March 12, 2025 • 46 mins
Hey BA Fam! This week, Mandi is joined by two powerhouse women who are shaking things up in their industries. Get ready for a fun, insightful, and inspiring conversation with Lisa Beasley, the comedic genius behind the viral character “Corporate Erin,” and Kenya Parham, the Chief Growth Officer of Spill, the Black-owned social media platform that’s changing the game.
What We’re Talking About:
• Lisa’s Journey from Gary to Greatness: Lisa takes us through her path from growing up in Gary, Indiana, to becoming a viral sensation. She spills on how her corporate consulting days inspired “Corporate Erin” and why she left traditional Hollywood behind to take control of her creative career.
• What Makes Spill Special: Kenya breaks down how Spill is creating a safe and inclusive space for Black, Brown, and queer communities online. She shares how the platform uses culturally competent AI and human moderators to protect users while fostering authentic connections.
Follow Lisa Beasley (@lisabevolving) for more Corporate Erin antics and updates on her creative projects.
Join Kenya Parham (@spillmob) and check out what makes this platform the new go-to for culture drivers.
Download Spill > https://www.spill.com/
Take part in Spill's crowdfunding round > https://wefunder.com/spill/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Okaba fan, I cannot be more excited to have this
duo on the show. First of all, it's the duo
I didn't know I needed in my life. And y'all
know of brown ambition. I want to create a space
where we can, like sister talk like we're getting around
a table. We are not just having guests on who
want to talk about, of course, all their incredible business ventures,
(00:22):
but the people who have come up with them, the
relationships that have sustained them during those hard times, the
friendships that keep them going, the people who know the real,
real you know, when the lights go off and the
way it comes off, and the real you know, the
real shit that we're all going through. And so I
(00:42):
have a couple of incredible guests today. First, I have
Kenya param who is the chief growth officer for a
spill app. Here's the t Now, if y'all are not
familiar with spill app, what's wrong with you? If you're
looking for an alternative to the you know what of
it all? Just going to put the what are we
calling it? The are just formally known as Twitter, and
you want to join a black owned, black maid for
(01:06):
the culture. Social media app spill is where it's at.
I love Spill, and then also Lisa Beasley, who I
don't even know. Lisa, Like when people recognize your name,
I feel like if I said, your real name is
kind of cool, You're like a Clark Kent kind of vibe.
She's actually better known as Corporate Aaron, the comedian actress.
(01:27):
And we'll talk a little bit about entrepreneur as well,
who has been plaguing our social media nightmares for years
and giving us all PTSD of being in corporate and
talking and listening to the corporate errands of the world.
But I'm excited for y'all to get to know Lisa
as well as Kenya, who.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Y'all have come up together right well, firstly, you know,
really grateful to be here with you and have an
opportunity to introduce Spill to the BA community, the Brown
Ambvision community.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
We are conversation connection, culture, community, commerce, an impactful place
where we are on a mission to become the de
facto place to discuss and discover the things that matter
most to us as culture driving communities. We are an
emerging social platform that's built to center brown, black, queer
(02:21):
communities who have historically driven culture across the Internet, but
unfortunately received the line share of hate on other social
platforms because of a lack of trust and safety. So
on spill, we have a deep, heavy policy and practical
investment in moderation and safety.
Speaker 4 (02:40):
We can tag team Lisia, you know when you want
to come through.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
But we were both at the AFRO Tech conference this
past year in November. Where was I.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
Okay, I didn't get a chance to meet you, Lisa,
but I saw you.
Speaker 4 (02:56):
Yeah, I saw you.
Speaker 5 (02:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (02:57):
Corporate Air was there and I took a It was
a girl's trip. It was me and Corporate here and
we were both there at the same time.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
Gotcha right, that's right.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
And so I had quite a few speaking engagements over
the course of a couple of days. It was a
super packed schedule and we had this spilled leadership team
and a couple of our other folks there and we
ran into each other at the Black Excellence brunch and
the minute that I saw her.
Speaker 4 (03:24):
I was like, Okay, I know exactly who this is.
I had a little fan girl moment.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
I went up to her and as I was speaking
to introduce myself, she was like, I know who you are.
I haven't seen you over the last couple of days,
and I was like, okay.
Speaker 6 (03:37):
Yeah, yeah, And I remember thinking, so at the last
event that we saw each other at the Black Excellence brunch,
so I was there working the event, but also there
for myself.
Speaker 5 (03:47):
So I'm getting what I want to get done.
Speaker 6 (03:49):
But there was only a couple of activations that Lisa
myself wanted to go to, because it is true, I
do have different personalities from my characters, even though they
all come from the same place.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
I'm so really to hear your real voice, I gotta
tell you, that's such a relief.
Speaker 6 (04:04):
I can also do this like Beyonce though, so we
have options. Okay, so she's she's a She's at the brunch,
but had I had only gone to a couple of other,
like auxiliary events put on by different companies, but Spill
was always the like one of the companies at the
(04:26):
activations that I was going to, So I didn't know,
but I went to the Spill activations, And now that
I'm thinking about it, the Spill activations appealed to me.
Speaker 5 (04:33):
So those are the extra ones that I went to.
Speaker 6 (04:35):
Because you know, when you go to these huge conferences,
there's so much going on at once, which is why,
which is why you have three people at a conference
and they not know and so speaking to that while
she's doing her thing with the there's a Microsoft Copilot event.
She's on a panel and she's just talking that talk
I like to hear. It's just very decolonized and there
(04:56):
was no centering of ideals.
Speaker 5 (04:57):
That I didn't like.
Speaker 3 (04:58):
Yeah, and within like the first couple of minutes, so
I'm like, hey, girl, huge fan of your work, not
just your comedy and your artistry, but also you know,
corporate batty to corporate batty, Like, I salute you.
Speaker 4 (05:12):
I get it. It makes sense to me.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
And I'm just kind of going through the motions and
she's like, okay, you know what, I got to let
you know right now. I didn't even have to pitch her.
She was like, I'm planning this huge stunt. I'm leaving
X and we about to do something and I'm joining
Spill and.
Speaker 4 (05:28):
I want you to know that.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
From that moment until when we chily pulled off this
really successful big stunt, it was like ten days in time,
which wow, I've heard of.
Speaker 6 (05:39):
Okay, I'm not trying to be like go out and
circle back, y'all. I want I'm.
Speaker 5 (05:44):
In the camp of like, will let's all be making
pick your fruit off trees?
Speaker 6 (05:48):
But I know we can't get it. So this is
what I mean in terms of being a corporate baddy.
The activation that we pulled off that took ten days
would have taken your typical stress G marketing team anywhere
from three weeks to seven eight months. Seriously so and
still and people will know what I mean when I
(06:09):
say this, still banging it out legitimately, like still having
a deliverable slist, still having you know, the itemizations, still
getting to the contracting, still doing the thing we've already done,
the whole meetings to death thing that stops in the
way of progress.
Speaker 5 (06:24):
And so here I.
Speaker 6 (06:25):
See this high executive in a large platform that I
could have a place in, looking at me and talking
to me.
Speaker 5 (06:36):
That's never happened at other platforms.
Speaker 6 (06:38):
So on X I left, it was twenty seven thousand
followers and looking across if I if I look across
my Internet kingdom, yes, you know, surveying the land of
about six hundred and fifty thousand, I'm like, I can
do away with that island. So but I also understand
(06:59):
very de how my revenue streams as a pertean's platform
work and how they also work as leveraging and marketing channels.
So I didn't feel like I was losing anything because
I was gaining some of my soul.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
Back, right yeah, and it's nice. I mean you guys
are in startup phase, right ken yea? I mean you've
been Mischief Growth officer. How's the growing doing? What does
that all entail? How do you grow? Can't I can't
think of a more intimidating kind of platform to launch
when there's so much noise, so many options. My god,
(07:36):
thread and Blue Threads and Blue Sky and the meta
of it all. I'm like, but to have something like
spill in the mix? What has that been like to
grow this brand at this time?
Speaker 4 (07:48):
You know?
Speaker 3 (07:49):
I started off with the team day one, twenty twenty three.
At the top of twenty twenty three as the global
Vice president for Community and Partnerships.
Speaker 4 (07:59):
At the top of this year, I've stepped into being Chief.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
Growth Officer, where I'm now responsible for leading all growth revenue.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
User lines got promoted.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
I love to optimize the complete user journey, maximizing retention,
scaling revenue operations, and making sure that our high performing
teams are focused on success, and so growth looks a
lot like an upward trajectory, but also continuing to double
and triple down on what we've always done really well,
which is centering the communities, protecting the communities who drive
(08:31):
culture forward, and making sure that people have a stafer,
more fun, more enjoyable place on the Internet to just
be ourselves.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
How is it that you like, what actually goes into
making this a protected a protected space, like we're an
in dangerous b bcs or something the protected lens. If
you're black, you're queer, your trands in that community. What
are you getting that's different? You've said you protect us,
But is it through moderation? Is it like we're going
to filter out racism and misogyny and that kind of thing.
(09:00):
What actually is happening behind the Wizard's curtain?
Speaker 4 (09:02):
Yeah, I appreciate that question.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
So, firstly, we have a really robust set of community
guidelines that I authored in partnership with some of the
top trust in safety professionals who are also black women
across in this field. I sat and listened and learned
to what was working and what wasn't working on other platforms.
Speaker 4 (09:23):
When we authored our rules, and that is kind of
the rule book.
Speaker 3 (09:28):
By which we have created, you know, governance on Spill,
and then we kind of bring our tech into it
where we are training one of the first ever large
language models in AI for content moderation, so basically culturally
competent technology that is enforcing our community guidelines. And an
(09:50):
amazing thing happens when we do that, because it's not
just about the defense obviously, right, like you know, the
things that would normally populate on other social platforms hit
the timeline on Spill because of our AI lines of defense.
Speaker 4 (10:04):
But we also have humans in.
Speaker 3 (10:06):
The loop, a talented team of culturally competently trained human
beings who are on the clock twenty four to seven
three sixty five in shifts to be the human lines
of defense to enforce these rules as well. And so
that awesome thing happens I was talking about where it's
not just about defense, but it's also about the offense.
