Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Kennita Hickman. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Kennita, thanks for joining us today. Being a business owner can be really hard sometimes. It’s rewarding, but most business owners we’ve spoken sometimes think about what it would have been like to have had a regular job instead. Have you ever wondered that yourself? Maybe you can talk to us about a time when you felt this way?

During my first business slump/slow season, I teetered with this question. I saw (replace with the word say) teetered because even though I was applying for jobs, my heart wasn’t into it. On a cellular level, I just didn’t want to work for anyone in a traditional sense.

I had 2-3 months of no income. And, look slow seasons are real in every business. It’s just when you work as a traditional employee, your salary isn’t usually impacted. The check is the same regardless to whether it’s a business season or slow season. I had done all I could to avoid being ‘broke’ during my slow season. It generated some income but not at much as I needed. So, slow season hits and I’m panicked. PANICKED. Depression soon followed in addition to real fear. So I started looking for traditional work. I tried to work for Instacart and they weren’t accepting applications each of the 4 times I applied (to work in the store).

While I was applying though, I remembered WHY I went full time to work for myself. Freedom. Autonomy. As a Black woman, as a millennial that’s so important to me. I left the traditional workforce because I didn’t feel safe as a Black woman in that space. Specifically around were my ideas respected. Was I being heard? Did I have the ability to lead as I wanted to? And often, I did not. I left so that I could explore freedom in that regard but also autonomy of my ideas and time.

I keep that at my forefront as a leading value and principle. Doesn’t mean it’s always easy.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I’m Kennita and I own Catera. At Catera, I produce live events, influencer campaigns for businesses and a travel/culture series called Artist Eats. My events and influencer campaigns are usually for clients, so I’m not often public facing which is nice.

Artist Eats is my baby though. It’s a travel culture series that explores cities through their local music and food culture. Right now, I have 10 pieces of content that I’ve self-produced. Check those out on youtube at Artist Eats. The thread that ties all of my work together is being able to work with independent artists and local culture/community.

I started of as a freelance writer, moved into radio (on air and production), then managing musicians and their marketing campaigns. That led to producing events around Milwaukee and then deciding to go full time with my company, Catera.

Ultimately, through Catera, I get to amplify local culture and culture in marginalized spaces. I get to highlight and showcase community in spaces often ignored in traditional tourism and culture spaces. That’s the problem Catera solves. Catera is a conduit to cool stuff.

Have you ever had to pivot?

In business, it was definitely making the transition from being a client based business to think about community at large. When I first started my company, it was to support independent artists, specifically musicians. I offered artist development, public relations and marketing, branding and booking. That’s incredibly time consuming and doesn’t generate much revenue. This is especially because I was working with nano-artists. These are artists who have less than 100k followers, they’re hyper local or concentrated to a particular city. In my city of Milwaukee, there also isn’t a standard rate that artists across disciplines should get paid.

So, I may book an artist at a venue and they get a portion of the door. That portion is dependent on how many folks show up. We might get $150 off the door and then I get 10% of that. Exactly.

Then, I decided to start offering workshops but again, artists didn’t seem interested in that either from a revenue perspective. So, I began to ask myself how can I make money and still support artists. I started working with businesses who wanted to work with artists. And, then building a show like Artist Eats which also serves as a platform for artists.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

Again, I think my entrepreneurship journey. I wrote my first published article in 1998/1999, at age 14. So many of the folks that I started off with in music management no longer work in music. I feel like I’ve prevailed and won. I’ve won awards because of my work in Milwaukee. And, now I get to support artists full time.

I stuck with it when there was no real pathway to make money in this industry, especially in a city like Milwaukee. The state of Wisconsin is ranked 50 in the nation for arts funding. That essentially means, we give the smallest amounts to our arts community. And, we are also one of the top segregated cities in the country. So when you think about how resources are dispersed, it’s often communities of color and poor communities who are left out. So, yes we give the least amount of money to arts in Wisconsin. But, poor communities and communities of color, genres of music typically performed by folks of color get the least of the least in terms of resources.

That’s especially true for our local music scene. So, for me the resilience to just continue to work in an industry that I love and believe there was a way to generate income, that’s resilience for me. It took me 23 years to get here. Again, wrote my first article in 1998. Quit my job to go full time in 2021. And, now I’m 2 years into the journey of a lifetime.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoeGwV0dqrPeY6aJocgiUVA
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kennita-hickman
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoeGwV0dqrPeY6aJocgiUVA

Image Credits
Chris Siegel Liz Smulian Rob Randolph