Resilience and Revolution Black Women in Professional Spaces

Kandice Whitaker and Randy McCray discuss resilience, career growth, and entrepreneurship in the "Bail Yourself Out Happy Hour Podcast." Kandice shares her journey from a young mother to a successful consultant and business owner. Randy emphasizes the importance of freedom and self-determination, highlighting her goal to be the freest black woman in all aspects of her life. They discuss the challenges faced by black women in professional spaces, including microaggressions and systemic biases. Randy advocates for creating one's own spaces and building communities of support. They stress the importance of multiple income streams and intentional exposure to opportunities for personal and professional growth.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Intro
• 3:02 Randy McCray's Introduction and Background
• 4:10 Defining Success and Resilience
• 11:39 Challenges for Women of Color in the Workplace
• 15:43 The Role of Community and Support
• 20:41 Navigating Microaggressions and Systemic Issues
• 22:07 Building Multiple Streams of Income
• 46:10 Advice for Younger Generations
• 56:02 Final Thoughts and Closing Remarks

Transcript

0:00

Kandice, welcome to the bail yourself out Happy Hour Podcast, where each week we'll help you navigate the corporate jungle. Here's your host, Kandice Whitaker, no, it's happy hour. Welcome to the bail yourself out Happy Hour pod, friends. Here we focus on personal growth, career growth and entrepreneurship. Our crew is dedicated to providing you with the tools and insights necessary to turn your dreams into reality and get your money up. In each episode, we'll explore strategies rooted in the bail method of resilience, guiding you to conquer challenges and thrive in everything you do. I'm your host, Kandice Whitaker, and at the age of 21 I was a determined young mother who wanted to ensure my best possible life and defy the odds. So I took steps towards achieving the life I desired. I got my master's degree. Then I was a sought after consultant, which led me to starting my own company. I have a passion for guiding people into the life they envisioned through resilience, using the bail yourself out approach. So I'm happy you're here. Kick off your shoes and relax your feet. Fill up your favorite drink, because the bail yourself out Happy Hour podcast is about to start now you're listening to Kandice Whitaker, and together, we'll learn how to bail yourself out. B, believe that you can a accept change as a natural part of any process. I inventory your strengths and the strengths available to you and your network. L learn from your experience and the experience of others. Hey, y'all, hey, this is your girl. Kandice Whitaker, new company on the bail yourself out. Happy Hour lounge. I'm so excited about today's guest. This is my girl, Randy McCray, who is principal of RM consulting. But see, here's the thing about Randy, she is so special to me because she is the reason we have bail yourself out Happy Hour pod during the pandemic, we were home just like y'all, and we did a couple of go lives on Facebook, when I tell you we did live, and we taught for several hours. We did and we got people engaged, and it was so great. People were like, You should start a pod, but Randy's way more busier than me. So that's how I got a pod, and she's my guest. One day I have my own pot, or I'll come on your pot. I'll do your pot. I need my own stuff. I like partnership, so I'm good. I'm here we are, and we are so grateful for you, so grateful for your years of friendship. We met many years ago. We worked together at a Ivy League institution that starts with a y, and we became friends. But you know how I feel? I didn't know if we was friends. When we work together, we start out as allies. We only friends if we still talk after we don't work there anymore. So it's been more than a decade, and here we are still going strong. So my girl, what do you want the world to know about you? Sis, wow. So if I had to tell the world something about me, I would say, I love to do anything right. Like, I'm just free my whole goal in life to be the freest black woman I could be in all aspects of my life, right? Like, free with my identity, free with what I do for a living, free to move about the world the way that I want to move about the world, without people trying to surveil, that, control, that, hold that, keep that. Like, I just like freedom, like, That's my ultimate goal in life. It's just to be the fullest, freest black woman I could be. That's what I would say about myself, you know what? And that's definitely one of the things I think we vibe on Randy, because I feel that way too, although I don't know that I use similar language, but I'm just like, I know I'm a free spirit. And when you're a free spirit, you connect with other free spirits, right? And I think that's how, you know, we kind of started this very intentional tribe of people who are Renegades of sorts, right? I like that term. Thank you. Because you know not everybody aspires to be in the C suite, right? Because I know what that looks like to be there and I happen to want to do my own thing, I can tell you I get there, where is the space for people who just want to make enough money to live the life that they want to live and do what they want to do? And there's totally nothing bad. That's the thing. Like the first thing I would say as a professional when I decided to own my own business is rightly disconnecting myself from this idea that the material things that we accumulate when we try to make all this money and get to the C suite are the things that defined me and define my quality of life, right? So my quality of life is really about the freedom to choose to do what I want to do on my own terms. And as you said. Like working in the C suite, you really don't get to do things. It's rare that you get to do things on your own terms. Someone is always pulling the strings, right? And even as a consultant, people do try to pull the strings. But I will say, as a consultant, I get to choose that, whereas I don't get to choose that. In the C suite, you you don't get to make that choice, and so I wasn't willing to, and trust me, I love my designer stuff. I just recently bought me a new Tory Burch bag. I'm just saying, but I'm not willing to compromise myself, my freedom, my values, right? Like to accumulate large amounts of those things. I'm willing to find an alternative path to do that, and that is what life is. You get to define your terms of success. American culture says the definition of success is climbing to the highest place that you can even if it means killing yourself and not spending any time with your family. And don't get me wrong, if that's what you want to do, have at it, but there's a whole bunch of links who are like, not adding it. I