(10:28):
Because when you don't have to worry about defending for
your life on social media, right, you show up with
much more authentic, authentistic voice, You show up much more
authentically in you know, in community, you know, and love
happens when that happens, right, connection happens, Relationships foster, you
(10:54):
can do business with folks right, Just amazing things spark
from a place where you don't have to feel like
you are combating yourself against some of the most vitriolic,
disgusting elements of hate that, in particular, black women who
over index in use on social media face every single day.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
Yeah, I think I'm in like a bit of a
bubble with Brown Ambition because just the audience we attract,
I mean, it's us. It just has always felt so
safe and our listeners, it's just positivity up and down.
And I mean doesn't mean they won't say when they
don't like something or question something, but it feels very
safe here. And it sounds like Spill also kind of
(11:38):
offers that community. I have a personal Spill account. I
think I need to start my Brown Ambition Spill account
breaking news Brown Ambition on Spill come follow us.
Speaker 4 (11:47):
I mean, we've got groups now, so it'd be great
to help.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
Great Fition group where okay.
Speaker 3 (11:53):
Your listeners and your community can continue to receive updates
about what's happening on in the Brown Ambition world.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
Yeah, all right, so tell me like Kenya and Aaron,
you guys met at this conference. I'm kind of surprised.
Should I just called you Aaron? If you bring that wing,
if you take that listen the pitch, better stay the pitch.
I like the baritone. Uh what was I going anyway? Whatever?
(12:25):
I want to start talking in a British accent again,
It'll be fine, Aaron.
Speaker 5 (12:30):
No, this is the part of my person who joke.
Speaker 6 (12:32):
By the way, I'm maliciously I maliciously enjoyed this a
little bit, so I'm sorry.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
But I'm glad you do. It's like my sons because
I named them Rio and Remy, which I'm an idiot,
and yeah, it's great. But I like Lisa, even though
your name is in like twenty font in front of
my face. Christ Almighty Lisa. When you were an Afro
tech you were You're also an entrepreneur, right, so like,
can you tell us about your corporate journey and how
(13:00):
it's been in entrepreneurship land? How are you coping?
Speaker 5 (13:03):
Yeah?
Speaker 6 (13:03):
Absolutely, A lot of people don't know my story because
on purpose, I kind of market myself forward facing with
the content because I've been having a lot of fun
having a direct access to people who watch my content.
Without Hollywood gatekeepers. So grow up, Gary and Diana. I
went to perform in arts high school, but I played
(13:25):
the clarinet, so I was very shy.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
So I wait a second, I also was a clarinet player.
Does that mean that we're shy?
Speaker 6 (13:32):
Well, I was shy, but I knew I wanted to
be like a star and a singer and broad Way.
Speaker 5 (13:38):
But I was like, I was.
Speaker 4 (13:44):
Clarinet in middle school.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
You guys all, this is now a different podcast right now.
That's so funny.
Speaker 6 (13:58):
Yeah, so I took the that too. It was the
only way I was gonna pay for college. So I
went to a college in Memphis, Tennessee. I went to
lamorna On College, went on a full music scholarship and there,
yeah there, so I uh uh did a concentration in
classical jazz studies. And from there I knew that I
did not want to enter the workforce because I did
(14:20):
the responsible thing of Okay, in senior year college, you
can get a management position just because you have a
bachelor's It doesn't even matter what it's in. So I
did those programs that employers was doing at the time
where they were enticing you know, fresh college grads doing
the responsible thing of like, alright, let me secure my
check so I could pay for my car so I
could drive to my job, so I could pay for
(14:40):
my apartment, so I could pay for my car so
I could drive for my job. So and I and
I was like, I wanna be a performer and I
that was like one of the first calls from inside
the house that I truly answered where I felt like
I am shifting the direction of my life. And I
went to LA instead of working at like enterprise rent
a car. I could have got started at like sixty
thousand dollars benefits, but I decided to go to LA
(15:02):
with three suitcases and be homeless until I found an
apartment instead. And then I did act the school for
a couple of years, and that was like I knew
the last time or I thought that I would be
able to immerse myself fully in the arts for like
twelve fourteen hours a day. I was truly on my fame.
And here's where you start paying and sweat. So fast
forward to leaving that I got broke, moved back to Gary, Indianna.
Speaker 5 (15:24):
And then I was like, oh no.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
Okay, so how many years did you try to kick
it in LA before I was there for.
Speaker 5 (15:31):
Two and a half years.
Speaker 6 (15:32):
I was at school for two years and then I
tried to do six months as a green, fresh eted
actors student. I ain't had no money, I didn't understand Hollywood.
I just knew I was very talented, and that is
not how you want to.
Speaker 5 (15:44):
Go about that.
Speaker 6 (15:45):
So I moved back to Gary and then I started
auditioning in Chicago, and that's where I found like this
robust theater scene, and that's where.
Speaker 5 (15:52):
I found like a career and like where you could.
Speaker 6 (15:55):
Get your equity card and have health insurance because you're
an artist in Chicago.
Speaker 5 (16:00):
And then just started building from there.
Speaker 6 (16:02):
It's a great place to like be a producing artist
and curate for the city. And then I did about
six to ten shows a week for about ten to
twelve years.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
What kind of shows was this?
Speaker 3 (16:14):
Like?
Speaker 1 (16:14):
Improv it?
Speaker 5 (16:15):
So it ended up with improv. But at the start
I was doing.
Speaker 6 (16:20):
Musical theater, like original musical theater from playing theater houses
in Chicago or like other August Wilson's and the and
the Fences and the and I was always a comedic
relief in serious.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
Plays and then oh we love that, Yeah.
Speaker 6 (16:35):
And then I started started doing comedy in Chicago because
I found the there was this improv scene growing up.
We called it ad living, and I didn't know how
serious improv was a new team if they had a show,
but I was never into I was never into Saturday
Night Live. I was never into the improv as they
know it. I was just into black people play all day.
(16:57):
So that's where I get my chops from. So it
turned out I was very good at it and started
getting the jobs that that that the white people had
wanted for decades but didn't and I would get there
as soon as possible, get the jobs that they wanted.
Speaker 5 (17:16):
And just skyrocketed through that.
Speaker 6 (17:17):
And then that's when I saw like this path of
and here's how you get a TV show, and here's
how you get in writer's rooms, and here's how you
work and how like, and so I sincerely tried.
Speaker 5 (17:27):
To do that and it was very hard.
Speaker 6 (17:30):
But there is this transition from from acting on stage
to TV that does take time because the immediate gratification
of having an audience is no longer there when you're
on set.
Speaker 5 (17:43):
So it was a different mindset that I was shifted into.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
So did you try to do TV, Like, were y
did you have like pilots.
Speaker 5 (17:50):
Or oh absolutely, yeah, so you.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
Moved back to LA at a certain point, or you
doing that in Chicago? Okay.
Speaker 6 (17:56):
I stayed in Chicago because I was one of those
people that's like, oh, you don't have to be out
there to do this, because they moved slower out there,
just traditionally as working meaning California queen.
Speaker 5 (18:07):
Oh yeah yeah, and not slow slower like in Chicago.
We have a problem.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
No, I'm from New York. I mean I live in
New York now, but I know they do move slow
in Cali.
Speaker 5 (18:16):
Yeah, like.
Speaker 6 (18:20):
Tuesday, we'd be like, you want to meet, Let's meet Wednesday.
But in California it's like, let's meet next Wednesday.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
So it's that gives me anxiety just thinking about that.
Why not now?
Speaker 6 (18:29):
Yeah, So I was like I'm gonna keep my operation
here because I started to get guest star roles.
Speaker 5 (18:34):
I did a couple of TV shows.
Speaker 6 (18:36):
I have a lot of friends in TV, like helping
write pilots and pitching pilots, and I was doing the
pitch game. But I heard no too many times for
the level of talent that I knew that I had,
and so I stopped, and so I worked at I
was a writer at Cards Against Humanity, And on June twelfth,
twenty seventeen, that's when I was decided to become a
full time entrepreneur because I've always done that. I did
(18:59):
graph design to support myself through acting school, and that
built this way up kind of like with my acting
career of becoming eventually a creative director and a founder
and a company. So I know, I just sounded like
I skipped a lot, but this is like ten years
of me working skills alongside each other because to be
an actor, I had to have a real world skill
to support myself because it was one hundred and twenty
(19:21):
five dollars a week. The kids' theater shows were not
gonna pay the bills, so I would offset it with uh,
my own graphic design clients that I managed terribly because
I didn't understand my own workflow. If we wanna talk
about entrepreneurs, not I. I have a feeling in my
spirit that there are some listeners on the Brown Ambition
that understand the client deliverable aspect of their businesses, and
(19:44):
how do you start to realize it's a different skill set.
Speaker 5 (19:46):
But anyway, it's so real. That's so it's it's so real.
Speaker 6 (19:49):
And so I took I took those skills and I
started a traditional, good old fashion corporate, mid corporate corporate
business where I did a inclusion consultant for Fortune five
hundred and Fortune one hundred companies and this is where. Yeah,
so that was a good that was a good five
years of talking to industry agnostic. Industry agnostic is how
(20:15):
we work. But every single call was the same. And
so by this time in my acting journey, I had
taken my characters off stage and started to put them
online because of the pandemic, because I was bored and
I missed applause, and I.
Speaker 5 (20:30):
Also went through being real.
Speaker 6 (20:32):
I went through my whole like there's no audience, this
energy is gone, and I just started to play with
the audience that I had, and that audience grew. So
Corporate Airon is like the fourth character entry pointing to
this universe as some people they've already entered into different characters.
So before Corporate Airon, LORI Lightfoot ran locally really huge
(20:54):
in Chicago.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
And that's the mayor, right, you did like an impersonation, yes,
remember that one?
Speaker 5 (21:00):
Yeah, on my way out of corporate.
Speaker 6 (21:02):
I couldn't take it anymore, and so I was like,
y'all are not going to stop doing this. So I
became them and made that my next character, and then
that swelled a portion of my business and I forgot
where I was going or what I was being asked.
But I think that's kind of a good place.
Speaker 5 (21:21):
To be, like, hey, we are and here we are out.
Speaker 4 (21:24):
Here because I resonate with so much of it.
Speaker 3 (21:28):
I mean a lot of times people, particularly in the
last two years, here the work that I'm doing with Spill,
and assume if they've never met or seen me before
that I just kind of always worked in tech, but
this is my first time working in working at SPILL
is my first time working in house one hundred percent
for another company. Straight out of school, I invested in
(21:52):
myself and became a consultant. I started off as a
girl who got the coffee and worked my way up
to being a campaigns consultant and a fundraiser in electoral politics,
and in twenty six sixteen transitioned that because a special
thing happened in twenty sixteen that we all remember with
(22:12):
the elections there, right, And I.
