🎙Dear Black Creative, Start Today & Perfect It Along the Way!

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Hey Gang! Let’s talk about perfecting it along the way.

This month’s Shoppe Gal podcast & content issue is a love letter to Black creatives – called #dearblackcreatives.

Black creatives are near to me because I AM one. And heavily identify with a lot off struggles Black creatives have. Over rime, I will seek to address them. But for now we’ll keep to the theme of this issue and simply … Start!

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A lot of you have big visions, but won’t START because of your own idea of perfectionism. This episode is dedicated to YOU, my dreams Black creative!

This episode of #ShoppeGal Diaries podcast includes spilled thoughts from Imani’s mind, usually sparked during internal dialogue and self-critique. Imani will take you on a visualization journey with her favorite analogy about babies learning to walk.

Today’s society wreaks of F.E.A.R. making it easy for us to assign ourselves the victim role instead of the victor role.

But a personal branding journey reaches beyond even the victor role and seeps into the main character territory, allowing FULL ACCESS to the hero role. And while fear IS valid – 1000% – with personal branding YOU have the ability to conduct your own exposure therapy to confront your fears, leverage them and use them before they use you.

This especially powerful for Black creatives seeking to shift power dynamics, reclaim their creative spirits and have people judge you on your thought leadership – not on their bias.

Discover how you can develop a stronger YOU by packaging your imperfections in Imani’s article and in the podcast here.

How do other Black creatives build confidence so effectively? By starting.

Doing something enough times helps to build a confidence muscle. And that repetition ultimately creates a brand. Every successful person has believed in their vision and nurtured it with understanding to the power of repetition. They know what they want and they put all of their energy toward achieving it, all while boldly confronting fear. They understand that nurturing their vision is to directly nurture their own growth. Click here if you want to learn more about how simply starting can help you achieve everything you’ve ever wanted.

The best thing you can do is START. Starting helps you advance your future, prioritize, refine your productivity, give you something new and exciting to talk about, improve efficiency and inspire others.

To start is to get clear on your goals and better define the information you need.

Listen to the podcast to hear more on how to start and achieve in any creative niche.

Keep reading while listening for inspiration to get your start!

5 Black Creatives Who STARTED!

… And Now They Disrupt and Dominate

Dear Black creatives. THIS is your season and you should definitely step onto your path to create fearlessly, breaking the old and stepping away from the monolith they’ve fed us. I know it’s scary but we have plenty guides – past and present.

YOU are the future ~

All you need to do is commit to your journey and trust the process. In short, just START!

In case you need inspiration to see other Black creatives fearlessly rejecting the monolith, on their own path of self-healing through self-expression here are a few you’ll recognize.

Imani K Brown

Black female tattoo artist and life coach, Imani K Brown uses her personal brand to work through inner child healing and shadow work to awaken the giant she can feel inside. Knowing that no one will come to save her, she understands the value of clinical and traditional help. But leans more into self-mastery through self-management, self-care and peer to peer or community healing. The following Black creatives are avant-garde guides who deeply inspire her work and brand, Shoppe Gal.

Missy Elliott

Known as THE definition of avant-garde, Missy Elliott sets the bar for avant-garde artistry in the 21st century. Her brand challenges us to not just think outside the box but to dismantle the whole damn thang all together! She brings a timeless nostalgia as she sets Black culture front and center – from joaining to double-dutch to braids and bamboo earrings. Missy is quintessential Black creativity x personal branding complete with a renaissance era. Today, not only is Elliott the FIRST female rapper inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, but she’s also the first Black female artist to be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

Tobe Nwigwe x Fat Nwigwe

This one is a 2-fer with Black culture’s present day first family, Tobe and Fat – also dubbed Houston’s first family of rap. In their single Eat, Fat proclaims ‘We don’t ride the wave, we create it’ after having lit the world on fire sharing their love story of how they came to be.

When it comes to this Father figure and young Queen mother, some loved it, many hated it. But guess what tho. ‘They still togevuh’. The family and their dynamic IS the brand. It’s an innovating vibe – creating what they feel is missing in Black culture, healthy visions of Black families & Black love … and challenging us, the listeners and fans, to deconstruct what we feel to be true in all things love and creativity.

Erykah Badu

Inspiring hood healers everywhere, Badu once unmasked (post faux locs and ‘You Got Me‘ feature on The Roots Things Fall Apart, 1999), has nevah let up in demanding that we take in ALL of her or nothing at all. And we love to see it! Badu’s lifestyle brand infuses spirituality and hood goodness like baby daddy and EBT like no one else but a Black person could understand. And is definitely the female ODB of our generation