Episode 420: Courtney Ismain of Jamii
In this episode, Fiona chats with Courtney, co-founder of Jamii, a platform supporting black-owned businesses. They talked about the challenges faced and the community-centric mission that drives their business forward. Tune in!
You'll Learn How To:
Building partnerships with major organisations
The role of community in business growth
Effective marketing strategies
The impact of media coverage
Personal development and its influence on business confidence
Advice for entrepreneurs facing lack of representation in their industry
The importance of maintaining authenticity and passion in business
Importance of Community
Courtney's personal background and operational role in the business
Challenges and stereotypes faced by black-owned businesses
Partnership and support from larger organisations
The impact of the Black Lives Matter movement on business
Masterclasses and initiatives to support black entrepreneurs
Future aspirations for inclusivity and broad support in business practices
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I’d say first and foremost to think, to centre, to focus on who or what you are doing it for. Because if you start with a very authentic foundation, even if it's just for yourself, that's something, it's just for you. I was interviewing someone, they're a mentor for young women and she was saying that she is being the mentor that she never had growing up. I think when you start with an authentic foundation starting something that you don't see anyone else in your space doing, that's how you'll attract people who are very similar to you.
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Welcome to episode 420 of the My Daily Business podcast. Today you're reading a small business interview that I did a few weeks ago. Thankfully, my voice in the interview did not sound like it does today. But I am just so excited to be bringing you this interview because the person that it's with, we connected over Instagram and I just was so blown away by what they have achieved, but also just attitude. I came off this particular conversation feeling invigorated about what's possible, particularly the whole idea that one person can't make a difference. They absolutely can. In this case, the business was started by two people who are sisters. Two people or one people can make a difference. I'm always saying that small business owners can make a difference.
We make up the bulk of society, we make up a huge amount of employers here in Australia, I think small business owners equate for 50% of employment in this country. I just think that when we can work together and when we can do things for the greater good, the whole world becomes a better place. Before I get stuck in, I want to of course acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians on the land on which I meet these wonderful people and connect and record this podcast and that is the Wurrung and Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. And I pay my respects to their elders past and present and acknowledge that sovereignty has never been ceded. Let's get into today's small business interview.
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Today it's my absolute pleasure to bring you an interview with the wonderful Courtney Ismain, who together with her sister Khalia started Jamii. Jamii is the UK's first discount card and discovery platform for black creators and black-owned businesses. They are the proud home for black British brands. I connected with Jamii on Instagram. They came up in my explore feed for your section and I went over I had a look and I was like this is awesome. Such a smart business and such a great business that is changing lives. I think some of the best brands, and this is what I talk about in my second book, which is coming out soon, is that brands can change the world and change perception, can change, identities can change the way that we shop and the way that we live as a result of that.
I just think what they're doing is incredible. In this chat, we talked about what it was like to start a business. Khalia started it and then brought Courtney on board. And now Courtney is running it. She talks about how Khalia got poached from the business by a company that they had partnered with, which is a gigantic company in the UK. And we talk about that and how did you got on their radar and how you won a partnership with them and all the sorts of things that have gone on to create Jami and to make it one of the most incredible community businesses in the UK. It is such an inspiring platform for people, especially outside the UK as well, who may want to do something like this in their own territory. Jamii means community in Swahili and that's exactly what Courtney, her sister and the other people who are involved in Jamii have created over the last seven and a half years.
The company has been up for so many different awards and as you hear from Courtney, it's obvious that she's so passionate about this even though as she says this is not the path that she thought she was going to go down. I feel like sometimes the best businesses are started by people who see a gap in the market and also see that change needs to happen. How do we make that happen ourselves? We're not going to wait around for everyone else to do it. We're going to get in there and make it happen ourselves. I'm always talking to small business owners who say things like, I'm only a small business, or there's just one of me, or we're not turning over gazillions of dollars or pounds. How can we make a difference?