Speaker 5 (22:15):
Was like.
Speaker 3 (22:17):
And I was like, well, I think I need to
kind of recalibrate and check on myself a little bit.
And I parlayed that into doing cultural consulting from movie
TV film studios. So there are so many parallels between,
you know, our trajectories in terms of being entrepreneurs, being
black women who had to kind of hybrid interface into
(22:39):
corporate infrastructures while also running our own business businesses. And
you know how amazing. I would have never known that
that pathway, that trajectory could have led me into working
in tech or recognized a non traditional pathway that was
had a transferable skill set the entire or time that
(23:00):
would be applicable for a time like now to create
you know, uh help help to create spell.
Speaker 5 (23:08):
It's a transferable skill set for me.
Speaker 6 (23:10):
Cause when when I heard her background, and it's bigger
than the consultancy piece. But when you hear the background,
entrepreneurs and people who have been in these different worlds
know what that looks like really on a day to
day level, Okay, like this this you got a thousand,
ten ninety nine and W two's when it's time to
do taxes, you got like the day to day of
it it's just kind of a different lifestyle.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
Yeah, and I c I regre lucky.
Speaker 6 (23:38):
Ye, what I do, what i've what I've done, and
what I think Kid is doing, which is why the
likes of us found each other and for and what
I hope to inspire people to do is all of
these transferable skills that we use for other people, use
them for yourself or for what you're trying to build.
So I used to be in circle back, follow up,
project manager, hell for other companies I do. I'm not
(24:05):
saying I'm running. I treat myself like that. I give
myself grace. I'm not indulging myself in white supervis practices
on myself that's crazy.
Speaker 5 (24:14):
But I am using that skill set to build.
Speaker 1 (24:18):
Yeah, it's about that energy. I was just writing I'm
working on my first book right now, and I was
just I literally wrote in writing a chapter that's basically
encouraging any woman woman of color in corporate to take
your age, subtract it from one hundred, and the larger
number is what percentage of time you should be focusing
on other skills Like then year nine to five, which
(24:40):
may sound like, Okay, I'm twenty two, so I'm really
going to spend you know, seventy eight percent of my
time on myself, Like yeah, yeah, I think that's I
think that's fair like that.
Speaker 4 (24:51):
Yeah, wait a minute.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
I so you can flip it. If you're more conservative,
you can say, Okay, I'll spend twenty two percent of
my time on my side hustle and eighty percent. But
just the idea is to normalize the the just normalize
that behavior, Normalize that you should be working on other
things and putting all of your one hundred percent into
a company that can drop you at the you know,
(25:15):
like that, and like screw anyone who says that federal work,
federal government job, good government jobs are safe, because like,
look at what's happening right now to thousands, tens of
thousands of workers who are being let go. So yeah,
I'm just big on saying hell no, do not give
them your one hundred percent. Save something for yourself so
that you have more resilience. So, whether it's like you Aaron,
(25:38):
I mean whatever your name is, got me again, Got
me again, whether it's you Lisa or you Kenya, you know,
leveraging those skills and in corporate but then taking them
out for yourself as well.
Speaker 3 (25:55):
Totally, and thank goodness we did. You know, like again,
you know, building community on a social space, a social
app was far outside of my purview of what I
thought is something that I would be doing.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
As a creator. Lisa. Yes, Lisa, I questioned myself even
when I said it right, as a creator, Lisa especially
and with your partnership and you know, your activation with
Spill and being on this app. Now, I'm curious because
even with Brown Ambition or any other creator, now there
is this increasing conversation about you know, owning your community
and when you put all your eggs in one social
(26:34):
media platform for example, that and we saw this with TikTok, right,
TikTok almost well went away, and like what that could
have meant. I feel like TikTok is probably your biggest platform.
That's where I first discovered you.
Speaker 6 (26:47):
I'm so glad we're talking about this, and I'm probably
gonna get more specific because of your audience and for you,
please dealer, because this is kind of the stuff I
nerrid out about that I don't get to talk about
because a lot of people, you know, well, we're all
just enjoying the content because largely how I view myself
as a creator is when I think about, Oh, I
(27:11):
didn't think I would be doing this. In my mind,
this y'all was gonna be watching me on TV now,
so it's like, oh, this is different. I have to
play out a storyline still for mass media, and the
storyline is still catching on.
Speaker 5 (27:27):
So it's like, Wow, I didn't know that I would have.
Speaker 6 (27:29):
A TV like character exist in the world in five
d I was thinking small and thought it would just
be on a TVA screen. So with that, I want
to talk about some numbers because I want to encourage
creators who think about these per platform to build their
media literacy and just kind of think of mass media
in general, because your reach is way further than the
(27:50):
analytics that platforms share with you, because the entire Internet
is a whole digital landscape. But creators, you've been kind
of groomed to think of it per per per platform.
So I when I swelled to I think like four
hundred and fifty thousand on TikTok, I started to do
(28:12):
the analytics games for partnership to be like, Okay, here's
my analytics, here's the numbers that I've reached, here's the
demographics I do I'm reaching partnerships please, And so I
pulled a report from sprout Social. I did a if
so any day was out there. I did a Sprout
Social activation and a part of it was payment and
(28:35):
pullar report. So for creators that do have these conversations
with people, sometimes it's not always about.
Speaker 5 (28:42):
Money, money, money, money, money, money, but you can also
barter with large companies.
Speaker 6 (28:48):
So from there, I found out that without even including TikTok,
I was reaching. I thought I was reaching from what
I saw two million people, but they showed me that
across the entire Internet, not including TikTok, I was reaching
a hundred and fifty million people. And then I had
a ninety seven percent approval rating across positive comments. So
(29:11):
these are stats that you can pull on yourself. I
did a listening analysis and it was like, okay, from
these keywords, here's how this is being received across the Internet.
Because I hadn't put any content on YouTube, and somebody
had put corporate air on on YouTube, and I was
so scared to look at the comments, cause they are
they are scary over there.
Speaker 5 (29:32):
Every time I picked on the YouTube and look at
the comments, it a.
Speaker 6 (29:35):
It cu it could be a it could be a
I ain't even gonna make a joke about it. Yeah,
the comments are scary. And I went and all the
comments was nice, and I was like, I am, I
am I working with someone? Did I Did I do
some So I was like, I I feel like I'm
working with something, but I wanna pull the data. So
that's what it led me to see in like the
the ninety seven percent approval rating and stuff like that.
(29:57):
So I think about why don't focus on certain traditional platforms.
I think of the content as a whole. And so
when I think of like creators building community, the reach
is way larger than you actually think it already is,
even for the numbers that you have.
Speaker 5 (30:16):
Because sometimes I really.
Speaker 6 (30:18):
Like to get very needy, greedy with how I talk
about this, because it could seem like, well, girl, you
got millions of followers, like it's easy. Oh quite Oh
sure a percentage of that will kick back to you
some cash. But there are ways that companies use data.
There's ways that they use our content that go way
outside the platform with the platforms have been provided for us.
(30:41):
And so I work from that angle and not from
the angle of how many people are watching, how many.
Speaker 1 (30:46):
People are clicking, so it's a deeper level, yes, smart.
It also helps you keep it in perspective like, oh,
I lost four hundred followers or whatever it's like, But
that's not the bigger picture here.
Speaker 5 (30:57):
That's not the bigger picture.
Speaker 3 (30:58):
I think the best part about this is having creators
like Lisa and the thousands others that are on the
platform helped to inform that development from the ground up.
So we're building with that in mind and considering that.
You know, it's a really important problem to solve, and
you know, we've been talking with creators on the ground,
(31:21):
We've been talking with creator agencies right try this. You know,
are we happy with these particular outcomes? And I think
you know that having that opportunity while we're still in
beta has been a really great reciprocal exchange. And I
think it's building the foundation for what's a successful you know,
(31:41):
creator platform partnership can look like, and the foundations of
you know, a creator ecosystem and a creator economy on
a platform like spills on legacy platforms. It's like having
to undo infrastructure that is fifteen seventeen years in development
and was never developed with in with with the mindset
(32:04):
of centering and protecting the creators who have made those
platforms pop is a much heavier lift than you know,
coming to a platform and saying, Okay, here's what I
like over here, here's what I'd like to do that
I've never been able to do, and having that conversation.
And again, as leadership, we're on the platform every single day.
We're listening attentively. We make ourselves available for this feedback.
(32:30):
And you know that's been really great.
Speaker 4 (32:34):
I mean, you know, data has has been released from
you know, multiple reports.
Speaker 3 (32:40):
I think Bloomberg reported that the creator economy is going
to be you know, a trillion dollars in just a
few years, set to set to.
Speaker 1 (32:47):
Trip billion dollars for who though, well, the well.
Speaker 4 (32:51):
The creator the creator economy at hole, right, and.
Speaker 7 (32:54):
We already know that like advertisers, and we know that
advertisers spend one hundred and fifty six billion dollars to
reach our communities, right, and you know, amongst our communities,
we are the trusted voices.
Speaker 4 (33:09):
So if we think about what creators are.
Speaker 3 (33:12):
Doing to aid and assist in that kind of in exchange,
you know, why not link arms, link arms with our clarinets.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
You know, my little fifty four cent checks from Meta
crack me up every time they hit my anymo, like,
why are you sending me an invoice? I'm gonna get
a ten ninety nine for four dollars from Metta.
Speaker 5 (33:36):
I work from the philosophy of like people first.
Speaker 6 (33:40):
So if I'm getting fifty four cents from Meta doing
it this way, well I'll try to get one hundred
dollars trying it this way. And if it doesn't work,
guess what creators are added nothing to lose point with
their own businesses to try to switch it up and
(34:01):
try it new tactics. And by that I mean investing
in the idea of going back to the advertisers. There
they will come directly to you because you have the eyeballs.
Because the eyeballs of television are shrinking, so you're talking
major networks will have a boosted ratings and it would
be like five million people washed today, But you can
(34:23):
look across your analytics and see how many people you've reached.
Their they're paying for the same eyeballs, and they're just
taking advantage of some creators not also being entrepreneurs or executives.
Speaker 5 (34:32):
And that's that's kind of like the decide and difference
between it.
Speaker 1 (34:35):
What was your learning curve, like Arin, Like did you
have a mentor to help?
Speaker 5 (34:39):
Like what what?
