We were lucky to catch up with Lillian Jackson recently and have shared our conversation below.
Lillian, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Alright, so you had your idea and then what happened? Can you walk us through the story of how you went from just an idea to executing on the idea
Brown Skin Brunchin’ was founded because I moved across the country and left my friends and family on the east coast. I moved out to the West coast chasing a career in Human Resources. I quickly realized that as an adult you need friends and professionally you need allies. To meet new people, I started going to brunch events in the area. There, I was able to connect with others in a more casual environment that was much more fun than a traditional networking event. As I shared my adventures with others, they also indicated that they too wanted to make friends. From those conversations, I realized that this was a need across the country for many other women. The group started off small with chapters in Richmond, Va, Los Angeles, Ca., and Las Vegas, NV. To pull this off, I had to figure out how to build a website, put up social media accounts and learn how to market the idea. The idea quickly took off on social media with our first three chapters filling up quickly and more people started reaching out asking that a chapter be created in their areas.
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?
I have a bachelor’s degree in psychology with a minor in Psychology from the University of Maryland. My corporate career spanned almost 20 years in in the field of Human Resources. I began my career as a recruiter, so I naturally am able to bring people together. I utilized the skills I learned from recruiting to bring people together over brunch. I love learning about people and finding out what motivates them. It is from that information that I am able to help them connect with others.
We’d love to hear about you met your business partner.
I met Melissa Mason, cofounder of Brown Skin Brunchin in the second grade. We met at Blackwell Elementary school at a young age. Over the years we have held a friendship and always found a way to keep in touch as we grew older and life priorities changed. We lost touch after high school and once we reconnected again after college, we vowed that we would not lose touch again. We have been inseparable ever since and have used the business venture to become closer and grow professionally together.
Can you talk to us about how your funded your business?
To put together the capital needed to fund our business, we poured all of our discretionary income into the project and relied on personal credit. We took a gamble and bet on ourselves and our idea so much that we were willing to risk our own funds and credit to pull it off.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.brownskinbrunchin.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/brownskinbrunchin
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/brownskinbrunchin
Image Credits
n/a