"Take the risk and jump off of the cliff."
Kisha Mays is a Successful Serial Entrepreneur, Visionary Global Business Development Strategist, Best Selling Author, Angel Investor, and Philanthropist. Her primary focus is on helping to SCALE 1,000,000 Fearless Female Entrepreneurs generating a minimum of$1,000,000+ in annual revenue. Turning them into unicorn global businesses through the Just Fearless Angel Fund which is a fund exclusively for female-founded companies.
She pays it forward by supporting non-profits worldwide that specifically support & empower women and girls. Kisha and her team are developing strategic partnerships for 2022 and beyond to make this international business and brand to an explosive level bringing Just Fearless from behind the scenes to the forefront. She and her team are excited for the abundance of opportunities, expansion, and partnerships to be announced very soon. She has been featured in the Business Insider, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, and Forbes to name a few. The Just Fearless team has worked with Pepsi, GE, and Home Depot to name a few.
Kisha released her Best Selling book “From Failure to Fearless: Still Completely Flawed BUT Thriving Fearlessly” to rave reviews. Most successful people only talk about the good parts of their journey. In her book, “From Failure to Fearless,” Kisha details her many, some very public, failures and how she overcame them in a transparent and vulnerable way. Based on the many positive reviews readers can relate to this from both a personal & business perspective.
Her major influences are Oprah Winfrey, Sara Blakely, Madam CJ Walker, and Richard Branson, for their fearlessness, exceptional courage, drive, ambition, willingness to go after what they desire & believe in all while setting the standard and breaking through any ceilings. Even with all the success, she has achieved, Kisha still feels like she is only getting started. Based on her early success at a young age and her drive and ambition, her future and continued success are undoubtedly going to leave a major mark in history.
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Table of Contents
Tell us a little bit about your current projects. What exciting milestone would you like to share with our readers? (Don’t hesitate to delve into your achievements, they will inspire the audience)
Kisha Mays: Everyone has been affected by this current pandemic. We saw so many businesses in multiple industries struggling to survive, especially Female Founded Businesses. Less than 3% of Female Founded Businesses generate 7 figures or more annually. We have always believed that in the hard times is when businesses can take off. So we made it our mission to take that 3% to 10% by December 31, 2025, thereby adding $1 Trillion to the global economy.
How are we making this happen? In two ways, first with our HERstory Made Angel Fund an exclusive fund to support Female Founders and their business growth. Secondly, we also launched HERstory Connections, a global community exclusively for Female Founders that provides tools and resources to help members increase revenue, reach, and scale. We are beyond excited to help 1 Million Female Founded Businesses generate a minimum of $1 Million in annual revenue by December 31, 2025. We could not be more thrilled to have a positive impact on small and medium enterprises.
Was there somebody in your life that inspired you to take that specific journey with your business?
Kisha Mays: I would say 2 women had the biggest impact on my entrepreneurial journey. They are Madam CJ Walker (the first black woman to become a self-made millionaire) and my Grandmother (who was an incredibly successful entrepreneur). They are both a major driving factor as to why I became an entrepreneur. My Grandmother had the biggest impact as I saw her firsthand run multiple businesses. I loved that she was her boss and was able to employ others. It was just a great example of her actions.
I learned about Madam CJ Walker as a child and share a birthday with her. I have always been inspired by her story. Both of these women started from nothing and built something phenomenal. I knew that I was destined to be an entrepreneur and to positively impact the world through my work with Just Fearless and HERstory Connections.
Resilience is critical in critical times like the ones we are going through now. How would you define resilience?
Kisha Mays: Resilience for me is internal. It is the characteristic of never giving up and bouncing back from every challenge and setback. We all have failures, also known as lessons learned, and what matters is how you respond when they occur. If you are resilient, nothing can stop you or hold you back. If you are not resilient, any little thing will stop you. The bottom line, the choice is yours and it is an internal one that has to be made. To be or not to be resilient, that is the question.
What is most important to your organization—mission, vision, or values?
Kisha Mays: For me, it is the Vision. Vision keeps me motivated even when there are challenges. Vision allows the mission to be set so that the vision is achieved. Values align with the vision and the mission. So I am always focused on the Vision which is essentially the result for me. My team is focused on executing the mission in alignment with our values to achieve the vision. So it is a win-win-win all around.
You are a successful business leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success?
Kisha Mays: Interestingly, you have asked me this. Two of those we discussed in previous questions. The 3 character traits that are instrumental to my success are Resilience, Visionary/Driven, and Courageous/Fearless.
Resilience because I never give up no matter what and always bounce back from every lesson learned. Visionary and Driven because I have goals that are bigger than life. With me being clear on my drive and vision I will make it happen. Being courageous and fearless is a necessity in the entrepreneurial journey because you will encounter more challenges and lessons learned than the average person. You must also have the ability to take risks and bet on yourself even when no one else does and that is a part of being courageous and fearless.
Entrepreneurship is essentially jumping off of a cliff and building a parachute or plane on the way down. Either you will land to dust yourself off, learn the lesson, and try again or your will soar and achieve your goals. Having these 3 traits has been supremely instrumental to my success. I would not change it for the world because it helped me build my empire.
What have you learned about personal branding that you wish you had known earlier in your career?
Kisha Mays: There is an art form to maintaining a good active personal brand. Because I am such a private person, I was not very active in building a solid personal brand, just the corporate brand. But in 2022, I am stepping out more to actively build my brand with integrity and authenticity. While I do wish I had started sooner, it is better late than never.
What’s your favorite leadership style and why?
Kisha Mays: My favorite leadership style is a mix of delegative and transformational leadership. I am a visionary and the most important thing is to achieve the result…the corporate vision. In that process, I aim to inspire and empower my team to step outside of the box to achieve the vision in the best way they see fit. It produces the results that I am after on a grand scale.
What would you say is the main difference between starting a business at the time you started yours and starting the business in today’s age?
Kisha Mays: More industries to create and build businesses in such as cryptocurrency, NFT’s, new media, social media, streaming, etc. Faster ways to build businesses and brands with social media. Using social media levels the playing field compared to when I started when it was more focused on advertising and public relations. So in today’s age, less money is needed and social media helps more businesses expand their reach faster. But there is still room for tried and true methods from when I started like different ways of advertising, public relations, joint ventures, and partnerships even in today’s age.
What’s your favorite “business” quote and how has it affected your business decisions?
Kisha Mays: “Just Do It!” It is really just that simple for entrepreneurs. Take the risk and jump off of the cliff. You will either land with a parachute or soar with an airplane that you built because of your fearlessness.
Jed Morley, VIP Contributor to ValiantCEO and the host of this interview would like to thank Kisha Mays for taking the time to do this interview and share her knowledge and experience with our readers.
If you would like to get in touch with Kisha Mays or her company, you can do it through her – Facebook
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