Speaker 1 (34:40):
What was your learning curve? And then like moving into
the next level where maybe TV, Hollywood will come calling,
but you also have this your own business. You know,
you ha, you can show up. I'm sure you got
paid a pretty penny to show up at Eefrotech as Aaron,
you know, as corporate Arin. And that is a level
of professional resis millions that I think is wonderful even
(35:01):
for a creative person who maybe has aspirations to be
on screens. Even still, how do you how do you
bridge that gap for yourself in terms of that knowledge?
Speaker 6 (35:12):
Well, for me, the learning curve was actually in the
reverse where I knew more than I I had to
learn myself. So because I kept in my the consulting
that idea was, I was telling CEOs what to do.
Speaker 5 (35:27):
So I was the mentor. I was the kind of.
Speaker 6 (35:32):
Shining light for some people. So growing and confidence of
that is the learning curve.
Speaker 5 (35:38):
Right.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
You didn't just yeah, come up with corporate Aaron in college. Yeah,
you did have that career first.
Speaker 6 (35:44):
Destroying, destroying the gas light of my innate experience and
authentic intelligence is the hard work that I had to
do to destroy my imposter syndrome.
Speaker 5 (35:56):
And then the gap I feel some times is the.
Speaker 6 (36:02):
Gap of knowledge that I need to provide for other
people in terms of I tell people like, this is it,
Like as an artist, a lot of people are just
not realizing, like, oh, we're in the TV show. We're
a part of the TV show. And if I look
at her IMDb, she was on TV screens. She is
on TV screens. Does she is in that world already?
So there is no world for me to go to.
Speaker 5 (36:24):
This is just this is it?
Speaker 6 (36:26):
And so I'm kind of existing in the gratefulness of
being able to enjoy my own.
Speaker 5 (36:32):
Ebs and flows as an artist and entrepreneur.
Speaker 6 (36:36):
And the largest gap that I had to overcome was
the gap that not that I didn't need any guidance
or any help. There's a I think people who operate
at a certain executive level understand that there's a myriad
of like friends influences what you read, what you eat,
and what you're doing, what you're listening to, what you're intaking. Yes,
I had to get to know that I really didn't
(36:58):
know what I was doing, and the imposter syndrome did
not apply that I couldn't apply it to me and
how how deep I was in it, because when I
could show up under contract for somebody else to validate me,
when I tried to show up as myself, for some reason,
I didn't have that overlord.
Speaker 5 (37:16):
I felt like I wasn't worthy. So I had to
really get over myself.
Speaker 1 (37:23):
Yeah, but it's okay to stand on your own and
not have like a corporate brand to like legitimize rall. Yeah,
I've definitely been there.
Speaker 6 (37:31):
I have been there, and it's a longer road sometimes
and sometimes it's just a choice. So for me, I
value creative control, which is why whatever show of Mind
that ends up on TV, I have to do it,
which means I have to finance it, which is a
different road as opposed to pitching.
Speaker 5 (37:50):
It to this network who will give me a team.
Then I'll have to share, and then it becomes down
and that.
Speaker 6 (37:57):
And there is also still places where projects like that
can exist and be still if fully contained and go great.
But when you're innovating in a space that people are
not familiar with, they're still gonna want to try to
what you're doing.
Speaker 5 (38:11):
Is to go there, right. So that's the part where
I like to be like, no, this is it.
Speaker 4 (38:15):
This is art too.
Speaker 1 (38:16):
I get it. It's the Yeah, No, I get it.
It's a circle. I want to take a quick pivot
into wrapping up the show.
Speaker 5 (38:22):
So what we do.
Speaker 1 (38:23):
I know, Keny, you said you're a longtime listener, so
you know we do brown Boost Brown Break. Lisa, that's
maybe your first time hearing that. So at the end
of the show, we like to kind of highlight either
something that we want to celebrate. So it could be
a brown Boost about I just got this amazing contract,
or I just hit this milestone in my career, whatever
it is, I have this new app that I'm loving whatever,
(38:44):
or a brown break is something that is driving you
nuts and you just want to like complain about you
want to call it out, give a little bit of
a read. So I will. I'll kick it to y'all.
Brown Boost, brown Break. You don't have to do both.
You pick one, Okay, I'll go first. It's our cool Yeah,
of course.
Speaker 4 (39:01):
Okay, big brown Boost, Big brown Boost. So spill right.
Speaker 3 (39:06):
We've been talking about it this entire time. Visual conversation
app place to discuss and discover culture. We're the first
social app to put spades on the platform. Right, We've
got live tea parties which are like our goal live feature.
We call our folks on platforms billionaires trying to lean into.
Speaker 1 (39:24):
The ideology that's okay of value.
Speaker 4 (39:27):
We come from a culture and create culture of value.
Speaker 3 (39:30):
You can express yourself by adding text to image and
gifts and videos and share your quotes and comments on
your spills.
Speaker 4 (39:37):
It's fantastic, right.
Speaker 3 (39:40):
We are actually launching our first ever crowd round, So big, big,
big brown boost there.
Speaker 1 (39:47):
Okay, crowdfunding like a so we could own a little
piece of Spill.
Speaker 3 (39:51):
Yeah, So this crowd round is a unique opportunity for
the community to own a piece of the commonversation, own
a piece of a social platform that has been building
and centering our communities from the beginning, alongside with the
vcs that have also invested in us. So that's, you know,
(40:13):
a rare opportunity that doesn't normally happen in our communities.
We're really excited about this. So everybody can go to
spill dot com, Forward slash invest to find a little
bit more about how to own a piece of the
conversation and Spill minimum investment is two hundred and fifty dollars,
(40:34):
and investment investors can you know, get a range of
benefits including, you know, like special profile badges and early
access to new spill features and a first look at
our company updates and merch and all kinds of cool stuff.
So we're we're really really excited about this opportunity, So
big brown Boost for congratulations. First ever crowd round allocation.
Speaker 1 (40:58):
Is it live now or is it going live at
a certain time.
Speaker 4 (41:02):
When your listeners hear this, it will be live.
Speaker 1 (41:04):
So okay, all right, Spill dot com slash invest we
got it. We'll put it in the show notes for
your BA fan.
Speaker 4 (41:09):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (41:10):
All right, Lisa, I'll do brown Boost.
Speaker 5 (41:17):
Because I'm okay.
Speaker 6 (41:19):
So I'm excited because I'm gonna launch some content specifically
and exclusively for Spill.
Speaker 5 (41:26):
So I didn't know this was gonna be my problems.
But I'm excited.
Speaker 6 (41:30):
Because if I think about like company updates, I really
don't have nobody to give company updates too. So this
is like a this is a serious company at leasta
the experience core update. I am moving some of my
what I call analog things I do in the real world,
in real classrooms with real bodies. I'm moving some of
my analog classes that I teach at the collegiate level
(41:52):
in terms of like how artists can be entrepreneurs or
move like it into the digital space exclusively specifically at
spill so and to also kind of help launch creators
like you kind of into a different mindset of like,
oh right, here's how we can activate, reinvigorate and just
(42:13):
kind of like do what I do with the classes
in the real world in this digital space with creators.
So I'm excited about that. Yeah you know, I'm gonna
let you know. Yeah, I'm gonna let you know. So
I'm really excited about that. That's like my Brown moves
because I'm excited to do something directly with a platform.
Speaker 5 (42:35):
Like I'm a big creator on the Internet and.
Speaker 6 (42:38):
I haven't pitched two other platforms, but they also haven't
reached out.
Speaker 5 (42:42):
To me, and I feel like being at this level
that I am, I'm.
Speaker 6 (42:47):
Very excited to share and I keep just knowledge that
I have because I don't have anything to do with it.
I'm practicing it, and I just kind of want to
share what I know and I only feel safe doing
it at a place that has community.
Speaker 5 (42:59):
Got it's like spill.
Speaker 1 (43:01):
Yeah, that's facts. That's amazing, And I mean that's a
big like part of our ethos at Brown Ambition too
is like no gatekeeping. Just that's why I ask deep questions,
you know, like how much do you make? And where
where do you get your money from? And how do
you diversify income streams? And what's your list look like? Yeah,
because that's what's happening behind the scenes, So like why
not why try to pretend I share?
Speaker 5 (43:23):
I share all of that negotiating with brands, pitch deck
like everything.
Speaker 1 (43:28):
Oh nice, Okay, I gotta have you back to talk
about negotiating because that's my jam and the negotiating click.
Speaker 3 (43:34):
Me taking part in a trend that started in twenty
twenty three on platform when we first launched, which is
still university. So I know other platforms have been credited with,
you know, educating.
Speaker 1 (43:45):
Not Hillman Talk said, y'all were first. Noteing's first still university, okay.
Speaker 3 (43:54):
In twenty twenty three, and it has a robust set
of classes and educators who in real life who are
coming to platform to share their knowledge and resources, and
you know, classes ranged from you.
Speaker 4 (44:09):
Know university level level curriculum to like contend one on one,
you know, like.
Speaker 1 (44:17):
You know it's it's a game that is Yeah, okay, girl,
I'm not gonna up front. I need to learn how
to play space.
Speaker 3 (44:25):
Well, you can learn how to play spades on spill.
We've got a practice mode. No angry uncles to flip
the table and cush you out when you mess up.
Speaker 1 (44:32):
Okay, you can try being a biracial baddy in a
family where you don't know how to play spades and
you just like try to fade into the background at
every gathering.
Speaker 4 (44:41):
Listen, you can, you.
Speaker 3 (44:42):
Too can learn how to play spades. And when you
sharpen your skills, girl, tag me in. We can take
we can run these tables together.
Speaker 1 (44:49):
Is it like a group game? I really don't know
anything about it.
Speaker 4 (44:52):
It's a group. It's communal. It is a space where people.
Speaker 3 (44:55):
Exchange, you know, ideas, and you can do live video
and live audio while you're playing spades as well communicating
with folks.
Speaker 4 (45:03):
Lisa is a great spades player too.
Speaker 5 (45:05):
I love playing spades.
Speaker 1 (45:06):
Okay, I can't wait. I'm very competitive, so I can't
wait to suck it up in there and play and
talk my ship. But I can't talk my shit yet
because I don't know. But we don't worry. When I
get it there, I'll be I'll be shit talking.
Speaker 6 (45:17):
I should do a space ship Talk and tea party
where a lesson on once you get your SPAE skills.
Speaker 1 (45:22):
Here's there's because I talk my ship very well and
like the banter. I love the bad babes like I
can go back and forth. If I can't like insult you,
then like really all be friends. You know what I mean?
