We recently connected with Britney Robbins and have shared our conversation below.
Britney, appreciate you joining us today. Risking taking is a huge part of most people’s story but too often society overlooks those risks and only focuses on where you are today. Can you talk to us about a risk you’ve taken – it could be a big risk or a small one – but walk us through the backstory.
The biggest risk I’ve taken thus far has been quitting my job in 2016 and starting my own business, The Gray Matter Experience. I knew that I was ready to leave my full time job but was clear that I didn’t want to move into another full time employee role. I really enjoyed the work I was doing, but didn’t want to stay at the company I was with either. While I had never started a business before, I had been teaching entrepreneurship for the past 3 years and understood the basics of what to do and had a strong calling to have a deeper impact in the space I was already within. I wasn’t making a ton of money, so my first decision was to save as much money as I possibly could. Secondly, I reached out to every single person I knew to see if there were pro bono resources, grant and funding opportunities or product/space donations that I could leverage. Thirdly, I had to have a lot of tough conversations with myself about my capabilities and the reality of what leaving the stability of my full time job really meant – especially living in a city with no family members or additional people to support me financially. I decided to bet on myself and trust that the vision that I was being given for The Gray Matter Experience was much bigger than I could imagine. I remember telling myself, you can always come back to corporate America – it will always be there and you’ll have many more skills and capabilities having started a business. I’m happy to report that while I did have to pick up some side hustles along the way, I’ve never had to re-enter the corporate workforce and have now built a company of my own in which I’m able to hire my own employees.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers
I am the founder and CEO of The Gray Matter Experience, a non-profit I founded in 2016, dedicated to unlocking the self-determining power of Black youth and strengthen their ties to community through real world experience in entrepreneurship. Gray Matter provides an environment and community where Black students can explore business and creative areas within an innovative space that fosters the development of entrepreneurial skills and mindsets, the development of self- agency, and the transferability of these skills and mindsets into school, career, and life.We have since served over 700 Chicago youth in this mission, awarded over $95,000 in seed funding and helped to launch 9 teen-run businesses.
I have worked within Chicago’s entrepreneurship and tech community for the past nine years working within some of Chicago’s top venture capital firms and incubators including Sandbox Industries, Cleveland Avenue, Lightbank and 1871. I have been recognized as one of Ariel Investment, BMO Harris and WVON’s 40 Under 40 Gamechangers, Essence Magazine’s Woke 100, a finalist for Ebony Magazine’s Power 100 People’s Choice Award, featured on Fox32, Chicago Inno, BlackEntrepreneur.com, DNAInfo Chicago, Chicago Tribune, and Essence Magazine for my work through Gray Matter and the social impact and equity lens through which I approach the work. Most recently, I’ve been named as one of the 26 Most Influential, 20 Most Inspiring Chicagoans and one of The Chicago Defender’s Women of the Year in 2021.
In 2020, I joined Cleveland Avenue, a Black owned venture capital and consulting firm. I am currently consulting the company as they launch a new initiative aimed at supporting Black, Brown and women founders in growing their companies by connecting them with resources and social capital. I also serve as the Secretary of the Chicago Urban League’s IMPACT Alumni Association, am a member of Black Leadership Council, the Executive’s Club of Chicago and the Baumhart Leadership Council.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
The first three years of business were extremely difficult. I was working as a solo founder and doing most every function of the job and fundraising was extremely difficult as we were a new organization on the scene working to prove ourselves in the space. I was grossly underpaid and unable to take on additional work because I was so focused on building the businesses. I did what I could to find creative ways to supplement my income to ensure that I could pay my bills, keep a roof over my head and feed myself, but it was very hard. The end of years one and two, I was burned out, depressed and not sure I could continue on at the rate we were going. I needed help, I needed funding and I needed someone to mentor me to help me figure out what I was doing wrong and how to make things better – and none of those things were available. I pushed through, despite the challenges, continued to ask friends and family for help and support where they could, until I landed a grant large enough for me raise my salary and hire a full time employee – then covid hit. I didn’t know if the business would survive considering it had been already so difficult up until that point. But Covid and the BLM movement completely shifted the trajectory of the organization. I am happy to say we have grown our revenues 5x, grown our team to 6 and are still growing and program demand is higher than it’s ever been. Had I given up when things got rough, we wouldn’t be here today and wouldn’t have had the chance to impact over 700 students since 2016.
How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?
I was the businesses first investor. I had saved up nearly $6k to survive after leaving my full time job. I used my own funds to incorporate the business, pay for supplies for programming, rent space for the programming and to build and host our website. I asked friends to help with design, web development, document creation and other things I knew I wasn’t good at and they all did so willingly. Early on, I started crowdfunding campaign and raised funds from family and friends as well. I raised close to $3k and used that money to keep building the programs and pay for supplies, meals and space rental. I had a friend help me to understand measurement and evaluation which helped to be better positioned to apply for grants. I applied for our first grant maybe 2 months after starting the business. It was a city grant for summer programming and provided the first $25k we’d received to continue building the programs. That $25k lasted our entire first year. The second year, I applied for a fellowship that paid the founder a monthly stipend for their salary, which helped me to survive and keep using the funding from the $25k grant for program costs. I would apply for any grant I saw that was relevant, networked a ton and asked for several introductions to funders and people who could help secure funding for us and eventually started to see more consistent funding coming in.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.graymatterexperience.com
- Instagram: @graymatterexperience
- Facebook: @graymatterexp
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/britneyrobbins
- Twitter: @graymatterexp
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXxMJCofHU1N81ZT3XF0YFg
Image Credits
Chuck Olu Alabi Heidi Zeiger