Got that ChickSwagg- The ability to be flawless, fly, accurate all while carrying a one year old with a bottle and an Ipad in your free hand and giving instructions over your blue tooth. Confidence with a savvy appeal, the ability to excel in a world of naysayers. Strapped with a leather bag full of proposals, standing all day in stiletto’s, steel toes, or pink fly ass air force ones with bad ass chick air brushed on the side. ChickSwagg is a feel, a lifestyle, a plan to be great. ChickSwagg is your go to for support and resources helping you get to where you need to be and chick, thats at the top! ChickSwagg is every woman young and seasoned, from socialite to single mom rallying for free breakfast for elementary students. ChickSwagg is you! Are you a member yet?
ChickSwagg will interview women in business, provide inspiration,business tools and advice to readers that will help take your business to another level. One of ChickSwagg's goals is to pay homage to women in the past that were trailblazers in the business world.
ChickSwagg will have monthly events based in the bay area reaching out to other communities pushing women business owners to support each other, exchange ideas and create lucrative business opportunities that mainly focus on pushing creative economics.
This Chick has major Natural Business Swagg..........Cleo Cartel
Cleo Cartel is the C.E.O of Yummi Goodz an all organic skin and hair line catering towards women and men. Cleo has been a celebrated veteran stylist. Cleo realized that there was a need for an all natural hair and skin product line. Yummi Goodz was formed in 1999. After many concoctions and recipes were used on family, friends and clients, The formula for success was perfected. In 2010 "The House of Holistic Healing" The Chocolate Butterfly "Spa Concierge" was created to offer VIP spa services that renewed the spirit, restored health and intensify awareness of self while maintaining a beautiful you cocobuttafly.com.Yummi Goodz is available online at yummigoodz.com.
Who are you?
I am a passionate, determined, focused, tenacious, comical, faith driven, spirit filled, dynamic, bad ass poet-singer, chemist, and style whore.
What are your hobbies?
Making jewelry, designing gowns, cooking, bitching, creating, helping, eating, laughing, sex, raising my dogs-badly sometimes, definitely listening to music, writing, fishing, being at the ocean, kicking it with my air tight crew and yelling at Da-Budda (her miniature pinscher).
Why did you choose to be an entrepreneur?
It chose me, anything else that I would have chosen for a profession would have probably killed me by now.
What are your inspirations? Also who is your business inspiration?
My business inspiration are the black men and women who owned businesses in the 40’s-50’s and sixties. My father is my inspiration.
What advice can you give a woman that is wanting to start a business?
Research her business, research, research, research.
What is the major obstacle you have come across being a business owner?
Not being taken seriously because of my womanhood, skin color and my honest spirit.
Being a business owner has it’s advantages and disadvantages can you tell me about that for you?
I only see advantages no disadvantages. The advantages being able to create your own reality.
Why did you choose natural skin and hair care?
Because I love making people feel beautiful and feel that everybody should have the chance to be at there best naturally so I designed a system to accomplish that.
What is your business motto?
No pain no gain.
What are your goals for the next 5 years?
Well for my life to be healthy, spirit filled, to be an inspriation for others and for Yummi Goodz to be a houshold name.
What is your swagg? Meaning what makes you stand apart from the rest?
My attitude.. my attitude is fresh to death.
Major ChickSwagg from the past: Madame C.J. Walker
Sarah Breedlove was born on Dec 23, 1867 in Delta, Louisiana. Born to former slaves that were now sharecroppers, Sarah learned to carry water to field hands, and dropped cotton seeds into plowed furrows. Sarah became orphaned at the age of 7, at the age of 14 she married and gave birth to a daughter, Lelia in 1885. Her husband died two years after getting married, she traveled to St.Louis to establish herself as a laundrywoman. For the next 17 years, Sarah supported herself and her daughter as a laundrywoman. While attending and being active in her church, St. Paul African Methodist Episcopal (AME) she encountered prosperous, well-educated African Americans, and as a result, she began to consider how to improve her appearance. Only in her thirties, she found her hair was falling out. She experimented with hair products already on the market, but nothing helped. Finally, as she told a reporter, God "answered my prayer, for one night I had a dream, and in that dream a big black man appeared to me and told me what to mix up for my hair. Some of the remedy was grown in Africa, but I sent for it, mixed it, put it on my scalp, and in a few weeks my hair was coming in faster than it had ever fallen out. I tried it on my friends; it helped them. I made up my mind I would begin to sell it."
Sarah moved to Denver because her brother’s widow and four children lived there and she could set up her own business.Arriving in Denver in 1905 with $1.50 savings, she rented an attic room, joined the local AME church, and found a job as a cook. She saved her money and before long she was able to quit that job and, taking in laundry two days a week to pay her rent, spend the rest of her time mixing her products and selling them door to door. Wonderful Hair Grower, Glossine, and Vegetable Shampoo. She changed her name to Madame C.J. Walker after becoming newly married to C.J. Walker because she thought the name gave her products more appeal.
She later divorced Walker, putting the 21-year-old Lelia (her daughter) in charge of the mail-order branch of the business while she traveled around the country promoting the products. Business grew and in 1908, Walker and Lelia settled in Pittsburgh where they established Lelia College, a training facility for the Walker System of Hair Culture.
Eventually, her products formed the basis of a national corporation employing at one point over 3,000 people. Her Walker System, which included an offering of cosmetics, licensed Walker Agents, and Walker Schools offered employment and personal growth to thousands of Black women. Madame Walker’s aggressive marketing strategy combined with ambition led her to be labeled as the first known African-American woman to become a self-made millionaire.
This ChickSwagg businesswoman died at the age of 52. Her prescription for success was perseverance, hard work, faith in herself and in God, "honest business dealings" and of course, quality products.
ChickSwagg Books to Read:
Every woman with ChickSwagg needs to research and learn how to be a better business woman and grow. Remember to research your particular field but always read a business book that will give you new ideas. We would be interested in knowing what books you have read! We will add to this list every month.
Mommy Millionaire: How I Turned My Kitchen Table Idea into a Million Dollars and How You! Can, Too
Author Kim Lavine
The E Myth: Why Most Businesses Don't Work and What to do about it
Author Michael E. Gerber
Do You!: 12 Laws to Access the Power in You to Achieve Happiness and Success
Author Russel Simmons
ChickSwagg will continue to grow where women can cheer each other on and be supportive. I want our young girls to see women who are wanting to own a fortune 500 company or to see her mom accomplish a goal that she has worked hard towards. We all have ChickSwagg it's a matter of letting her come out and succeed.
ChickSwagg will continue to grow where women can cheer each other on and be supportive. I want our young girls to see women who are wanting to own a fortune 500 company or to see her mom accomplish a goal that she has worked hard towards. We all have ChickSwagg it's a matter of letting her come out and succeed.
Eyreka
Major ChickSwagg!
Love the first post. Its pretty interesting to see how local business women are getting their start and how they continue to be profitable. Also, i liked the historical aspects.
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