We were lucky to catch up with Jessica Wise recently and have shared our conversation below.

Jessica, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Talk to us about building your team? What was it like? What were some of the key challenges and what was your process like?

Audacity started with myself and one friend, and now I’m the only remaining founder. When my friend told me she wanted to step down last year, honestly I was distraught. At the time, I had just started a new day-job and I had a season contract performing at a local theatre for the first time since pandemic (btw, I’m an actress too ☺️). I was working 60 hours a week NOT INCLUDING Audacity. What was I going to do?

My ex-cofounder’s reasons were completely valid, and we’re still friends to this day. The silver lining to this was it forced me to start delegating and expand my team. I contracted a writer/curator for our monthly Audacity Book Club, and I hired a social media manager. I sat down and strategized what the new Audacity Magazine & Events would like with just me calling the shots. We needed a new logo, a new schtick, new ways of doing business, and a new team. I’m happy to announce we’re officially hiring Brand Ambassador interns!

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 back background and context?

Audacity Magazine & Events (audacitymagazine.org) is an online magazine and events platform for millennial workers. We create career and lifestyle content and host networking events to inspire millennial and Gen Z workers to elevate their careers and aspirations.

I have been an active journalist for eight years, with over 75 digital publishing credits on various platforms, from business to charity work to bridal. I worked for three magazines before starting my own. As I gained more experience, I noticed a problematic pattern of businesses hiring young workers/interns and tasking them with what would truly be considered part-time or full-time work in order to avoid paying them. I’ve been in several abusive work environments where I both experienced and observed this. In addition to demanding unpaid or severely underpaid work, young professionals are often used for their creativity, fresh ideas, and tech savviness to exponentially push business forward and never reap the benefits or even the credit for it. It’s wrong. No matter how new or inexperienced or young someone is, if a worker is increasing your company’s social media engagement by 150% or driving the work behind million-dollar profits, they deserve to AT MINIMUM be heard, respected, and paid.

This is the problem Audacity seeks to solve. We create bold content both on social media and through our original articles, calling out these issues and sharing knowledge on how to navigate and combat it. We also strengthen these ideas at Audacity events like Round Table Talk, where we choose a topic affecting millennial workers and discuss it in an open forum. We create space for new ideas with our bi-annual Pitch Contests, where new small business owners can present in a room of their peers and get pointers before taking it to high-stakeholders.

We’re most proud of the community we have been able to build through these events. Our subscribers, known as the Audaci-TEAM, get free access to all our events, plus exclusive workshops, meetings, and more. We brush shoulders regularly with young business owners like ourselves, who we showcase at our pop-up shops and on our Fetch List, a unique contact list of freelancers and entrepreneurs for hire. We look forward to having more people be a part of Audacity.

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

Believe it or not, we have NEVER taken out a loan to fund Audacity. We take advantage of free online tools and services, as well as workshops and YouTube so we can learn to do as much ourselves as possible.

For initial capital, we started a GoFundMe. In the past, this would have been considered unsavory or tacky, but it is truly a new wave of getting starter cash. All kinds of businesses do it — film projects, dance studios, non-profits, you name it. A lot of people want to support but don’t want to commit. Requesting donations to get things started and being transparent about what you’ll use the money for is a great way to include people on your journey without making them feel obligated to buy into your business 100% from the jump.

We also hosted seed parties. A seed party is where you present your pitch deck to a room of potential angel investors and donors, From there, people have the opportunity to donate starter money without the pressure of a return.

Can you talk to us about manufacturing? How’d you figure it all out? We’d love to hear the story.

I design ALL of Audacity’s merch myself, but I don’t make it by hand. We’ve gone through several printing vendors in the past, and I think we’re finally finding our footing THREE YEARS LATER. That would be my biggest advice. Don’t get married to a vendor or product too soon. Keep testing things and find out what profits and what manufacturing methods work best for your brand. A good manufacturer completes your orders on time, shows you samples of the product before completing the order, and doesn’t cut corners with quality.

Also, always underestimate how much inventory you want to make, that way you’re not just stuck with product you can’t sell. It’s better to be in-demand than oversupplied.

Contact Info:

• Website: audacitymagazine.org
• Instagram: @audacitymagonline
• Facebook: @AudacityLLC
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/audacity-magazine-events/
• Twitter: @liveaudaciously
• Youtube: Audacity Magazine & Events