live in a three story condo. Yeah, you know, I want to get something else for my kids or whatever, but my goal is either a tiny home or a homestead, and traveling six months out of the year to other countries, like I want to live here for six months. See people I love, kiss them, shake some hands, kiss some babies, play some politics, then I'm back on that plane, moving it about and like, that's what I want, right? And I respect that some people want the half a million dollar house they want, the Bentley they want, the Maserati. I'm not going to knock nobody hustle, but it's just not the hustle that I want. Like, I want to know when I left this world that I left it better than I found it. I've contributed some of my time to something much larger than myself and much larger than my kids, and I just want to see other parts of the world and live in other parts of the world. And I think that's what I want, right? But I respect that other people want something different, and that's cool, right? But you know what? Randy, that right there defines resilience, and that's what we're all about here, right? So bail yourself out is my resilience framework, teaching people how to adapt to change in their life. And change doesn't always look like moving from one job to another. It might look like moving from one job to a different scenario, but the biggest change that you can make in your life is the ability to transform your thinking, to understand, number one, what you want, and then to be able to go after it. That is freedom, right? And I also say, like, ask yourself why you're doing something. When I was younger, I thought of a lot about what I wanted, so which is what drove me as a professional to be like, at the top of my game, right? I can't work at an Ivy League college for almost 20 years if you're not progressing like, and you're not staying at the top of your game, but even leaving there, like, you know, working towards a PhD, right? But then I also, like, started to ask myself, Well, why do you want that, right? Like, do you want that? Because society says that that's what makes you good enough. Or do you want that? Because it's something we really want. And once you reflect on why you want something, right, you can align your aspirations or your passions with your why not, versus the what right, because the house, the car, the degree, those are the what's but why do you want those things, right? Like, why do you want that? Why do you want to be doctor? Randy, Renee McRae, right? Do you want it because people have to say Doctor? Well, I don't plan to make people say that, right. So I don't want it for that way. I wanted it simply to be able to teach at the master's level. That was only reason I wanted it right. Like, I don't even care if you never say Doctor anything. But again, over time, that became less important to me as I grew as a professional, was able to achieve some of the things that I thought I needed a PhD to achieve. Then I was like, no, actually, I don't actually need that. Like, I've been able to walk in rooms without that. The room that I thought I needed that to walk into I've already walked into them. I'm good on it. What do you think as a woman of color? Because I definitely know the answer for myself, but I want to hear what you think. Have we been conditioned to always assume that we need more? I would say yes, because we are brilliant, we are magical. We are the reason that things work right like we take on problems we've never created for some strange fucking reason. We take them on and we take them on and we try to fix them like shit we didn't even break. We try to repair like but even though we do that, people still don't give us our due. People will hire you, use your knowledge, your expertise, your thought partnership, and they will leave your name off the marquee. I don't even know what marquee was when I was in the Miss Black Connecticut pageant, but I never forgot it. This guy kept saying your name on the marquee, and I know what that. And I went look it up him. It is your name outside on that thing? Right? He was talking to another person. He's like, Is your name out there? Because what he's essentially saying, if your name out there, your name ain't on that, it you don't matter. And so we do a lot of the behind the scenes work, but they don't put our name on the marquee. And so we keep striving for this illusion of things and certificates and initials and and awards and so that we can tell the world we're good enough to be acknowledged for the powerful forces that we just are organically, you're enough. You are we operate under this, because we keep doing it and we don't get our due. We keep going after the next thing and the next thing and the next thing and the next thing, believing that we have to accumulate all those things. And here's the key. You know this, when we worked at the place, you'll see other people not giving what you're giving, not doing what you're doing, not as smart as you like, I told my colleagues once, I'm smarter than all of you when I'm sleep, I am right because I saw them. I'm like, You guys are idiots. Like, I can run circles around you, and I don't even have to try. So we see that, right? And then they use us, but then they never give us the positions, the title, the respect, the money that they give other people who are mediocre at best, right? You? Let's flip it Randy Yoker at best. Pass you. Yeah. I mean, that is true, but I feel like we've spent enough years waiting to be given anything. Now is the time we have the opportunity. Let's make our own spaces. That's the problem. We don't have enough of our own spaces. That's the question. Who are we waiting for to give us our own spaces? Why do we need to be given them. We make them. What are we waiting on? You're a woman of color. I'm a woman of color. We identify as black women. I don't know women of color, but I identify as a black woman, black through through the black as you can get right? That's on black, black, black. I'm black. That's me like I listen to that in the morning to motivate me to keep reminding me of my blackness, and I love my black, and I'm willing, like I said to you at the beginning of this podcast, I'm willing to follow You wherever You go. I don't have to be in charge, right? That's what I said. That was my statement to you, because I know you don't. I remember looking you up. I'm like, yo. She like dope, right? For real in real life, that didn't mean I was less dope. That means she dope in real life. I want to partner with her. I want to collaborate with her, and if she's leaving, I'm okay with that. What we as black women have to do, we have to come into our own community, hold some truth circles and address our own stuff, which is the residual stuff that we are carrying from living in a society that puts us up against each other, right? That