 Many of us are doing things that we actually don't like or many of us are pursuing things and we're not seeing it through to the end or it feels like I'm doing stuff but I'm not getting the response that I want and oftentimes conventional wisdom is just keep on going things are going to change keep on do it keep the consistency keep the consistency up and sometimes consistency isn't the answer sometimes the pursuit of that thing isn't the answer sometimes that thing maybe it might even be destined to fail but at least you've got the skills that you need that will help you build in the next season or perhaps you need to change something about your circumstance in order to produce the result that you want. In the world of business sometimes we have the pleasure of being able to start companies with our friends that was my story for the first few businesses that I started and in our episode of Pip Jameson she spoke about some of her difficulties with having a co-founder but my next guests have been able to find a way to make co-founding a business together work Courtney and Renee have been best friends since secondary school and they are also the founders of Team Our Sisters. TMS is a digital sisterhood designed to support women all around the world throughout 2023 they've been able to become published authors host international events and host large-scale events including at the Happy Empire. In this episode we explore the dynamics of working together as well as how they've mastered the business of content creation. I'm Claude Williams the founder of Dream Nation and this is the behind the dreams podcast. Hi guys welcome to the Dream Nation podcast really grateful that you both have agreed to be my first guest today. Oh thank you for having us. Such an honor we are so happy to be here. Which in you guys I continue both my little sisters come up and create something honestly so beautiful and so amazing it's been really inspiring and I would love for anybody listening today to be able to walk away with some I guess practical insights on the what did it take to build what you guys have in case they wanted to do something similar for themselves. Where did you actually start? What was it like at the beginning for you guys? Well cast your mind back to the height of the pandemic. Shall I take this one or you take this one? You've started. Yeah I was setting the scene I was trying to set the scene well cast your mind back to the height of the pandemic it's circa November 2020 and we are only being allowed to see like one or two other people and Courtney being my best friend was one of those one people that I could go and see and for some context me and Courtney had always wanted to do something together so to my sisters was actually previously a series on Courtney's YouTube channel for those listening that don't know you should definitely get to know but my best friend is also a content creator and has been a content creator on YouTube for the longest time creating amazing content around wellness well-being and supporting women really helping women with their personal development goals so Courtney has definitely been somebody that has been in the game for a minute and her work is really just a testament to that so we had been kind of like bumping into each other in various different contexts we had like spoken on the same panels we had been at the same events and essentially we had the idea to collaborate on something big and because Courtney already had the idea for two my sisters which had already been a series on her platform we kind of said let's do a podcast it was also at the time low stakes so it wasn't necessarily a YouTube channel it wasn't necessarily something that was high production at the time it was very much a let's actually try and cultivate some kind of community around friendship so November 2020 I think it was like the eighth of November or something like that yeah that's on the first one I yeah yeah I just I take my my belongings my bag my bonnets everything and I make my way to Courtney's house and literally in terms of we were remarking at the beginning of this before we started rolling we didn't have any fancy high-tech equipment we had two microphones that we clipped to Courtney's like window that kept falling off like every six minutes they kept falling off every few minutes also but we championed through for a whole 45 minutes and the first episode ever of two my sisters was called frenemies and we had a really candid conversation around our relationship as friends friendship in general and I think what was really beautiful about that start was that start would underpin a lot of the work that we continue to do at two my sisters right friendship and this idea of platonic relationships being something that's actually worth pursuing and something that's actually really really important especially in a time where people can't see each other people's relationships are failing isolation is a really big thing a lot of folks are dealing with loneliness it felt like at the time we were sharing a little bit of our sunshine with the rest of the world so that's how two my sisters started literally in Courtney's bedroom so it's great to hear that but I'm really curious it's like how did you maintain because the reality is a lot of people including myself started things during the pandemic and we all had a lot of free time a lot of energy etc but very few of them are still around today so what was it that I guess was different between the two of you when it came to this project that why you still exist and why you've grown so big now I think what's been so beautiful about our journey has been evolving from you know best friends co-hosts and now like co-founders and business partners and now living together is the thing she said about friendship