We were lucky to catch up with Chantal Brown recently and have shared our conversation below.

Chantal, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Let’s talk legacy – what sort of legacy do you hope to build?

I hope the Legacy that The League of Step (LOS) leaves includes self awareness, exposure to new and creative ways to live life, fun, growth and love. LOS is more than just step; we use step as the tool to expose our children to a world bigger than their hometown, to possibilities outside of their everyday. We show them how to work through difficult or challenging circumstances. Through mentorship we show and encourage them to be the very best they can and want to be. By traveling to compete we show them our states, schools and cities where they could also grow and spread what has been instilled in them. As African American OWNERS we show that they do not have to settle they can be owners as well. As college graduates we can show the importance of education in ANY form and how that can propel them to be great. All in all LOS seeks to leave a legacy of future politicians, teachers, custodians, businessmen/women, and anything else they set their hearts and minds too!

Chantal, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Wow. I got into entrepreneurship because a great friend of mine had/has a dream of building something for the community he grew up in so that he could help the children have something positive to do that would in turn not life long lessons and help the future of our society be better. We both are step coaches and we’re coaching 2 different teams, I switched the school that I was teaching at and it just so happened to be the same school that he’d been coaching at for 5years prior. So we were talking one day after practice and he was explaining what his dream was and I simply told him “let’s do it” and from then on I sort of fell into a business woman and have loved it ever since. My whole life I have always loved kids and wanting to help them as much as possible (as I am a teacher) and when he shared the dream of giving children another avenue to be positive using something that we both love and are passionate about I was in! The League of Step Inc. does so much for our community, steppers and their families it warms me to know that we are making a small but huge impact on so many around us.

Any advice for managing a team?

RESPECT and Loyalty. We work as a family, we may have our different view points and may have to seriously sit and talk through certain decisions but at the end of the day we respect each other’s opinions and we are loyal to each other, the kids and the business overall.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

As a new and growing business, I had to learn that I was going to have to be the face or be in front of people talking about my business. In the very beginning and even now admittedly, I struggled with being out in front and talking. I prefer to be in the behind the scenes and not doing a lot of the major “on stage” networking I typically let my business partner do that. Over time I have been made and becoming more comfortable with large setting networking and being acknowledged.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: theleagueofstep
• Facebook: theleagueofstep
• Youtube: theleagueofstep

Image Credits
Shon Browner and Etta James