114. Building Entrepreneurial Legacies: a Q&A with Erica and India
Summary
How much do you know about the powerhouse duo behind Pause On The Play The Community? How much do Erica and India know about each other?
It’s time for another round of revealing Qs and intersecting As. As membership inquiries and interest in their values-based approach to visibility continue to grow, Erica and India take this opportunity to reintroduce themselves to new folks and those who’ve followed these discussions for a while.
In this discussion:
Divergent experiences and common themes throughout Erica and India’s relationship
The triumphant, continual journey from grief to growth
Black entrepreneurship and the importance of living by example
Black hair and identity politics in the workplace
Honoring ancestors and building generational legacies
Keep The Dialogue Going
Turn powerful conversations into lasting legacies. Create the change you want to see by joining our values-based hub for entrepreneurs and changemakers at Pause On The Play The Community.
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“My goal with these [Q & A sessions] is always, like, if I can get you to share one thing that I didn't know, I won.” And, with that, India lets Erica in on her plan for this casual yet introspective chat between these two best friends and colleagues.
“I feel like everybody asks this all the time, and I actually don't know the answer to this,” India says, “What did you want to be when you were growing up?”
“This is funny because my daughter asked me this the other day,” Erica begins. “I know that when I was like middle school age, I wanted to do medical research - so R and D - because I wanted to find cures for diseases. That was what I thought that I wanted to do at the ripe old age of, like, 12.
India laughs. “I didn't see that coming!”
“I know! I know! And, so while I won't try to make it all depressing, I wanted to find cures for diseases because I lost my dad at 12 to leukemia. And, so, at that point I was like, I want to do something that is going to help someone else not to have to experience this. Now, the interesting part is I've always apparently wanted to do something to create impact, and I'm doing that - my impact just looks a little different. But, apparently I always wanted to create impact. So here we are.”
At about that same age, India’s dream was to become a fashion designer, “which is funny because when I met you, I think you had dove into a fashion design class,” she says of Erica.
“I was prompted to do it because I was tired of feeling like there were not enough options for us curvier, plush women to feel like we had options that did not look like somebody's damn tablecloth,” Erica confirms.
“But then,” continues India, “I think by the time I was, like, oh, high school-aged, I switched over into wanting to go into the medical world.”
“I think for me,” India says, “I thought about how much compassion that I have, and I didn't know it at the time or that there was even a word for it, but being an empath or HSP and I was like, oh, the moment we got to the part in our college classes where you started doing hospital visits and stuff, I was like, oh, I might have to tell people that somebody died. Yeah, I'm not cut out for this.”
The next question also speaks to their motivations and inspirations: Who was the best boss you ever had, and what made them the best?
“Oh my gosh. I don't know if I think I had a best boss,” Erica says before reconsidering. She tells the story of her supervisor at a mega gym. “He was just so impactful, and it was from him that I got something that has still stuck with me till this day, which is that he found that it was very important to empower or to kind of really set people up to be able to make good decisions and to be able to make decisions on the spot if they needed to. He always prefaced it that ‘I want you to know that you can make a decision and that you're not worried about whether or not it's a good decision.’”
Erica explains that her boss’s follow-up was just as empowering. His willingness to champion his employees’ agency had an impact on Erica. “I don't think I've ever worked with anyone else that really did implore you to know that you could step up in a leadership moment and to be that necessary leader. And that has always stuck out to me.”
“I don't think I had a best boss that I can remember, but I will say that I had a very vivid situation that stayed with me,” India says, “And, whew!, this is very entrenched in the DEI pieces that we talk about here.” Her story begins with the first leadership role for which she was hired out of college. “I think I always had a little bit of imposter syndrome about it,” India says, even as she observed issues within the global brand. “In my opinion, there's a point where you're going beyond just making sure that people fit the brand's image into controlling how people look.”
Strict image guidelines dictated that all staff members wear their hair straight and slicked-back into a low ponytail with a ponytail holder that was either black or matched your hair color - absolutely no deviations. “At the point in my life that I had taken this role, I was also in my early twenties where I am navigating my own identity after college and really recognizing that I'm a woman, I'm a grown woman, I'm engaged, and I am learning how to make decisions for myself of who I want to be instead of who everyone else told me I needed to be. I decided to chop my hair down to nothing and wear my natural texture for the first time ever.”
India explains that she’d never seen her natural hair texture before, having opted to use chemical relaxers since she was a child. “I remember the first time that I had made the decision to do it. I first asked this boss for approval, and they were like, ‘Yeah, you don't need to ask me what to do with your hair,’” she recalls. “I was like, Hmm, noted. That's not what's in the book. And then, number two, when I did it, it was like such a dramatic change cause I always had this shoulder-length, you know, bone straight hair...Erica, you did this cut. What was it? It was like, almost like a Mohawk!”
Erica confirms that, yes, it was a cute little fauxhawk, dyed a very light brown to boot.
India picks the story back up. “I just remember the first time this boss saw me on the job where they could actually see this dramatic change. I was like, are you sure this is okay? And I was really nervous that it’d be a corporate problem. I gave myself all these stories - I'm gonna have to start wearing a wig! - and she was like, ‘No! I love your hair. It looks amazing! And I'm so glad to see you wearing your natural texture!’” she recalls. “I was like, Okay.”