notion that if there's two black women in the same environment, that one of us has to be less than the other person to matter, right? I have no problem acknowledging brilliance. Some people are smarter than me. I'm okay with that. And if you say, We doing this thing and you lead it, I'm okay with that, right? I can stand next to another dope ass black woman and be like, I'm okay with that. In order for us to cultivate, make and build our own spaces. We have to leave that behind. We gotta stop competing with each other. We waiting for someone else to fix these things that, like you said, we can do that ourselves, but we gotta use that energy internally. You only have so much energy in a day, yes, right? So either you're going to use your energy to fight somebody who you don't need to fight, or you're going to use it to build, yes, yes. I don't have to be in charge if I have a great, amazing idea, because I be thinking, I'll be waking up with ideas every day. Then I go see somebody else already doing it, right? And if you're already doing it, I'm going to come to your event with you. I'm not going to go start a whole nother thing, right? But what do we see people doing for real? I mean, here's the thing, let's really, really talk about this. What Randy and I were talking about before y'all joined us in the podcast is kind of how brandy grew up in church, and so did I many of us people of color, especially ones who are in significant positions of power, started in the church. I was very fortunate to grow up in the AME Church. A lot of people were educated. A lot of people were divine. Nine. That was the culture, right? I thought that was regular. I. Didn't know that that wasn't regular. Mm, hmm. Having the privilege of being raised in that space, right? If the church is our model, we can't even get along and figure out what we going to say. And we all supposed to believe one Lord, one faith, one baptism. We can't even get that together. You know, I remember AME Zion, Baptist coaches, everybody got a little different spin on the same thing as a consultant and as a an advocate and a revolutionary and a truth teller. Like, I'm always going to these different places and spaces where there's all these different frameworks, right? Like, how do we rebuild our communities? And how do we address community level trauma, individual trauma, and I'll never forget, like, this, one thing I would I did where it was black centered, right? Like, because I do a lot of work centered on, you know, anti oppression, anti blackness, or anti bias in workplaces, but this particular thing was all centered around, like that community organic level, like the church, right? And the last module of that was really that calling the circle around us. How do we show up for each other now in communities like, what are the ways that we aren't embodying principles of Ubuntu, right? Part of the issue with coming to this country, I've been to one place on the continent, and I always have to pre qualify that, because there's so many different cultures and so many different languages, so you can't just lump it all together. So the place that I went to in Africa and the cultures that I observed, but is pretty consistent across the diaspora, which was stolen from us is this sense of collective community, like I did a workshop with a bunch of kids with robotics, and I gave all the kids their own kits, but they poured them all into one basket because they don't know anything about individuality. I went into the village and I ate at someone's home, and they put everything in one bowl, and you're eating from the same bowl with your hands. They don't know individualism and so that ties into some deep principles about how we're connected to each other and how my success is deeply connected to your success. My liberation is deeply connected to your liberation. Part of being raised as a person of color in a westernized culture, is that we have these notions of individualism which are countertuitive to our nature as people of the African diaspora, and we have to reconnect with those principles, right? We don't know how to want the$400,000 house and car and honor those principles, right? They bump up against each other, right? We don't know how to coexist in that dynamic, right? How do I operate in a capitalistic mindset, which is, can I how much can I take and equally, figure out constructs that honor, sisterhood, community, caring, my success tied to your success, my liberation tied to your liberation, right? We don't know how to hold those two things together, so we're doing networking events and we're doing branches and but we're not having a real, authentic conversation about, how is it that we move forward collectively, bringing back some of those principles that were stolen from us that would get to exactly what you're saying? Well, I have an idea in that regard. I think ultimately, how we get where we need to get, and this could be a whole separate pod in and of itself, is by forming community. Because community is important, right? That is how you draw strength from one another. I mean, that is why this pod exists, to create this community for black and brown people, people of color, this season diaspora, to understand about business and careers. But the caveat is, within yourself, you have to be secure enough to give and to receive. The key words you said there were security within ourselves, that's what you bet you need, the security within yourself to be able to show up in the community in the way that you should, and be able to give and receive, and that's a great place to take a break. We'll be back. Get the 411 on the bail yourself out Happy Hour lounge community by signing up for our community newsletter. And when you sign up, you'll get a free download of your choice and you'll be entered to win Limited Edition Gail yourself out podcast t shirt on our monthly drone. Sign up today at Gail yourselfout pod.com We'll see you there. So tell me, are you enjoying the show? Go on ahead and rate us five stars and leave a comment. Now back to the show. All right, y'all welcome back to mail yourself out Happy Hour lounge. I am super excited that you decided to join us today. We've had an amazing conversation with my girl, Randy McCray, principal of RM consulting, and in our last break, we had. This really wonderful conversation about a whole lot of things that ended on community within the season diaspora. So us and we decided that's going to already be another pod, so we're going to put a paper clip in that conversation and downshift into where we vibe. Randy and I vibe, you know, we met working together, so we know very intimately what it's like to be a black woman work, and I did not start the timer, so hold on one second, but I don't I'll just delete this later. And so there was a very interesting study that came out from