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Interview conducted by Tina Gray.

Tina: First, I want to ask you to tell us a little bit about yourself.

Arisha: My name is Arisha Smith and I am 40 years old. I’m an entrepreneur, I’m an innovator, I’m a mom, and I’m a wife.

 

T: Where did you grow up?

A: I grew up in the suburbs of Dallas, Texas.

 

T: Have you always been self-employed? Have you always been an entrepreneur?

A: No, I’ve had some time with other companies initially. It was interesting, I was an employee at start-up companies, smaller companies, and then I would bounce into a large company and back to a small. So I wasn’t, per say, always an entrepreneur, but I think I was always in the space of working for organizations that had high growth, rapid growth, fast pace – like an entrepreneur environment.

 

T: How did you get started in your own business?

A: Quite by accident. Working in technology and digital media it is a very fast-paced environment and people go in and out of jobs all the time. It was sort of a situation where a job goes away, and maybe I’ll do some things on my own. Networking and things of that nature. So that’s how I kind of fell into it.

 

T: And you ended up liking it?

A: I ended up liking it and then I would dabble back-and-forth for a while. Go back to corporate America when I wanted to take a break – when I wanted to just go to work and not be innovative and not have to shoulder all the burden and not have to be in charge of everything. And then I finally decided at some point that I’m over working for other people and I’ll just continue to be an entrepreneur. I finally got the bug, I ran from the bug for a long time.

 

T: How long did it take you to reach a point of success in your entrepreneurship that you were comfortable with? Or have you? Do you feel like you’re still striving for that?

A: I don’t know if you’ve ever seen any of the memes or any of the illustrations where they talk about entrepreneurship and it’s like: “success, fail, success, fail.” It’s up and down. Of course, I feel like I’ve reached many points of success and then mini fails, and mini-successes and mini fails. Every success and every failure builds you up for the next success. At the onset, each time I was either on my own or working with a group of people. At each point I reached a success, but it was a step towards a higher success each time. Maybe in my mid-thirties is when I felt like, “This is something that I could sustain a lifestyle and child at the same time by myself.” So it was really getting some legs, getting some momentum.

 

T: What do you think made you believe in yourself, that you could do it?

A: I always thought that I could do it, I just didn’t want to. I just wanted to chill and be a wife and not work. Be a mom and a wife and not work. I feel like I was forced into it.

 

T: But you enjoy it now? You have the bug?

A: I mean it’s okay, I’d still rather just chill and be a mom and a wife and volunteer. But if I had to choose between working for somebody or just doing what I know how to do to earn money then I’d rather do that.

 

T: You brought up being a mother and a wife, so tell me a little bit about how you balance family and managing a business. What are some of the secrets, how do you do that?

A: I feel like there’s no balance to the balance. It’s understanding what needs the heavier attention at the time, like I need to lean this way for a little bit. I need to lean towards work and push through this, or now I need to lean towards family and pull it off.

It’s never just like everything is at an equilibrium. I mean, nothing’s like that, right? Either I’m going to focus more on this client or let this client breath. All the clients want attention at once especially when something stressful is happening.

I think I’m still trying to work to find that balance. It’s like once you find it, here comes another scenario or situation or a horrible thing. It’s like, now that I thought I had it figured out here’s this. I think just learning to manage it in my mind and not freak out. It’s not going to be balanced, it’s not going to be perfect, but as long as nobody’s dead and nobody’s bankrupt then it’s okay.

 

T: How do you think race impacts the dynamics of what you do as a woman in business?

A: I think gender first, then race. I work in technology, in a space where it’s mostly men, so trying to come in and make decisions, especially in technology – it’s not that they don’t believe what you’re saying – but whenever anybody says anything, “The sky is blue,” it’s like, “Oh, actually it’s kind of blue-grey. It’s kind of blue-white. It’s only blue because of an illusion.”

As a wife and a mom, and I’m working, I really don’t have time for that. It’s blue. If you all want to debate about it, if you all want to talk about it or try to understand it, go over there with that. At the end of the day, I have goals I need to meet, so I can’t be swirling on about if it’s blue.

So I just think those kind of dynamics first. After that, I think race. I think you don’t have to bother with it as much when you’re an entrepreneur versus when you’re in corporate America. As an entrepreneur, you pick your clients.

 

T: Is there an example where you experienced discrimination?

A: I think the thing is, in the space that I’m in it’s still been very creative. I’ve worked mostly in advertising and technology so it’s been mostly in the entertainment space. If you look at what’s taking the bulk of entertainment dollars and what’s driving entertainment it’s not so much color as it is wherever the whole flock of people are going.

I’ve never been in a space where people have had to say, “Oh, I don’t know, blah, blah, blah.” Because, who’s the most popular singer? Oh, Beyonce, she’s brown. Who’s the king of pop? Michael Jackson, he’s brown. Well, he was brown, he started brown.

But I will say one thing I did not realize, and I know this now that I’m an older lady: looks. I never really grasped or understood that I was easy on the eyes, I never knew that ever. I never realized that, and I think that is also a way that a lot of doors opened for me. I think a lot of the decision makers, they were male and they’re thinking, “Oh, she’s so cute, look at her.” Not even that they wanted to do anything, but just, “She’s so cute, I would like her in my stable with other smart people.”

 

T: What would you say to the young women, the women who are entering the workforce today, what would you say to them? Because I think in a lot of ways we are still living in a man’s world.

A: We are, we are. I was actually thinking about this earlier, you know working and doing business in corporate America or as an entrepreneur, it’s all some type of game. Everybody uses whatever assets they have. Their intelligence, their gift of speaking, their gift of reading between the lines.

Whatever your gifts are when you’re having to play those types of games, I think you have to own whatever your gifts are. Really pay attention to your gifts, master them and use them in ways to do good – don’t Lex Luther it and use it for evil – but understand your gifts, master them and use them to be successful and help people. From your heart not from the pocket.

 

Check out more from Arisha at The Idyllic Agency.