After a brief hiatus, REVOLT CEO Detavio Samuels’ show “The Blackprint” returned. And this week, the guest was innovator DonYé Taylor. The PG County-raised creative director and consultant grew up in an environment where she could explore what she liked and didn’t like. Although the city where she got her wings to soar didn’t cultivate a space for much creativity, Taylor was always a trendsetter who forged her own path. Having a keen eye for creativity, she noticed over time that her opinions and ideas always captivated people, leaving them wanting to learn more about her perspective in various areas.
A natural-born hustler, Taylor always found a way to make money by merging her intelligence and creative storytelling skills. After taking a leap of faith to move to LA and launch her own business, following three years of helping build brands, she knew it was time to build on her own, so she did. Since then, Taylor has created a community of followers on Instagram who are inspired by the work she does. The go-getter has also launched nüclei, “a brand repurposing everyday objects and philosophical beliefs into functional art in order to defy the unwritten laws of creativity and push the limits of ideation and expression,” per its website, with more on the way.
Below are seven takeaways from the disruptor's interview with Samuels.
1. Music Was Her Introduction to Being Creative
Being raised with her older cousins helped peak Taylor’s interest in music early because she was exposed to whatever they were listening to. She admitted that hearing certain music at a young age and seeing the creativity in music videos got the wheels turning for her original visions.
“I think music was my entryway to creativity. My aunt and my uncle have children of
their own. They're older, so my big cousin Erica, she was a huge Aaliyah fan, Kanye West fan. Whenever I missed the bus, she would take me to school. So, she will always play Aaliyah and different artists from the R&B era like that,” she said. I feel like that trained my ear. That was my first real exposure to music at that level. My aunt and my uncle, we would go to church every single Sunday. Byron Cage was the musical director at my church, so I think music was my entryway into creativity. Even from there, watching ‘106 and Park’ when I got home from school.”
2. Growing Up in Black Culture Enhanced Her Confidence
Growing up in Maryland with her aunt and uncle is essential to the woman Taylor has grown into, as it shaped her perception of self-worth. Since she was raised in a predominantly Black city, the entrepreneur felt as if she never had to go through strife about being a Black woman in the world because everywhere she went people looked like her. That helped her be confident in who she is and all things Black culture.
“I think when people grow up in diverse areas, sometimes it can be hard to connect to your identity. I think growing up around Black people, my Blackness was never a question, and I never had to question it. So, I had a different level of confidence about my identity and my culture because it was all around me,” the artist explained. “My teachers were Black, principals were Black, people at the grocery store were Black, so I never felt isolated or indifferent or treated differently. So, I think that has just really cultivated the confidence that I have now as a Black woman and why I'm able to be so unapologetic when it comes to my Blackness.”
3. Taylor Learned Early That Pivoting Doesn’t Mean Failure
Something Taylor believes has helped her creative journey is knowing when it is time to switch gears and move on to something that serves her better. The young artist was allowed to explore a variety of things in her childhood, thanks to her aunt.
“It would be times where I was like, ‘Oh, piano classes seem cool. Put me in piano classes too,’ and [then] said... ‘I don't like this no more.’ She was like, ‘Okay, you don't want to do it no more? Fine.’ That was always her energy towards me. And I feel like that's why even now as a creative, I'm able to flow through and pivot so much, because if at any point I'm not happy, or I feel like I'm not getting fulfilled, I can go to something else,” the businesswoman shared.
4. MySpace Amplified Her Hustler Qualities
When the social media platform grew popular among the youth, one of the main reasons was because profile pages reflected a person’s personality and individuality. The website allowed teens to not only learn the world of coding but to build a space online that they manufactured down to the background, music choice, top friends list, the page’s layout, and more. Because of her versatile and original flair, MySpace became an avenue for Taylor to make money since her peers would come to her to add some razzle dazzle to their pages.
“Then when that internet era came, I was in middle school. MySpace was the way that I started expressing my creativity. I used to try to make my layouts look like the music videos that I watched. After a while, the kids at my school was like, ‘DonYé, can you make my MySpace page look like yours?’ And that was actually my first side hustle,” she revealed.
“I'm still figuring out myself creatively, but I think when you are able to express yourself through a medium, it makes you learn about yourself because you only create what it is that you're inspired by,” she added.
5. Being The Smartest in the Room Doesn’t Make You a Great Leader
When Taylor got her first full-time corporate job while still in college, she instantly became a standout star on the marketing team. Despite being the brightest there, she was fired after being with the company for a year and a half. Taylor didn’t understand why she was let go until she launched her own business.
“I was the youngest person on my marketing team. I was the only girl on the marketing team, and I learned a lot about company culture, and how when you're working on a team, sometimes it doesn't matter how talented you are, or how much you know; it's about how well you mesh with the other people on your team, and I think that was really where I learned the qualities of a good leader,” she said. “I thought that I was a good leader because I knew the most, but I didn't do a good job of educating the people that I worked with, and I ended up getting fired a year and a half after working there, and I couldn't understand why I got fired until I had my own business, and it was people that I had hired that were extremely good at their job, but they did not mesh well with everybody else, and they didn't bring out the best in everybody else, so that was when it clicked. I'm like, ‘Oh, that's why I got fired…’”
6. The Importance of Building a Community vs. Having a Following
After partnering with an ex-boyfriend to build a creative agency, she decided it was time to part ways because their visions for the company weren’t aligning. It was time to bet on herself! When Taylor made this leap, she had around 20,000 followers on Instagram who were fans of her work and style. While growing her personal brand, the young hustler noticed that although she had a “moderate following,” there wasn’t much engagement between her and her followers. This is when she deep-dived into constructing a space for community because having a safe space for like-minded individuals is key for all brands.
“I had followers, but I didn't have a community. I think followers and community [are] two separate things,” the entrepreneur told Samuels. “I think when you have followers, you have people that are looking at you, but your community is people that are watching what you do, they're inspired by what you do, and they're connected to what you do on an emotional level.”
She continued, “So I started building my community around 2021 when I had launched my newsletter, ‘To Whom It May Concern.’ And my newsletter was a way of me just sharing my insights on the creative world without having to worry about likes, or followers or shares. And on top of that, I wanted to own my audience.”
7. The Importance of Educating Her Employees
After getting fired from her first job at Shoe City, Taylor became a business owner. That’s when she learned firsthand the importance of teaching, so that her staff could be and feel knowledgeable while they carried out tasks and fulfilled deliverables.
“I remember this meeting so vividly. I was pitching for us to go to Coachella, and I had walked into the pitch. I had spent all night working on this presentation, and the first slide, I have a question, and it was from the guy that ran the e-commerce side of the business. He was about maybe 55, 60, had a wife and kids. He was like, ‘What's Coachella?’ And I'm like, ‘What do you mean what's Coachella?’ Like, I'm in college... I'm like, ‘You guys don't know what Coachella is?’ And that moment taught me the importance of education because I should have educated him and the rest of the people that were in the meeting [on] what Coachella was instead of assuming that everybody knows,” Taylor admitted.