Meet Shelby & Erica

We recently connected with Shelby & Erica and have shared our conversation below.

Shelby & Erica, so good to have you with us today. We’ve always been impressed with folks who have a very clear sense of purpose and so maybe we can jump right in and talk about how you found your purpose?
We always encourage our Melanin fam to just start where they are. You do not have to have it all figured out before you get started — that is the beauty of this journey. Very few of us know our purpose from the start, most of us are figuring it out along the way and that is okay! Once you bet on yourself and take a step towards your dreams, the more steps will be revealed to you. Everyone has a purpose, if you’ve been sitting on an idea for a while but you haven’t figured out “how”. Let this be your sign to go for it anyway! You will figure it out as you go. You don’t have to have it figured out to move forward, start where you are. Take time to reflect on what gets you excited? What makes you happy? What do you enjoy doing? Those passions are not random, they are connected to your purpose! More than anything, you have to take the leap of faith towards your ideas, goals and dreams to get started and your purpose will find you!

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?
All Things Melanin is a space for us to be 100% ourselves and to share a different outlook while being open, honest, and transparent about real-life situations we go through; and the process to reach the level of success we aspire to. From career, life hardships, relationships, building a business and so much more. We hope to inspire, encourage and uplift women of color. No matter what, we’ll continue to hype you up along your journey. We created this platform to give light to young entrepreneurs, creatives, and writers to share their stories of inspiration!

We are real friends, experiencing real life and going after real dreams, together! Shelby is a small town girl, Erica being from the city, are total opposites but balance each other out and are divinely connected. It’s amazing how God will connect you with people you are supposed to be connected with. We met at work, – Shout out to God! From then on, a genuine friendship was born. We’ve traveled together with our first trip being the Essence Festival in New Orleans (if you have never been, we recommend you go at least once! ) You will get your life!

Anyway, we were so inspired by the panel of speakers, all influential black women sharing their stories to inspire others. Before we started our brand, we attended a brunch, and at that moment something in our spirit said you are supposed to be doing something together. We had no idea what that “something” was. One day we had a meeting about creative ideas and our brand was born in 2017. We both LOVE being able to use the gifts and talents God has blessed us with to build an amazing platform. We have such great things in store for All Things Melanin!

We also have a podcast called the All Things Melanin Podcast. Our All Things Melanin Podcast focuses on honest, open, and transparent conversations about life, love, career, faith and more. As your certified hype women, you can count on us to keep it real with a side of pettiness on occasions! Available now on all major Podcast platforms.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
The three areas of knowledge that have impacted our creative journey the most is, 1. Learn to Pivot: We started our brand with a specific idea to inspire, encourage and uplift women of color through blogs and vlogs. This year, we are making a pivot to get back to the basics of why we started our brand. When you’re a creative, you will oftentimes experience moments that may require you to pivot, when you look at what is working and what is not. Making adjustments but sticking to your “why” is a necessary skill we wanted to be intentional about. 2. Take Breaks: Over the years of building our brand we have faced burnout from going so hard, non-stop. We have learned to be intentional about taking a break. On our content schedule, we literally block our schedule off for a break or mini hiatus.  Also, we have mutual respect for each other to recognize or speak up when we need to take a personal break. We encourage one another to take some time to check in with ourselves— and give ourselves permission to pause. 3. Work Smarter Not Harder: We have learned how to work smarter, not harder. For example, we have quarterly content planning meetings and use content scheduling tools, like Later, that allow us to schedule our content out in advance. We also play to each others’ strengths which makes things flow easier when each of us are responsible for tasks that are in our area of strength. For example, Shelby’s strength is social media marketing and strategy, she is amazing at social media engagement. Erica’s strengths are in branding and graphic design, she is amazing at creating the brands graphics and marketing materials. We allow each other to shine in our own strengths. These 3 areas of knowledge and skills help our brand to run like a well-oiled machine!

Any advice for folks feeling overwhelmed?
As creatives, it is so easy to get overwhelmed! What works for us is to write down our goals and put them into daily tasks. The key is to make sure your task list is realistic. A list of 25 tasks is not obtainable or sustainable. We find it more productive to have 3-5 tasks to accomplish and if there are days where we only got 1 thing done, that is more progress than having. Our advice would be to give yourself grace when you don’t have the mental space to accomplish something that day, you are human, not a machine. As we said earlier, it is easy to reach burnout, and that is not the goal! We make sure we revisit our goals or list of things to do and adjust if it’s just not working for us and causing us to be overwhelmed. We have to remind ourselves that this journey is about progress, not perfection. Sometimes creatives can get overwhelmed by looking at how far we have to go, not how far we have come, therefore, we are always encouraging our Melanin fam to celebrate their small wins along the way!

Contact Info:

Image Credits
Photo credit: Rosita Palmer Photography | www.rositapalmerphotography.com | IG: rpalmphoto

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