Female Founders: Kim and Keyondra Lockett On The Five Things You Need To Thrive and Succeed as a Woman Founder
An Interview With Candice Georgiadis
We think more women should be founders because it helps women mold and create the business model that they want to see and insert more women in the workforce. It also helps a woman to be a legacy builder. As black women, in particular, we do not see a lot of black women, or women in general, having the opportunity to leave a legacy.
As a part of our series about “Why We Need More Women Founders”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Kimberly Lockett.
Kimberly Lockett, Keys2LuxLife, is an Atlanta based celebrity fashion stylist. Kim is no stranger to the fashion industry, having spent over 10 years as a personal and celebrity wardrobe stylist, she has gained experience coordinating all aspects of a client’s image. While Kim’s work has been seen on various national platforms and television networks such as BET, HypeHair.com, Essence Magazine and more, her personal style has been featured and recognized in major online publications and blogs such as Essence.com, 50 Fab Fashion Instagrammers (2012) and a Fashionbombdaily.com, Fashion Bombshell of the Day (2015).
Keyondra is a #1 Billboard Chart Topping singer-songwriter. She has shared the stage with artists such as Yolanda Adams, CeCe Winans, Kirk Franklin, Mary Mary, and many more.
She’s also the first and only gospel artist to have a licensing deal with a toy company.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”? What led you to this particular career path?
We are honored to share! Thank you for having us. We both share a love for fashion and have always wanted to be entrepreneurs. As kids, we were the girls who had to have every doll and all her accessories. When we couldn’t get the accessories we would create dresses and handbags from socks, tissue, scrunchies, rubber bands, and cardboard (for purses)! We were also the girls with the lemonade stand going door-to-door to make a sale. In high school, I (Kim) had a dream to one day design my own clothing and have it sold in all the fashion capitals of the world. In 2009 Keyondra had the idea to create an online eyewear brand. We named it The Red Glasses Sisters (RGS) because we wore red glasses then. What we didn’t realize is that business wouldn’t be our breakout thing, but it was the catalyst to where we are now. We learned a lot about what not to do while running RGS. We desperately needed a rebrand because RGS was very limited in the name alone. We had a decent sized male following and the glasses part didn’t allow us to seamlessly grow. So we sought out a new name. As we sat and thought about new names and the direction of our new venture Keyondra continued her singing career where she found a passion for encouraging women and girls. I continued in my wardrobe styling career and worked towards a master’s degree in counseling. In my studies, I learned of several statistics that shed light on the state of black women, in the US alone, which made me dig deeper for names for our new business venture. Since we’re from Louisiana we decided to tap into French culture and name our business, Jolie Noire. We could have said Pretty Black but we wanted it to spark conversation. It only made sense that we advocated for black women because Keyondra used her platform for women’s empowerment and the statistics shed light on the need for a community and safe space for black women to be celebrated. The cool thing about our mission is even men find it valuable so we had to create a small space in the Jolie Noire closet so they too can be represented. Our main mission still exists, to promote and show representation of black women, but we do realize underrepresentation is a blackness issue, not just black women.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began leading your company?
The most interesting thing that’s happened to us since starting is when Target approached us for the black history month partnership. It was so cool and unbelievable at the same time. The Sr. Buyer of the multicultural dept contacted us via our business email and Kim’s personal email addresses. When Kim read it, she couldn’t believe it so she sent a screenshot of the email to our group text between the two of us, our mom and our business coach, at the time. After our business coach confirmed it was her, we screamed and cried with joy, before knowing what “opportunity” she had in mind! We had a meeting with her a few days after responding to her email and here we are now with an exclusive Jolie Noire collection sold in all Target stores and target.com!
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
We can think of several mistakes we’ve made when we first started but we can’t say they were funny… Hah! We’ve made jokes about them but at the time we couldn’t see the humor. One of those mistakes is we trusted the numbers of a large Instagram influencer without really looking at their history. We took the word of their manager as gold and because they had a lot of followers, we didn’t do sufficient homework. The influencer had an event that they wanted emerging black businesses to sponsor. We were to provide clothing for them to get ready for the big day and pay $700 for our name to be featured on the step-and-repeat, at the event. The process was so rushed and went so fast. That should have been a red flag for us, but we proceeded. Once the day came, they were supposed to wear the pieces and mention what they were wearing and where it was from and create a video that we could share on our platform. They wore one piece but never mentioned where they got the piece, they never did the video, and the other pieces conveniently got lost in the mail. We followed up with their team several months without any resolution. We had to count it as a loss. We made several funny moments when speaking about influencers, based on that experience, and learned to slow down and research each opportunity. If we cannot take the time to research, it’s not the collaboration for us.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
Not to sound cliche, but we must thank our mom. She has supported us in EVERYTHING we’ve ever done and Jolie Noire is no different. She has been our financial investor. Keyondra and I had very little finances to start Jolie Noire. We started with about $100 of our own money, added roughly $2000 more, over time, and she has funded the rest, which is A LOT!
