- Our show wants to be a place
where we can come together and build genuine relationships.
Have real conversations and lift one another up.
So when I saw our next guest creating an initiative
doing just that, I knew we had to chat with her!
Take a look.
- Hi, my name is Luuvie Ajayi Jones
and I am a writer, a speaker, a podcast host
and I am also one of the four women
who've created the Share The Mic Now campaign.
Shout out to my fellow creators and founders,
Bozoma Saint John, Glennon Doyle and Stacey Bendet.
As we search to figure out allies should look like,
we decide to ask prominent white women
that we are in community with
to hand over their Instagram accounts for a day
to black women who typically might not have
that major platform.
Because when the world listens to women,
it listens to white women.
And it is time for black women's voices to be given space.
Over the course of a week,
we had 50 black women agree to take over the accounts
of 50 white women and tell their stories,
amplify their voices, talk about their lives
and their experiences,
because we wanted to show what community could look like
and sisterhood in action.
Our hope with Share The Mic Now,
was to catalyze a change that only happens
when we truly listen to each other's voices.
- And now ladies and gentlemen, Luuvie Ajayi Jones, Luuvie!
(audience applauding) - Hi Drew!
- Now, can you share with me,
this was such an exciting question
for me to just get right in.
How did you select the women you chose
to start this initiative with?
- Yeah, when we decide to do Share The Mic Now,
we were like, we wanna pick women
who have already used their voices in some way
to speak up about racial justice.
You know, they're the people who've already said
Black Lives Matter.
So, me and Boz got with Glennon and said,
let's do this in this big way.
Glennon said, "Okay I'll be back.
"I'll go talk to some white women who I respect
"and see if they'll say yes."
And Glennon went and said,
"Hey, I just need you to hand over your Instagram account
"for a day to a black woman who's amazing, are you down?"
And everyone said yes to that question.
She would come back and be like,
Hillary Clinton just said yes, Brene Brown just said yes,
Jen Hatmaker just said yes.
And for us, once we had the white women
who were prominent confirmed, we went to black women
who's voices we really loved and who's voices needed
bigger platforms to be heard.
- How did you pair the women?
'Cause I thought that process, to me,
was really interesting as well.
- So we actually called up Zoom,
and had everyone join us.
I'm thinking assistants were going to join us,
but when I'm seeing Yaba Blay join,
when I'm seeing Tarana Burke, and I'm seeing Ashley Judd,
all without makeup at seven o'clock in the morning,
I'm like this is special.
And we decided to pair people up
based on industry, who we thought were easily matched
like Gwyneth Paltrow and Latham Thomas.
Or chemistry, like Esther Perel and Yvette Noel-Schure.
So we created those pairs
and just hoped the magic would happen
and magic did happen, because some of these pairs
are now collaborators, like they've worked together.
They're continuing to talk,
they have actually built friendship with each other.
- And actually we're gonna share the mic today together.
Who are we collaborating with today, Luuvie?
- So I think someone amazing is Rachel Rodgers.
She is a mom of four, she is a wife,
she is just an overall dope woman.
And her company, Hello 7 empowers entrepreneurial women
to become millionaires without losing their sanity.
And she's somebody who is worth us sharing the mic now with.
- Please welcome Rachel Rodgers!
(audience applauding)
- [All] Oh!
- Oh, hi Rachel!
Thank you so much for coming on the show!
- Thank you so much for having me.
- Tell us about your business, Hello 7, Rachel.
- So, what I do is I work with women entrepreneurs,
and what I saw is so much conversation
in the women's entrepreneur market
about getting to six figures, getting to 100K.
And I'm like, I don't know if y'all been at 100K,
but it's not enough money, you know?
I'm like, no, why are we setting our goals so low?
Let's go for a million!
Let's build seven figure businesses.
And so I just started talking about it
and I started teaching it, because I really saw
that a lot of the training out there
just got you to six figures but it didn't teach you
how to get to seven figures and how to build
a million dollar business.
There was like, no advanced training
that was focused on women.
And so I decided to create that.
So that's what we do at Hello 7, and it's a lot of fun.
We really enjoy it.
- We live in a society, that talks about
you can have it all, the mantra out there, I think,
makes us feel like, it is all on our shoulders.
- Absolutely. Listen, I make it very clear.
I'm not trying to be all things for my children,
for my husband, even for my business.
It's crazy how, even bread-winning women,
are always the ones
doing the bulk of the domestic work.
And so, for me I'm like listen,
I wanna be there to parent my children,
but I don't need to do their laundry, and clean for them
and cook for them and do everything for them.
So, I make them part of the conversation
and I trust that they can handle that and understand that.
- I am so honored to share the mic with you today Rachel.
Luuvie, I would love to ask you,
can this be a place that we can continue and foster
this incredible initiative that you have launched
and been a game changer for?
- I would love that.
I think your platform and who you represent in this world
is significant and you've been able to share the mic now,
with women who typically don't have this platform,
is part of the action that we can take
to change the world.
- I am honored and humbled to do so,
and all I can say is, let's do this.
(upbeat music)