We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Julian and Charity Crenshaw. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Julian and Charity below.
Hi Julian and Charity, thank you so much for joining us today. There are so many topics we could discuss, but perhaps one of the most relevant is empathy because it’s at the core of great leadership and so we’d love to hear about how you developed your empathy?
Wow. What a great question. The conditions that made us more empathetic would have to be everything we’ve faced leading to this point in our lives. We’ve faced so many things as individuals, as a married couple and as entrepreneurs. It’s been bittersweet with more of the bitter than sweet. But when it’s sweet, boy is it ever so lovely. We thank God every day for what we’ve been through and how our love for eachother, for people and God have remained intact and stronger than ever. Even though the conditions that brought us here came with a lot of pain and heartache, it didn’t tear us apart and only kept us hungrier for what our purpose is and to help others along the way.
We’ve faced a lot of challenges but one of the most challenging conditions for us as a family was almost losing our 8 month old back in September of 2022. It was at the restart of our business, since we had to take a break from a complicated pregnancy and childbirth, where we faced the hardest 4 months of our lives.
We started our business in 2018 and took a break in mid year of 2021 til Charity was about 4 months postpartum in 2022. Then a few months after that our world collapsed while our business started elevating with opportunities then we had to make the hard decisions to quit several projects to focus on our little one then healing as a family after all the trauma.
January 2023 was when we started feeling a bit better as a family until our house was randomly targeted for a neighborhood shooting. A total of 46 bullets went through our house, one of which was 2 inches away from Charity almost ending her life. In that moment I was in the master bedroom holding my 1-Year-Old when I heard muffled voices outside of our house.
Just seconds later the shots began and the first thing that I did was get on the ground. Hours later the police arrived to look at the houses in the neighborhood. They found the bullet shells in the middle of the street and when they finally came to our house to check to see what happened the first thing they did was blame me for the shooting. Once the officers realized that my wife was recording the whole situation, their demeanor in stance & vocals changed and went back to look for the rest of the bullets. We know what happens when a black man is alone with a racist white cop…either dead or horribly injured.
After all of the racial Injustice going on in the world, especially with what we’ve faced for being black and brown, we do not feel safe around any police officers. So you can imagine what we had to overcome in our mental, physical, emotional and psychological health after the fact. We’re surprised that we kept the business going around that time. We were performing at shows and giving our best at gigs. The biggest lesson we learned is that not everyone that says are for you are truly for you and that you can only take care of you the best way you can and hope for the best. This is not meant to sound sad but to declare how much we’ve grown as individuals, as partners and as parents through the struggles and in the aftermath.
We’ve had to be our own cheerleaders and make things happen on our own when others didn’t believe in our hard situations and business. We had to create safe spaces for others that don’t feel seen, heard or taken seriously. We created those spaces because we’ve felt overlooked, not taken seriously, and completely forgotten. It’s brought us to a place of deeper love, connection, communication, compassion and empathy for ourselves and the world.
Too many people are dealing with hard things on their own and a lot of them don’t want to be…but as a society there’s this thing to be strong and not feel anything. There’s this thing to not deal with anyone’s feelings & struggles. Isolation is killing our world. Pride & ego is driving us mad and creating restlessness & selfishness.
Our goal and hope is for our art to reach everyone. So they can feel, heal, empathize, and recognize what’s happening in the world and in their individual hearts and minds to be better people in the world. Our priority has always been to put God first above all else…and because of this, we’ve found success in our marriage, parenting, and in our business. We’ve learned how to navigate the hard things because of God’s love, our own experiences, and listening to other people’s experiences. We hope that when people see or hear about us that they notice something different about us…that they truly see & feel love, joy, passion, authenticity, honesty, and art. We hope when they leave our event or presence that they leave feeling good about themselves.
Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
Our business is actually going through a name change. In the next few months, we will change our name to Mainstream Movement. We started as C&J Entertainment in 2018. It was something we threw together for convenience of being legit without a story behind it. Later, we changed it to Legacy Foundation Creations to share more of a background but it didn’t solidify everything we’re trying to do. It worked out for the time being though.
We specialize in dance lessons, choreography creation, DJ, MC/Host, photography, videography, coaching, and wardrobe consulting.
