We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jalan Ward a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Jalan thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you talk to us about a risk you’ve taken – walk us through the story?

My entire story up to this point has been one huge risk, but I like to call it a major sacrifice. From the day I graduated with my master’s degree in Biology, I was only focusing on the aspirations of becoming a Dentist. However, I felt there was way more to life for me. Most students graduate with excitement, and confidence for the next phase in life. For myself, knowing how multi-talented, and creative I was in many fields, I truly felt I was limiting myself to what the world tells us to do upon graduation. Find a good job with good benefits, and get settled into adult-life. (I understand that, but what if I have a dream to create a company where I can employ hundreds of others for the betterment of impacting our world? Is that possible to do while working my “safe” job with those good benefits? I’m still not sure.)

This is where I entered a low moment mentally in life after graduating. Unfulfilled, solely focusing on Dental school preparations, working a full-time job (I hated it), and disconnecting from friends, and even family. At the same time, 2020 came in swinging with the start of pandemic; everything felt dark & mentally cloudy in my life. Truly a tough experience I had to go through.

I’m a firm believer in God, and his work. While going through this low point, an idea came to me in a dream (God’s idea). To create a company that will help change the world. Suddenly, everything started flowing with ideas on how I will achieve these worldwide goals. Instantly, the company name came to me, the foundation came, and the mission statement presented itself all at once.

Once I had a clear idea of what I needed to do next to put the brand into fruition, I decided from that day that I will pursue a life-changing opportunity, or die trying.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your background and context?

My name is Jalan Ward, and I am the Creative Director, and founder of The Proud Black Brand, LLC. P.B.B. is “An inspired brand with the purpose to inspire others.” We are continuing to stand by that mission with our core values and beliefs. Our plan is to impact the entire world, and we have been off to a great start now that we have launched our non-profit sector. This has helped P.B.B. collaborate with various organizations such as Habitat for Humanity. Currently, P.B.B. serves as a multi-media, clothing, and service based company in preparation to expand into more avenues (I don’t want to spoil what we have in store next).

There has been a disconnect in our communities, and it has been long overdue for something of this brand’s caliber to arrive and be the glue for connecting communities of people. The company was created to service the public, and unify.

Without my unique upbringing, there is no way this could be possible.

As a introverted kid, everything the world broadcasted through television intrigued me. I was super quiet, shy, but I observed everything on TV that seemed cool, and interesting. It didn’t matter the topic nor subject, It had my attention for that moment. At the age of 28, I can say I am thankful to have grown up in the rise of the computer era. Before phones became our source of connecting with the world. The computer was my very own personal playground to explore things that interested me. If you were not fortunate to travel much as a kid, you had no choice but to get creative with your resources. I would learn/see something from the TV, and then hop on the computer to dive deeper. I was fascinated by the vase amount of information, and the community’s of people who were also into the things I had liked. Whether it was music/artistry, science, pop-culture, fashion, cartoons, skateboarding, gaming, history, you name it!

I watched TV so much it became a mental getaway. I treated television like a school outside of public schooling. Learning everything outside of the subjects teachers would teach.

P.B.B. is literally everything the world has displayed to us as people, I’ve created something unique for the world to fall in love with. The past, present, and future history of the world is told through the unique lens of P.B.B.

There is no direct definition to label “The Proud Black Brand”. As it is only a concoction of everything that has inspired me up to this point. I’m just pouring it back into the world in my own creative way.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

Community! Community! Community! The biggest thing you can do in my opinion is to be organic with your business outlets on social media. Your audience will never leave you stranded if you attempt to build your audience organically. No, I do not have a vast amount of followers on my company page currently, but outside of friends and family, the people that come across our social media pages have stayed with us over these past 3 years because of our values, and purposeful content.

What you stand for is super important. Social Media can help get your message amplified as long as it is true to your business’s direction, and core values.

The best advice I can give anyone is to literally run your social media pages with intention of how you think it should present to the public but to your very own liking. DO NOT try to implement something from someone else’s page/work. It will not flow the way you want it to because it’s not your idea, nor what your business stands for. The audience will be very confused and may subject to unfollowing your business’s social media pages.

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?

Funding can get very technical. Personally, I am very particular on funding, and what resources I use from the outside. I’ve been offered money from private investors for percentages of the company. I refuse to allow my hard work I’ve placed inside the company to be taken because someone offered some money. The money is the last thing that I’m worried about with my company, I’m trying to build an sustainable empire for millions of people.

In retrospect, this lead to me utilizing my very own funds to start my business, and basically depleting my savings. I’ve unloaded everything inside of the company because I truly believe that it will become one of the largest company’s in the world. One day P.B.B. will be a valued billion-dollar company.

I will continue to take these crazy ideas of mine, and see what happens down the road.

Contact Info:

• Website: TheProudBlackBrand.Com
• Instagram: instagram.com/proudblackbrand
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ProudBlackBrand/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/ProudBlackBrand
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9k7RWoRT2mGv7Axx_0enRg

Image Credits
(Winston -Aliusdesignco), (Devin Hunter – TheVisualHunter), (The Whitaker Group)