Back to School!

What have we learned from running a business for the last few months? We checked in with our founder, Tachand Dubuisson, and her close friend and colleague, Vaner Ducatel.

Tell me about the journey that led you to become entrepreneurs.

T: I never wanted to be an entrepreneur. Understanding how the system in America is set up, I realized that I could hit a glass ceiling. I came out of school with an accounting degree and jumped into finance and Vaner and I started making money very quickly. When in finance climbing the ladder can be quick initially then you quickly learn the political game it takes to get into C-suite positions. 

For that reason I choose to be purposeful in terms of my journey and pivot into doing something that I really loved, which I know is part of my privilege—I made enough money to say, “hey, I wanna do something that I love.” That freed me to understand I don't have to make X amount of dollars and that I could actually shoot for the stars and do anything I want … be my own boss.

V: I’ve always wanted to be an entrepreneur. I remember sitting in on this marketing class at UMass Amherst. We had a guest speaker come in, and say ‘if any of you guys wanna be an entrepreneur why are you even sitting here?’ And I felt so crazy that after I paid out-of-state tuition to come to this place, this guy just told me to leave!

I grew up very poor, in New York City—there’s a lot of hustlers, ambition in the city. After my degree, Tachand helped me get my first corporate gig at the bank. I quickly realized how much I don’t take direction. So I’ve actually been fired from a few banks. I realized, this is why I want to be an entrepreneur—for me it’s about freedom and control. 

T: I was operating from a freelance capacity for many years, and was walking into different agencies as an independent contractor/business. What happens is yes, you have the freedom of time and choosing your projects. But in essence, you're still bound by their company culture. 

That’s what the Apt-122 mission was borne of—I was pushing my own personal agenda in these spaces, and awesome people were flirting with the idea, but they weren’t all the way on board with me—so how do we bring in more of these brown faces? How do we have brown conversations? There was no way to do it without starting my own thing.

V: There are probability people and possibility people. The entrepreneurs are possibility people—we are driven off of mission. If you can’t control the mission, no matter what, you’re always gonna run into some frustration because the projects and the work could never go in the vision that Tachand wants as a creative person. When you’re self employed, you could get paid very well, but when you go home, the job’s done, versus your mission, which is continuing—that’s what’s happening at Apt-122.

It often feels like there's two paths in life—one is going into the system, and then trying to work your way up so much that you finally have the resources when you're at the top of the pyramid to change the system.

The other route is starting up your own system and changing things, because like you said, you are in control and you have the freedom to do that. Those two methods come with very different challenges and successes.

V: The probability people only go as far as they can see, while the possibility create something in their heads.

I was explaining to Tachand that she's a possibility person in the beginning. We used to reference Karen Civil. And I told her she's Karen Civil, because we don't know what her title is and it doesn't matter. She doesn't work from a title space. She works from a knowing-that-I-wanna-do-this-type-of-work-and-I-don't-care-how-it-looks. Karen was helping with Hillary Clinton's campaign, marketing for companies, her dogs, having Louis Vuitton parties. And that was fly to us, you know, especially as Black people and people of color in business; that’s who we are—we make things fly.  

As a probability person, you have to work in a confined space. So Tachand was trying to envision her life as a probability person, and that's the issue. The way our system is, you think your degree pretty much dictates where you go in life—that’s where probability people come from. They dictated their lives based off ‘this degree allows me to do X, Y, and Z’. They need to see a position that they can attain. And from there, they sit down and they try to realize what they can sacrifice in their personal life to get there.

T: You’re systematically taught to be one person and when you realize it’s okay to be the other type of person, it’s a game changer. I struggled with being in the middle for the longest. What that did was stifle me. There were all these rules I felt I needed to follow, because I’d never seen anyone do different. Once you can get rid of that thought process, you will win—that’s legitimately how I’ve started finding success. By stepping outside of the status quo and going against the grain. 

There’s a certain ease that comes with following the status quo—have you encountered any difficulties through going against the grain?

T: I’m going to give a very Vaner response here: people are just delusional.

V: DELUSIONAL!

T: Not going against the grain is folks trying to cultivate the fact that that life style is safe. When in fact it’s not. Me going to school, getting a job, climbing the corporate ladder is not actually safe for me. I could get laid off—I can literally lose my job to Covid and the government not help me. It’s delusional for you to tell me that going out on my own is the scariest or riskiest route. I think it's actually rude and offensive for the world to tell me that the status quo is a more safe approach, especially as a Black woman in this country.

I wanna come back to this idea of learning, which is really synonymous with entrepreneurship for me. What does learning mean to you?

T: I’m always asking questions. I'm okay with being the least knowledgeable person in the room. That's allowed me to be a sponge, and learn at a deeper level. I also Google everything. It’s not a fact until I can see it. That’s an interesting flaw of mine, it’s what makes me a bit hardheaded. I’m not easily swayed but also makes me thorough. That is part of my entrepreneurial process. I'm not quick to jump into things— I'm not overly risky, Vaner would likely take a loss much quicker than I would but I am evolving lol.

How important is failure and what role does it play in the entrepreneurial process?

T: Vaner sent me a video featuring an entrepreneur talking about his losses, and why he felt like it was important for him to have these losses by a certain amount of time so that he could have gains for the rest of the year. When I saw it, I felt allergic to it. I was like, you wanna lose this often?!

Now, as a business owner, I get it. In the last quarter for me, I have run into so many different pitfalls and in the moment it feels frustrating. It feels like you've done yourself a disservice. What you don't realize until you've done that a million times, is you always come out on top.

Imma do it, no matter how many pitfalls I come across in the end, I have a goal that I'm looking to achieve by any means necessary. What I learned is that it doesn't take away from the goal. I'm still gonna get the win, it's just a different way. It's taught me now what to work for, what I like, what I don't like, it's taught me to evolve and to be better and to just be a little more critical or strategic about the plan. So, truly the failures are not failures. Right? 

V: I remember when we were working at BNY Mellon, it was around after a recession and, Warren Buffet lost billions of dollars. It was one of the biggest losses in history. And I remember being so amazed and I was like, I can't wait to lose like that one day. Tachand was like what? I said, think about it—if he can lose $5 billion or $7 billion, how many dollars does he have? Cause they didn't say he went bankrupt. You understand? And she was like, yo, you really think different!

T: I don’t love losses, but I appreciate losses.

Failure is a really vulnerable space to be in. How do you build resilience against that feeling?

T: For me, it’s a muscle. When I’m encountering all this stuff, Vaner will tell you I have called him crying and upset—non-professional-tone-of-voice-pissed. I’m one of those people where I need to feel my feels. Then I can talk about the business.

But those breakdowns are less and less now. It doesn’t take away from the fact that this is irritating and frustrating, but I can control my feelings a bit more. Key “emotional entrepreneur!”

V: I’m a firefighter. So it takes a lot to shake me. I recently lost my mom, so now I feel like everything else is easy. Sometimes Tachand will check on me and be like, this isn’t normal—you shouldn’t be this calm, what’s wrong with you? 

Do you have any inspirations that help you with the journey?

T: Realistically, Vaner and I grew up poor—we don’t have examples of business owners or entrepreneurs in our families, let alone in our communities growing up. 

There are people I’ve met along the way, especially in starting this business, and working at the agencies where you see how the owner operates their business that have inspired me. There are things I’ve gone through that led me to therapy, so I feel like the different support systems that we’ve implemented into our current lifestyle sustain us. We’re the friends that our friends look up to. And i hope this agency is a place where friends like us can thrive.

We’ll see you later @WeAreApt122