So right, if I don't like a really good like
a like a dagger kind of insult, that's like did
she kill her? I don't know, Like that's my love language. Ah,
(45:44):
that's amazing, okay, ken Ye. So everyone's got to check
out Spill University, the ogs no shade to Heilman Talk University.
Maybe they need it too. But let's give credit where
credit is due to my incredible guests who did not
grow up together in Gary, Indiana, but you know, in
a fan fiction world, maybe you did. We don't know.
Kenya and Lisa, thank you so much for joining me
(46:06):
at the Brown Table and for joining and just sharing
your your your shine and you're light with ba Fam,
thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 4 (46:14):
This is fun.
Okaba fan, I cannot be more excited to have this
duo on the show. First of all, it's the duo
I didn't know I needed in my life. And y'all
know of brown ambition. I want to create a space
where we can, like sister talk like we're getting around
a table. We are not just having guests on who
want to talk about, of course, all their incredible business ventures,
(00:22):
but the people who have come up with them, the
relationships that have sustained them during those hard times, the
friendships that keep them going, the people who know the real,
real you know, when the lights go off and the
way it comes off, and the real you know, the
real shit that we're all going through. And so I
(00:42):
have a couple of incredible guests today. First, I have
Kenya param who is the chief growth officer for a
spill app. Here's the t Now, if y'all are not
familiar with spill app, what's wrong with you? If you're
looking for an alternative to the you know what of
it all? Just going to put the what are we
calling it? The are just formally known as Twitter, and
you want to join a black owned, black maid for
(01:06):
the culture. Social media app spill is where it's at.
I love Spill, and then also Lisa Beasley, who I
don't even know. Lisa, Like when people recognize your name,
I feel like if I said, your real name is
kind of cool, You're like a Clark Kent kind of vibe.
She's actually better known as Corporate Aaron, the comedian actress.
(01:27):
And we'll talk a little bit about entrepreneur as well,
who has been plaguing our social media nightmares for years
and giving us all PTSD of being in corporate and
talking and listening to the corporate errands of the world.
But I'm excited for y'all to get to know Lisa
as well as Kenya, who.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Y'all have come up together right well, firstly, you know,
really grateful to be here with you and have an
opportunity to introduce Spill to the BA community, the Brown
Ambvision community.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
We are conversation connection, culture, community, commerce, an impactful place
where we are on a mission to become the de
facto place to discuss and discover the things that matter
most to us as culture driving communities. We are an
emerging social platform that's built to center brown, black, queer
(02:21):
communities who have historically driven culture across the Internet, but
unfortunately received the line share of hate on other social
platforms because of a lack of trust and safety. So
on spill, we have a deep, heavy policy and practical
investment in moderation and safety.
Speaker 4 (02:40):
We can tag team Lisia, you know when you want
to come through.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
But we were both at the AFRO Tech conference this
past year in November. Where was I.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
Okay, I didn't get a chance to meet you, Lisa,
but I saw you.
Speaker 4 (02:56):
Yeah, I saw you.
Speaker 5 (02:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (02:57):
Corporate Air was there and I took a It was
a girl's trip. It was me and Corporate here and
we were both there at the same time.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
Gotcha right, that's right.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
And so I had quite a few speaking engagements over
the course of a couple of days. It was a
super packed schedule and we had this spilled leadership team
and a couple of our other folks there and we
ran into each other at the Black Excellence brunch and
the minute that I saw her.
Speaker 4 (03:24):
I was like, Okay, I know exactly who this is.
I had a little fan girl moment.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
I went up to her and as I was speaking
to introduce myself, she was like, I know who you are.
I haven't seen you over the last couple of days,
and I was like, okay.
Speaker 6 (03:37):
Yeah, yeah, And I remember thinking, so at the last
event that we saw each other at the Black Excellence brunch,
so I was there working the event, but also there
for myself.
Speaker 5 (03:47):
So I'm getting what I want to get done.
Speaker 6 (03:49):
But there was only a couple of activations that Lisa
myself wanted to go to, because it is true, I
do have different personalities from my characters, even though they
all come from the same place.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
I'm so really to hear your real voice, I gotta
tell you, that's such a relief.
Speaker 6 (04:04):
I can also do this like Beyonce though, so we
have options. Okay, so she's she's a She's at the brunch,
but had I had only gone to a couple of other,
like auxiliary events put on by different companies, but Spill
was always the like one of the companies at the
(04:26):
activations that I was going to, So I didn't know,
but I went to the Spill activations, And now that
I'm thinking about it, the Spill activations appealed to me.
Speaker 5 (04:33):
So those are the extra ones that I went to.
Speaker 6 (04:35):
Because you know, when you go to these huge conferences,
there's so much going on at once, which is why,
which is why you have three people at a conference
and they not know and so speaking to that while
she's doing her thing with the there's a Microsoft Copilot event.
She's on a panel and she's just talking that talk
I like to hear. It's just very decolonized and there
(04:56):
was no centering of ideals.
Speaker 5 (04:57):
That I didn't like.
Speaker 3 (04:58):
Yeah, and within like the first couple of minutes, so
I'm like, hey, girl, huge fan of your work, not
just your comedy and your artistry, but also you know,
corporate batty to corporate batty, Like, I salute you.
Speaker 4 (05:12):
I get it. It makes sense to me.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
And I'm just kind of going through the motions and
she's like, okay, you know what, I got to let
you know right now. I didn't even have to pitch her.
She was like, I'm planning this huge stunt. I'm leaving
X and we about to do something and I'm joining
Spill and.
Speaker 4 (05:28):
I want you to know that.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
From that moment until when we chily pulled off this
really successful big stunt, it was like ten days in time,
which wow, I've heard of.
Speaker 6 (05:39):
Okay, I'm not trying to be like go out and
circle back, y'all. I want I'm.
Speaker 5 (05:44):
In the camp of like, will let's all be making
pick your fruit off trees?
Speaker 6 (05:48):
But I know we can't get it. So this is
what I mean in terms of being a corporate baddy.
The activation that we pulled off that took ten days
would have taken your typical stress G marketing team anywhere
from three weeks to seven eight months. Seriously so and
still and people will know what I mean when I
(06:09):
say this, still banging it out legitimately, like still having
a deliverable slist, still having you know, the itemizations, still
getting to the contracting, still doing the thing we've already done,
the whole meetings to death thing that stops in the
way of progress.
Speaker 5 (06:24):
And so here I.
Speaker 6 (06:25):
See this high executive in a large platform that I
could have a place in, looking at me and talking
to me.
Speaker 5 (06:36):
That's never happened at other platforms.
Speaker 6 (06:38):
So on X I left, it was twenty seven thousand
followers and looking across if I if I look across
my Internet kingdom, yes, you know, surveying the land of
about six hundred and fifty thousand, I'm like, I can
do away with that island. So but I also understand
(06:59):
very de how my revenue streams as a pertean's platform
work and how they also work as leveraging and marketing channels.
So I didn't feel like I was losing anything because
I was gaining some of my soul.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
Back, right yeah, and it's nice. I mean you guys
are in startup phase, right ken yea? I mean you've
been Mischief Growth officer. How's the growing doing? What does
that all entail? How do you grow? Can't I can't
think of a more intimidating kind of platform to launch
when there's so much noise, so many options. My god,
(07:36):
thread and Blue Threads and Blue Sky and the meta
of it all. I'm like, but to have something like
spill in the mix? What has that been like to
grow this brand at this time?
Speaker 4 (07:48):
You know?
Speaker 3 (07:49):
I started off with the team day one, twenty twenty three.
At the top of twenty twenty three as the global
Vice president for Community and Partnerships.
Speaker 4 (07:59):
At the top of this year, I've stepped into being Chief.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
Growth Officer, where I'm now responsible for leading all growth revenue.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
User lines got promoted.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
I love to optimize the complete user journey, maximizing retention,
scaling revenue operations, and making sure that our high performing
teams are focused on success, and so growth looks a
lot like an upward trajectory, but also continuing to double
and triple down on what we've always done really well,
which is centering the communities, protecting the communities who drive
(08:31):
culture forward, and making sure that people have a stafer,
more fun, more enjoyable place on the Internet to just
be ourselves.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
How is it that you like, what actually goes into
making this a protected a protected space, like we're an
in dangerous b bcs or something the protected lens. If
you're black, you're queer, your trands in that community. What
are you getting that's different? You've said you protect us,
But is it through moderation? Is it like we're going
to filter out racism and misogyny and that kind of thing.
(09:00):
What actually is happening behind the Wizard's curtain?
Speaker 4 (09:02):
Yeah, I appreciate that question.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
So, firstly, we have a really robust set of community
guidelines that I authored in partnership with some of the
top trust in safety professionals who are also black women
across in this field. I sat and listened and learned
to what was working and what wasn't working on other platforms.
Speaker 4 (09:23):
When we authored our rules, and that is kind of
the rule book.
Speaker 3 (09:28):
By which we have created, you know, governance on Spill,
and then we kind of bring our tech into it
where we are training one of the first ever large
language models in AI for content moderation, so basically culturally
competent technology that is enforcing our community guidelines. And an
(09:50):
amazing thing happens when we do that, because it's not
just about the defense obviously, right, like you know, the
things that would normally populate on other social platforms hit
the timeline on Spill because of our AI lines of defense.
Speaker 4 (10:04):
But we also have humans in.
Speaker 3 (10:06):
The loop, a talented team of culturally competently trained human
beings who are on the clock twenty four to seven
three sixty five in shifts to be the human lines
of defense to enforce these rules as well. And so
that awesome thing happens I was talking about where it's
not just about defense, but it's also about the offense.
(10:28):
Because when you don't have to worry about defending for
your life on social media, right, you show up with
much more authentic, authentistic voice, You show up much more
authentically in you know, in community, you know, and love
happens when that happens, right, connection happens, Relationships foster, you
(10:54):
can do business with folks right, Just amazing things spark
from a place where you don't have to feel like
you are combating yourself against some of the most vitriolic,
disgusting elements of hate that, in particular, black women who
over index in use on social media face every single day.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
Yeah, I think I'm in like a bit of a
bubble with Brown Ambition because just the audience we attract,
I mean, it's us. It just has always felt so
safe and our listeners, it's just positivity up and down.
And I mean doesn't mean they won't say when they
don't like something or question something, but it feels very
safe here. And it sounds like Spill also kind of
(11:38):
offers that community. I have a personal Spill account. I
think I need to start my Brown Ambition Spill account
breaking news Brown Ambition on Spill come follow us.
