terrible.
0:13:48 It’s a terrible problem when you are the underrepresented group trying to get information
0:13:55 to one another that is accurate, that is in real time, and that you’re trying to get resources
0:14:00 to the people on the ground, which in our case was back in St. Louis, like bail bonds.
0:14:02 You know, people were going to jail when you’d get them out of jail.
0:14:06 People were then driving to different cities where all these uprisings were happening.
0:14:08 You need to get them money.
0:14:10 It’s an entire cluster.
0:14:15 And without media and information, sharing and platforms, you wind up just perpetuating
0:14:17 the cycle over and over again.
0:14:18 So that was the problem.
0:14:24 And that’s when I said, I’m going to take this leap and really commit to over the next
0:14:28 three to four months figuring out how to quit my job and be full-time working on Blavity.
0:14:29 Wow.
0:14:35 So I didn’t realize that Blavity first started off basically to help a human rights movement
0:14:37 within America.
0:14:38 That’s basically why it started, right?
0:14:41 And then it’s evolved and we’ll talk about the evolution.
0:14:45 So it really started off with you creating an email newsletter, right?
0:14:47 Why did you start that way?
0:14:48 Cheap free.
0:14:49 I was broke.
0:14:54 You know, I think the email newsletters are smart because you can just get to people fast.
0:14:59 You don’t have the dependency on social network algorithms, much like SMS.
0:15:01 You’re right in people’s fingertips.
0:15:05 It’s really hard for people not to open emails or at least scan the subject line.
0:15:11 So that was my lowest barrier to entry to be able to get to the masses of people that
0:15:13 we wanted to connect with.
0:15:14 And how did you first collect emails?
0:15:19 Well, what I did probably wasn’t legal.
0:15:24 But I scraped emails from like when people wouldn’t be CC lists within our little community.
0:15:27 I’m like, I’ll immediately adding you to my email list.
0:15:29 I would do not recommend this to anybody.
0:15:33 But 10 years ago, that was like all, that was normal 10 years ago to your point.
0:15:35 It’s different times now.
0:15:36 It’s different times.
0:15:38 And I love email newsletters, guys.
0:15:42 I just really started getting into email like the last year and it’s been awesome.
0:15:44 People really click those things.
0:15:48 They really open it up into your point, especially when it’s like sensitive topics.
0:15:52 You don’t have the algorithm and social media networks like shadow banning you or you could
0:15:54 just get the word out.
0:15:58 So how did you figure out the kind of content that your audience really wanted to read?
0:16:01 What was the ways that you got your content ideas for this email newsletter?
0:16:02 Yeah.
0:16:03 So there’s two things.
0:16:07 On one end, we were able to track all the information in the newsletter, right?
0:16:11 You’re able to track what people are watching, what people are clicking on, if they’re sharing
0:16:15 the newsletter, if your newsletter is growing organically, what I called and what the world
0:16:17 calls as a viral coefficient, right?
0:16:21 So for every two or three people who sign up for the newsletter, do you get another one
0:16:23 to three people?
0:16:25 So you’ve got a good machine going on.
0:16:29 That’s very organic and that’s going to allow you to grow quickly and cheaply.
0:16:33 And that’s what you’re looking from a Silicon Valley perspective as a product manager.
0:16:37 That’s what I was looking for was, is this sticky enough that people are going to share
0:16:42 it on their own so that I don’t have to try to build a huge marketing engine?
0:16:47 The product and the value should be so good that they want to share it.
0:16:49 And we learned a lot of different things really quickly.
0:16:54 I mean, the good thing about a daily newsletter is that you have a daily data set every day.
0:16:58 And what we found was a few different things.
0:17:02 One, what people say they want to read or watch is different than what they click.
0:17:09 And as a curator of information as a platform, you have to decide and have really strong
0:17:16 values or else you could go to a place where people are just clicking without any sort of
0:17:19 value to that person, if that makes sense.
0:17:23 If I just went by clicks, I would just write about Kim Kardashian all day.
0:17:27 But that’s not really what we needed called PWI.
0:17:31 This might have been your experience as well, but like, you know, you go to lunch, everybody
0:17:35 plays this with who they identify with at lunch.
0:17:37 And so you couldn’t tell the black people anything.
0:17:42 As far as I’m concerned, I went to an HBC because it was like black, black, black all
0:17:45 the time, especially at lunch and parties and things like that.
0:17:50 And anytime we would all discover each other, have critical conversations, people would
0:17:53 be doing homework, people would be talking about dating, like whatever was going on.
0:17:58 It was just this really beautiful moment in the day where you felt seen and heard and
0:18:04 felt like you were part of a community, even though when you walked out that lunch room,
0:18:11 it’s back to you and you and two other people in your Econ 101 class.
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0:23:05 So, I know that you started Blavity as a side hustle while you were into it.
0:23:07 Talk to us about what that experience was like.
0:23:08 How are you spending?
0:23:10 How are you spending your time?
0:23:13 I woke up really early.
