The Keys to Building a Successful Career in Media, Marketing, and Branding

**Rashad Bilal** (0:00)
So let's get into this. So all right, how do you start your career, right? Coming from East New York, what's your break into the industry, and which industry do you start first? Was it music, fashion, liquor? How did you actually get your stride?

**SPEAKER_2** (0:15)
Yeah, it was funny. I started in media. So media is a big, big part of my expertise as well. So I started at a small internet company a long time ago, like a long time ago, mid-90s, long time ago. I've been in the game for a minute. I want to say it's 96 Okay. I made it myself, which is cool.
But yeah, I worked for a company called ivillage.com, and they were like the first lifestyle website for women. And I was the 35th employee. I literally was just looking for a full-time job. I was in college and wanted to make some money. I was putting myself through college and wanted to work in advertising, and they had a job opening and they hired me. And amazing ride. Four years was a part of their IPO.
Friends and family stocked it really, really well. They ultimately got acquired by NBC. So I had experience in that space very early on in my career, but loved advertising and marketing, but really needed something that was speaking to me culturally. And so I don't know if you guys know Keith Clinkscales.

**Rashad Bilal** (1:15)
Yeah, heard of him.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:16)
Yeah, yeah. So I believe he created 30 for 30 with ESPN.
He's one of the original pioneers in the culture, so Launch Vibe magazine.
Keith started a company called Vanguard Media, and they had three magazines, Honey, Heart and Soul, and Savoy. And Honey magazine was like the essence for young black women. Essence at the time was a little bit more mature, and, oh, your man left you, and you got a divorce. I was like, I'm 20 I don't know anything about that life. But Honey was fashion forward, and makeup, and beauty, and music, and all the things I loved. And I was like, you know what? I want to work at this magazine. So I literally wrote old school, wrote my letters and my resume, mailed it out, convinced them to sponsor a party at Howard University for Howard Homecoming. And they came in as a media partner, and they loved the work that I did with my cohorts, DSMs, who I'm sure you guys have heard of. Yep, yep, yep. Also Sean Combs alumni and a genius in her own right. She and I had a company, and we did an event with Mark Barnes in DC, and got Honey to come down. They loved it. And they were so impressed that they hired me. And I went into sales for Honey, Heart and Soul and Savoy for about four or five years. Then ultimately heard about me at Time Inc. They brought me over to Time Inc. to work at their publications there. And then Glamour magazine recruited me, and then Vibe recruited me, and then Giant recruited me. And I was finding this whole pattern of people seeing excellence in the marketplace and calling me like, hey, we're here doing great things in the market. We'd love for you to be a part of our team. So that went on for about 15 years. And ultimately, I burned out, like I can't keep doing sales and teaching people how to spend money with black people, because it was a real challenge. It was like, no, black people buy shampoo. No, we buy cars. And it was constantly educating people to allocate money to us.

**Troy Millings** (3:06)
Allocate money inside of the publications and outside of the publications? What exactly are we doing in sales?

**SPEAKER_2** (3:11)
So I was selling advertising within the publication. So when you go into a magazine and you see a print ad, I was literally selling those ads. So I would go to companies, major companies like L'Oreal and some of the others, and they just really didn't understand the segment of the African American audience in a way that made sense. And so they felt like they were capturing us if they ran a commercial on ABC, or if they ran an ad in a white magazine or a general market magazine. And it's like, you need to be able to speak to us specifically in order for us to be loyal to your brands. So that went on for over a decade of constantly teaching people about our value, and I realized that print was a dying industry at the time. And I was like, I need to do something different, and I'm really good at marketing. That's the reason why I'm selling the way that I'm selling in advertising. And I just started taking a bunch of informational interviews, and I sat down with this woman, her name is Imani Duncan, and at the time she was the CMO of Bad Boy Worldwide Entertainment Group, now Combs Enterprises, but it used to be BBWEG.