Feeling Stuck? Try these 3 Steps to Success from Blavity's CEO Morgan DeBaun

Hello Monday with Jessi Hempel

Careers, Business

4.8 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 31 March 2025

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Morgan DeBaun didn't let statistical probabilities or conventional expectations hold her back from achieving massive success. As the founder of Blavity and Afrotech, she's redefining what's possible for Black entrepreneurs. In today’s episode, Jessi Hempel sits down with Morgan to discuss the lessons she’s learned on her entrepreneurial journey, and how you too can achieve success on your own terms. Morgan’s new book, Rewrite Your Rules, provides a roadmap for anyone looking to succeed faster, with more freedom. She shares her story of building Blavity and Afrotech, how she raised venture capital, and why she believes we all have the potential to achieve the outcomes we want. Morgan and Jessi discuss: Why failure is an essential part of success and how to start practicing it The importance of embracing periods of stagnation to make room for growth Re-evaluating your goals, checking in on your personal growth, and making pivots How to overcome fear and self-doubt to create something meaningful at scale The moment Morgan almost sold Blavity How DEI professionals can adapt to the current landscape Continue the conversation with us at Hello Monday Office Hours! Join us here, on the LinkedIn News page, every Wednesday at 3 PM EST.

Transcript

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0:00.0	LinkedIn News
0:03.0	Silicon Valley kind of seems like this area of the country where they're supposed to be the smartest people in the world building products for the rest of us.
0:16.3	And once you get there, you realize these are just normal James and Joe's, and there's nothing special about them.
0:22.5	They just have been given permission to think at this level and the resources to operate at this level and to fail at that level.
0:30.4	That's when I started to get the inkling of, okay, well, why not me?
0:33.8	Why couldn't I be somebody who create something at scale for the people and the customers
0:38.8	that I care about?
0:42.0	From the news team at LinkedIn, I'm Jesse Hempel and this is Hello Monday. It's our show
0:47.2	about work on our own terms. So growing up, I had this really good friend who was, shall we say, a strong personality.
0:56.4	What set Aaron apart is that she had this perspective that, well, take anything.
1:01.4	Let's say the lottery.
1:02.6	Most people, they're not going to win the lottery.
1:05.2	But my friend Aaron would say somebody will so that somebody should probably be me.
1:10.0	And I guess it's no surprise that Aaron has
1:12.0	gone on to be hugely successful in her career. I thought about my friend a lot as I prepared
1:18.1	for today's interview, because today's guest is Morgan De Bonn. And on paper, expectations wouldn't
1:25.5	be that Morgan would succeed so fabulously at such a young age.
1:30.3	People who come from her background rarely raise the kind of venture capital she has been able to raise.
1:35.3	They rarely have the business success that she has had, and certainly not as young as she has had it.
1:42.3	But Morgan wasn't thinking about that when she built her own company, Blavity.
1:47.0	She wasn't thinking about that when she launched AfroTech, which is the biggest black
1:52.0	professional tech conference.
	...

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