You can make a difference. Every single small business owner is already making a difference whether you know it or whether you don't because small businesses are communities. And when you nurture those communities, you nourish those communities, you talk and educate those communities, you are opening up the dialogue for every single member of that community to then turn around and have conversations in their communities, in their own families, in their workplaces, which in turn is creating huge social change. If you are reading this and the state of the world right now, there's so much going on and I feel like people can worry that they're not big enough, they're not large enough, they don't have an amount as much staff as other people, or they don't turn over as much to make a difference. You can make a difference and Jamii is living proof of that.
When you start with something and you think, how could we create a community around this? You have such an incredible opportunity to change things up. I'm so thrilled that Courtney said yes to coming onto the podcast. She is just such a wonderful person to talk to and I just know you'll get so much out of this. If you want to check out Jamii, you can go and check out lovejamii.com. If you want to follow them on Instagram, which is exactly how we connected, you'll find them @ukJamii. And if you are interested in figuring out how to grow your business and your black-owned business, check out their Grow with Jamii. You can check out Growwithjamii.com. We'll link to that in the show notes as well because currently, and if you've read this before, I think they finish up in October 2024 for this series, they are running a series of free master classes on how to build your business with all sorts of different experts. They are based in the UK so I'm not sure about the time zones if you are here in Australia or on this side of the planet, but check it out and you can see all the information for that as well just on their Instagram. Again, that's @ukJamii. Here is my interview with the wonderful Courtney Ismain from Jamii.
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Hi Courtney, welcome to the podcast.
Hi, thank you for having me.
Thank you for getting up and being bright and bushy-tailed in the morning because it's our evening here and you are all the way in the UK. How are you feeling about life right now?
I'm feeling content. I think this year has started off on a real high, both in business and in my personal life, my personal motivation. I'm happy about how things are going.
What a nice way to be content. It's such a nice, nice word as well. Can you tell us a bit about yourself and how you got started with your business?
I have a sister called Khalia, she's a couple of years older than me and we run Jamii together. The way it started back in 2015 there was the first wave of the Black Lives movement and there was a lot of growing anger about the state of racial inequality in the world, both in the US and the UK and around the world. My sister at the time was looking to own businesses more sustainably. She came up with the idea of a discount card, basically an incentive to get people to go off the beaten track search for black-owned businesses, through us because back then it was very hard to find them. Even harder to support them. She came up with the idea of the Jamii card where people could, partner with businesses and then customers would buy the Jamii card and get discounts with all these businesses.
He enlisted me to get involved in it with whatever skills that I had. At the time I was a student studying languages I've always enjoyed writing, writing essays, writing copy, that thing. that was my area of business. I would write the weekly newsletters, I'd write all the website copy. I guess in that sense I built or developed the branding or our tone of voice, so to speak. That was my initial role in the business. As it's evolved, I've focused more on the operational side of the business and now Khalia has left the business full-time. It's me running it full-time. In a way, do you know how a small business is you? That's how I feel about it, even though it wasn't necessarily my business to start with.
Where does the name come from?
Jamii means community in Tahiti. Khalia spent three months in Kenya working with micro-entrepreneurs. That's partly also where she got the business idea from. I think that's where she got the idea to start helping the community and how businesses, small businesses can be a supportive ecosystem when supporting each other.
Is it still how it runs today when you were talking about people can buy a card and then the card gives them a discount for these black-owned businesses, is that still the way that it runs or how has it developed?
It is. At the core we have the Jamii card still, my word has evolved in so many different directions that nowadays we almost don’t know even how what our elevator pitch would look like because we have like a customer-facing side. We have a side of the business that supports black-owned businesses. Those are the two main strands. But also we work with larger organisations. There are so many things that we do. But I think, so just to give you I guess a quick explainer, we currently have a discount card, but we've also evolved into an online marketplace where you can shop directly with about 150 black-owned businesses directly on the marketplace. We also work with a lot of corporate organisations. We run internal team engagement projects for them to get black home businesses into supply chains and offices and that thing. We run master classes for the support of black home businesses as well. That's what we're doing at the moment. We're spinning a lot of places I'd say.
Did you come from a family that you were very entrepreneurial? Did your sister, I mean you said she went to Kenya, but did she study business? How did you guys decide, yep, we're going to do this because a lot of people would've seen what was happening around the world and felt it and been like we should do something but not fully created a business with all these different strands? Do you think that was your upbringing that you had entrepreneurial parents and you're like, yes, we can do this or where did that come from?