is so key it has underpinned everything it's not just about you know being two very competent people which we are it's about actually honoring and respecting each other and wanting our friendship to survive and our business to thrive at the same time because I think there can be a temptation to take one or the other you know if our friendship thrives then we have to overlook certain things but if our business thrives then we kind of have to be a bit cut through and it's like no we have to find you have we have to use wisdom to find this middle ground to be like you know what that's my co-founder yes we have KPIs yes but that's my best friend and I love her and that means something in this dynamic and I think it serves us really well because it means that we're not just out here using our friendship as a gimmick but we're actually doing it in real life and we can talk about the challenges that arise from that because we're facing it on a daily basis and we can also talk about the benefits of that because we're eating the fruits of it and so it's so nice to like have brought her on and her just not only get the vision but also being the best person to actually expand it like I always say yes TMS was like a brainchild of mine but I had to put that in like her womb and just be like you grow it you do the work because she I couldn't have done what we've done on my own like as much as I started it alone yeah no I really couldn't I really couldn't have like when I when I think about the expansion and the growth and I think it's such a beautiful thing because it is a testament to sisterhood and the power of collaboration you know that scripture in the bible that talks about one will chase a thousand and two will chase ten thousand I think there's so much multiplication in collaborating and us doing this together with the purest of hearts and the purest of intention and her taking on something which I had started and making it her own we wouldn't be here right now if it wasn't for that you know I think it's hard to sustain something especially this magnitude on your own and we had to you know go through the teething issues of finding a dynamic that worked for us but through sacrifice and respecting each other but also being dedicated to our crafts and our skills and learning we've made this what it is and it's just a it's a blessing like it's a blessing to get to do something like this with someone who cares about it but also cares about you yeah it's beautiful hey guys I just wanted to let you know that on November the 24th 2023 we will be hosting our first workshop of the year it's going to be focused on helping you to become a board member for more information visit the dream nation website at dream nation dot co that's dream nation dot co often in the world of business as you both entrepreneurs as well is we'll be told you need to find your niche you need to find your specific area to focus on you need to find your topic yeah and you guys don't really fit nicely into any type of box yeah so you're literally going against the rules that an entrepreneur's taught a mist from day one so however you guys have been able to break that rule and still succeed and has there been a price to pay in doing that oh that's a great question that is good I think okay one for us it's community first right so I think you can get very in wanting to niche down the struggle I've found is you want to create the perfect brand the perfect bio the perfect you know one liner that says hey I do this and I think in our appreciation of the fact that communities are complex sisterhood is complex like we as people focusing well as an organization focusing on the holistic wellness growth and development of women you realize that that holistic nature is complex and so for me embracing that has meant we're not going to have that perfect one liner you know we give our one line at the beginning of the episode and then we go into something completely different which is relevant but it's still like you can't box in what we're trying to do because it's just too big for a one liner and so with us it's just been this is what we're going to roll with and if it's going to be impactful then that's better than it being succinct and very neat but in terms of what has it cost us I think firstly people looking at you and being like so what do you do and you're like let's go to the beginning it's a digital sisterhood and all of these things you kind of have to unpack and people seeing it as I mean now that the numbers are behind it people see as legitimate but in the beginning it was very much like okay yeah that's cute cool um I also think in navigating brand partnerships it has been a bit it has taken a lot longer like with the numbers we have because we don't have that specific niche it has taken a bit longer for us to say get the partnerships that we really are getting now um to do the work that we want to do and I think that's just because brands do you want to partner with somebody who they can say oh this is specifically what they do but thankfully for us like with the rate of growth and also the community support to my sister said just kept growing and it's kept being self-sufficient um from from the get go in terms of making revenue which has definitely taken off the pressure I think because I think one thing that makes people want to niche down so much especially in trying to pitch themselves for brand collaborations or things like that is because they are strapped for resources you know but for us it was kind of like nah this thing is you know very low cost to produce and we're doing this out of the love of our hearts and thankfully all of our life work so far has prepared us for this it seems so we don't really need to hire too many people a lot of it is DIY and we don't have to