Speaker 4 (11:47):
I mean, we've got groups now, so it'd be great
to help.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
Great Fition group where okay.
Speaker 3 (11:53):
Your listeners and your community can continue to receive updates
about what's happening on in the Brown Ambition world.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
Yeah, all right, so tell me like Kenya and Aaron,
you guys met at this conference. I'm kind of surprised.
Should I just called you Aaron? If you bring that wing,
if you take that listen the pitch, better stay the pitch.
I like the baritone. Uh what was I going anyway? Whatever?
(12:25):
I want to start talking in a British accent again,
It'll be fine, Aaron.
Speaker 5 (12:30):
No, this is the part of my person who joke.
Speaker 6 (12:32):
By the way, I'm maliciously I maliciously enjoyed this a
little bit, so I'm sorry.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
But I'm glad you do. It's like my sons because
I named them Rio and Remy, which I'm an idiot,
and yeah, it's great. But I like Lisa, even though
your name is in like twenty font in front of
my face. Christ Almighty Lisa. When you were an Afro
tech you were You're also an entrepreneur, right, so like,
can you tell us about your corporate journey and how
(13:00):
it's been in entrepreneurship land? How are you coping?
Speaker 5 (13:03):
Yeah?
Speaker 6 (13:03):
Absolutely, A lot of people don't know my story because
on purpose, I kind of market myself forward facing with
the content because I've been having a lot of fun
having a direct access to people who watch my content.
Without Hollywood gatekeepers. So grow up, Gary and Diana. I
went to perform in arts high school, but I played
(13:25):
the clarinet, so I was very shy.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
So I wait a second, I also was a clarinet player.
Does that mean that we're shy?
Speaker 6 (13:32):
Well, I was shy, but I knew I wanted to
be like a star and a singer and broad Way.
Speaker 5 (13:38):
But I was like, I was.
Speaker 4 (13:44):
Clarinet in middle school.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
You guys all, this is now a different podcast right now.
That's so funny.
Speaker 6 (13:58):
Yeah, so I took the that too. It was the
only way I was gonna pay for college. So I
went to a college in Memphis, Tennessee. I went to
lamorna On College, went on a full music scholarship and there,
yeah there, so I uh uh did a concentration in
classical jazz studies. And from there I knew that I
did not want to enter the workforce because I did
(14:20):
the responsible thing of Okay, in senior year college, you
can get a management position just because you have a
bachelor's It doesn't even matter what it's in. So I
did those programs that employers was doing at the time
where they were enticing you know, fresh college grads doing
the responsible thing of like, alright, let me secure my
check so I could pay for my car so I
could drive to my job, so I could pay for
(14:40):
my apartment, so I could pay for my car so
I could drive for my job. So and I and
I was like, I wanna be a performer and I
that was like one of the first calls from inside
the house that I truly answered where I felt like
I am shifting the direction of my life. And I
went to LA instead of working at like enterprise rent
a car. I could have got started at like sixty
thousand dollars benefits, but I decided to go to LA
(15:02):
with three suitcases and be homeless until I found an
apartment instead. And then I did act the school for
a couple of years, and that was like I knew
the last time or I thought that I would be
able to immerse myself fully in the arts for like
twelve fourteen hours a day. I was truly on my fame.
And here's where you start paying and sweat. So fast
forward to leaving that I got broke, moved back to Gary, Indianna.
Speaker 5 (15:24):
And then I was like, oh no.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
Okay, so how many years did you try to kick
it in LA before I was there for.
Speaker 5 (15:31):
Two and a half years.
Speaker 6 (15:32):
I was at school for two years and then I
tried to do six months as a green, fresh eted
actors student. I ain't had no money, I didn't understand Hollywood.
I just knew I was very talented, and that is
not how you want to.
Speaker 5 (15:44):
Go about that.
Speaker 6 (15:45):
So I moved back to Gary and then I started
auditioning in Chicago, and that's where I found like this
robust theater scene, and that's where.
Speaker 5 (15:52):
I found like a career and like where you could.
Speaker 6 (15:55):
Get your equity card and have health insurance because you're
an artist in Chicago.
Speaker 5 (16:00):
And then just started building from there.
Speaker 6 (16:02):
It's a great place to like be a producing artist
and curate for the city. And then I did about
six to ten shows a week for about ten to
twelve years.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
What kind of shows was this?
Speaker 3 (16:14):
Like?
Speaker 1 (16:14):
Improv it?
Speaker 5 (16:15):
So it ended up with improv. But at the start
I was doing.
Speaker 6 (16:20):
Musical theater, like original musical theater from playing theater houses
in Chicago or like other August Wilson's and the and
the Fences and the and I was always a comedic
relief in serious.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
Plays and then oh we love that, Yeah.
Speaker 6 (16:35):
And then I started started doing comedy in Chicago because
I found the there was this improv scene growing up.
We called it ad living, and I didn't know how
serious improv was a new team if they had a show,
but I was never into I was never into Saturday
Night Live. I was never into the improv as they
know it. I was just into black people play all day.
(16:57):
So that's where I get my chops from. So it
turned out I was very good at it and started
getting the jobs that that that the white people had
wanted for decades but didn't and I would get there
as soon as possible, get the jobs that they wanted.
Speaker 5 (17:16):
And just skyrocketed through that.
Speaker 6 (17:17):
And then that's when I saw like this path of
and here's how you get a TV show, and here's
how you get in writer's rooms, and here's how you
work and how like, and so I sincerely tried.
Speaker 5 (17:27):
To do that and it was very hard.
Speaker 6 (17:30):
But there is this transition from from acting on stage
to TV that does take time because the immediate gratification
of having an audience is no longer there when you're
on set.
Speaker 5 (17:43):
So it was a different mindset that I was shifted into.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
So did you try to do TV, Like, were y
did you have like pilots.
Speaker 5 (17:50):
Or oh absolutely, yeah, so you.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
Moved back to LA at a certain point, or you
doing that in Chicago? Okay.
Speaker 6 (17:56):
I stayed in Chicago because I was one of those
people that's like, oh, you don't have to be out
there to do this, because they moved slower out there,
just traditionally as working meaning California queen.
Speaker 5 (18:07):
Oh yeah yeah, and not slow slower like in Chicago.
We have a problem.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
No, I'm from New York. I mean I live in
New York now, but I know they do move slow
in Cali.
Speaker 5 (18:16):
Yeah, like.
Speaker 6 (18:20):
Tuesday, we'd be like, you want to meet, Let's meet Wednesday.
But in California it's like, let's meet next Wednesday.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
So it's that gives me anxiety just thinking about that.
Why not now?
Speaker 6 (18:29):
Yeah, So I was like I'm gonna keep my operation
here because I started to get guest star roles.
Speaker 5 (18:34):
I did a couple of TV shows.
Speaker 6 (18:36):
I have a lot of friends in TV, like helping
write pilots and pitching pilots, and I was doing the
pitch game. But I heard no too many times for
the level of talent that I knew that I had,
and so I stopped, and so I worked at I
was a writer at Cards Against Humanity, And on June twelfth,
twenty seventeen, that's when I was decided to become a
full time entrepreneur because I've always done that. I did
(18:59):
graph design to support myself through acting school, and that
built this way up kind of like with my acting
career of becoming eventually a creative director and a founder
and a company. So I know, I just sounded like
I skipped a lot, but this is like ten years
of me working skills alongside each other because to be
an actor, I had to have a real world skill
to support myself because it was one hundred and twenty
(19:21):
five dollars a week. The kids' theater shows were not
gonna pay the bills, so I would offset it with uh,
my own graphic design clients that I managed terribly because
I didn't understand my own workflow. If we wanna talk
about entrepreneurs, not I. I have a feeling in my
spirit that there are some listeners on the Brown Ambition
that understand the client deliverable aspect of their businesses, and
(19:44):
how do you start to realize it's a different skill set.
Speaker 5 (19:46):
But anyway, it's so real. That's so it's it's so real.
Speaker 6 (19:49):
And so I took I took those skills and I
started a traditional, good old fashion corporate, mid corporate corporate
business where I did a inclusion consultant for Fortune five
hundred and Fortune one hundred companies and this is where. Yeah,
so that was a good that was a good five
years of talking to industry agnostic. Industry agnostic is how
(20:15):
we work. But every single call was the same. And
so by this time in my acting journey, I had
taken my characters off stage and started to put them
online because of the pandemic, because I was bored and
I missed applause, and I.
Speaker 5 (20:30):
Also went through being real.
Speaker 6 (20:32):
I went through my whole like there's no audience, this
energy is gone, and I just started to play with
the audience that I had, and that audience grew. So
Corporate Airon is like the fourth character entry pointing to
this universe as some people they've already entered into different characters.
So before Corporate Airon, LORI Lightfoot ran locally really huge
(20:54):
in Chicago.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
And that's the mayor, right, you did like an impersonation, yes,
remember that one?
Speaker 5 (21:00):
Yeah, on my way out of corporate.
Speaker 6 (21:02):
I couldn't take it anymore, and so I was like,
y'all are not going to stop doing this. So I
became them and made that my next character, and then
that swelled a portion of my business and I forgot
where I was going or what I was being asked.
But I think that's kind of a good place.
Speaker 5 (21:21):
To be, like, hey, we are and here we are out.
Speaker 4 (21:24):
Here because I resonate with so much of it.
Speaker 3 (21:28):
I mean a lot of times people, particularly in the
last two years, here the work that I'm doing with Spill,
and assume if they've never met or seen me before
that I just kind of always worked in tech, but
this is my first time working in working at SPILL
is my first time working in house one hundred percent
for another company. Straight out of school, I invested in
(21:52):
myself and became a consultant. I started off as a
girl who got the coffee and worked my way up
to being a campaigns consultant and a fundraiser in electoral politics,
and in twenty six sixteen transitioned that because a special
thing happened in twenty sixteen that we all remember with
(22:12):
the elections there, right, And I.
Speaker 5 (22:15):
Was like.
Speaker 3 (22:17):
And I was like, well, I think I need to
kind of recalibrate and check on myself a little bit.
And I parlayed that into doing cultural consulting from movie
TV film studios. So there are so many parallels between,
you know, our trajectories in terms of being entrepreneurs, being
black women who had to kind of hybrid interface into
(22:39):
corporate infrastructures while also running our own business businesses. And
you know how amazing. I would have never known that
that pathway, that trajectory could have led me into working
in tech or recognized a non traditional pathway that was
had a transferable skill set the entire or time that
(23:00):
would be applicable for a time like now to create
you know, uh help help to create spell.
