The Terrible, No Good Very Bad Year of 2020 - Part 3.
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.
Hiring Help- And the Headaches It Brings
What undoubtedly made me feel the most helpless was how much help I needed, and how difficult it was to find. Everyone always badgers entrepreneurs about knowing when to bring on additional help but no one ever talks about the money we waste trying to find it.
The area that proved to be a pain point was IIC’s social media management. Because I was managing IIC’s external marketing efforts, often, I’d post things when I’d find time to get to them which meant there was no set schedule for anything. This proved to be problematic for many reasons, but once companies began to seek us out promote their events to our network, I decided it was time to look for a social media manager.
Because I am a brand strategist, IIC’s internal brand strategy and visual identity had already been created. I put a lot of effort into building the on-boarding process and used that to get prospective social media managers to understand the business and the tasks required of them before hiring them. I outlined what IIC was, how we operated, our task forces and initiatives. I told them the language and tone that I expected them to have for each post and how to consider the visual imagery guidelines. All of our meetings and interactions were recorded on zoom so that, should they forget something, they could simply refer back to the videos for clarity. After every meeting, I’d ask if they had any questions, or if I needed to explain something differently, or show them something specifically, and no matter how many times I did this, the response was always no. “I’ve got it” they’d say and conclude with “this seems pretty simple”. This was almost never the case.
Despite their confidence, the results I’d get back were almost always wrong. Some would put together carbon copies of things I’d created in the past with information that was no longer relevant. Many would put posts together with irrelevant copy that referred to the wrong initiatives. Some would type up long explanations about an initiative, and have no clue what it was actually about. Many lacked the ability to design anything I found visually interesting or they’d disregard the visual rules I had painstakingly walked them through in past meetings. Most were focused on bulk post creations and, despite my objections, would attempt to make 30 posts for the month; most of which were wrong or had incorrect information which would inevitably stall posting progress. In the end, like most things at IIC, I would have to do the posts myself. Almost none of them could think in terms of a marketing campaign. When I’d ask for them to come up with witty post ideas they lacked the ability to do so despite reassuring me during their interviews that they could. Their markers of success were to increase followers. My markers of success centered around increase website traffic and sign ups, which they’d almost always forget to tell people to do in their posts.
Hiring a social media manager was the most horrible, time wasting process I’ve endured, but I’m sure some kind of lesson was learned from it (still figuring out the lesson). I cycled through about 8 different social media managers, most of whom quit because they felt as though they were failing - and they were. When I eventually came to realize that what I was asking for was a bit more than a typical social media manager could provide, and increased my budget accordingly, the new social media managers simply continued to fail at a higher price point.
After about 2 years and a $15k-$20k of paying other people ( which included website developers and administrative assistants as well), I simply stopped looking for outside help and IIC’s outward progress began to stall.
Burned Out, Broke and Out of Love
Despite its pain points, IIC was able to get some really great initiatives off the ground. We were able to partner with Microsoft and Ipsos to do our “What’s the Story Behind That” Series to educate future generations on how some of their products came to be thanks to market research. We partnered with Lucid and ThinkNow Research to produce the industry’s first ever inclusive research standards guideline. We developed a diversity sense-check survey to have researchers ask themselves crucial questions about the inclusiveness of their research methods. We had a “Where Are All the Men” forum to highlight the importance of BIPOC men in research sectors that weren’t all tech related. We pioneered an employer pledge that companies had to sign before posting on our job board. We created a resource for BIPOC researchers who had suddenly found themselves in DEI roles with no additional compensation. We developed thought leadership on how to get diversity right when hiring BIPOC talent. We created a way for businesses and companies to find and hire freelance BIPOC research professionals. We partnered with Quirks and Mimconnect on a variety of diversity initiatives. We spoke on various panels on a wide variety of issues, and for the most part we’ve successfully left a mark.
But if I’m honest, most of what we did wasn’t always executed very well. I can not overstate how tired I was throughout this entire time period. I had gained 20 lbs and became tied to my desk with meetings, conversations, work projects, and more, often foregoing showers, proper meals or fresh air. As a result, the work we did (I did) for IIC was often subpar, or below my standards of excellence. Because I had little help on pushing out marketing, there were often typos or visual inconsistencies. When hosting live webinars, almost always things would go wrong, and fall into my lap to fix, while also moderating the conversations. I had a very “lets just get it done the best way we can and move on” attitude and everyday I had to deal with IIC I would feel sick to my stomach and try to put it off for as long as possible (it’s a feeling I still have to this day).
Eventually, I began putting restrictions in place. I stopped allowing meetings to happen on Mondays ans during the week, meetings before 10am were strictly forbidden. I made myself workout every morning before I allowed myself to touch my desk. I created automated systems that would respond to inquiries about IIC so I wouldn’t have to be involved. When new speaking opportunities came, I pushed them to IIC board or advisory council members and if no one said yes, then we’d pass on the opportunity. I had grown tired of talking about the same diversity topic over and over and over and over again. No one wanted to talk about changing anything, everyone just wanted to talk about how they felt, and I believed my talents were better spent making new tools and resources for the industry.