Elizabeth Linos, and I hope I'm saying her name correctly. The Emma Bloomberg, associate professor for public policy, along with some other colleagues, whole bunch of folks whose names are interesting at MIT, and basically their study was supposed to focus on people of color, so black, Asian, Hispanic, and what happened once we actually got them on the job and they were working with white people? And what that study found was that black women, when we are working on teams that are mostly white, right? We have more performance issues. There's a retention policy. There's retention issues. So we're not staying we're not promoted as much. And honestly, when I first heard about the study and I read it, I was like, and in more news, water is wet, right? Randy, what do you think about that? Because I was like, So what's interesting when you sit, when you sit like you said, when you sent the study, we're reading it like, Oh, yeah. And, but it always takes, like some other people who don't look like us, to say a thing is a thing before it actually is a thing, right? And what's disheartening as a person of color, or I'll say a black woman, because I'm not, I don't identify with those other identities, and you can't lump us all into cat the same category and say we're having the same experience we aren't. This is why we have something called intersectionality. And so yeah, I'm looking at that, and I'm like, Well, yeah, and, but I always go to like as a practitioner and as a person who's experienced it, and also a person who hears from other people experiencing it. But what are we actually going to do about it? Like people who have had the experience have brought this to people's attention, we don't need the study to tell us that people who are having the experience are telling us that so, but what are we actually going to do about it? Because, like you said, Yeah, another news, water is wet, so we already know that part. It's the it's what are you going to do about it that we don't know? Well, I have a friend who is in finance, and one of the things that she would always say about one of her former employers that she loved, and it actually was chase for y'all, if you're listening, shout out to chase. She was like, Chase had the best policies related to whether we're talking about you had a baby or moving up, she said, because they got sued a lot. And so I think the answer is, what she would always say is that x company hasn't gotten sued enough, but it's a person who has sued an employer more than once, and I said it with my chest, 25 year old Candace was like they need to know. They're not going to treat me like this. But you know, as a woman of a certain age now, I understand deeply, intimately, the emotional cost, the emotional labor behind teaching these people who may or may not want to learn a lesson, a lesson. And I'll tell you that I can see both sides. I'm not saying don't sue. I'm not saying don't file an EEOC complaint because they are warranted and just for information for our friends listening, there have been more EEOC complaints filed recently than ever. So you guys are out there doing the work, and it's not until people are called on the carpet and they start losing jobs that we will see change. But what happens to the days in between? Right? I think about this a lot, because I think I was, I was working with this white woman who she had been in this anti oppression. Work much longer than I had, and she came into this work as a gay white woman, and we were working on a project together, and it was the folks who were having the issue were people of color, particularly women. And she actually asked me the question, Well, why don't they just leave right? Like, if I don't like where I work, I just find another place to work. And the reason that I have some friends that will not do diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging work, and they will only do anti racism work, because they are not the same thing. And the reason I still do dei B work is because not everybody has the option to leave, not everybody has the option to fill file reports. Not everybody has the option to call somebody to the carpet without losing their livelihood. That weren't alright today, right? Like I have the option to say, Well, if you don't want to do what I say do, I could go over here, because I've set my life up. But like you said, 25 year old Candace, right? Like 25 year old Randy had to deal with a lot of microaggressions in a certain work environment, because I was 25 and I didn't have, you know, I don't have a trust fund. I didn't have, like, college debt, free college education. I'm relying on this employer because they're providing tuition assistance. They're providing health benefits for a 25 year old kid who has been living on her own since she was 18 years old. I need this job until I have another place to go. And so I look at those things and like, what do you do about them? Right? And I think we put too much of the work on the person who has been harmed. That's why I do that's why I do what I do because responsibility of the person who has been harmed to fix a problem that they did not create. You're not it is the responsibility of the employer or the person who created the issue to fix the issue, so they only say it person, right? But, but that's what my job but that's what my job is. And I'm telling you, I know that it won't be done when I stop doing this. I am very interested in cultivating the next, next individual, next generation of individuals who care enough to want to do something about it. That's why I do workplace based work. That's why I do work in colleges and university. I'm very interested in cultivating the next generation of people like me who care enough, who are willing to make the sacrifice to go into the workplace and say it's not the responsibility of the person who's been harmed. Don't wait till there's a report filed. Be proactive, not just reactive, right? And so as a deib professional, which I sit with a group of four women, where we meet frequently, and most of them do mostly anti oppression, anti bias work. They don't really do dei be work. They do activism work, and that's fine, but I stay in this space because it's not the responsibility of the person that's been harmed. We put all the responsibility right when we talk about earlier black women being exhausted and black women feeling this way, they're the ones responsible for addressing the issues that they didn't create. So when you talk about a person, regardless of their diversity dimension, whether it's their ability, whether it's their sexual orientation, or whether it's a trans person who thinks gender reassignment surgery should be covered under their health benefits, it's not their responsibility to get you up to speed. It's not their responsibility. It is your responsibility as an