Speaker 5 (23:08):
It's a transferable skill set for me.
Speaker 6 (23:10):
Cause when when I heard her background, and it's bigger
than the consultancy piece. But when you hear the background,
entrepreneurs and people who have been in these different worlds
know what that looks like really on a day to
day level, Okay, like this this you got a thousand,
ten ninety nine and W two's when it's time to
do taxes, you got like the day to day of
it it's just kind of a different lifestyle.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
Yeah, and I c I regre lucky.
Speaker 6 (23:38):
Ye, what I do, what i've what I've done, and
what I think Kid is doing, which is why the
likes of us found each other and for and what
I hope to inspire people to do is all of
these transferable skills that we use for other people, use
them for yourself or for what you're trying to build.
So I used to be in circle back, follow up,
project manager, hell for other companies I do. I'm not
(24:05):
saying I'm running. I treat myself like that. I give
myself grace. I'm not indulging myself in white supervis practices
on myself that's crazy.
Speaker 5 (24:14):
But I am using that skill set to build.
Speaker 1 (24:18):
Yeah, it's about that energy. I was just writing I'm
working on my first book right now, and I was
just I literally wrote in writing a chapter that's basically
encouraging any woman woman of color in corporate to take
your age, subtract it from one hundred, and the larger
number is what percentage of time you should be focusing
on other skills Like then year nine to five, which
(24:40):
may sound like, Okay, I'm twenty two, so I'm really
going to spend you know, seventy eight percent of my
time on myself, Like yeah, yeah, I think that's I
think that's fair like that.
Speaker 4 (24:51):
Yeah, wait a minute.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
I so you can flip it. If you're more conservative,
you can say, Okay, I'll spend twenty two percent of
my time on my side hustle and eighty percent. But
just the idea is to normalize the the just normalize
that behavior, Normalize that you should be working on other
things and putting all of your one hundred percent into
a company that can drop you at the you know,
(25:15):
like that, and like screw anyone who says that federal work,
federal government job, good government jobs are safe, because like,
look at what's happening right now to thousands, tens of
thousands of workers who are being let go. So yeah,
I'm just big on saying hell no, do not give
them your one hundred percent. Save something for yourself so
that you have more resilience. So, whether it's like you Aaron,
(25:38):
I mean whatever your name is, got me again, Got
me again, whether it's you Lisa or you Kenya, you know,
leveraging those skills and in corporate but then taking them
out for yourself as well.
Speaker 3 (25:55):
Totally, and thank goodness we did. You know, like again,
you know, building community on a social space, a social
app was far outside of my purview of what I
thought is something that I would be doing.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
As a creator. Lisa. Yes, Lisa, I questioned myself even
when I said it right, as a creator, Lisa especially
and with your partnership and you know, your activation with
Spill and being on this app. Now, I'm curious because
even with Brown Ambition or any other creator, now there
is this increasing conversation about you know, owning your community
and when you put all your eggs in one social
(26:34):
media platform for example, that and we saw this with TikTok, right,
TikTok almost well went away, and like what that could
have meant. I feel like TikTok is probably your biggest platform.
That's where I first discovered you.
Speaker 6 (26:47):
I'm so glad we're talking about this, and I'm probably
gonna get more specific because of your audience and for you,
please dealer, because this is kind of the stuff I
nerrid out about that I don't get to talk about
because a lot of people, you know, well, we're all
just enjoying the content because largely how I view myself
as a creator is when I think about, Oh, I
(27:11):
didn't think I would be doing this. In my mind,
this y'all was gonna be watching me on TV now,
so it's like, oh, this is different. I have to
play out a storyline still for mass media, and the
storyline is still catching on.
Speaker 5 (27:27):
So it's like, Wow, I didn't know that I would have.
Speaker 6 (27:29):
A TV like character exist in the world in five
d I was thinking small and thought it would just
be on a TVA screen. So with that, I want
to talk about some numbers because I want to encourage
creators who think about these per platform to build their
media literacy and just kind of think of mass media
in general, because your reach is way further than the
(27:50):
analytics that platforms share with you, because the entire Internet
is a whole digital landscape. But creators, you've been kind
of groomed to think of it per per per platform.
So I when I swelled to I think like four
hundred and fifty thousand on TikTok, I started to do
(28:12):
the analytics games for partnership to be like, Okay, here's
my analytics, here's the numbers that I've reached, here's the
demographics I do I'm reaching partnerships please, And so I
pulled a report from sprout Social. I did a if
so any day was out there. I did a Sprout
Social activation and a part of it was payment and
(28:35):
pullar report. So for creators that do have these conversations
with people, sometimes it's not always about.
Speaker 5 (28:42):
Money, money, money, money, money, money, but you can also
barter with large companies.
Speaker 6 (28:48):
So from there, I found out that without even including TikTok,
I was reaching. I thought I was reaching from what
I saw two million people, but they showed me that
across the entire Internet, not including TikTok, I was reaching
a hundred and fifty million people. And then I had
a ninety seven percent approval rating across positive comments. So
(29:11):
these are stats that you can pull on yourself. I
did a listening analysis and it was like, okay, from
these keywords, here's how this is being received across the Internet.
Because I hadn't put any content on YouTube, and somebody
had put corporate air on on YouTube, and I was
so scared to look at the comments, cause they are
they are scary over there.
Speaker 5 (29:32):
Every time I picked on the YouTube and look at
the comments, it a.
Speaker 6 (29:35):
It cu it could be a it could be a
I ain't even gonna make a joke about it. Yeah,
the comments are scary. And I went and all the
comments was nice, and I was like, I am, I
am I working with someone? Did I Did I do
some So I was like, I I feel like I'm
working with something, but I wanna pull the data. So
that's what it led me to see in like the
the ninety seven percent approval rating and stuff like that.
(29:57):
So I think about why don't focus on certain traditional platforms.
I think of the content as a whole. And so
when I think of like creators building community, the reach
is way larger than you actually think it already is,
even for the numbers that you have.
Speaker 5 (30:16):
Because sometimes I really.
Speaker 6 (30:18):
Like to get very needy, greedy with how I talk
about this, because it could seem like, well, girl, you
got millions of followers, like it's easy. Oh quite Oh
sure a percentage of that will kick back to you
some cash. But there are ways that companies use data.
There's ways that they use our content that go way
outside the platform with the platforms have been provided for us.
(30:41):
And so I work from that angle and not from
the angle of how many people are watching, how many.
Speaker 1 (30:46):
People are clicking, so it's a deeper level, yes, smart.
It also helps you keep it in perspective like, oh,
I lost four hundred followers or whatever it's like, But
that's not the bigger picture here.
Speaker 5 (30:57):
That's not the bigger picture.
Speaker 3 (30:58):
I think the best part about this is having creators
like Lisa and the thousands others that are on the
platform helped to inform that development from the ground up.
So we're building with that in mind and considering that.
You know, it's a really important problem to solve, and
you know, we've been talking with creators on the ground,
(31:21):
We've been talking with creator agencies right try this. You know,
are we happy with these particular outcomes? And I think
you know that having that opportunity while we're still in
beta has been a really great reciprocal exchange. And I
think it's building the foundation for what's a successful you know,
(31:41):
creator platform partnership can look like, and the foundations of
you know, a creator ecosystem and a creator economy on
a platform like spills on legacy platforms. It's like having
to undo infrastructure that is fifteen seventeen years in development
and was never developed with in with with the mindset
(32:04):
of centering and protecting the creators who have made those
platforms pop is a much heavier lift than you know,
coming to a platform and saying, Okay, here's what I
like over here, here's what I'd like to do that
I've never been able to do, and having that conversation.
And again, as leadership, we're on the platform every single day.
We're listening attentively. We make ourselves available for this feedback.
(32:30):
And you know that's been really great.
Speaker 4 (32:34):
I mean, you know, data has has been released from
you know, multiple reports.
Speaker 3 (32:40):
I think Bloomberg reported that the creator economy is going
to be you know, a trillion dollars in just a
few years, set to set to.
Speaker 1 (32:47):
Trip billion dollars for who though, well, the well.
Speaker 4 (32:51):
The creator the creator economy at hole, right, and.
Speaker 7 (32:54):
We already know that like advertisers, and we know that
advertisers spend one hundred and fifty six billion dollars to
reach our communities, right, and you know, amongst our communities,
we are the trusted voices.
Speaker 4 (33:09):
So if we think about what creators are.
Speaker 3 (33:12):
Doing to aid and assist in that kind of in exchange,
you know, why not link arms, link arms with our clarinets.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
You know, my little fifty four cent checks from Meta
crack me up every time they hit my anymo, like,
why are you sending me an invoice? I'm gonna get
a ten ninety nine for four dollars from Metta.
Speaker 5 (33:36):
I work from the philosophy of like people first.
Speaker 6 (33:40):
So if I'm getting fifty four cents from Meta doing
it this way, well I'll try to get one hundred
dollars trying it this way. And if it doesn't work,
guess what creators are added nothing to lose point with
their own businesses to try to switch it up and
(34:01):
try it new tactics. And by that I mean investing
in the idea of going back to the advertisers. There
they will come directly to you because you have the eyeballs.
Because the eyeballs of television are shrinking, so you're talking
major networks will have a boosted ratings and it would
be like five million people washed today, But you can
(34:23):
look across your analytics and see how many people you've reached.
Their they're paying for the same eyeballs, and they're just
taking advantage of some creators not also being entrepreneurs or executives.
Speaker 5 (34:32):
And that's that's kind of like the decide and difference
between it.
Speaker 1 (34:35):
What was your learning curve, like Arin, Like did you
have a mentor to help?
Speaker 5 (34:39):
Like what what?
Speaker 1 (34:40):
What was your learning curve? And then like moving into
the next level where maybe TV, Hollywood will come calling,
but you also have this your own business. You know,
you ha, you can show up. I'm sure you got
paid a pretty penny to show up at Eefrotech as Aaron,
you know, as corporate Arin. And that is a level
of professional resis millions that I think is wonderful even
(35:01):
for a creative person who maybe has aspirations to be
on screens. Even still, how do you how do you
bridge that gap for yourself in terms of that knowledge?
Speaker 6 (35:12):
Well, for me, the learning curve was actually in the
reverse where I knew more than I I had to
learn myself. So because I kept in my the consulting
that idea was, I was telling CEOs what to do.
Speaker 5 (35:27):
So I was the mentor. I was the kind of.