Not at all. I'm very academic. I never saw myself as a business owner or an entrepreneur or anything. I didn't go directly into Jamie. When I graduated, I worked for a year at Techstars up and what I realised was that I don't like working for people. It's not that I don't like working in teams, but I just enjoy working for myself. I feel like I'm most motivated when I'm working for something that I care about. Most people that, like for example, a real estate startup, I don't necessarily feel passionate about it, but a cause like the economic empowerment of like community I feel passionate about. I'm not naturally entrepreneurial I would say, but I do feel like I have this drive to just get things done. If someone gives me a task or a project, I like operations.
This is why I started moving into the more operational side of the business because I just like finding the most efficient way to do something or the most productive way to get something done. And that's what I enjoy, that's what motivates me and gives me a sense of satisfaction in my professional life. Even my approach to my job nowadays is just with an operational mindset. I still talk to about long, long-term strategy because that says strength, but mine is just, how are we going to make each week as productive and successful as possible?
Such a good mindset. Also, that's a common thread for lots of small business owners to be like, as you were talking, I was like, that's me. I was also like that at every workplace. I was like, how can we fix our system? Like why do we do it like this? And then it's a good skill to have as a business owner because you're constantly fixing problems and trying to find new ways to do things. And your sister started this and you're like, we're going to create this card, and then did you just have a lot of friends or people in your community that you were like, they have a business, I can ask them? Or how did you like scale it to where you have so many people now in your marketplace many businesses, did you do media and then people came to you? Did you go and find businesses first and be like, can you do you want to be part of this platform? How did you find them to start with?
To start with, it was a case of reaching out to the businesses first, telling them about the platform, and the idea. And they were very on board with it because it's offering a small discount, which is the customer acquisition cost. And they just would be like, this is great marketing. We launched with about 25 businesses back in the early days. It was a case of going to events. I think we'd go to blogger events, and marketplaces to spread the word about us to new customers, but also spread the word to businesses who might want to be on board. It's by saying that we have a very striking branding, it's just orange or orange. And eventually, we came to be known as the orange brand, which was great for us. We're very happy that people knew about the colour of our branding before they knew about what we were, were all about. But it got to the point where we could turn up at events and people had already heard of us or already seen us at least somewhere. It was a mix, I say, of physical events and like growing our presence in on, so on the online community, so Instagram, and Twitter, garnered more attention towards us.
That's how I came to find you on Instagram and I was like, this is awesome what you're doing. When you created that and you had 25 brands to launch with, did you have a real clear understanding of what we were going to have in fashion, did you know which categories you were going to go after first? And did you have an idea that down the track we want to be a full lifestyle marketplace or we want to have food or jewellery? Like did you know which categories you were going to grow or did you go, these 25 businesses may not be part of the same category, but they have some ethos that we believe in that's common to the marketplace.
I would say no, we didn't start intending to have certain categories for those types of businesses or in that sense, I'd say intuitively we knew that certain products were just less available for black people. For example, haircare, African clothing and more cultural products, more niche products. We knew that we would be providing a service in that sense. We thought it very pertinent to get those types of businesses, but as time has gone on, I feel like it's the more commonplace products, that's when you find out it's they're, they're being run by a black-owned business. For example, we partner with a business that sells lampshades, the African print lampshades, but the lampshades and you are like like this is my black-owned business. It may not be like a niche product in itself, but it's inspiring because like you didn't know that someone like you could be in the business of lampshades if that makes sense. It started focusing on more niche products, I think. But it is moved on to, it's just moved on to a wider range of products.
Amazing. At the moment, like as you grow, do you ever say no to someone coming on board or do you think like, do they have to be in business for a certain amount of time? Do they have to have enough stock and inventory and have their system sorted to be able to be on the marketplace so that there aren't heaps of people going shopping and everything's out of stock or we don't make that anymore? How do you keep on top of that for your brand as well?