employer, if you say you have values around diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging. It's your responsibility to define those values and live in those values. And when I say, live in those values, I'm talking about not statements linking to George Floyd on your website. I'm talking about, can everybody in here say that your policies, processes, your recruitment, your retention, really is inclusive of all the diversity dimensions we can think of. In most cases, it's no and it's to your point, they aren't large enough, or haven't been sued enough to be held accountable. Here's the thing that scares me most. Mm hmm, I'm going to agree with your point, and I know that you're right, theoretically you're right, but in 2024 where we have people who are actively fighting history being taught true just fact, yeah, how? Then in future generations, when we right now, have people saying slavery wasn't that bad on the record, you know what you have to do. This is, this is what you have to do. And I stand behind this 1,000% not as an opinion, but as a definitive thing we have to do. So people assumed that when we became one nation and we weren't two separate entities of government, meaning we can't. Off the Confederate States, and they didn't win, but they don't think they didn't win, and so they're still holding up Confederate flags and holding Confederate ideas, but they didn't win, right? They didn't win the war bottom line. And this nation has been moving forward slow, albeit, but has been moving forward ever since. They are not going to go away. They are still having children like we're having children. I'm trying to raise activists and socially conscious individuals. They're raising racist children the same time that I'm raising mine. Right? So what we know, what we know? Because when I look at TV, I don't see 80 year olds perpetuating these ideas. I see young children who I could have babysat perpetuating these ideas. That tells me there is a parent that socialized them to these ideas. So as long as there's a me and a you socializing our children against those ideas, there is a parent socializing their children for those old ideas. They're old ideas, but they're still being socialized into new children. So the only thing we can do is we have to, with every generation, ensure there's an equal and opposite force to fight those ideas. When we lost really great leaders in the movement towards black liberation, whatever iteration you want to call and whatever faction you want to side with it, whether it's Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Fred Hampton, Medgar Evers or whoever. James ball, whoever you want to think of, what we lost when we lost those people was a collective movement of equal and opposite force. I haven't seen it yet, and if we don't build one exactly what you said is true is going to keep happening. You're not going to ever convince all the people that a woman has autonomy over her body. Every generation for the rest of the human existence will have a group of people that don't believe women have control over their bodies. They're going to exist. We're not going to cancel them out, right? So when I go into an organization and I talk about these things, I'm not going in there, because I'm going to think I'm going to miraculously change your racist mind. I'm just letting you know that where our voice is going to be present with your voice, right? So basically, putting them on notice, I'm putting them on notice, and then we have to activate. We have to be active in that we can't go to sleep at the wheel. I say the biggest challenge we have in this country today is the lack of education. People don't even know how the Supreme Court thing happened. Don't even know. They have no idea whose role and responsibility is what. They have no idea about checks and balance in the government, this government system. They have no idea like that strategic Randy, that's right, but, but guess what? We do have, I have the power to educate my own children. You can't stop me from educating my own children if you decide you don't want to teach my child Black Studies. I don't give a about what you do. I have a house. I have a TV just like I could teach my kid to run around in Jordan, to play basketball. I could teach my kid anything else I want to teach them, so hard if the school isn't willing to educate the child to my standards of raising a socially conscious child. I have the right to raise a socially conscious child in my house, and you can't change that. Just because Florida canceled all dei programs doesn't mean y'all can't get together like Grace Lee Boggs and her husband did in their living room. Bell Hooks, Audrey, Lord, yes, they worked in the academy, but they also worked outside the academy. We have those choices. That's not where we're putting our efforts and all I'm saying no judgment, as a person who is very forward thinking in these things, because I look at history, and I look at now, and I look at where we're going, and I look at the trends, you know, we were a different generation in a lot of ways. You know, we're the kids that grew up on The Cosby Show, and a different world. And for many of us, and I'm going to even put myself in this, you know, I had the privilege of growing up in New York, which I didn't realize at the time. I know, right abstract concept. I did not know people were still really on that tip. I didn't either, I swear I didn't either. I'm not even going to lie. First of all, I grew up with black teachers. We told our kids aren't growing up with black teachers from elementary school. They're growing up with teachers who aren't half my age, or are only half my age. Charles Mills talks about social context. So our teachers had a social context of the black struggle that these teachers don't have. So we grew up in this era of kind of privilege, where I think things kind of chilled out for a second. And and it loathed us into we're okay and I can step for myself. I really, truly believe, if I get my education, I get this good job, I'm gonna be good and then I was faced with this. I didn't even know it was racism at the time at work, because I didn't even I didn't have any experience with this in the past? This is like, what? Yeah, like, 25 year old Candace working with a bunch of middle aged white women who were just hosting me for no reason. You don't even know. Don't even know, but me being me, I was just like, okay, Yahoo. Don't want to talk to me that afternoon like it's whatever, I'm still going to be dope. I grew up with adults who made me believe I could be anything. I want to be me too. So when I went into the workplace and had those experience, I was like, You won't control me, like I'm gonna be like, I didn't really codify it as racism, or be like, I need to go tell somebody I was like, if she get it twisted after