0:23:17 We’re on the West Coast, so I would wake up and do East Coast meetings, go to work, walk
0:23:18 to work.
0:23:24 I was saving every penny I had, so I was eating boiled eggs and oatmeal, and avocados are
0:23:25 cheap in Cali.
0:23:30 I would even bring Tupperware to work because we had a lot of free food, just like shameless.
0:23:36 I was just saving every penny that I had, and after work, I would have to like happy
0:23:42 hours or founder meetups, just trying to immerse myself in the community and get to know who’s
0:23:46 who and the players and how the tech industry worked.
0:23:54 And then from there, in 2014, in January of 2014, I was starting Blavity.
0:23:59 We launched our first version of the product in the spring, the first version of the website
0:24:01 in July of 2014.
0:24:04 My grandma was killed in August.
0:24:11 And if he hadn’t been murdered, I wouldn’t have, I think, felt the urgency to quit.
0:24:17 I think I would have stayed on the side hustle, main hustle dance for another year, but at
0:24:22 that point, I said, “Okay, I have to figure out my finances to be able to quit.”
0:24:30 So by October, I was fully out of the business, I’m at Intuit, and I took on more side hustles
0:24:36 actually once I quit because I still had a downtown apartment in downtown San Francisco,
0:24:38 and I was financing, I was bootstrapping the company.
0:24:43 So I was paying for the engineers, the bloggers, the site maintenance and everything.
0:24:48 So I took on a consulting job, I arbitraged an apartment so that I could, you know, I
0:24:52 rented out an apartment and then rented it out to somebody else for a higher price.
0:24:57 And I was literally just hustling, trying to make ends meet so that as much of my discretionary
0:25:00 income as possible could go into the business.
0:25:03 So I have no experience with fundraising.
0:25:06 I started my companies totally bootstrapped.
0:25:09 I think a lot of people don’t have the experience that I had.
0:25:14 It was like a slow organic experience, and then I got really huge retainers as soon as
0:25:16 I started my companies.
0:25:20 So let’s talk about fundraising because you have a lot of experience with it.
0:25:24 Talk to us about the steps that we have to take to get VC money.
0:25:27 What are the things we need to prepare, things we need to create?
0:25:29 How do we go out and find people to pitch to?
0:25:32 Just walk us through that whole process.
0:25:34 You know, if I could have stayed bootstrapping, I would have.
0:25:38 I think it’s the better option for most people.
0:25:43 And in my scenario, the reason why I ultimately decided to fundraise is because I couldn’t,
0:25:48 we were growing so fast, I couldn’t self-finance the growth, and we were leaving a lot of money
0:25:50 on the table.
0:25:54 And I also felt a responsibility to convert people who were working as contractors or
0:25:58 bloggers into a more sustainable, like, living baseline wage.
0:26:02 I mean, it was still startup wages, but something is better than nothing.
0:26:09 So it was about the summer after Blavity Launch 2015 when I went out to try to fundraise.
0:26:14 Now again, Black Girl, San Francisco, 2014.
0:26:15 Not really in vogue.
0:26:20 There’s a lot of new conversations around equity in VC, and I love that.
0:26:21 It’s beautiful.
0:26:28 There’s funds dedicated to minorities raising money, but none of that existed when I was
0:26:29 out there.
0:26:34 So the first thing is identifying why you’re fundraising and making a decision on if your
0:26:38 business is venture-backable or not.
0:26:41 And at the time, there was a lot of media companies that were raising money.
0:26:49 You had Vice, you had BuzzFeed, you had Upworthy, Attention, so many media companies.
0:26:52 Mike, for example, some of them exist now, some of them don’t.
0:26:58 But I had enough data that showed, yes, this is a category that people will spend and invest
0:26:59 in.
0:27:03 Then the second thing is, do you want to be a venture-backed founder?
0:27:07 Because there’s another set of responsibilities that comes from taking outside money.
0:27:12 You dilute yourself and give away a piece of your company, and therefore you’re getting
0:27:14 power away.
0:27:17 And the more money you raise, the less power you have.
0:27:22 And the more people who become your bosses, the irony of entrepreneurship.
0:27:26 And then the last thing is, if I take this money, am I going to be able to give it back
0:27:31 at a really high return at the speed at which this industry requires me to do so?
0:27:36 So typically in the venture capital world, they’re looking for a five to seven-year return
0:27:42 timeframe, which means within five to seven years, you need to sell your company or you
0:27:45 need to have an IPO, which is a public sale.
0:27:51 So am I, as the founder, willing to commit to a five to seven-year timeframe?
0:27:53 At the time, I was.
0:27:56 So all of those things were true for me.
0:28:01 I went out to raise money, and I was really militant and really strict at the time.
0:28:02 And so what did I do?
0:28:04 I said, I want all black investors.
0:28:06 I want to all blackboard.
0:28:10 And this is a black media company, so the people who own this need to be a reflection
0:28:11 of our community.
0:28:12 Right?
0:28:13 Well, all the black people said, no.
0:28:18 So that was a strike.
0:28:22 And they were friendly about it, and I know all these people now, and I love them now.
