The Terrible, No Good Very Bad Year of 2020 -Part 2.
How Starting a Diversity Initiative Nearly Killed My Joy. An IIC Tell All.
If you were someone I worked with, spoke with or met between August 2020 and December 2022, I feel as though I owe you an apology. Within that time period, I was probably the most bitter version of myself that I have ever known- especially in 2021.
If someone had told me that I would be running two businesses, in the midst of a global pandemic a year earlier I likely would have laughed to the point of tears. I’ve stated in the past that I never wanted to be an entrepreneur, so the idea of becoming one while the world was in disarray seemed profoundly absurd. And yet, that’s exactly what happened.
At the end of 2019 I started my own insights consultancy (Touch of Whit Creative) and was happier and freer than I could have ever imagined. For about 9 weeks I had nothing to do and I learned that a life without a daily work activity was not as scary as I thought it would be. I sank deeper into my couch and rode out the wave of uncertainty with the rest of the world in solitude. In spite of my own financial situation and feelings about the world possibly ending I was, for the most part, at peace.
And then came the summer and a series of events that would propel me into the spotlight and test the limits of every boundary I had ever set for myself- including the ones I did not know I needed. I’ve hesitated telling this story. I’ve been terrified of sounding too negative or cynical. But the truth of my experience is not a fun, feel good story which directly contrasts against the often unrealistic, suffocating expectations of fierce positivity and unrelenting optimism in corporate culture; the very same culture that I’ve spent much of my adulthood detesting.
So buckle up buttercup. This is a story told by the non-corporate version of me. No flowers or feel good tummy rubs. Just truth.
This is the story of about the rocky journey of Insights in Color.
Money Issues
By the end of 2020, exhaustion had begun to set in. The events of 2020 made Black and brown researchers hot commodities which meant that work for Touch of Whit Creative was streaming in, and I was still a party of one. The needs for IIC seemed endless and I was increasingly managing more people, projects and tasks at every touch point. I had quickly become a desk zombie as all my waking hours were spent commissioning and working on brand strategy projects for one business, and building initiatives and managing Board members for another. Due to the COVID shut down I rarely, if ever, left my apartment, barely showered, and forgot to eat fairly often. Work would begin at 7am and end around 1-2am every night. Burn out was definitely near.
At that time, IIC hadn’t really made any money with the exception of the job Board, and, due to our partnership with Mimconnect, meant that we were only receiving $35-$100 per post (this was an agreeable partnership as again, the job Board did not interest me, and I had no capacity to own that part of IIC). In truth, I never intended for IIC to make money. I never thought of it as being a money making entity. All I wanted to do was show others that Black and brown researchers did exist and demonstrate the importance of our industry to the next generation of multicultural market researchers. Much of the rest was done to appease the needs of the industry, a factor that would continue to fuel my discontent with IIC in the years to follow.
With the growth of responsibilities came an increase of expenses. The Board was cranking out ideas and initiatives, each of which needed to be managed and resourced by me. To help hack some of our ideas, I sought out different platforms to bring some of our visions to life- each of which required a monthly subscription fee. While at first, a $25 or even $50 a month fee doesn’t seem like a big deal, when utilizing multiple platforms, this fee can add up fairly quickly in addition to random one-off expenses for unforeseen needs. Because Touch of Whit was doing so well at the time, I used money from that business to manage these expenses which included, purchasing IIC’s domain names, hosing the website, hosting the data is beautiful website, paying for automation integrations and purchasing necessary marketing tools and software. When I couldn’t figure out how to DIY my way into building or making something I’d purchase freelancers who could do those tasks for me. This dynamic fueled my need to continue to take on projects for Touch of Whit Creative as, without this income, IIC would not be able to continue to grow and expand.
At the same time, organizations were increasingly coming to IIC asking for advice for what they could do internally to solve their own diversity issues and also wanting to “help” by handing over large sums of money. The problem was, we had nothing for them to give money to. At the time of formation, I lacked foresight to see the initiative as more than just a way to bring attention to issues that were pervasive in our field, but it was becoming clear to me that I needed to change my initial thinking and potentially create money-making opportunities for IIC. So I went to my Board seeking advice.
I called for volunteers to attend a meeting to brainstorm ideas around initiatives we could implement within IIC to begin making money. While the Board was never aware of exactly how much money was being spent on IIC, they were very much aware of how much pressure I was feeling with the weight of it.
The meeting was successful and I was truly grateful for the members who showed up and contributed their thinking. I took notes, wrote out all the ideas and circulated them to the wider team and those who could not attend. At the next monthly Board meeting, I spoke about our ideas and some even helped me to refine them more. From that feedback, I put together a draft of a “partnership deck” filled with the initiatives and ideas we had brainstormed together, with costs attached to each idea and circulated it to the group. It was at this point, for some reason, that all hell broke loose.
The Coup
At some point in November, I received a note from one of my task forces asking to clarify IIC’s structure. A new joiner (a Board Member who had be recently recruited), it seems, had decided to put a halt on their task force planning because, she was shocked to see that IIC was trying to make money. So we all hopped on a call- she lead the discussion and spoke for all of her taskforce members.
The first thing we spoke about was the role of the Board Members in IIC. At this time, while each task force had a vision and goal attached to them, I had no concrete answers for her because everything was still very, very new. We were, at this time, barely 6 months into building IIC with a Board that was difficult to gather, and slow to develop points of action. There was a lot of ambiguity and unknowns for us all but I was never shy about this fact. In the initial interviews for each Board Member, I made it clear that everything we were doing was meant to be a collaborative effort to figure out the direction of IIC together. We were a motley crew of researchers, passionate about the same topic, and I was trying my best to steer and organize what had become a very big boat. I expressed this to her and the other members on the call, but it didn’t seem to put them as ease.