That is very important to us, the customer experience and just everyone's brand reputation because we were already, even when we started Jami, we were very aware of negative, stereotypes about customer service and the black community. It's very hard to fight against those stereotypes anyway. When it comes to picking the businesses that we work with, we're not exclusive by any means, but we are selective there's a certain quality of photography we do ask for that they've been trading for. At the moment it's a minimum of nine months. This is just for practical reasons. Just not to create extra admin on our side or create any inconveniences, we want the business to set up their processes, and know what they're doing logistically for themselves before they join Jamii so it's smooth sailing for everyone.
When you were doing this, and I know I'm putting you on the spot, but was there any mentor or somebody that you could look to and go, they're doing this well in the US or they're doing this well in some other part of Europe or they're doing this well in Australia. Was there any mentor that you looked at or even a business model that you were like, they do it well, whether it was for the black community or whether it was another type of marketplace that inspired you a bit or how to even do this given that you didn't come from that retail background?
Because there are not that many doing exactly what we do, the role models or the inspirations that we took weren't necessarily from similar businesses. The businesses that we look to for inspiration would be more the ones that have a strong community. Those are the ones we try to emulate because they have managed to get their customers to advocate for them. They managed to successfully transmit their mission and reach their customer's hearts and minds and their values. They're so admirable and that's exactly what we want to achieve basically.
With this, what challenges have you faced in growing Jamii and how have you overcome them? Here in Australia, we have a very complex history, a horrible history with First Nations people and Australians. I know that some First Nations businesses even that I've worked with have said, we got a whole lot of attention in 2020 when Black Lives Matter resurfaced and it's frustrating that all this attention and all this business as well has diluted and all these people promised that they would support and they didn't. And there have been some challenges in that people putting it out, I've done a part on social media and I'm not committing to changing behaviour, particularly white-owned businesses or corporations that wanted to, wanted to and said they were going to do more and we are going to diversify where we get our things from. Have you faced challenges like that or how have you kept the business going? What challenges have you faced? And maybe I'm projecting that maybe you haven't faced that at all, but what challenges have you faced?
We have experienced what you mentioned. Thankfully we haven't ever experienced any real hatred or aggression towards the brand by any racist people, but it's more the apathy. We did experience a huge surge. A lot of business bathroom businesses experienced a huge surge in support during the summer of 2020. But it did just spike, the support fell off. It's been harder to keep engaging people in the mission because they did just do it to show that that quick, show of support. But then the apathy has grown over time. People become desensitized to issues that are going on in the news. And that's very common and that's just how it is. I guess our job has, like I said before, to keep engaged in a community and keep appealing to their values.
It's not going to, we're not going to be for everyone. It may have seemed like it in June 2020 when as I remember we were getting purchases every three minutes or so. It seemed like this was a moment, but we do ultimately have a community that's not going to everyone. We have focused on them. Thankfully as well, larger organizations, a lot of them say that they were going to commit to more diversity practices and more representation. A lot of them didn't, but quite a few of them did. We're still working with them today. Just to give you an example, there's a media organization called Clear Channel in the UK and I think they're global as well. Back in 2021, we started partnering with them on an advertising competition to give High Street advertising to 10 different black-owned businesses. And that's them putting thousands of pounds of their own money behind this campaign to support businesses and just like increase their visibility, which can be so monumental to their success. We've run two iterations of that campaign in the past three years and we are playing the next one and the team is so brilliant to work with, responsive, and motivated to start to create more impact. There are organizations like that that are committed to making the change and keeping it going. It's just a case of working with more of them and seeing, and doing the maximum that we can do.
And then hopefully at some point it's not like, there's a few that are doing it. It's like everyone, it's just stock standard like that's where we are hoping I would imagine that everyone is hoping to get to. You mentioned that you have an audience who are people buying directly from these black-owned businesses, but then you also have the black-owned businesses and you do a lot in the way of helping black makers and entrepreneurs grow their business, and understand elements of business.
Tell us about the masterclasses or later I'm going to ask you about collaborations with huge brands like Lloyd's because that's who I had my very first bank account with when I was born in the UK and then when I moved back at 21, I had my Lloyd's bank card and everything. When I saw that. Was that element of classes and training and was that always there from the start? At some point we are going to do this as well as have the marketplace or when did that come into play?