0:28:23 But it hurt.
0:28:25 I mean, I was on the floor crying.
0:28:27 I mean, it was terrible.
0:28:32 I felt like, if they don’t get me, then how could somebody else?
0:28:36 And like, if they don’t want to put the money behind this problem that impacts them and
0:28:41 their children and their children’s children and all the things, then why would Jenny from
0:28:43 around the block do it?
0:28:47 So I had to sit for a couple of weeks and lick my wounds, and then I was talking to some
0:28:52 people in my network, and they said, well, have you considered social impact investors?
0:28:54 And I had never heard of social impact investors.
0:28:56 I was like, I don’t even know what you’re talking about.
0:29:04 And a social impact investor is someone or a fund who wants to make investments in venture
0:29:10 backable startups and enterprise investments, not investing in nonprofits, but they do have
0:29:16 a strong fiduciary responsibility to invest in companies that are going to do good.
0:29:21 So their set of criteria, while they still want money back, they’re not looking for as
0:29:23 much money back.
0:29:28 While they want it fast, if it takes a little longer, and you’re doing good, it’s okay.
0:29:31 So their set of criteria was a bit different.
0:29:35 And so my first set of investors actually wound up being social impact investors, people
0:29:41 who cared deeply about diversity in media and democracy, people who cared deeply about
0:29:47 there being examples of companies run by women of color at scale that are profitable, that
0:29:53 aren’t charities, and that is how I raised my first round of funding, which is around
0:29:57 $500,000, which to me was everything.
0:30:00 And for a lot of people, that’s a lot of money to get started with.
0:30:03 So talk to us about the behind the scenes of that.
0:30:05 How did you find these social impact investors?
0:30:06 How did you pitch them?
0:30:07 What was that like?
0:30:08 What did you prepare?
0:30:10 What was the meeting like?
0:30:13 Because I think a lot of people don’t hear this little nitty gritty information in terms
0:30:14 of fundraising.
0:30:15 Yeah.
0:30:19 So I had my deck that was a failure from the first round.
0:30:24 And so then I knew that I shouldn’t use the same materials because I needed to tell a
0:30:28 different story, because they’re evaluating impacts, so they were going to want to know
0:30:29 how do you help people?
0:30:30 How do you measure impact?
0:30:37 So I needed to think, put myself in the mindset of these folks and understand what their criteria
0:30:38 was.
0:30:39 And I just did research.
0:30:45 I sent Lamar, I sent literally just brute force reading forums, reading things on Reddit,
0:30:48 like just research, because I didn’t know anyone.
0:30:56 And the second thing was I applied for a program that would give me a certain amount of financing.
0:30:59 It was like $100,000.
0:31:02 And they were all a group of social impact investors that were financing the program.
0:31:07 And as a part of that process, they gave you all of these templates to fill out, like
0:31:10 a financial template, all these questions to answer.
0:31:14 And so I signed up for that program, it was called a new media ventures.
0:31:17 They still exist today and still run this program.
0:31:22 And through that process, I was able to put together my three year projections, financial
0:31:25 projections, which again felt insane to me.
0:31:27 I’m like, I’m just making shit up.
0:31:30 Like, I don’t know what’s going to happen in three years.
0:31:31 How are you guys going to know?
0:31:32 Do you know something?
0:31:33 I don’t know.
0:31:36 I updated my pitch deck, which was pretty straightforward.
0:31:40 Like I said, I just updated some of the slides in terms of impact.
0:31:46 I told the vision of Blavity, Inc., and where I wanted to go differently.
0:31:51 So I talked about hiring and financing the next generation of journalists.
0:32:00 I talked about how the more that you see images in advertising, the more it changes your perception
0:32:05 about what’s possible and that I talked more about the soft stuff.
0:32:10 And then I won that first 100K.
0:32:13 And then what I did next, and this is what I would recommend for anybody who’s fundraising,
0:32:20 I then asked the people who gave me money to help me finish raising the rest of my round.
0:32:26 I tried to make it their responsibility now that they’ve said yes to me to make me successful.
0:32:32 And I don’t think enough people put the burden on others to help them be successful when
0:32:35 actually it is their job and they want to.
0:32:36 Right?
0:32:37 You say, “Thank you for the money.”
0:32:38 And you move on.
0:32:39 And it’s like, “No, no, no, no.
0:32:40 Thank you for the money.
0:32:41 We’re now married forever.
0:32:42 How else can you help me?”
0:32:44 And I said, “Introduce me to people.”
0:32:46 I was introduced to people on their board.
0:32:48 I was introduced to their financiers.
0:32:52 And that’s how I filled out the rest of my round was actually all of the really, really
0:32:55 wealthy people that were giving them money.
0:33:00 And that kind of created this cover for our initial set of business because I had a really
0:33:06 strong network of angel investors and funds who made this commitment to, you know what?
0:33:09 We want to see Morgan, and we want to see Blabity grow.
0:33:12 And how did you decide how much equity you wanted to give away?