She then got to the main point of her concern. She expressed surprise in the fact that IIC was not a non-profit company and specifically asked, if we were to move to a making money model, “where would the money be going?”.
This to me was a very loaded question because it inferred ‘greed’ as a number one motivation for the creation of money-making initiatives. I was, in all honesty, offended by this. Not only was I taken back by the accusation that I’d be pocketing “all this money” that she assumed we’d be getting, I was also confused as to why IIC trying to make money (a topic that I had been openly talking about with the board for weeks at this point) was such an incredulous concept for her to wrap her mind around.
It should be noted that this particular Board Member had missed just about every Board meeting since joining IIC and she, like many others, had not been reading the after meeting notes, or watching the after-meeting zoom recorded call. While I did my best to share information from every meeting, many members missed meetings, details and information that was being openly, and publicly shared with them.
I reminded her that the NDA she signed before joining, clearly stated that IIC was a DBA of Touch of Whit Creative. I re-explained what original Board Members had already known- that IIC was never supposed to be a business. I noted that the initiatives we came up with may or may not be successful- they were untested ideas in a new marketplace- who knew if they would even work? Doing additional paperwork to make IIC a separate business just wasn’t smart at that juncture.
I then addressed her questions about non-profit status which (to this day) gave me anxiety to even begin considering due to the large amount of paperwork associated with doing so. I was just beginning to build my own business up. I did not intend for IIC to become my sole focus. I felt that designating IIC as a non-profit would force me to prioritize it over Touch of Whit, which I was never, ever willing or desiring to do.
She then proposed that everything that we were doing should come to a halt- a notion that offended me even more. I knew that the appetite for what we were doing was fickle, and for us to continue to delay more than we already had would jeopardize IIC and all of our efforts as soon as the industry decided to go into a different direction (see 2024). Looking back, I don’t think everyone understood what was at stake and why expediting of our ideas into tangible solutions was so crucial.
I proposed a compromise. I assigned her with the task of coming up with the rules and expectations they’d like for IIC to put in place for Board Members and promised that I’d work to get everything legalized and fully established once they let me know the provisions they’d like to see for themselves. This solution, I believed, would make the other members of the Board key architects in establishing their roles in IIC while also saving me the time and headache of doing it myself. She and the taskforce agreed.
All of That, for Nothing.
I was not surprised when I learned that these objections lead to little to no action. Not only was no one available to meet to discuss the terms, but no other Board members were making this issue a priority which resulted in no solutions being provided. As I previously mentioned, I don’t like sitting on things. I like to solve problems quickly and get them out of the way, and more than anything, I didn’t want this issue to resurface. After one more attempt of having others lead the charge on creating the rules and expectations they wanted to see for IIC, I took the process over during what was meant to be my holiday break.
At the top of 2021, while everyone was coming back from the holidays well rested, I had been up several nights in a row trying to formalize IIC into a LLC, and finalize the contracts of IIC’s Board and Advisory Council members before starting a new project for Touch of Whit Creative. I had gotten no break and had sacrificed what little rest I could get to create a solution which, looking back, didn’t really need to happen.
This part of the process also required me to spend a great deal of money. I sought a lawyer to help me build contracts and was referred to one by a friend. Not only was this lawyer a $10k mistake, but he never did what I had originally hired him for. I was actually forced to hire and pay someone else to review and legalize the contracts that, due to the first lawyers inability to help, I had hand written myself.
It took a few weeks, but once they were approved, I sent out the new agreement terms to the Board and the Advisory Council. They stipulated attendance and commitment expectations as well as a code of conduct. They stipulated ownership of all ideas for IIC and plans for profit sharing if IIC ever actually made any money. At this point, due to the high degree of lack of participation, I gave everyone the opportunity to drop out. I stated that by signing these contracts, they’d be locked in for a 1 year term of commitment. Much to my surprise, nearly everyone signed their contracts. By April, we were all back to functioning again and was about $15,000 more in debt with IIC.
I wish I could say that the contracts changed things at IIC, but they actually did nothing to improve attendance or participation rates, not even for the person who first asked for the rules to be established in the first place. It seemed that my plans to bring more people into the Board did little to help the backlog of progress. While some task forces flourished, others withered and required even more of a helping hand from me. The amount of emails, reminders, follow-ups, and rescheduled meetings seemed to double in this time period. The more people there were to manage the more our ideas stagnated and were prevented from being put into the industry.
Despite the internal disarray, outwardly, IIC’s reputation was growing and, unbeknownst to me, IIC had evolved into some sort of virtue-signaling, status symbol. Suddenly people wanted to use our logo on their websites as a way of signaling to others that they were “in the know” and “aligned with IIC” and everything we stood for. Companies and individuals that I had never spoken to would tag us on their LinkedIn posts and list us on their event fliers to signal to others that we had worked together or that we were partners. Even some of the individuals I interviewed for Advisory Council or Board Member roles expected business kickbacks and wanted to put their logos on IIC’s website so that they could drive traffic to their own businesses- something that not even I had done with Touch of Whit Creative.
I think this further illustrates the tensions that were felt between me and others who thought IIC was meant to be some sort of money grab. It was clear that individuals who came with that mindset never actually experienced the trauma or issues that Black professionals often face in Market research settings. If they had, they would have lead from a place of wanting to make the space more welcoming and hospitable. IIC for me was supposed to be something bigger. It was meant to solve deeper issues and impact things in our industry that most could never even begin to think about solving. But it was quickly evolving to some sort of diversity gesture that people and companies were actively seeking to profit from, by any means necessary.
Part 3 Coming Soon.