Michael Mitchell, senior director of brand at Mailchimp, joins Cheddar News to discuss the launch of Bloom Season and what every BIPOC entrepreneur needs to know to succeed. 

All Hands: Race Toward Inclusion

Mailchimp Launches New Publication for Entrepreneurs of Color

Welcome back to all Hands, everyone male chimp recently launched bloom season, a new online resource for entrepreneurs of color that aims to help the next generation of black and indigenous people of color business owners succeed. The first installment is centering around helping entrepreneurs of color achieve equity and success at all stages of their business journey. Joining us now to discuss is Michael Mitchell, senior director of brand at mail chimp. Hello, welcome to the show, Michael one inspired male chimp to create and release this guide for entrepreneurs of color. So bloom season was born out of the protests in 2020 and mail chimp as a team, we just wanted to figure out how could we do something meaningful and authentic to our specific audience of entrepreneurs and sometimes it takes a long time to do something meaningful. So 18 months later we've come out with bloom season, which is 25 plus articles featuring 50 plus black entrepreneurs offering practical actionable advice on both, how to grow they grow their business and scale their business, but also speaking to how to overcome the mental health and wellness challenges that entrepreneurs face today. So how can bloom season activate the entrepreneurial community as a whole here, Michael, so we really think that there's just an opportunity to address some concerns that came up during the research to create bloom seeds and entrepreneurs of color, really feel feel isolated because there there aren't too many communities of black entrepreneurs to to be a part of they feel alienated from the communities that already exists that may be full of folks who don't necessarily look like them. And the combination of those two lead to a bit of mistrust. So we actively tried to address those three needs. We made sure everyone who contributed all the writers of the videographers and photographers were people of color as well. So that sort of spoke to the authenticity and um, led to sort of defeat that miss stressed feeling and when people see themselves authentically represented, that leads to lesser feeling of isolation and alienation, I think what bloom season does so well is utilize various mediums for storytelling, from art to video to writing. What was the process when it came to designing this guide, Michael? Yeah. So we just wanted audiences to feel the amount of care and love and effort that went into this and part of that was to diversify the types of content in here. So there's long form journalism, there's video, there's audio and we also understood that people receive content in different ways. We wanted to make sure everyone who approached this content found their own way in whether it was through a piece of engaging video, a long form piece with actionable insights or a piece of audio. How did you go about selecting entrepreneurs? Yes. So we really try to expand and sort of speak to entrepreneurs at every level of their journey. So we have an interview with Gilbert's Solomon who is a black VC, who is the founder of a Black VC fund, one of the few female black VC fund founders, we spoke with john gray of ghetto gastro, who's a star in the culinary space. And we also spoke with activists, baritone day thurston. So we wanted to speak to two folks at various stages in their career. We also have a bookstore owner, a barbershop. We wanted audiences to approach bloom sees and be able to see themselves in it no, no matter what stage in their business life that can you talk to me about the challenges that entrepreneurs of color face in their daily effort to grow and start their business? Yeah, so I think I I sort of mentioned them before these, these ideas of isolation and an alien nation. It it takes, it takes a village to kind of grow up a child and sometimes it takes a village to grow up a business. Um, and you also, there's another phrase, you can't be what you can't see. And so if you don't form communities with people who look like you and are facing similar, challenging challenges as you, it can be very difficult. So we were really focused on trying to build community through this, have authentic representation inside of the content and make sure that all of these pieces ended with actionable, practical guidance, not only for scaling your business, but to counter um, the wellness issues as well. What can the larger business and investor community do to help these entrepreneurs of color get a foot in the door and ultimately succeed here, Michael? Um, I think just being authentic and bringing meaningful, uh, meaningful resources to this community, we, we made sure that we weren't going to participate in this conversation by putting out an advertisement. We wanted to make something that felt useful and meaningful and that was from this community for this community. So we could break down some of those mistrust barriers that I mentioned before. So that was our approach at mail chimp and we hope to continue to tell stories for historically excluded groups in the future. I have 30 seconds left with you, but I want to ask any tips or strategies for those founders trying to grow their business. Yeah, I think don't let perfection be the enemy of progress. Make sure you continue to iterate and grow and grow as the everyday as an opportunity. Um, and make sure that you invest in yourself the health of your business is often a reflection of the health of you as an individual. So if you put yourself first, their chances are that we'll have a good halo effect on your business growth. That is fantastic advice, Michael Mitchell, senior director of brand of male chip. We appreciate your time. Great insight. Thank you so much