0:33:16 I hated how much equity I had to give away in the early stages.
0:33:22 I was shocked and shook at how much these VCs want to give away.
0:33:29 So every round, they typically want 10% to 20% of your business every time you raise.
0:33:32 And I was like, “No, I don’t want to do that.”
0:33:35 So actually, that’s one of the reasons I stopped fundraising.
0:33:41 So I’ve raised $13 million in the last, you know, over the last six plus years.
0:33:47 And I have not raised since 2018 because I do not want to continue to dilute my own ownership
0:33:52 and the ownership of my employees and our existing investors because every time you
0:33:55 do that, you go down 10 to 20%.
0:33:56 Yeah.
0:34:02 I only have given out equity to my executives basically who’ve been on my team because they’re
0:34:04 putting in sweat equity.
0:34:07 They’re deciding not to start their own companies to work on this company and so on.
0:34:12 So you’ve given equity to some of your employees and team members?
0:34:13 Yeah.
0:34:14 Every employee at Blavity gets equity.
0:34:15 Oh, wow.
0:34:16 Yes.
0:34:18 I know I’m a crazy lady, but it was important to me.
0:34:21 Talk to us about why.
0:34:24 When you become an owner of something, you treat it differently.
0:34:27 You treat it differently and you make decisions differently.
0:34:28 I believe that.
0:34:31 I also believe it’s core to our mission.
0:34:37 Although we’re not a social impact company only, we’re a for-profit enterprise, I do
0:34:43 believe that it is my responsibility as a CEO to building more progressive version of
0:34:44 what companies should look like.
0:34:45 Yeah.
0:34:48 I mean, I’m curious just to understand what does that look like?
0:34:52 If somebody signs on, at what point do they get equities?
0:34:53 Do they get distributions?
0:34:55 How does that work?
0:35:00 We have salary bands based off of levels and so our salary bands that are based off of
0:35:08 levels also include a set of stock options and those stock options are fair market value
0:35:09 of the company.
0:35:14 We have a third party that prices the company one to two times a year and they can buy those
0:35:18 stock options if they so choose, which is a heavily discounted rate.
0:35:19 Yeah.
0:35:20 It’s a private company.
0:35:21 It’s a private company.
0:35:22 It’s not like you can sell it.
0:35:27 We can buy it back from you, but you cannot sell it on the open market.
0:35:28 It’s off of your level.
0:35:32 You get a certain amount of shares and you can buy those shares while you’re here or
0:35:37 if you ever quit and or get fired, you have a window in which you could buy those shares.
0:35:39 Things don’t work out fine.
0:35:46 The standard for our company is a four-year cycle of vesting with a one-year cliff, meaning
0:35:50 you have to be with us for at least a year to get your first 25% of that allocation of
0:35:51 shares.
0:35:52 Got it.
0:35:57 So this also is good for you because it helps you retain your employees.
0:35:58 Is that right?
0:35:59 Absolutely.
0:36:03 I definitely know when people start exercising their shares, I’m always like, “Hold up.
0:36:04 Are you happy?
0:36:05 Are you about to leave?
0:36:06 Are you okay?
0:36:09 What’s going on?”
0:36:12 But generally, we see people exercise their shares.
0:36:15 If they’ve transitioned, we see that take place after the fact.
0:36:19 People don’t generally exercise during the time that they’re at the company because there’s
0:36:20 really no reason to.
0:36:24 But in the event that we sell the company, that means that everybody who has shares gets
0:36:28 a check, even if you were part of our vision and mission four years ago.
0:36:30 And I think that’s beautiful.
0:36:31 That is awesome.
0:36:32 I want to look into that.
0:36:33 It sounds really cool.
0:36:38 So talk to us about how Blavity has evolved over the years because it started as a newsletter
0:36:41 and I went on your website and I was like, “Wow, there’s a lot going on here.
0:36:44 So what are the types of things that you do today?
0:36:45 What’s your business model?”
0:36:46 Yeah.
0:36:51 With Blavity today, we have about 200 employees, we’re fully remote all over the country.
0:36:57 We have two divisions, so really two separate groups of leaders.
0:36:59 One is our Blavity Media Group.
0:37:02 Blavity Media Group is the original mission of Blavity.
0:37:07 We create brands and media brands that speak to our communities and then we work with advertisers
0:37:11 who want to authentically reach those communities.
0:37:18 We have big clients, Walmart, MasterCard, Toyota, et cetera, that advertise with us.
0:37:21 And we have online content and all the good things.
0:37:25 We also have a publisher network where we work with multicultural publishers that are
0:37:31 independent or smaller than us, who don’t have the same sales team or ad infrastructure,
0:37:37 who want to work with the McDonald’s or Toyota or other really incredible partners and run
0:37:40 their ad operations and monetization for them.
0:37:41 That’s amazing.
0:37:44 Sounds like we’re doing really some similar stuff.
0:37:45 We are.
0:37:51 And then our second business, which is called Afrotech and Talent Infusion, is really focused
0:37:56 on talent acquisition and diversity in the tech space.
