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

Tamani, appreciate you joining us today. How do you feel about asking friends and family to support your business? What’s appropriate, what’s not? Where do you draw the line?

Starting any type of new business can be extremely difficult and super scary. But there’s so much beauty in community that seems to make all of those thoughts and doubts fade away.

With both WOMEN OF LYN and HOUSE OF LYN, I had the genuine support of my city (the DMV) close friends, and family. This pushed me to see past my fears of starting both businesses and to just go full force. When you have people behind you that genuinely support you, it makes your entrepreneurial journey ten times easier.

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?

My name is Tamani Lyn, and I am a 24 year-old Maryland native most known for my first company, WOMEN OF LYN. WOMEN OF LYN came into fruition as I was a freshman in college attending Bowie State university back in 2016. The idea of women’s empowerment was out of my norm, as I was then on the path of becoming a Public Relations officer within the United States Air Force. I was nervous at first to step into the path I knew I was destined to walk, but I knew it would take an extreme amount of faith and focus to allow my dream for WOMEN OF LYN to come into fruition.

Through WOMEN OF LYN, my main purpose in starting it was to defy the negative norms centered around women and how we interacted with each other in the DMV area. I wanted to create a platform that would educate, uplift and empower all women to uplift the community. We began with selling basic empowerment merch, in which quickly grew into a company that provided a plethora of different things to uphold our mission of empowerment: an international podcast called The WOMEN OF LYN Podcast, business development workshops, a national one-on-one mentoring program, and more!

Two years after the mere idea of WOMEN OF LYN was conceived, we officially and proudly launched on July 2nd, 2018 after I put my doubts and fears to eternal rest.

Today, our company has grown to a national level, empowering many women across the United States through what we do.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

Results and genuine connections. Those are the two main things that formed my reputation as a business woman the most. Most companies are centered around aesthetics and looks, as to where WOMEN OF LYN is solely focused on providing female entrepreneurs with not only the tools that they need to succeed in business, but also giving them the opportunity to build genuine connections as well.

The genuine business connections that I’ve been grateful to create have catapulted my businesses farther than I could imagine, too. So those are the two main things that I would say. Results and genuine connections.

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

Of course! I would say that the COVID-19 pandemic is nothing that anyone saw coming. Especially Founders of small businesses. Successfully pivoting a company to 100% virtual where it was originated by in-person connections was extremely hard. But with faith, our supporters, and an amazing team, we were able to see it through with true resilience. As an entrepreneur, tough situations can either make or break you. Always look at hardships as an opportunity to grow and build your resilience to make you a stronger business woman.

Contact Info:

• Website: womenoflyn.org
• Instagram: @womenoflyn
• Twitter: @womenoflyn