We recently connected with Jakia Myles and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Jakia thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What was it like going from idea to execution? Can you share some of the backstory and some of the major steps or milestones?

Some may not know, I started Pretty Women Hustle several years ago and actually released about 5 Issues. The demand and the support just wasn’t where I felt it should be at the time and I felt defeated and gave up. Fast forward about 6 Years later, I had my daughter and instantly felt inspired to relaunch my dream. I never wanted to be the parent to encourage their children to go after their dreams while I sit there and give up on mine.

I started this time around in the middle of the pandemic, with a hope and a dream of sharing the stories of women creatives who normally don’t receive the credit they deserve. We had a goal of saying yes to stories, when most media companies say no due to the entrepreneur not having enough followers or previous features.

I had a list of celebrities, Influencers, Entrepreneurs and Upcoming entrepreneurs that I had been eyeing for quite some time and I reached out to everyone. It was literally a list of about 50 individuals, and out of that 50 only about 10 said yes due to us being a startup.

Despite the many No’s, we launched anyhow and were able to garnish so much buzz, that we went from an online only site to a digital/print publication within a matter of months. Landing features with entrepreneurs like: Quandra Banks, Audria Richmond, Santia Deck, Hazel E, and so many more.

From there we vowed to accept almost every story that came our way, and we haven’t stopped yet.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I am Jakia Cheatham – Myles, woman of God, a wife and mother of 2 beautiful children. I am not only a publisher of content specifically for female creatives, I am a 4 time author, Christian speaker, and visionary. I started Pretty Women Hustle with a prayer and vision to share the stories of female creatives from all around the world.

We found a problem in the industry and set out to solve it. We saw that there were millions of creatives without their stories being told. We wanted to solve that, we created a platform for female creatives to share their stories of entrepreneurship without the hassle and fear of not being accepted.

Do you have any stories of times when you almost missed payroll or any other near death experiences for your business?

I remember about four or five months into this and I knew we needed writers and I put out a call for upcoming writers and freelancers looking to provide content to female entrepreneurs.

With a budget of absolutely nothing, I hoped and prayed we would be able to add writers to our team.

Almost, every writer that came our way wanted hundreds of dollars per article and we just couldn’t afford it. We were a startup barely making anything in the beginning and we just knew we had a hope to inspire but couldn’t afford to pay.

I was ready to throw in the towel but was connected with a few ladies from different states willing to write pro bono and that carried us through for the first year of business.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

One lesson that I had to learn is the thinking that you can stand alone and win. Rather, we want to admit it, every successful person has one person in their corner pushing them to succeed and not give up.

I had to learn quickly in this industry some of the best connections will not include money but will have knowledge attached to it. Understanding collaboration and the art of networking has taken me to places and rooms no amount of money could have placed me.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.prettywomenhustleonline.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/prettywomenhustlemagazine
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/prettywomenhustlemagazine
• Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/Jakiamyles
• Twitter: www.twitter.com/pwhmag

Image Credits
Michelle Winfield – Fuqua, Author K. Reshay, Amber Deas