0:38:01 And it’s separate from media because ultimately what we’re trying to do is increase the speed
0:38:09 in which people of color are able to get jobs and increase the pipeline of talent that stays
0:38:12 in tech and stays at these big companies.
0:38:17 And so we have a huge conference called Afrotech, typically in November, and we have memberships
0:38:22 and communities as well as a SaaS product behind the scenes that is for corporations
0:38:26 to get access to those talent pools year round.
0:38:28 So let’s stick on this topic of diversity.
0:38:32 You say diversity must be a true company value.
0:38:34 How do you make sure that you have a diverse workplace?
0:38:36 What are some of the things that you do?
0:38:37 Couple of things.
0:38:42 One is first, you have to have higher people that are diverse.
0:38:45 And when I say diverse, I don’t just mean black people.
0:38:54 I mean truly a diverse set of people across interest groups, religions, political interests,
0:38:58 particularly if you’re building a product that is for a diverse set of consumers.
0:39:03 The reason for this, and there’s a million studies on it, but basically diverse groups
0:39:08 come up with better answers, and diverse groups come up with better profits, and that’s where
0:39:12 in business, that’s where we are business people, we want profits.
0:39:15 So once you hire people, then you have to retain them, which is really, really hard
0:39:16 for a lot of companies.
0:39:19 They spend all this money to get you, and then when you get there, you’re like, “I don’t
0:39:20 want to work here.
0:39:25 This is not what you sold me,” because there’s no diversity at the top.
0:39:30 And so decisions that are passed through aren’t inconsistent with what they talked about versus
0:39:34 how it’s actually applied through the workforce, whether that’s pay equity, whether that’s
0:39:38 access to opportunities and mentorship, whether that’s even feedback.
0:39:42 It recently just read a research study that showed that if you’re a woman or a person
0:39:48 of color, the type of feedback, the vocabulary of feedback that you get is very generic versus
0:39:54 if you’re a male or a white or Asian male, you get very specific feedback, which allows
0:39:56 you to get better.
0:40:00 So we’re just widening the gaps.
0:40:05 So diversity has an inclusion and equity, have to be looked at at every single part
0:40:07 of your company along the way.
0:40:13 And then ultimately, I do think it’s important that at the top of these companies, your board,
0:40:19 your investors, the people who are really making the big decisions need to have inclusion
0:40:22 and diversity as a part of their own values, because it does make a difference.
0:40:29 I’m in these boardrooms, I advise big companies, I advise PepsiCo, I advise American Airlines.
0:40:33 These decisions are made in the boardrooms, so you’ve got to have that.
0:40:39 And I know that to attract better talent, you say that you celebrate success, and this
0:40:41 is a great way for you to attract diverse talent.
0:40:43 Can you tell us what you mean by that?
0:40:48 Yeah, so at our own company, we really try to showcase the incredible success of our
0:40:49 employees.
0:40:54 So if you look at our corporate branding, you look at our corporate social media profiles,
0:40:57 you’re not going to see a picture of me every five seconds.
0:40:59 It’s not called Morgan de Bonne company.
0:41:04 It is a corporation, and I want to make sure that the work of the people who are working
0:41:06 at this company are acknowledged.
0:41:11 That’s another piece of data that we see often, is that women and people of color in the workplace
0:41:13 feel underappreciated.
0:41:18 And underappreciated, certainly financially, of course, but also just generally, they feel
0:41:22 like they do a lot of invisible labor that’s not acknowledged.
0:41:28 And so we try to encourage companies, and even within our own company, create programs
0:41:32 like quarterly programs where we acknowledge employees who are doing really good work.
0:41:37 We have peer recognition programs so that you can acknowledge someone you enjoyed working
0:41:40 on a project with, and they really solved a great thing that happened with a client,
0:41:44 and they were quick, and they were awesome, and they had a great attitude.
0:41:51 So we try to create all these different moments for verbal and financial affirmations of people’s
0:41:52 success.
0:41:54 And I think companies have started to do that.
0:41:56 You start to hear about employee engagement.
0:41:59 You start to see these teams, chief culture officers.
0:42:04 There’s all these different titles in the tech world, but ultimately it’s about engagement.
0:42:07 How engaged is your diverse workforce?
0:42:12 And I know you’re also a proponent of anonymous employee surveys.
0:42:17 Who child, yes, because, and I used to be not terrified of them.
0:42:19 I used to be terrified of anonymous surveys.
0:42:22 I was like, “I don’t know if I want to know what they have to say about us.”
0:42:28 But what I’ve learned is anonymous surveys, frequent anonymous surveys, and I think that’s
0:42:29 the key.
0:42:31 If you do one once a year, you’re going to get a bunch of stuff.
0:42:35 But if you do these often, and it becomes a part of your culture, then people start to
0:42:40 feel psychologically safe to share things and things that maybe would be difficult for
0:42:45 them to tell their direct manager or boss, or they don’t know how to talk about it.
0:42:47 And you can identify trends much easier.