work in the parking lot, we can dual hands. But that's what I grew up like. I grew up somewhere. You had to, even if you couldn't be that person, you had to fight, because they was just going to come after you tomorrow, right? So even if you're not the biggest, baddest person, you had to fight back to not get beat up and shamed, right? So even if you didn't win the fight, they'd be like, well, she fought back. She got some punches in, right? Like, I grew up in that place, right? I'm not a fighter, but I grew up in a place where if you didn't fight back, it wasn't going to be good for you. So, you know, so, I mean, you get to these people at work, you're like, if they get explicit in the parking lot, we can do this. But I even think about her right, like she don't got nothing over me. I'll do I'm about to party on the weekend. I'm fly my hair getting done. Imma have me up do and I don't even care about her. Like we've been waves. Yes, we don't wait as long as my paycheck is, Am I that part. Let that we have a project clear. We don't have a problem is, do you got my check? Like, I don't even know what you're talking about, but do you have my money? Like, that's but, like, that's a whole experience too. Randy, we don't talk about how you started as a hood chick, and now you're sitting with people who straight up talk crazy to you, to your face, and you can't slap the fence out of them. Like what you like when I say that, like when I quit, you're the first person I'm coming from on God. But I will say this newer generation. When I saw the article on the mass resignation, and I saw some of the video of the younger students like that are not even about this life. You do one thing, and they be like, I don't have to work for you, and they don't even give you two weeks notice. And I was like, so I love the energy of like, I'm not gonna let you do this to me. But I do live in the reality of capitalism, and I live in the reality of inflation. I live in the reality of, yeah, my apartment in Worcester Square was $750 but it's like $7,000 a little there. Now I worry for our kids of like, okay, I get it. Like you ain't about to do the things you're not even about to buy this. Like you're not about to go into college debt. You ain't about this life. I'm struggling with the fact that we haven't built alternative pathways for them. So to your point of us growing up thinking that these things weren't a thing anymore, we didn't build alternative pathways for what if our kids be like, I ain't about this life. Like, yeah, yeah, I was about this life, but I ain't about this life. We don't have another place for them, it's not no, not please, not at all, not at all kind of going through this whole thing as a professional black woman, right to speak to the article. Unfortunately, I don't know any black woman who has not been unfairly on a performance improvement plan, you yelling at somebody because you're speaking sternly to them, fired or almost gotten fired, and to the people listening. I just want y'all to know that you're not alone, and take that personally, like, try not to take it personally. And remember, we don't act like them other folks jumping out of windows and when that kind of stuff happened to us. No, we don't do that at best. I'm gonna get me a bottle of Casa amigos and be like, Imma leave them there for the weekend. I got, I ain't taking this one with me for the weekend. I got other things to do, but I will say I got a call from another partner, like, how you and I partner up on stuff? Like, I'm very intentional with partnering up with other women of color who are consultants, though I do have, I have one other white woman that I work with occasionally, who is really, I could really say, as an ally, because they don't. Get to stay there ally. We could stay there all and imma say she's an ally. Um, as a consultant, this other woman I work with, we both on the same contract. We just had our first conversation today about the microaggressions we're experiencing. And she said, You know, there's no place for consultant. She's like, when you work for someone, there might be like a place of HR or something you go to but even as women who have said, Listen, I'm not dealing with this in the work environment. I'm going to work for myself, they're still same experiences working for themselves. And that's what makes me sad, right? Because, like you just said, like you don't know any women of color who hasn't had this experience. That's very sad. Because I think other women can say that it is sad, and I think it's important that we bring it out, though, right? We have to stop going through these experiences and being silent and, you know, feeling like there's something wrong with us. We already know there's something wrong with the system, and it just keeps showing up in different places. Would you say that at the heart of this all is only the singular thing about unconscious bias? No, I think that's an oversimplification of a magenta experience. And the reason I use the term magenta, I say magenta for whenever it's a whole bunch of different things, right? It's not just blue, it's not just green, it's just red. It is a magenta experience. And I will say this, I will answer your question with a story I studied abroad in grad school in France, which was a very interesting, weird experience, because I told you, I grew up in a place that wasn't racist, but I wasn't that far removed from that experience, right? And Paris is racist, especially to Africans, right? But when I as a black American, opened my mouth and could say, I'm not African, I got treated differently. And even though, as a person of color, black, whatever, I'm black, right, I could see what they were going through, and I could identify because I understood it, but I didn't care enough to involve myself. And so the question is, I will say this, I think I agree with experience. I think I agree and I will add because I do do a lot of unconscious bias training, and I always tell people, the benefit that most people in the audience have is that they're it's a story. It's like watching a Netflix series for them right in 90 minutes. Or if I happen to spend a half day with you, you're going to leave that room and this is no part of your life at all. It actually doesn't impact your life at all. So if you want people to do something about it, they'd actually have to care enough to do something about it, because it doesn't impact their life any at all. That part. When I'm talking to mostly white people, chances are they're not having daily micro, aggressive experiences with white women. They can recall a time period, if they're old enough where they worked, in an environment dominated by people who identify as males, and they know what that looks like, right? But because white women, their progress has looked very different than the black woman's