Erica admits she didn’t see that plot twist coming, and, for a while, India didn’t trust that her boss’s enthusiasm would stand, either. The incident left its mark on her. “ I think that as women of color, we can have these stories that our white bosses are going to behave differently when we start showing our real Black pieces.”
“I had a lot of those conversations,” Erica says of her time behind the chair as both a stylist and a salon owner, “and there were a number of people that did not feel as though they had the permission slip to go ahead and do that.” She adds, “It does take a certain amount of courage and just fuck it at some point to be like, I'm going to do me, and I'm just going to have to deal with that later because some people are just so nervous because they don't know what they're going to walk into. And yours could have gone very differently. Let's acknowledge that.”
“I've seen it go differently!” India agrees.
“I could go on all day just to talk about the fact of how Black women and their hair, we are too much and not enough all the damn time.”
Facts.
Before launching into her next question, India says the experience definitely made her recognize some truths about the amount of deprogramming necessary. “A lot of my own DEI work has been deprogramming the way that I see myself and giving myself permission to be who I was born as and not what society expects from me.”
Erica reminds folks of the work needed on both sides. “It's other people's preconceived notions and your own.”
Next question up: What was a specific turning point in your life?
“Leaving an abusive relationship,” says India, “and being honest with myself that it was an abusive relationship because I think sometimes it's hard to actually put those words to the situation, even though, you know, what it is, right? Naming changes everything.”
She shares a second related experience. “The journey that leaving that relationship put me on as far as getting support through a therapist to process my trauma - multiple traumas I've had in my lifetime - and really getting on the other side of that healing journey, which I say journey because it's always a work-in-progress, but being able to allow the rain to pour on down is what that process felt like in order to have the clouds fade away, and the sun comes out.”
Erica’s examples are no less reflective or inspiring. “It's been almost 14 ago,” she begins, “starting my journey as an entrepreneur because I had been in the beauty industry for years and had worked in multiple salons.”
Experiences in other salons told Erica that she wanted nothing to do with owning her own. Eventually, however, she did take over a salon on her own and created multiple facets of her beauty business. Erica conceived Pause On The Play in that space, began recording podcasts there, and hosting events. In short, she grew into her serial entrepreneurship. “Being able to be something for my children that I didn't have at their age, which was an example of what it looked like to be a Black entrepreneur, I didn’t have that,” she says. “I could not be happier that I gave myself the permission to be my own boss and to completely consider myself unhireable to work for somebody else.” She adds, “I got a whole lot more to do, so I ain't done!”
Erica’s second recollection is tied to the influence her father’s death - at age 37 - from leukemia has had throughout her life. “I recognized that I [have] been on this earth longer than he was. And when that hit me, it was a day to where I just felt very called to go to the cemetery where he's buried and I couldn't tell you why I felt the need to go there - but I've done much better at listening to my intuition, and I was called to go - and I just kind of had a bit of a breakdown that day. A lot of a breakdown.
“It hit me,” she says, “that he was gifted to be on this earth and to be able to be who he was and to be my daddy, and it hit me that if I had more time than he did that, apparently, I'm here for a reason. Apparently, there's something that I'm supposed to do. And it was a moment where I was reminded that I have a purpose here. I was reminded that...as terrible as life felt in that moment because I was not in a good place in life at all, that there was something on the other side and that it could get better. And that this place that I currently was didn't have to define me. It reminded me that I am so much more than what I was led to believe at that moment, and I did not have to let all those terrible things be it and that didn't have to be my story forever.”
The realization has stuck with Erica ever since. “I am here for a purpose, and I very consciously, very consciously and very awarely for myself, for my children, those that matter to me, and those that I don't even know that I fight for. I am here to leave an impact, to create a legacy that I don't know is being built, but it's still being built nonetheless because I won't leave this earth without using the gift that I got.”
Erica goes on to say it’s important to share this because “You might not know why it matters so much, why I'm so passionate about what I do, and why I'm not okay with just okay, why I can't allow people to just be passive and not actually get off their ass and do shit differently. I was gifted something that my daddy wasn't gifted. So, therefore, I refuse to waste that time, and I won't let others do that with their time either. We are here to make shit happen. And I mean it; we will do that!”
How to best use the time she’s been granted has also occupied India’s mind lately since the recent death of her biological mother. “I want to make sure that when I leave the world, I can be proud about what I did and what I created and how I impacted other people's lives while I was here.” Making an impact, forging meaningful connections, building a legacy that lasts - all of these desires intersect. “This process is so much more than you see,” India says. “I mean, it is literally undoing generational trauma to get to where we are today.”
“Absolutely,” Erica agrees. “We're willing to do that because those that come after us deserve better than what we received, the same way that those that gave it to them deserve better. We're choosing to break those ties and to do it differently, recreate.”
Quoted
Erica Courdae
“It does take a certain amount of courage and just, like, fuck it at some point to be like, I'm going to do me.”
“Those that come after us deserve better than we received.”
India Jackson
“A lot of my own DEI work has been deprogramming the way that I see myself and giving myself permission to be who I was born as and not what society expects from me.”
“I want to make sure that when I leave the world, I can be proud about what I did and what I created and how I impacted other people's lives while I was here.