It is been a natural evolution I'd say. Since 2020 and us being able to work with large organisations and have just a bigger scope for impact, I think we've tried to focus on what more structural impacts we can have. At the end of 2022, we ran our research, which started because we were just looking for a stat, like one stat, and then it became apparent that we'd have to do the survey ourselves. It was a survey of 200 businesses and how they expected to be affected by the pending recession. And the results of the survey were quite dire. There wasn't a lot of confidence in being able to have access to resources, have access to funding, and be able to support their business through an economic crisis. And from that research and other research, it became very clear that black-owned businesses don't feel like they have access to knowledge and resources.
A lot of them start a business because it's quite relatively easy to start a business on Shopify, but it's not easy to keep it going, especially in the ups and downs of the economic times. Many of them may have even started in 2020 when there was so much support. It's the support has been going down ever since and there's just not that knowledge there to know what is business as usual. What we wanted to do was confront this knowledge gap with a series of masterclasses. The masterclass monthly series running, it launched in May and it will be running until October in partnership with Lloyds Bank, basically covering seven different areas. We asked our network, so our immediate partners, we asked them what they wanted to know about and things came up like accounts financing, international trade, branding, and marketing.
One-hour sessions with experts to fill these knowledge gaps, make business owners feel more equipped and more confident to deal with the challenges that may come their way. Because the small businesses right now, as we all know, it's tough where at the beginning of this year we were reflecting on it many businesses were closing down because they just, they don't have the resources, the money to keep going. I remember reading a stat in a report that said something like access to business advice for black entrepreneurs is the difference between doing an 8,000-pound year and a 28,000-pound year. If we can just fill that knowledge gap, we can hopefully encourage so much more successful businesses to come through and flourish.
Let's talk about the Lloyd's partnership and even the Clearwater, they've got all of these different partnerships going on with huge businesses. How do you get in there? People are reading and are like, how did they do that? Again, I love that you sound very determined and you've got this passion and everything else. Were you like, we are going to do these master classes, we need somebody to partner with us we're going to go out to a gigantic bank. Were you already in discussions with these different places, in terms of these partnerships? Have you just pitched, have you walked in there and been like, I've got ideas? Was it within the network of people who were already on the platform? How did that happen to you?
It's a bit of everything. Clear Channel would've come about because in 2020 we gained, a lot more recognition for the work that we were doing. Back in 2020, Clear Channel reached out to us to see what they could do. At the same time, Lloyd's Bank was also looking at how they could make a change. I think they launched a race-to-action plan and they put together an advisory board. Khalia my sister, they asked her to be on the board. They've known about her for three, four years or so. She's been working with them to the extent that they poached us from the business.
We are like, “No, you can't take my staff.” A lot of the work that she was doing for Jamii, she's now doing directly for Lloyds Bank when it came to, I've mentioned already and what I was going to say as well is a lot of the cardholders that we have also happen to work in these organizations. Sometimes we run just marketplaces and offices and they'll be like, I know about you because I bought a jam card three years ago. Or I know exactly how we can work together because I've been part of the community for years. It's just a case of these now, the people working in these organisations are part of the community too or their customers too. That's how they heard about us and they want to, they recognise the change that needs to be made in their organisations and they want to bring us to them.
It sounds like that element of community, which is so important regardless of what business you have. And even more important as AI grows will be people seeking out a community that they can meet in real life and that they can be part of and feel they belong to. It seems like you've got a strong hold on building a community and you just keep expanding it and talking to them about what they need. But what other marketing has worked well for Jamii? Is it, we just did social media and then that blew up. Is it that we were strategic with which magazines we would go and get media? I know you've had a lot of media. Did you try podcasting? Did you try Google Ads? What marketing has worked well for you?
