Betting on Me: Taking charge of my world through the pandemic

My 100 day journey to reshape my Entrepreneurial Journalism venture

When Covid started ravaging the world and New York City began to shut down, I knew that there was an opportunity for real change to happen in our society. Having lived through many upheaval growing up in Haiti, 911 here in the United States and more recently Sandy in New York City, I was determined to capture the moment and empower myself to create real change in my life and in the community that I live in.

It began with discussions and speaking up against inequities at work. What I hadn’t expected was how much that feeling and passion I had was being felt and expressed throughout the country. Then came the protests and unrest. That wasn’t all of it though.

As a Caribbean history student during my undergraduate studies, I was fascinated by the complicated history of Marcus Garvey. His bold ideas of black economic empowerment and pride during a tumultuous time in US history seemed to defy the status quo at a superhuman level. He published his “Negro world” newspaper from 1918 to 1933.

I wanted more than to speak out. I wanted to shift and shatter the old paradigm that was created for me. I wanted to see more diverse and more honest storytelling in our media when it comes to the issues that people of African descent face in the diaspora.

She became my beacon of excellence. She became my hero.

Then came Erykah Badu with her Badu world market shows and website. That was the spark that began my drive to start my project. Ms. Badu, full of flair and all like Mr. Garvey, became sort of a beacon of confidence for me. I scoured her site, watched her news conference, read up on her adventures in starting her project and researched the services she had used. She was indeed a pioneer, unapologetically performing and excelling in a white-male driven field of technology and start up.

As a black man living in America and as a media creator I wanted to create a video platform where stories of inequality and inequity could be presented and discussed freely without the worries about self censorship or the marginalization that takes place in our social arena when it comes to discussions of race and inequality. I wanted to bring the black water cooler to the forefront and challenge black folks, people of color in general and white folks to ”study” in these race and socioeconomic issues that have plagued our world.

Inspired by the successes of the #MeToo movement I also dreamt of empowering others by creating a buffer against these systems through media, engagement and discovery.

Finally my Manosalon project was born. I built a fully functioning web prototype www.manosalon.live. I came up with a mission statement “Bold storytelling that challenges a changing world.” My tag-lines or action words were set #explore, #create, #communicate. However, I quickly realized that I was going in blind. These beautiful things that I had created and the message that I was so eager to share with the world wouldn’t be enough. When I started going through the program I discovered some of the hurdles that I would face in maintaining such plans both financially and in terms of engagement. The challenge for me was to find a way to make this venture sustainable and to find my true audience.

“Don’t buy your own medicine, prove it.”​

-Jeff Mignon

The past 100 days have been a true soul searching for my journalism venture. I came into the Entrepreneurial Journalism Creators Program wanting to fully explore and soak in the knowledge that it offered. In a sense I was willing to completely deconstruct everything that I had learned in the previous months, and wholly begin the process of rebuilding. It began with Anita Li’s module on opportunity exploration. This totally turned any ideas I had about engagement and audience building on its head. Through this process I learned what the words “audience” and “engagement” truly meant. We also spent many exercises and went through countless materials learning how to truly define and engage an audience. It could have just stopped there.

Then came Michelle Young and Augustin Pasquet’s module on product development as well as Nancy Wang and Jeff Mignon’s module on Growth. These workshops came at the very pivotal moment when I had decided to move away from just storytelling and towards revenue creation for my project.

Where Michelle and Augustin helped me to envision the structure of my business venture, Jeff and Nancy guided me to methodically define my value proposition. In addition, I learned the necessary steps of taking a product from a functional prototype or MVO to Market viability and growth. This hit the nail right on the head for me. I’ve always dreamt of going to business school and that was the closest thing. Those workshops solidified and affirmed what I had created as a prototype. However, they presented me with the true challenge of following through with my newfound ideas.

With any endeavor there is a peak and most certainly there’s a valley looking right at you in the horizon. How does one remain creative and productive while attempting to build or define an audience? How do you stay authentic and on message while engaging new ones? Lastly, how do you maintain the semblance of journalistic integrity while doing all of the above? Those were the predominant challenges for me. You would have thought that would have been easy but it was not.

Through my search for sustainability and audience building, I rediscovered something that was there in front of me all along.

Because of the pandemic, my social network and part of my artistic life completely shuttered. With it went a community that I had been part of for many years. I’ve been contributing as an apprentice and steady drummer for West African and Haitian dance classes in the city. Over the years, I’ve not only learned how to be a drummer from world renown performers but I’ve also earned my place in these communities.

It has also been a place where my son developed from a toddler sitting on my lap while drumming for a dance class to becoming a full participant in a drum ensemble and learning the priceless traditions of the greater African diaspora. This was all decimated because of the Covid-19 restrictions on inside gatherings. Every dance class became virtual. Some of those teachers who were media savvy made due and adjusted (barely), however, the drummers and musicians who often relied on the tips and the cash earnings from the dance classes were in deep trouble.

With a renewed focus on revenue creation, I came back full circle to what had motivated me from the start, which is connecting with a community of artists that have been displaced due to the pandemic. Now, with my project, I will not only provide a platform for them to continue earning but I will also create a virtual community that can withstand the test of time.

Manosalon’s value proposition is to create a virtual space where creators, makers and change makers can tell their stories and share their craft through live-streamed, embedded videos and VOD content.

In the next 90 days I’m going to focus on making partnerships with these creators and generate content for a more complete website down the line.