0:42:55 And in larger corporations, I think creating safe pathways for communication for everyone
0:42:56 is really important.
0:43:01 I say everyone because the other thing that we’ve noticed is that when you create systems
0:43:08 and tools and cultures that benefit people of color, benefit women, the rest of the group
0:43:10 also gets unintended benefits as well.
0:43:12 It’s just like maternity leave.
0:43:14 When you have maternity leave, that was great.
0:43:21 But parental leave is better because it actually benefits the whole family unit and the birthing
0:43:23 person or closed captions.
0:43:26 I mean, I can’t tell you how many times I’m like, “I don’t know what these people are
0:43:27 saying.
0:43:28 Let me turn on closed captions.”
0:43:32 Well, closed captions used to only be for people who could not hear.
0:43:36 But now we all benefit from closed captions, right?
0:43:41 So this idea that we got to go out of our way for diversity and all this stuff, I’m like,
0:43:43 “Yeah, but it’s going to make it better.”
0:43:44 That’s such a good point.
0:43:45 I love that.
0:43:46 Okay.
0:43:52 So let’s talk about this corporate mission that you have, which is to advance black happiness.
0:43:56 How do you define black happiness and what do you feel like you’ve achieved already on
0:43:57 that front?
0:43:58 Yeah.
0:44:00 We spend a lot of time on this mission.
0:44:02 It’s one that’s really ambitious, which is important.
0:44:06 When you think about happiness, it’s hard to be happy when you don’t have some fundamentals
0:44:07 in place.
0:44:15 Access to safe work environment, access to housing, access to information, equality of
0:44:20 treatment, access to and safety in your community, right?
0:44:24 There’s all these different things that are barrier to even being happy.
0:44:29 And we wanted to start with the top and our work our way there.
0:44:34 I think that you can find moments of joy and happiness in everything that you do.
0:44:39 And we wanted to make sure that the work that we are doing every single day at our company
0:44:41 is striving towards that.
0:44:48 So when we’re evaluating articles or social media posts, I ask the team, “Is this going
0:44:49 to do harm?
0:44:54 Is this going to be neutral or is this going to be a positive impact on happiness?”
0:44:56 And they have to think about that question.
0:44:59 And sometimes the answer is like, “I think it’s just neutral, then we don’t really need
0:45:00 to do it.”
0:45:05 So now if it’s going to have no impact, why are we wasting our time?
0:45:08 I really encourage companies and entrepreneurs that are building their missions and their
0:45:14 values to be ambitious enough that as you get larger, as you become bigger than you
0:45:18 ever thought you could be and you’ve got all these people working for you, can they
0:45:22 use and leverage your mission and values in their work every single day as just a gut
0:45:23 check.
0:45:27 We’ll be right back after a quick break from our sponsors.
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0:50:28 You grew this company.
0:50:31 You’ve got over 200 employees, which is super impressive.
0:50:37 As a diverse minority woman, you probably didn’t have many leadership experiences before
0:50:38 you started your company.
0:50:39 Same thing with me.
0:50:43 It’s like every leadership position that I’ve ever had was like, I put myself in that nobody
0:50:44 ever put me in a leadership position.
0:50:49 It was like an organization I started or whatever.
0:50:54 Talk to us about some of the challenges you had as a leader over the years, just trying
0:50:59 to be a good leader to this company without really much experience leading.
0:51:00 Yeah.
0:51:01 I mean, I made a bajillion mistakes.
0:51:04 I’m sure I make mistakes every day now.
0:51:12 I think what I’ve learned to accept and embrace is that I am on a journey where all I can
0:51:22 do is control my ability to take input, feedback, and then address it and address it head-on.
0:51:26 There were times in my life as the leader of this company where I was avoided, where I
0:51:27 didn’t address it head-on.
0:51:30 I made all these different excuses.
0:51:31 This is sexist.
0:51:34 These are expectations that they wouldn’t have for a male CEO.
0:51:37 My employees would never say this stuff to a male CEO.
0:51:42 This would never happen to a white man media company that had the same statistics that
0:51:43 I have.
0:51:44 These advertisers would never give us these prices.
0:51:48 I mean, I made all these different excuses and all these different things, but at the
0:51:54 end of the day, I’m still who I am, whether those things are true or not true.
0:51:55 So it’s not really.
0:52:01 What I’ve learned, it’s not really productive for me to spend any energy there and to very
0:52:07 quickly move myself towards a place of where it’s in my control, what’s in my power, and
0:52:12 how can I make an impact or improve the things that are in my control and my power?
0:52:13 So I took classes.
0:52:17 I hired executive coaches and read a lot of books.
0:52:19 I read tons of books.
0:52:20 I listened to podcasts.
0:52:22 I’m on a million and one newsletters.
0:52:28 I mean, I’ve just made learning and learning how to be a better leader a part of my engine
0:52:30 every single day.
0:52:35 And I have really close advisors who can give me feedback and call me out and say, “I don’t
0:52:37 care if you’re black, green, tall, short, Morgan.
0:52:38 That was a bad decision.”