I began saying no a lot. I became short with my words and impatient with others. I had become a completely different person because I started an initiative that somehow had become a company that was bleeding me dry, physically, mentally and financially on a daily basis.
As I had suspected, barely any of the initiatives we ideated ever went on to make any money. There was one amazing occasion where IIC got a significant investment thanks to the help and support of a national US retailer. We built a bespoke platform for brands and agencies to use to ensure their research documents and process were intentionally inclusive at every touchpoint. It was built not only to be a resource for the industry, but also to help freelancers of color get paid in the process. While it represented a money-making opportunity for IIC, I was more pressed to spread the wealth to others who may desire to be involved and who could use the extra source of income. Unfortunately, however, the construction of the platform took more money, time and dedication than the engineering partner I hired said it would. The initial contribution quickly dwindled down to nothing. Something that was supposed to take 3 months turned into a mind-stabbing 2 years and some change due to a dev team that had no idea how to build a consumer facing interface. By the time the platform had finally been fixed (2023) conversations about diversity and inclusion had dried up - much as I had expected. We had a tool which, due to monthly subscription fees, was actively draining IIC and any profits it could have hoped to make. Adding this to the monthly revolving door of expenses and we were barely staying afloat.
To this day, IIC has never made a profit.
An Inevitable Fate
Towards the middle of 2021, I’d grown weary of trying to rally the board to participate in meetings and initiatives- so I stopped. I want to be clear in stating that there were definitely members of the board and advisory council who stepped up and put in work. But the nature of what we were trying to achieve required more than just a few dedicated team members who would also become burned out and bitter at the amount of work they were taking on vs. their less active task force colleagues who meant well, but never delivered.
In the fall of 2021, tired of people not reading my emails, failing to show up to board meetings and failing to participate in task force initiatives, I disbanded the Board and the Advisory Council. I recorded our last meeting, sent out several notifications about the dissolution of the board by the end of the year, and still received emails by former board members wanting to know when the next meeting would be after the fact.
In 2022 I attempted to do a much larger sponsorship run. We created a years’ worth of programming that could help us build and connect with the community that our brand partners and clients were so desperate to bring in house. Companies still desired quick fixes for their DE&I needs but failed to realize the need to invest in initiatives that would help solve their problems more long term. In the end, we were unsuccessful in achieving much of anything in 2022. We kicked off what was supposed to be an national IIC and Friends tour in NYC thanks to the contributions of a couple of sponsors who believed in us. Despite their support, their dollars were not enough to cover the full cost of the event and in the end I paid several thousand dollars out of pocket to settle the bill for the venue. A second initiative was for a beautifully immersive interactive lounge at the Quicks event in NYC and Samplecon. But after failing to render much support there with sponsorship opportunities we were unable to put anything together beyond the donated space and furniture that the Quirks event was willing to lend us (which we are forever grateful for).
In the end, much like I expected, there was no money to be had with IIC- which was why, (again) it was never initially built to be a revenue generating business. Had I stayed true to myself, and not expanded to try to accommodate or address the widespread needs of an industry, I’d probably have a lot more money on hand, and less bitterness overall. The lesson for me is not a new one, but instead a doubling down on what I’ve already, always known to be true: listen to your gut, and know that you’re always right.
IIC Today
After about a year of ignoring IIC, I returned back to it with fresh eyes and thoughts. I’ve been doing little things here and there behind the scenes but making no promises to anyone about anything.
This year, after a multitude of one-off requests from clients and partners, I invested a lot of time into building an online freelancer marketplace that allowed marketers and insights professionals to browse and connect with freelancers on their own accord. As excited as I was for that, it has not received much traction as clients and marketers seem to only want to work with freelancers they know or can be referred to. This, like many other IIC initiatives, will slowly disappear and die in the night, but that’s okay.
Outside of this, we’ve offered a limited series of one-on-one office hour sessions for market researchers seeking input and guidance on their careers and now, we are providing lunch and learn sessions for market research companies and departments seeking way to ensure their research methods are thoughtfully inclusive. This will likely be the extent of our efforts moving forward.
Despite the very tumultuous and rocky road that became my IIC journey, I feel quite satisfied with the things I’ve attempted to accomplish with IIC and the efforts I went through to try to change the industry from the inside out. Had I not at least tried, I would have been left with a barrel of “what if’s” towards the end of my life- a prospect so paralyzing that I’d choose to start and fail all over again if I had to.
IIC still gets a ridiculous amount of web traffic today which let’s me know that the interest and need for diversity initiatives in market research still exists. I can only hope that we were able to put a dent in some of it along the way as the next generations of researchers come along and make this industry their own.
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Thanks to everyone who joined me on this journey and supported us, our dream and visions along the way. A lot of it wasn’t perfect or ideal, (and again, I apologize if I ever came across as a stressed out, disconnected maniac at any point ) but at least we can say we were brave enough to try and that’s really all we can ask for- isn’t it?