compromise so I think that's another thing you kind of have to like if you're going to be a rule breaker to some degree you really have to stick by your guns on what it is you're doing and be prepared to take the consequences that come with it and for us we were just like how do we get best prepared to you know really go at this for the next like three years if no one wants to partner with us or if no one understands what it is that we are doing like what's going to keep us encouraged and it's paying off are we hanging in? I'd really love to hear a little bit more around the background around actually how did you guys get to this point so we've heard the start of TMS but that's not the start of your stories and of course like we can open this as a podcast without getting a little deep into the the relationship between you guys you've already touched on that quite a bit and even hearing it it does it reminds you a lot of my own story in all honesty so a lot of people don't know this but Jim Neeson's actually like my seventh friend that I've built yeah I started a long time ago but the first six I did my best friend as well so like listening to you guys kind of speak and like hearing that dynamic and that support has reminded me so much of that and yeah I definitely would not be where I am if I didn't have him when I was building it and even till now he's still one of the most supportive people but yeah going backwards because yeah like I know when I started my first I was about 17 or so so it took a it took a long time to get there and I know Courtney I know you were on YouTube for a long time before this and Renee I know you was doing like a million projects literally honestly and killing everyone she was yeah killing myself in the process to be there so Renee let's let's start with you like what were as briefly as possible what was you doing before you got to this point that was like a challenge a million and one different things and I think what's actually wonderful about like this particular episode is I have the two closest people to me that is a testament to seeing that unfold in my life like I can remember the amount of times that we've had our own catch ups and I'm like Lord I'm doing this so you're like so is this like the might thing that you're doing today um but Renee before two my sisters so I'm very much a big nerd I love education I love learning that's never been something that I've been able to shake off um and like right before two my sisters as Courtney mentioned I had been doing my masters in international education policy at Harvard um and I also loved writing so I had a writer's community as well called the World Collective so I've always been someone that loves like community building I've loved education I love like empowering people to do better for themselves um so those were the kind of things that I was doing I also flirted with YouTube for a little bit and it's so funny that when like Courtney was mentioning like two my sisters and it feels like there are certain elements of like my story that have kind of merged into two my sisters or I found the most appropriate outlet or the most appropriate like space for me to manifest these things that I've I've always loved but haven't really been able to take off myself so I had my stint in YouTube because it was the hip thing to do at the time and I was like oh you're gonna be one of those education YouTubers but I really hated it there was just something so not disingenuous but it wasn't something that I felt like I could sustain by myself and I felt like I wasn't at the correct place in my trajectory to be able to do that like I'm very much the kind of person that likes to go away for a while focus and produce like I'm an executor or I'm very operationally minded and sometimes in the process it can be really difficult to share the process because I'm so focused on the process so having to create at the same time as having to share was really really difficult for me and it's something that I have been challenged by but also sharpened by engaging with someone like Courtney because Courtney is literally queen of being able to show you the process like whether it's dusty or whether it's polished you'll be able to show you in a way that actually speaks to what you're going through whereas for me I'm very much like I need to go away and do some stuff because I'm very much like tunnel vision in that way so I had my stint in YouTube also really really just loved writing a lot so I used to write prolifically yeah very prolifically like literally every single day but I think that was also a great skill that helped us a lot into my sisters too because it's now translated into I mean we have a book now which is crazy it's translated into blog pieces it's translated into smaller things like even social media strategy and captions for like the distribution of our podcast it's translated into the way that we've been able to articulate ourselves on our podcast which so many of our community members really really resonate with so in a weird way as much as everything that I used to do before and to some extent continue to do whilst I'm doing to my sisters as much as it felt so disparate and kind of disconnected I remember in the conversations I've had with you I was always like yeah I'm multifaceted queen and you're like you're in a but you're gonna have to like find some way to channel that effectively and finally enough to my sisters has been the perfect way for me to channel all of these different things that I do in a way that was purposeful in a way that was impactful and in a way that actually resonated with a lot of people okay before I come to you Courtney I'm gonna dive a little deep into something with you so with all the things you've done there would have been a lot of mistakes that