0:52:42 That was a bad decision.
0:52:45 And this is how you need to fix it.
0:52:50 And just really having a tribe of people who I can go to and trust that are invested enough
0:52:52 in me and invested enough in the company.
0:52:53 And that’s my board.
0:52:54 Those are my co-founders.
0:52:57 Typically, they’re not strangers I meet off the street.
0:53:03 I mean, it’s like people who have really been with me a long time and understand the true
0:53:06 vision of what I’m trying to accomplish.
0:53:10 And that would be my advice to anyone is like, sometimes when people are looking for mentors
0:53:15 or advisors, they make this list that’s all the way up here, “You know, I would love to
0:53:21 have Sheryl Sandberg as my advisor, or I would love to have Elon Musk as my advisor.”
0:53:22 And I’m like, “Really?
0:53:24 Like, you know, that’s not really realistic.”
0:53:25 Yeah.
0:53:26 Get real.
0:53:27 Let’s get real.
0:53:30 But who has been rocking with you for a long time?
0:53:32 Who is successful, maybe in a different industry?
0:53:37 Who you can have quarterly meetings with or quarterly lunches or dinners with.
0:53:43 And that’s how I’ve been able to accelerate, I think, my growth, my personal development
0:53:50 and also pay it forward to other people through my own advisory or my own podcast so that
0:53:53 along the way, I can be that for other people.
0:53:56 Well, I have to ask you, I don’t have a board.
0:53:59 I always think about starting a board and then I just get too busy and I never start
0:54:00 a board, right?
0:54:03 I have like some people with their toes in, right?
0:54:05 But don’t have a formal board.
0:54:08 If you have a formal board, how is it structured?
0:54:11 I do have a formal board.
0:54:15 When you take venture capital after a certain stage, you have to have a formal board because
0:54:18 they take 10 to 20% of their company and they want to watch you.
0:54:21 They have the rights to information.
0:54:23 I have a board meeting coming up soon.
0:54:25 So it’s the people who invested who are on the board?
0:54:26 That’s right.
0:54:27 Okay.
0:54:28 So it’s the biggest investors.
0:54:29 Take the seats.
0:54:31 And it’s typically an odd number.
0:54:33 So my board is small.
0:54:34 It’s three people.
0:54:36 Some boards are sevens and boards are nine.
0:54:41 I mean, some boards are huge and we vote on the most important thing.
0:54:45 So if I want to do an acquisition, I have to get board approval.
0:54:47 They set my salary, right?
0:54:49 I mean, I work for the board.
0:54:51 I am the chairperson of the board.
0:54:54 I’m also CEO, which are really two separate roles.
0:54:58 So you know, there may be a time where we hire a CEO, the CEO reports to the board, right?
0:55:00 And the chairperson is the head of the board.
0:55:06 So I have double roles, but at some point probably won’t see me as CEO.
0:55:11 And I’ll still control the board, but that will be a different phase of life for me.
0:55:14 But basically, that’s how it’s set up.
0:55:17 And I recommend that people consider, even if it’s an informal board, you don’t have
0:55:22 to have one with voting rights and all these different things, because learning to organize
0:55:28 your information on a quarterly basis and key performance indicators for your company
0:55:30 makes you a better leader.
0:55:32 And it also helps your leaders become better leaders.
0:55:37 So the people reporting into you know that you need to go and justify these decisions
0:55:42 or these hires or these budgets every 90 days.
0:55:45 And that has made us a better company.
0:55:47 It has made us a better workplace.
0:55:53 It has made us a more equitable workplace, because everything is clear and written down.
0:56:00 There’s none of this, like, just because she wants to, like, no.
0:56:03 And I think that has been really helpful as to why we’ve been able to grow and mature
0:56:04 so quickly.
0:56:10 My last question for you on entrepreneurship, I know from me starting my own company as
0:56:14 a side hustle and then growing so fast, you had a very similar experience.
0:56:20 My relationships really took a toll, especially like the first four years of all of this.
0:56:22 Talk to us about that.
0:56:26 How much did you have to sacrifice personally and then now that you’ve got your feet on
0:56:32 the ground, how do you prioritize your life with entrepreneurship?
0:56:37 I mean, you know, I really do feel like we were living parallel universes.
0:56:38 It’s brutal.
0:56:45 I was single for a long time or I had terrible situationships and just, I wasn’t a great
0:56:46 partner.
0:56:47 There’s no way.
0:56:49 I mean, I’m working 12, 16 hour days.
0:56:51 I don’t have capacity for your stuff.
0:56:54 I barely have capacity for my stuff.
0:56:58 And then the type of people that I was dating or in relationship with, then you wind up
0:57:02 dating people who also have a bunch of stuff going on because that’s not the only way that
0:57:03 you feel okay.
0:57:04 Yeah.
0:57:05 Right?
0:57:13 So I had a lot of tragic situations, but I think eventually I had to make a decision
0:57:16 on, do you ever want to have a partner in life?