progress, right? In terms of being a professional, he's still not where male identified white men are. They can see themselves in CEOs. They can see themselves in their educators. They can see themselves in positions of affluence and power, right? They can see themselves there. We're still trying to get there, right? And so this means nothing to them, not even experience you can identify with. And so if you can't identify with experience, the only thing I have at my disposal next as a practitioner is, how much do you care? To do something about it, but to bring it full circle, right? That is why we talk about have your own business, have multiple streams of income, because it is depressing and it can be hard to consider that your entire life is controlled by people who may or may not have your best interest at heart. This is true. Because we are so caring, we just assume everybody else is like that baby. You know what happens when you assume so we're gonna take a break right here. We'll be back on behalf of our mic. Sounds nice? Please. Please continue to rock with our friend, our sister, our cousin, our colleague, your auntie, Candace Whitaker, bail yourself out. And if you don't think you have something to be bailed out of, after you listen, you will realize that you do. Now back to the show. We're back in the happy hour lounge with our guest coach. Host today, my girl, Randy McCray, and that last segment, oh my goodness, talking about being a black woman at work. You know, that was something that resonated with both of us, who are now both corporate renegades. That's what I'm calling us, industry disruptors. Yes, I love it to tell y'all make a life on your own terms. You don't just have to get one job and work that junk till you die or retire or whatever you get to make your rules about what you want to do and how you want to do it. That's number one. And number two, don't ever depend on one job for your whole livelihood. We need multiple sources of income. Yes, and amen TD Jakes tells folks seven. Mm, hmm. I was listening to all the stuff he was in. And I was like, I didn't really, didn't know that I was watching it with my mom. And I was like, Oh my goodness. Like, he's got a lot of stuff going on as he should, right? So back in December, I went to the hope Global Forum. A friend of mine was like, I have tickets. You want to go? I was like, Yeah, I'm in. And TD Jakes was there as TD Jakes talking about his businesses, and his business ventures and the whole thing about hope and Operation Hope, if y'all don't know about it, get on it. They have free F, R, E, E, mentoring for black businesses, free coaching. Go on their website, make you an account, get you a coach. If you have a business idea, their goal is to get a million black businesses. And so TD Jakes was there talking about all of his ventures and whatnot, knowing what you know, Randy as a woman of a certain age. What advice would you give 25 year old Randy? Oh, wow. Well, I have to say 25 year old Randy was an entrepreneur since high school, so I had this plan in the pipeline. I can't even front I was that annoying little smart kid, but I'm glad for that, right? But I will say be bold enough to really go after it, because there's going to be a lot of people who tell you that you shouldn't or try to tell you what you should be. That's what I can say. Like people are going to try to direct your dreams. Sometimes people think they know what's best for you better than you know what's best for you. So I will tell you that when I was saying all these things when I was younger, people were like, Oh, you're not going to do that. Or they were writing it off. Or you're good at computers, um, you create things you should do that. I remember somebody telling me I should start a t shirt business. I'm like, Well, that's what I do on the side, that's not my business, right? That is not the thing that I'm going to leave in this world. That's better than what it was when I got here, right? Nobody's going to be like, Oh my gosh. She's to make the best T shirts, right? Like, I'm hoping that somebody's going to be like, yo. She showed up unapologetic after leaving that place behind, but showed up on that stage at the School of Public Health, and she was her unapologetic self. She did that on her own terms. That is what I want them to say about me. So, you know, I would say 25 year old, or you even today, because I think we put age on things, but I would say, if there's something that you want to do, just do it. Don't ask for permission to live your dreams, because people are not going to give it to you. That part too. One thing that I say all the time is that God gave you a vision for your life to fulfill, not for other people to understand. And my advice to 25 year old Kandice would be stop putting energy and trying to get people to understand you. You know, as a woman of a certain age, full grown, I'm okay with the fact that I'm different. I'm very different, but 25 year old, part of me wanted to be like other people. You know, I also was an entrepreneur from as long as I can remember, I was at this place. I got this great job at 25 was supposed to be a great job with the pension, and no one could understand why I couldn't settle. I couldn't understand why I couldn't settle. Why couldn't I be happy here? I was like, well, first of all, it sucks. Here do we discuss that? Candace, I'm going to say when I left, first of all, I didn't leave overnight, like I had, like a three year plan, because that's the type person I am. But when I notified them, you know, my new boss, after some 30th 1000 restructuring, was like, well, that's a bold move. And I was like, Yeah, I do bold things, you know, and it's so funny, because what you're going to find that, as a woman of color, you don't get permission to dream bigger. You're always asked to settle in. Or the crumbs that people give you on the table, the nature of subtle racism, of low expectations. I'm not going to even call it subtle. I know it for what it is. Now, I didn't know how to name it in my 20s, but I'm telling you that as a ambitious woman of color, when you're dealing with other people and some of them look like you, because not all skin folk are kinfolk. They remember being told by women of color, shut up and fix those computers right. Like they told somebody else, shut up and dribble the ball, she said. And I quote, well, maybe that's all people see you at as a person who fixes computers. And I said, Oh, okay, God, and you are the only promissory over your life. That part, that's it, that part. And we fall into places where we feel trapped because we are waiting for all these other people's permission to live our highest and best. We all got a highest and best. I could do 1000 different things, but I have a highest and best, right? So Randy, I'm a realist in all things. What