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with several of Incite's nonprofit partners and regardless of size she found the same challenges to be prevalent.

      So, we began to build out our enterprise product to do a number of things but certainly to create a more harmonious flow between funders and their grant recipients.

      Exempt Me Now would go through a rebrand to recognize our suite of products, and what would come out of that is Resilia, a SaaS technology platform that enables organizations to increase capacity, and enterprises (think cities, private foundations, and corporations) to scale impact.

      I share this part of my journey to emphasize that you have to start somewhere. As you'll recall me mentioning, I'm not a technical founder, but if you have an idea and you're willing to execute against it, anything is possible. Today entrepreneurship has been glamorized in so many ways. I'm here to tell you that it's hard, and that success is achievable, but there's very little glamour in it at all. I'm excited to see all the aspiring entrepreneurs, and those who have broken through to attain success.

      As a Black female entrepreneur, I'm among the fastest-growing demographic of new business owners. What we often don't talk much about is that the average Black female–led business generates less than $30,000 a year. Digitalundivided, a nonprofit studied the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on Black female founders, finding that 82% reported a loss of revenue because of the crisis.

I do not say that we should start businesses to make money because I believe money is everything. But security is something, the security to take care of your family and/or yourself. What I know for sure is that not having financial security will make your days much longer, and will likely cause you an unhealthy amount of stress, but it's something that business owners often face on their climb. Coupling that with running a business and one that doesn't provide you the financial security you need in order to pay your bills will make it difficult to focus on growing your business because you're too focused on just trying to keep your head afloat and survive, literally.

      The life of an entrepreneur can feel like you are on a roller coaster: there are a lot of ups and downs, you can't always see what turns are ahead of you, and the roller coaster can seem never ending. At one point you'll be having a high, perhaps a new product launch or amazing press that captures the essence of what you are doing and building; at another point there can be what feels like endless things going wrong. Customers complain, key team members move on, or you just feel burned out. Something that my mother shared with me that I now apply to entrepreneurship, not just my personal life, is: “Don't let your lows get so low you can't see the heavens, or your highs so high you can't touch the ground.”

      2020 was a year of extreme highs and lows for me: just days before closing on my Series A round, COVID-19 began to rear its ugly little head, and I could feel my anxiety doing the same. I remember emailing my attorney, “We need to get our round closed!” I could feel the ground shifting—and just like that, it did.

      Later, I'll get to how I raised a Series A during the onset of COVID-19, but first, let's take a step back and discuss what's needed for this journey.

Focus

      Whether you are starting a bootstrapped business or what you hope to be a venture-backable startup, it's important to focus and really hone in on what it is you want to achieve.

Entrepreneurs or aspiring entrepreneurs often reach out to me to ask how to get started, and one of the biggest challenges I find they have is the inability to focus long enough to get started and then the inability to retain that focus to create consistent momentum. If you are someone who generally hops from one idea to the next, it could be because you lack focus. It also may be connected to what I describe as a “hustle mentality.” I'm not speaking of a hustle mentality that comes from a desire to get things done no matter what, but instead a mentality that finds you jumping from what seems like one opportunity to the next without truly having an end goal in mind. Though you might have success here, what I've found is that this mentality can leave you short-sighted, and success will often feel fleeting.

      When starting something new, it's important to get focused and spend some time fleshing out your ideas, figuring out whether this is something you're truly passionate about. Will you keep going if you don't have any funding? Will you even start? Are you willing to make the necessary sacrifices that come along with everything that's about to happen to you? Are you willing to constantly have to level up and push yourself?

      Have you figured out what your goals are and how to get really focused on how to build momentum? How do you put together the right ingredients to actually begin to grow not just your idea but yourself?

      I know it's hard. It's hard for me. If you are a builder and an entrepreneur you probably have no shortage of ideas. And you know, that's something that motivates you. Right?

      I think particularly that there is this theme that's being cemented in us. We're focused on how we create multiple streams of revenue, but when you think about individuals like Warren Buffett and how most people created their wealth, it's because they focus on that thing that really took off for them and became really good at that. That's the thing people reached out to them for.

You start by nailing that first idea, cultivating it, building it, and executing it, and then from there you diversify. So when you think about that you really want to focus on figuring that one thing out. You don't want to be a jack of all trades but a master of none.

      So, what is your niche? What are you really good at? It doesn't mean your niche has to be a small market but it's one that you can distinguish yourself in as the thought leader in your space and you can work toward building that one thing first.

      If you have too much on your plate, you will constantly feel disheveled.

      So now you have this disheveled mind where you have all these thoughts and ideas running through your brain and you have an endless list of tasks that you're trying to get through and you begin to do those tasks in a mediocre way. So think about how you can tune out the things that are making you inefficient.

      Why am I talking about focus so much in this chapter? Because the rest of this book is honing in on how to build your business or startup idea; how to raise capital and close deals without being backed by investors. But none of it will be useful if your intent is to move the needle in your business if you aren't focused and don't understand what is required of you for this next level of your life.

      How do you cut out the noise? Some things I do to realign are:

      1 Meditation

      2 Saying no

      3 Time blocking

      4 Mentorship

      One reason I wrote this book is because small changes in your daily habits can really have a huge impact on how you take on the day, and how you take on the day will impact how successful you are. Another reason I wrote this book is because I know that not everyone has mentors and I strongly believe that information should be easy to access for all.

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