0:57:23 Do you ever want to be healthy and not have to meditate for an hour to work because you’ve
0:57:28 got so much going on, I used to wake up in the middle of the night with my laptop and
0:57:31 just turn over and just, just tick, tick, tick.
0:57:34 So that was not sustainable for me.
0:57:38 It was not the life that I wanted when I looked into the future.
0:57:45 And it took a lot of hard work and intentionality and behavior shifts to get me to the place
0:57:46 where I am now.
0:57:51 I physically left LA, I live in Nashville, Tennessee, because part of it was the physical
0:57:56 environment, was one that was really hard for me to say no to all the things that were
0:57:57 coming my way.
0:58:00 I wanted to be closer with my family, you know, I wanted to have Sunday dinners with
0:58:01 my parents.
0:58:09 I wanted to be slightly more normal and I wanted to put myself potentially in a position to
0:58:10 find a partner.
0:58:14 And if I wanted a family at some point to be able to have a community and a culture in
0:58:20 which that family was going to wind up not with my 12 year old doing drugs in LA, but
0:58:23 somebody who’d be like, oh yes, I don’t even know what kind of a this is.
0:58:27 I mean, I don’t think that’s really the reality for these kids these days, but like just a
0:58:33 little bit more innocent than the things going on in New York and LA.
0:58:37 You see a lot in these spaces and it wasn’t easy.
0:58:39 People thought I was nuts when I left LA.
0:58:43 I mean, it’s like, how can you be so successful and have all these things and all these employees
0:58:47 and stuff that you live in like, Tennessee, it’s making sense.
0:58:50 But it does make sense to me and it’s worked out.
0:58:51 Yeah.
0:58:54 And nowadays as an entrepreneur, you can be just online crushing it.
0:58:58 You don’t need to be in physical spaces at least all the time anymore.
0:59:00 So you have a book coming out.
0:59:01 Tell us about this book.
0:59:02 What is it called?
0:59:03 What is it going to be about?
0:59:04 When does it come out?
0:59:05 Yeah.
0:59:06 So I’m finishing writing it now.
0:59:12 The book comes out next year, next fall, and it’s all about helping other ambitious people
0:59:17 define life and their success for themselves.
0:59:20 And even if you’re good, feel like I’m good, but I’m not great.
0:59:26 I want to get to the point where I’m living every week in my purpose.
0:59:30 And that might mean I’m a stay at home mom and I’m doing pick up and drop off and I’m
0:59:34 investing in my hobbies and I’m living a beautiful life.
0:59:35 That’s great.
0:59:39 It could mean I’m starting a media company and I’m growing this thing and I’m trying
0:59:42 to figure out how to navigate all these choices I need to make.
0:59:47 But the real person that it is for is somebody who aspires to have a vision of the life
0:59:52 that they want to live and then they’re willing to make some tough, temporary choices like
0:59:56 you and I have to get there and basically showing them how.
0:59:57 Well, awesome.
1:00:00 I can’t wait to have you back on to talk about that book.
1:00:04 So we’ll have you back on in six months or so when you’re done and the book is coming
1:00:05 out.
1:00:06 Thank you so much.
1:00:08 I end my show with two questions that I ask everyone.
1:00:13 So the first one, what is one actionable thing our young and profitors can do today to become
1:00:16 more profitable tomorrow?
1:00:17 Invest in yourself.
1:00:23 Whether that’s books, audible, whether that is investing in the stock market so you have
1:00:30 some safety net, whatever it may be, invest in yourself, you’re going to get paid so much
1:00:35 more dividends if you invest in yourself before material things.
1:00:36 I totally agree.
1:00:42 Getting as many skills as possible is so key, especially in 2023 and beyond.
1:00:45 And what is your secret to profiting in life?
1:00:49 And this can go beyond business, beyond financial, beyond the topic of today’s episode.
1:00:54 The key to profiting in life is so many things.
1:01:03 I think that my core key to profiting in life is to be happy and joyful and in peace
1:01:11 in my every day, to be totally, fully like I love today, not always wishing and wanting
1:01:12 for more.
1:01:18 Yes, putting in the work during the day to get to my more, but being totally satisfied
1:01:21 if I ran this day back every day, I’m good.
1:01:22 Yeah.
1:01:23 It’s so true.
1:01:25 Satisfaction is so important to happiness.
1:01:28 And then we’re just like always chasing something else and never being happy.
1:01:31 So I really like that you said that.
1:01:35 Morgan, where can everybody learn more about you and everything that you do?
1:01:39 You can listen to my podcast, The Journey podcast, where I talk about all the things,
1:01:43 all my challenges, all the things I fuck up on all the time.
1:01:45 And then all my fun friends along the way.
1:01:50 You can follow me on TikTok if you want the crazy weird me.
1:01:55 And you can follow me on Instagram, of course, if you want the more curated version, such
1:01:56 as Instagram is these days.
1:01:57 Awesome.
1:02:00 Well, I’ll stick all those links in the show notes on make sure that everybody follows
1:02:01 you.
1:02:03 Morgan, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast.
1:02:04 Thank you so much for having me.
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