Ok, thank you for that. Let’s now jump to the primary focus of our interview. According to this EY report, only about 20 percent of funded companies have women founders. This reflects great historical progress, but it also shows that more work still has to be done to empower women to create companies. In your opinion and experience what is currently holding back women from founding companies?
While we’re proud of the progress women have made, we can’t agree more that there is still a lot of work to be done! We think women are the group that the phrase “representation matters’’ resonates with most. We haven’t had many examples of women doing things outside of the norm, such as founding companies, and it’s hard to see ourselves in all types of spaces. If you’ve never had someone encouraging you, at home to be whatever you wanted, or whatever you deemed achievable, and you rarely, if ever, saw an example of women doing those “out of the box” things outside of the home, finding the courage to step out can be tough. It’s tough for those of us who have had examples of fearless women around us. We believe it starts in the mind. Your mind is initially shaped by your home environment. If we can overcome the obstacles of the mind, we can achieve a lot more. Another obstacle is finances. It’s tough finding funding for women-owned businesses. Unfortunately, women aren’t as respected as men are when it comes to finances and lenders and investors don’t take us as seriously. We often have to rely on our own resources just to start.
Can you help articulate a few things that can be done as individuals, as a society, or by the government, to help overcome those obstacles?
If it’s the obstacle of the mind that we’re overcoming, we suggest as an individual, seek counseling to help reframe thoughts as well as to assist in planning. Have a circle of close friends or family who are eager to see you win. Network with other women founders and even men founders to see how they went about starting their businesses. Decide what of that information will fuel you and what of it is information to be stored to help another aspiring woman founder. As a society, we need to support women founded businesses. We feel men should use their voices to speak on their view of the importance of women, in business, and women should continue to model why we are so valuable. On a governmental level, there should be a nurturing of programs to teach women about business and incentives to owning or supporting women founded businesses.
This might be intuitive to you as a woman founder but I think it will be helpful to spell this out. Can you share a few reasons why more women should become founders?
We think more women should be founders because it helps women mold and create the business model that they want to see and insert more women in the workforce. It also helps a woman to be a legacy builder. As black women, in particular, we do not see a lot of black women, or women in general, having the opportunity to leave a legacy.
What are the “myths” that you would like to dispel about being a founder? Can you explain what you mean?
A myth we’d love to dispel that everyone can be and should be a founder. Not everyone has what it takes to lead or grow a business. Being a founder of a business can be super stressful, at times, and honestly, everyone cannot handle the stress. Also, to build a business, with a team, you have to display great leadership skills or at least be able to delegate that responsibility to a partner. Though all great leaders are great followers, not all great followers are great leaders. The reality is not everyone wants to be a founder of a company. Some people truly love to help someone else see their vision through. Everyone can’t do everything. It’s not realistic.
Is everyone cut out to be a founder? In your opinion, which specific traits increase the likelihood that a person will be a successful founder and what type of person should perhaps seek a “regular job” as an employee? Can you explain what you mean?
I guess we should have read ahead! Ha. Other than having great leadership skills, some other traits a great founder would likely be open to change, a critical thinker, self-motivated, just to name a few. We always say never be married to an idea. A founder should be open to changes that take place, within their industry, be that daily, weekly, monthly, or every 5 years. The ability to adapt to that change, and accept it, makes all the difference. Critical thinking is a necessary life skill that unfortunately not everyone uses. As a founder we have to be able to solve problems such as how to adapt to the changes mentioned previously and how to continue moving your business forward in an ever-changing economy. The most important of them all, in our opinion, is the ability to be self-motivated. If you need someone to push you to do your job, you probably should choose a “regular job”.
Ok super. Here is the main question of our interview. What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why? (Please share a story or example for each.)
Five things we wish someone would have told us before we started are influencers with a large following will not automatically turn into sales, don’t depend on family to support your business, there’s no perfect timing, just start, develop a solid marketing strategy, you have more in your hands than you think. Concerning influencers, it’s important to understand, not all user generated content, including the content you pay for, will yield an immediate financial gain. It’s best to view influencers as a potential sale but a guaranteed ad. That way, you will be able to strategize and select your influencers wisely.
How have you used your success to make the world a better place?
Our initial mission was to empower black women to build them up to continue being incredible forces in society. Since we’ve started, our mission has grown to encompass black men as well. Now that we have the Target partnership, we’ve been able to further our message all while bringing a sense of unity between cultures, with non-black women taking interest in supporting our efforts. We now have other races of women asking if they can be a part of our movement, by purchasing. We are normalizing wearing whatever because it’s beautiful, not because of who did or didn’t create it.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good for the greatest number of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
It’s our hope that our business concept is that movement. Our efforts don’t solely impact black women, men, and children but it can continue to bridge gaps in the fashion industry and ultimately several others causing a greater surge of unity across cultures.
We are very blessed that some very prominent names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.
We’d love to sit down with Oprah Winfrey. She’s broken so many barriers as a woman and person of color. She’s so inspiring and her efforts aren’t specific to one generation of women.
Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.
Female Founders: Kim and Keyondra Lockett On The Five Things You Need To Thrive and Succeed as a… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.