What sets us apart from most is the fact that we teach the deep history of our dance lessons along with sharing our joy, passion, and enthusiasm as we’re working with others & creating. We enjoy expressing who we are in our art & have lots of fun doing it all! Our hope is that everyone leaves feeling better than they came in, more confident in themselves and that it creates a domino effect where they exude that to others.
Among these things, we absolutely love working with the younger generation. Whether it be one on one lessons, one on one conversations, a group dialogue or just a fun time as a group, we love working with young children up to young adults. We believe in the power of connection & healthy communication through the arts and that it’s one of the best ways to create healthy relationships while doing the thing you love or learning a new hobby. One of the best experiences we created was a dance scholarship program for the age group of 13-16 years of age. We created the certificates for each child along with a small ceremony, free dance lessons with a free meal, family time focused on group dialogue, and a field trip that we’d pay for. It was a project near and dear to our hearts that we hope to start up again soon. It was a pleasure to watch those teenagers grow in their dancing, in their character and communication skills, and to still have a relationship with them now, 5 years later.
So one of the things we are currently working on is a program in giving back to the younger generation by offering free dance classes and a meal either in a after school setting or on a Saturday once a week or every other week. The importance of keeping Afro Latin Dance & Hip Hop alive with the authentic truth and history is what we love to pass along to them too. So we’re hoping to do that real soon.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
1. Authenticity/self awareness- our number one thing is staying true to ourselves & believing in it which also ties in self awareness! That’s where we’ve found our creativity & the flow of our work. Knowing exactly who we are in the moment or moments before helps us navigate our emotions & creativity. It’s a real character check.
2. Adaptability- People, things & places change, so be adaptable! That helped us a lot when things didn’t go our way or when people started acting differently towards our gifts and talents or the places we thought we’ be in would flourish but ended up closing because of the economy. Ish happens…stay ready in the mind so your heart will follow. Sometimes our emotions are louder but then you’ll eventually come around!! Lol it’s that self awareness again!
3. Don’t be so hard on yourself! Take a step back or a day or find rest then come back around to resolve whatever it is you need to resolve. If it’s a quick decision drink some water or tea or go for a light walk or dance. The juices should flow in. But if you have the time….TAKE THE TIME OFF. Rest & relaxation is one of the greatest inspirations & a big influence on the best decisions and creative flow. Sometimes you won’t use those ideas BUT it’s a great way to get the juices or muscles flowing in the direction you need it to go!
**Some things we say to keep us moving forward and our heads up:
1.You got this!
2. It won’t make sense all the time.
3. You will fail.
4. It’s okay. Take your time, but get up….you still got this!
5. Trust yourself & the process.
6. Sometimes you gotta do it afraid!
7. Wise counsel/good people in your corner is vital. If you don’t have a group, that’s okay, as long as it’s one person that believes in you! If you don’t have that one person in your corner….YOU ARE YOUR BIGGEST CHEERLEADER! YOU GOT THIS!
8. You’ve got to believe in yourself!
9. The emotions you’re facing matters. Don’t dismiss them…deal with them…heal…..you can do this!
10. This is your time! You have what it takes!
Okay, so before we go, is there anyone you’d like to shoutout for the role they’ve played in helping you develop the essential skills or overcome challenges along the way?
I think we can both agree that our upbringing really helped us navigate what we feel we need out of life. God is the biggest reason. We feel He has helped us understand eachother and how to run the business. Both of our families have struggled financially growing up and have put their passions and dreams on the side of never looked back. We wanted to be the opposite of that. We want our children to see us work hard for what we believe in so that they can believe in what they want to do as well. We want them to see that failure is okay and here’s how we navigate it. We want them to see our struggles even though we really don’t want them to see that but we want to show the realities of it that it don’t always come easy. Sometimes it does which we have experienced but most of the time, it takes a lot of work.
We’ve been eachother’s big support when we were doing things individually then when we combined our business it was just a natural thing to do. We love each other and we love what we do so it blended together so well. We believe it’s the fact of over communication and hearing each other out without lashing out. We’ve learned from this so that’s why we are about it. We’ve had lots of arguments in the beginning of it all because of lack of communication and not fully understanding eachother.
Long story short, it takes having a very effective and understanding communication skills to be successful especially when you have a business partner. Communicate everything. Hear everything.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @legacyfoundationcreations
- Facebook: Legacy Foundation Creations
Image Credits
Legacy Foundation Creations
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