We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful IB Majekodunmi. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with IB below.

IB, appreciate you joining us today. Coming up with the idea is so exciting, but then comes the hard part – executing. Too often the media ignores the execution part and goes from idea to success, skipping over the nitty, gritty details of executing in the early days. We think that’s a disservice both to the entrepreneurs who built something amazing as well as the public who isn’t getting a realistic picture of what it takes to succeed. So, we’d really appreciate if you could open up about your execution story – how did you go from idea to execution?

I started Refine Collective as a passion project to build out a directory that makes it easy to find and support women & minority-owned businesses after being irritated at seeing my neighbors choose Starbucks over a local Black & Queer-owned coffee shop with objectively better coffee. I come from a background of eProcuremement technology, but concepts such as purchasing power were always floating around me, making the purchasing choices of my neighbors pique my interest.

Before throwing all of my energy into building this out, I put out a survey in my networks and 138 kind people in Chicago pretty much told me that the identity of businesses they patronize would be a consideration when shopping but they’re hard to identify which validated my idea, and got to work. I launched the directory in. May 2020 as a hobby, and nearly 3 years later, we’ve grown to over 1,500 businesses, and transitioned into curating over 20 markets & programs all under the mission to funnel purchasing power into the hands of the underrepresented.

IB, 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?

Refine Collective is a community that strengthens and celebrates women and minority-owned businesses and freelancers with a mission to funnel collective purchasing power into the hands of the underrepresented. Launched in May 2020, we have a thriving business directory that makes it easy for consumers to support these businesses, a touring artisans market, and programming for the entrepreneurs in our community to connect and get access to small business resources.

I’m proud of the community of thousands of engaged & like-minded creatives, entrepreneurs, and consumers we’ve built in Chicago – it never fails to amaze me to see people of all ages, races, and backgrounds show up & show out at our events. We’ve been able to spearhead cultural programming in spaces where people-of-color weren’t always seen such as the Museum of Contemporary Art for our annual Juneteenth Freedom Market, Garfield Park Conservatory, and more — and open doors for more diverse event curators to show up in these spaces.

What else should we know about how you took your side hustle and scaled it up into what it is today?

I took the leap of faith in Oct 2021 to quit my full time job to pursue Refine Collective full time. I went the safe route and still took some minimal project management freelance gigs with former employer to help pay the bills and made ure my savings were solid. I didn’t really have plans on exactly how I was going to scale, but after Planet HER 2022, our Women’s History Month celebration and 900 people came through, I realized that our markets were too good for me to not pursue it whole-heartedly.

After that, I put my all in our next large program, Juneteenth Freedom Market in securing brand sponsors to fund our production and truly took the lense of a business owner to ensure I could keep producing these experiences and live off it. I really learned through that event that two things can be true at once: I can run a profitable business AND I can use that business to do culturally-relevant, community-focused work.

Can you talk to us about how your funded your business?

I used my paychecks at my full-time job, then very part-time freelancing gigs to fund my business and pay my very very small team of contractors for two years. I’m a big supporter of using your job, even if you may not like it, as a tool to grow your business and dipping out when it makes sense financially / when you feel called to make the jump.

Contact Info:

• Website: refinecltv.com
• Instagram: refinecltv

Image Credits
Ambercita Chris Taliferro Antoine Jameson Rena Naltsas Sterling Hightower