We've tried Google Ads for whatever reason, but we didn't end up doing it long-term. It just didn't seem to work for us. I think something that we had to come to terms with was that because we evolved into a marketplace and we thought this is what the people want. We focused on the convenience aspect of the marketplace, we focused on the variety of products. But then we realised that maybe the Google ads weren't working because it's not so much the thing people want, it's the way it makes people feel and that's very hard to convey in a simple Google ads. We moved away from that and I quite like email marketing again because I write all day long. I enjoy doing it and because of that, it's become very effective as well. I think we do like weekly emails, just a weekly way to be in people's inboxes and they can reply to us and we can be more informal. I think that's been impactful for our marketing. I like email over social media anyway. I don't enjoy social media.
Yes, you are preaching to the converted here. And email still, out of all the different mapping channels has the highest return on investment. We have a weekly email that goes out many people will say, I've got this big email list. I never talk to them, but I'm like, but then you're trying to chase and get another 10 followers on social media. You've got these people ready and willing and also that intimacy of directly into their inbox, it's very like a podcast is incredibly intimate because you're in someone's ears literally while they're potentially doing something else. But an inbox is very intimate as well. It goes directly into that person. I love that you brought that up. And then with media, like the magazines and stuff, has that been, have you worked with a publicist or is it like, no we have an interesting story? I imagine that a lot of people would just come to you for that story. How has that worked and do you have any tips for anyone who's reading who's like, I'd like to get some articles written about us?
We do. Do you have a PR manager? Honestly, I don’t know what she does. I'm not the person to ask when it comes to the publicity that she gets for us. But honestly, I'd say that a lot of the time we have just reached out to people on social media, email, and people just been like, do you want to cover this? That's generally what it's been like.
Do you have books or podcasts or tools that you like, I could not run my business without this. Or even like a book that inspired you to take action or when you were talking about the passion behind everything that you're doing, has a greater reason and meaning and purpose. Was there anything that was like a catalyst for you or you watched a documentary or something that has helped you with the business?
A lot of the podcasts I listen to, they're not necessarily business-related, they're more life-related. I tend to feel that your business confidence comes from your confidence and your personal motivation. I tried to tackle that first. I was scrolling on LinkedIn a couple of months ago and I saw that Lloyd's instantly was doing a program where they offer free sessions of free therapeutic coaching to small businesses. I was like, I'm signing up. They were so good. They were the principal was that as I said, the way you approach your business is due to how you see yourself, and your self-esteem. It was like a mix of therapy and business coaching, hence the name therapeutic coaching. It made me think about, things like imposter syndrome and I've always said that I don't like public speaking, but then it's made me think, why don't I like public speaking? What is it about it? What is it about myself? Do I not think myself capable of public speaking or doing this and doing that? When it comes to business resources they're never usually business-focused, they're more life-focused, mentality-focused.
It's so true. I saw this thing the other day about the productivity triangle. I could not remember where I saw it. But he had a productivity triangle and he was saying that most times with productivity in business people will be like, use this app or use this tech tool. But he is like, the baseline of the biggest part of the triangle is the foundations like you have to have a good enough sleep, you have to have good mental health, you have to like to have somewhere that you can physically work to run your business. Without that foundation, it doesn't matter how many fun apps you have, your mental health your sleep and everything else needs to be strong to run a business. Very similar to you talking about how life stuff needs to be strong for you to feel like I can go and do a public speaking engagement or I can pitch myself to the media or I can have this confidence because my personal life is okay.
Exactly. I feel like if you're not ready to hear the business stuff there's so much business and podcast advice out there. If you're not ready to hear it, it's not going to go in and you're not going to have any impact anyway.
Let's say someone is ready to hear some stuff from you because one thing I wanted to mention is that you were talking previously about the gaps for people who are black-owned businesses versus maybe non-black-owned businesses. There is that whole idea of like you can only or sometimes perceive what you can see. That's why the importance of role models from all different backgrounds and ages and all of that is so important for anyone to be able to see, I can see the representation of what is possible if someone's reading this and they're thinking I'm in a business industry or a category where there aren't people like me and I can't see that. I have a client who is amazing at what she does and I hope she listens to this.
She was saying in her particular industry, she doesn't see very much representation of Maori people and she's Maori from New Zealand. She was like, I want to change that and I want to show a lot more Maori people in this particular industry. If you're talking to somebody, you had to do this, you had to start something that wasn't in front of you, that wasn't 50 different marketplaces for black-owned businesses when you started. What would you say to someone who's reading and thinking, I don't belong in this category, or I don't see any representation of what I'm trying to build?