Speaker 6 (35:32):
Shining light for some people. So growing and confidence of
that is the learning curve.
Speaker 5 (35:38):
Right.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
You didn't just yeah, come up with corporate Aaron in college. Yeah,
you did have that career first.
Speaker 6 (35:44):
Destroying, destroying the gas light of my innate experience and
authentic intelligence is the hard work that I had to
do to destroy my imposter syndrome.
Speaker 5 (35:56):
And then the gap I feel some times is the.
Speaker 6 (36:02):
Gap of knowledge that I need to provide for other
people in terms of I tell people like, this is it,
Like as an artist, a lot of people are just
not realizing, like, oh, we're in the TV show. We're
a part of the TV show. And if I look
at her IMDb, she was on TV screens. She is
on TV screens. Does she is in that world already?
So there is no world for me to go to.
Speaker 5 (36:24):
This is just this is it?
Speaker 6 (36:26):
And so I'm kind of existing in the gratefulness of
being able to enjoy my own.
Speaker 5 (36:32):
Ebs and flows as an artist and entrepreneur.
Speaker 6 (36:36):
And the largest gap that I had to overcome was
the gap that not that I didn't need any guidance
or any help. There's a I think people who operate
at a certain executive level understand that there's a myriad
of like friends influences what you read, what you eat,
and what you're doing, what you're listening to, what you're intaking. Yes,
I had to get to know that I really didn't
(36:58):
know what I was doing, and the imposter syndrome did
not apply that I couldn't apply it to me and
how how deep I was in it, because when I
could show up under contract for somebody else to validate me,
when I tried to show up as myself, for some reason,
I didn't have that overlord.
Speaker 5 (37:16):
I felt like I wasn't worthy. So I had to
really get over myself.
Speaker 1 (37:23):
Yeah, but it's okay to stand on your own and
not have like a corporate brand to like legitimize rall. Yeah,
I've definitely been there.
Speaker 6 (37:31):
I have been there, and it's a longer road sometimes
and sometimes it's just a choice. So for me, I
value creative control, which is why whatever show of Mind
that ends up on TV, I have to do it,
which means I have to finance it, which is a
different road as opposed to pitching.
Speaker 5 (37:50):
It to this network who will give me a team.
Then I'll have to share, and then it becomes down
and that.
Speaker 6 (37:57):
And there is also still places where projects like that
can exist and be still if fully contained and go great.
But when you're innovating in a space that people are
not familiar with, they're still gonna want to try to
what you're doing.
Speaker 5 (38:11):
Is to go there, right. So that's the part where
I like to be like, no, this is it.
Speaker 4 (38:15):
This is art too.
Speaker 1 (38:16):
I get it. It's the Yeah, No, I get it.
It's a circle. I want to take a quick pivot
into wrapping up the show.
Speaker 5 (38:22):
So what we do.
Speaker 1 (38:23):
I know, Keny, you said you're a longtime listener, so
you know we do brown Boost Brown Break. Lisa, that's
maybe your first time hearing that. So at the end
of the show, we like to kind of highlight either
something that we want to celebrate. So it could be
a brown Boost about I just got this amazing contract,
or I just hit this milestone in my career, whatever
it is, I have this new app that I'm loving whatever,
(38:44):
or a brown break is something that is driving you
nuts and you just want to like complain about you
want to call it out, give a little bit of
a read. So I will. I'll kick it to y'all.
Brown Boost, brown Break. You don't have to do both.
You pick one, Okay, I'll go first. It's our cool Yeah,
of course.
Speaker 4 (39:01):
Okay, big brown Boost, Big brown Boost. So spill right.
Speaker 3 (39:06):
We've been talking about it this entire time. Visual conversation
app place to discuss and discover culture. We're the first
social app to put spades on the platform. Right, We've
got live tea parties which are like our goal live feature.
We call our folks on platforms billionaires trying to lean into.
Speaker 1 (39:24):
The ideology that's okay of value.
Speaker 4 (39:27):
We come from a culture and create culture of value.
Speaker 3 (39:30):
You can express yourself by adding text to image and
gifts and videos and share your quotes and comments on
your spills.
Speaker 4 (39:37):
It's fantastic, right.
Speaker 3 (39:40):
We are actually launching our first ever crowd round, So big, big,
big brown boost there.
Speaker 1 (39:47):
Okay, crowdfunding like a so we could own a little
piece of Spill.
Speaker 3 (39:51):
Yeah, So this crowd round is a unique opportunity for
the community to own a piece of the commonversation, own
a piece of a social platform that has been building
and centering our communities from the beginning, alongside with the
vcs that have also invested in us. So that's, you know,
(40:13):
a rare opportunity that doesn't normally happen in our communities.
We're really excited about this. So everybody can go to
spill dot com, Forward slash invest to find a little
bit more about how to own a piece of the
conversation and Spill minimum investment is two hundred and fifty dollars,
(40:34):
and investment investors can you know, get a range of
benefits including, you know, like special profile badges and early
access to new spill features and a first look at
our company updates and merch and all kinds of cool stuff.
So we're we're really really excited about this opportunity, So
big brown Boost for congratulations. First ever crowd round allocation.
Speaker 1 (40:58):
Is it live now or is it going live at
a certain time.
Speaker 4 (41:02):
When your listeners hear this, it will be live.
Speaker 1 (41:04):
So okay, all right, Spill dot com slash invest we
got it. We'll put it in the show notes for
your BA fan.
Speaker 4 (41:09):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (41:10):
All right, Lisa, I'll do brown Boost.
Speaker 5 (41:17):
Because I'm okay.
Speaker 6 (41:19):
So I'm excited because I'm gonna launch some content specifically
and exclusively for Spill.
Speaker 5 (41:26):
So I didn't know this was gonna be my problems.
But I'm excited.
Speaker 6 (41:30):
Because if I think about like company updates, I really
don't have nobody to give company updates too. So this
is like a this is a serious company at leasta
the experience core update. I am moving some of my
what I call analog things I do in the real world,
in real classrooms with real bodies. I'm moving some of
my analog classes that I teach at the collegiate level
(41:52):
in terms of like how artists can be entrepreneurs or
move like it into the digital space exclusively specifically at
spill so and to also kind of help launch creators
like you kind of into a different mindset of like,
oh right, here's how we can activate, reinvigorate and just
(42:13):
kind of like do what I do with the classes
in the real world in this digital space with creators.
So I'm excited about that. Yeah you know, I'm gonna
let you know. Yeah, I'm gonna let you know. So
I'm really excited about that. That's like my Brown moves
because I'm excited to do something directly with a platform.
Speaker 5 (42:35):
Like I'm a big creator on the Internet and.
Speaker 6 (42:38):
I haven't pitched two other platforms, but they also haven't
reached out.
Speaker 5 (42:42):
To me, and I feel like being at this level
that I am, I'm.
Speaker 6 (42:47):
Very excited to share and I keep just knowledge that
I have because I don't have anything to do with it.
I'm practicing it, and I just kind of want to
share what I know and I only feel safe doing
it at a place that has community.
Speaker 5 (42:59):
Got it's like spill.
Speaker 1 (43:01):
Yeah, that's facts. That's amazing, And I mean that's a
big like part of our ethos at Brown Ambition too
is like no gatekeeping. Just that's why I ask deep questions,
you know, like how much do you make? And where
where do you get your money from? And how do
you diversify income streams? And what's your list look like? Yeah,
because that's what's happening behind the scenes, So like why
not why try to pretend I share?
Speaker 5 (43:23):
I share all of that negotiating with brands, pitch deck
like everything.
Speaker 1 (43:28):
Oh nice, Okay, I gotta have you back to talk
about negotiating because that's my jam and the negotiating click.
Speaker 3 (43:34):
Me taking part in a trend that started in twenty
twenty three on platform when we first launched, which is
still university. So I know other platforms have been credited with,
you know, educating.
Speaker 1 (43:45):
Not Hillman Talk said, y'all were first. Noteing's first still university, okay.
Speaker 3 (43:54):
In twenty twenty three, and it has a robust set
of classes and educators who in real life who are
coming to platform to share their knowledge and resources, and
you know, classes ranged from you.
Speaker 4 (44:09):
Know university level level curriculum to like contend one on one,
you know, like.
Speaker 1 (44:17):
You know it's it's a game that is Yeah, okay, girl,
I'm not gonna up front. I need to learn how
to play space.
Speaker 3 (44:25):
Well, you can learn how to play spades on spill.
We've got a practice mode. No angry uncles to flip
the table and cush you out when you mess up.
Speaker 1 (44:32):
Okay, you can try being a biracial baddy in a
family where you don't know how to play spades and
you just like try to fade into the background at
every gathering.
Speaker 4 (44:41):
Listen, you can, you.
Speaker 3 (44:42):
Too can learn how to play spades. And when you
sharpen your skills, girl, tag me in. We can take
we can run these tables together.
Speaker 1 (44:49):
Is it like a group game? I really don't know
anything about it.
Speaker 4 (44:52):
It's a group. It's communal. It is a space where people.
Speaker 3 (44:55):
Exchange, you know, ideas, and you can do live video
and live audio while you're playing spades as well communicating
with folks.
Speaker 4 (45:03):
Lisa is a great spades player too.
Speaker 5 (45:05):
I love playing spades.
Speaker 1 (45:06):
Okay, I can't wait. I'm very competitive, so I can't
wait to suck it up in there and play and
talk my ship. But I can't talk my shit yet
because I don't know. But we don't worry. When I
get it there, I'll be I'll be shit talking.
Speaker 6 (45:17):
I should do a space ship Talk and tea party
where a lesson on once you get your SPAE skills.
Speaker 1 (45:22):
Here's there's because I talk my ship very well and
like the banter. I love the bad babes like I
can go back and forth. If I can't like insult you,
then like really all be friends. You know what I mean?
So right, if I don't like a really good like
a like a dagger kind of insult, that's like did
she kill her? I don't know, Like that's my love language. Ah,
(45:44):
that's amazing, okay, ken Ye. So everyone's got to check
out Spill University, the ogs no shade to Heilman Talk University.
Maybe they need it too. But let's give credit where
credit is due to my incredible guests who did not
grow up together in Gary, Indiana, but you know, in
a fan fiction world, maybe you did. We don't know.
Kenya and Lisa, thank you so much for joining me
(46:06):
at the Brown Table and for joining and just sharing
your your your shine and you're light with ba Fam,
thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 4 (46:14):
This is fun.
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