you're saying is, right? I am co signing on everything like Amen. Mm, hmm. But talk about the scary part. What about the person who says, I want to but I'm scared. No one I know did anything like this. What about that? I'm a scared every day I wake up. I ain't going to lie to you. I'm scared that the contracts ain't going to come in. I'm scared that the payments are not going to come in. There are times the contracts didn't come in. We don't talk about that side of entrepreneurship. Your clients haven't paid you for 45 days, and they tell you somebody forgot, but they got their paycheck right. And so it is scary. I would never lie until somebody is not scary. It's scary every day I wake up. I am not going to lie, but I do what scares me, because again, when I think about the alternative, I don't want the alternative. I don't want the alternative. But the other thing that you can do, and you mentioned this earlier, as a person who lives a different life, you gotta find your tribe, right? You do? You are people like you. There are people you get when you're an entrepreneur. I will say this be a smart entrepreneur. Stop thinking, because you make toilet covers that everybody want. Toilet covers. They don't want them. You want them. Be a smart entrepreneur. If you are not solving somebody's problem, you don't have a business. If you're not filling a gap, meeting a need or solving a problem, you don't have a business, so be a smart entrepreneur and find the people who are going to places or on the same journey as you. You can't just do it from your living room off Facebook. You gotta get out there. You gotta build those networks. You gotta get it in the places and spaces that want your services or want your skill set, you gotta get out there. Yeah, be a smart entrepreneur, though. Like, that's what I would tell people. Don't just be entrepreneur. That's hard entrepreneur, right? Like, be strategic in really taking this journey, because there's a lot, and as you know, there's a lot that goes into this. This ain't for the faint of heart. There's a lot people don't tell you that part, but like here, there is no one size fits all right. Some people are built to be climbing the corporate ladder. Some people are built to be entrepreneurs. Some people are built to be that person who works but they got a dope side hustle. You know, you gotta figure out what's best for you. And you know what I tell my children? You know, I have children in their 20s, at this point, you gotta try different things you do, because you may have not even encountered what you really like it. Nope. And I will say this, parents, if you have children, one of the things that I borrowed from my upbringing, even though we didn't live with a lot of financial resources, is I was put in everything. So I was exposed to sports, I was exposed to acting, I was exposed to art, I was exposed to performance arts. I was exposed to everything. And through that exposure, I discovered what resonated with me. So if you're a parent with children, just keep exposing them to different things so they have the information to make a choice for the thing that aligns with them. My kids have played every sport but but at the end of the day, at this big age of 14, for them, they're like mommy basketball, right? I wanted them to play soccer. They don't want to do that, but they tried it, right? So they were exposed to it to know that they don't want to play well, my kids were growing up. I was similar, you know? I would just let them try things. So my son, he did karate one year, and then the next year he did baseball, and then the next time around, he. Play basketball, like we try different things until something hit, and that is totally okay. Even went to, like, an inventor's camp and all kind of stuff. I think, as a people, we are so freaking creative, so much to offer, and we have so many wonderful things just in us being us. We're funny, we're smart, which is amazing, but we not exposed to a lot sometimes. Yeah, I mean, I think when you look at communities, right, like, you know, you'll have some people that'll blame people, you'll have some people that are blaming the system. There's enough blame to be placed in many different compartments, right? There isn't one singular source for lack, right? There isn't one answer for lack of anything in any domain. But I will say you have to be intentional, right? And so exposure requires being intentional about seeking out the avenues of exposure and seeking out opportunities for exposure, right? And sometimes you might not have financial resources, but the schools or local community churches you brought up church before, right, some of my exposure came through that. Some of my exposure came through having older siblings that were associated with sororities and fraternities or community people lived in a community that were just people in the community that cared, right, like they would hold the program. So it's just really, you have to be intentional and find out where you can find those micro moments of exposure, because then they have the information to know what they want and what they don't want exactly at the end of the day. That's all we're about, right, figuring out who you are, believing in yourself, accepting change is part of the process that will build resilience in your life so you can have the life that you want to have, which you get to define. So this was an amazing episode, and this is a great place to wrap it Randy, where could people get to you? I'm on all social media platforms. That's Randy Renee. Randy with an eye. Y'all like Candace with a randy with an eye. It's on the screen there, like Kandice Whitaker, Randy Renee. So all social media and I put my actual face up there, so that you know it's actually my profile you're clicking on. So if you put in Randy Renee on LinkedIn, on Facebook, on Instagram, you'll see it's me, and you know, you see a little bit everything. All right, y'all, this has been an amazing episode. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you Randy, for coming and hanging out with our friends. We love you and we are out. Y'all. Wasn't that a great interview? Hold up before you grab your hat and head out, make sure you make your way to facebook and join the bail yourself out pod Facebook group. That's where you'll find your virtual coworkers luxuriating and chatting. Thank you so much for listening, and if you enjoy the show, please leave a review. That's how we keep the lights on. If you're on social media, follow your girl, Kandice Whitaker. Whitaker, and you know what I'd love to hear from you with that I love you, and I mean it, because there are people who hate in the world for no reason. I choose to love for no reason. I believe if the great Martin Luther King Jr said, hate is too great a burden to bear. So I choose to love peace. Y'all. You.