I'd say first and foremost to think to centre, to focus on who or what you are doing it for. Because I feel like if you start with a very authentic foundation, even if it's just for yourself, that's something, it's just for you. I was interviewing someone, so they're a mentor for young women and she was saying that she's being the mentor that she never had growing up. I think when you start with an authentic foundation starting something that you don't see anyone else in your space doing, that's how you'll attract people who you are very similar to you. If that makes sense.
No, that makes sense. I love that. What are you most proud of from this journey with Jamii so far?
I would say the community impact that we've had. Sometimes we get people at events or even on the street whipping out their Jamii class and being like, you're the founder of I'm the cardholder. And that honestly warms my heart because it's like you that the people in you are in the room with know anything about you. I've heard of your business before. And, not only that, but they're in the community. They're on your mailing list, they're your customer and they resonate with the vision as well. They share it. I think that's what's made me the most proud is knowing that we've like to step back and think that we've made waves in the community in ways that we haven't even realised. I'd say that we're probably one of the foremost champions of black-owned businesses in our space. But for years I don't think we even would've realised that for ourselves. I think it's meeting more and more people and realising that they associate supporting black-owned businesses with Jamii and barely anyone else like us. And it's a crazy moment to think like that's what we've managed to build.
It's amazing. In that as well, like knowing all that you do know now, what advice would you have given your younger self? When you were back in 2015 or 2016 and your sister was like, “Hey, we should do this.” What would you have told yourself now knowing what you know?
I think because we both have imposter syndrome, we would probably tell ourselves not to judge ourselves on our failures. Something that we both tell ourselves in our personal lives is that life is long. It sounds counterintuitive to the normal phrase, life is short, we see life as long in the sense that we have so much time to accomplish. Many different things have many different lives. If something's not working in Jamii right now, it's fine because evolve it, just move on, and it's fine. It's not like it's going to be the end of the business, it's fine. Sometimes there are lows, but there will, there's time, there will be highs, it things will pick up again. I think something else that I also think about, it's like brands like Kodak or Crocs like sometimes they just go outta fashion, but then they come back, their lifespan is so long and that can be Jamii. Maybe there'll be a phase where we're not making so much impact, but we'll come back. There's time. That's what I think I'd tell my younger self.
I love that so much. Life is long and what a good mentality to have just in general. Like life is long if a friendship breaks up or if a relationship, it's like life is long, there will be other friendships and there'll be other good and high tides to come in. Where can people connect with you if people are listening? We have a lot of listeners in the UK, we have a very global audience for this podcast, which is amazing. Thank you. Everyone who listens, where can they connect with you and what's next for Jamii?
You can connect with us on social media, you can find us on all social media @ukJamii. Our website is lovejamii.com which is also where you can sign up for our mailing list. In terms of what's next, right now we're running on the master classes and we're planning an exciting networking event, which is going to be one of our first events in a couple of years, which we're excited about. That's going to bring together loads of backend businesses, it's going to be in central London. It's going to be an exciting night of just celebrating empowering businesses with a focus on how they can get into retail. Beyond that, we are also looking forward to just getting more out into the community again in general. As I said, it's been a couple of years since we've done events, but we just looking forward to getting back out there and connecting with people in person again. That's what we're looking forward to the most. That'll be us for the rest of the year.
Amazing. Thank you so much for your time. You're probably already awake, but getting up and doing this first thing in the morning before you start your day, so appreciate it. I just think what you're doing is amazing and that's why we reached out to you when I saw it on Instagram. I was like, this is awesome. It's fantastic and I'm sure you're inspiring other people to listen and go, you know what? I want to move a bit more into something meaningful for what I want to do with the rest of my life.
Thank you. And thank you for having me.
You're so welcome. Bye.
Bye.
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There is so much to take away from this particular episode and I just want to thank Courtney again for coming in and just talking so openly honestly and beautifully about her business. The one that she started with her sister Khalia. If you want to check out Jamii, you can go over to lovejamii.com. You can also follow them on Instagram @ukJamii and we'll link to those in the show notes, which you'll be able to find for this episode at mydailybusiness.com/podcast/420. I'm going to pinpoint two things that stood out. I have to say there was quite a lot that stood out for me in this particular chat. I just have so much goodness and wisdom in there. The first thing I think is this idea of genuinely being interested and finding the work that you do.
This is something obviously that Courtney feels incredibly passionate about and quite rightly, and it's such important work. I think sometimes with business owners I would say, not necessarily the people that I work with, but other people that I see getting into business are sometimes doing it for quote-unquote wrong reasons or reasons where it's a quick fix mentality. I hate my job and I'm going to earn more if I go out on my own. Or I saw somebody that's earning all this money doing X, Y, Z on TikTok, so I'm going to follow that. Or I am just going to buy 10,000 items from Alibaba and sell them at the highest profit possible. Because yes, you might make a bit of money quickly but is that going to sustain you long term? Are you genuinely going to be interested and passionate about that going forward? I'm not saying that you're going to be passionate about your business 24/7 all the time. Everyone, every single person, no matter what they're working in or how meaningful it is, will have moments where they have tedious stuff to get on with. They have boring admin things. They've got things that aren't that exciting or they'll come up against challenges that are just exhausting. But for the majority of the time, you want to wake up thinking, I am genuinely interested in what I'm doing today.
I'm genuinely interested in the pathway that I'm taking this business in. I'm excited about the future. I am enthusiastic about showing up and doing this. If you are not, you have to question yourself as to why you are in business. I know people talk a lot about the why and everything else, but you have to just ask yourself, am I interested in what I do? Would I read about this topic on my days off? Would I watch a documentary about this? Would I want to sit down with a group of people and discuss this at length? Sometimes you just want to switch off from work, but a lot of the time I know in my business I can 10000% hand on heart say yes. I love reading about business. I love reading about creative small business owners.
I love talking and reading and listening and learning from people who have been able to carve out a life that is beautifully designed by them, but also their business supports that life. I've talked many times about my own working three days a week and being there for my kids and having time to go for walks and see friends and see my parents before they passed away. But I'm genuinely interested in what I do. I think you've gotta question yourself if you are thinking about your business right now and you've lost that interest or that curiosity, that passion for it. I just hope that today's conversation with Courtney ignites a little bit more of that for you in whatever business you are doing. The second one that goes hand in hand with this is when Courtney talked about having this authentic foundation and diving into what is authentic what we're setting up is whether are we coming across authentically and whether is it coming from a genuine place.
She talked about if you are showing up authentically and you have an authentic foundation, much like what I've just talked about, you're going to then attract people who are interested in that as well. Curious in that, excited about it, enthusiastic, and you'll have your community. And Jamii has created such an incredible community around them because of that authentic foundation. Again, I mean they just go hand in hand with those two points, but I can't reiterate enough how important they are. I've worked with people, some of my clients I've worked with for six years on and off, and other clients I've worked with for a year or six months or, and you see people, I see people that are making huge amounts of money and not just huge amounts of money, but huge amounts of profit as well. Completely life-changing money.
But if they lose the excitement around their business, if they lose the interest, if they are not passionate about it, yes, the money's great, but that fulfilment is not there. Don't just be lured by things that aren't long-term going to bring you meaning and passion. That is it for today's podcast interview with the wonderful Courtney from Jamii. As I said before, if you want to connect with them, you can go to lovejamii.com. You can also follow them on Instagram, which is how I connected with Courtney @ukJamii, and over on TikTok as well. We will link to all of that in the show notes, which you can find for this particular episode at mydailybusiness.com/podcast/420. And just a reminder, if you are looking for help at the moment with your business, but don't necessarily have the money, and I get it, the cost of living is massive. We have a range of free downloadables and resources, which you can find at mydailybusiness.com/freestuff. But if you go over to mydailybusiness.com, you'll find at the top in the navigation free stuff, and there's a range of things there that can help you as well as this podcast. Make sure you hit subscribe and you don't miss any other episodes. Thanks for reading and I'll see you next time. Bye.