were made along the way absolutely if you had to pick one mistake which has been I guess fundamental in you've been able to build this business today what would you say that is that's a great question thank you because I have so many mistakes I'm trying to what is the biggest one the biggest don't have to be the biggest that's an important one I think the most important one for me was my youtube channel because I feel like if I had continued my like individual youtube channel it would have diverted my attention from to my sisters too much because I would have been thinking about like myself and my brand as opposed to the work that we're trying to do at tms so I think that would have given me too much of a focus because me being the kind of person again that is very tunnel visioned when it comes to my outputs and very tunnel visioned when it comes to creating things I think that if I had continued that and if I had actually been serious about developing the level of skill that was required to sustain that I think that would have directly and probably actually negatively impacted to my sisters because yeah I would have been too focused on that and too focused on building my brand as the business as opposed to to my sister's the business yeah thank you all right well Courtney yeah was that new to you sound to me like that was very good because you're asking great questions no it was it was newness it's nice to hear because I do see how complementary our skills are and I think that's just something I guess finding a co-founder you want to have like complementary skills and I think it has required us to both focus on very different things so that we can bring those things together so yeah yeah I benefit greatly co-founders are so important yeah so Courtney yes how about your backstory well in the beginning so I studied an undergraduate degree at Cambridge I was studying human social and political sciences and whilst I was there I started my youtube channel and I purely started my youtube channel because I wanted to have conversations about tabu topics because I one thing I hate is the elephant in the room like I'm the person who's like let's open the door let the elephant out like let's talk and I've always been somebody who was quite confident in doing that and so I started my youtube channel and it really helped me to gain this passion for using media to impact people in real life and you know I'd create videos around education we did a video I think a couple months after I started my channel talking about how we got into Oxford and Cambridge purely because when we were applying to Oxford and Cambridge we didn't see a video like that and it was like someone needs to help you know a young black girl like us who's trying to figure out this magical place that people you know equate to Hogwarts which seems impenetrable and now we're here let's just kind of you know lift up that that curtain a little bit and so we created that video and people really were impacted by it and like till now when I go back to Cambridge to do what people are like oh I watched that video and now I'm here it's like wow see online content offline impact I want to do this and before even going to uni I worked as a hairstylist and my passion has always been for women's wellness and like them just feeling the best version of themselves and if you I'm very I'm very sure it's similar to the barber shop where you sit in someone's chair and it's like it's either a therapy session or it's like a community link up you're just it's a new dynamic of sisterhood and I think being a salon stylist and getting to interact with women that way and then going on to work in business development at an e-commerce company for women's beauty and wellness definitely gave me that passion for women's development in a different way because I did have to think about marketing branding storytelling but specifically targeted towards women and you know hair and beauty is something that's so tied to like our identity as women and it was so nice to be at such a intimate place for women like a hair salon or like where they go to you know feel their best and so many women would sit in my chair or I'd meet so many like women on set when I was working who would ask for crazy advice and that's where the kind of desire to solve dilemmas came from because people sit in your chair and suddenly they take off their wig and it's like my man is cheating on me and you're like let me just heat up the straight and I'm gonna come back gonna come back to this and so even small things like that seeing how that now assists you know and has culminated in the work we do with TMS has been beautiful um so yeah I continued to be a creator and I even went on to create my own e-commerce brand which was called CDB London which was all about making hair easy and like really breaking down the complexities that exist and just trying to get you know good hair extensions good wigs and stuff like that and it really grew during the pandemic um we got to the point where we're like making six figures I'm leading a team of like eight people it was fantastic and it was like oh this is my dream life as an entrepreneur but similarly I was killing it and it was killing me like I was tired I was burned out I was doing this without any like investment or anything like that so to have gotten it to this point when it had started literally with me making wigs in my bedroom it was like this is so amazing but I don't know how to scale this and one thing I've also you know struggled to navigate is that title of being an entrepreneur um because I very much just felt like a hustler or a creative and you know very thankfully the things that I touched seemed to turn to gold and it was working but I was struggling to know how do you multiply this how do you scale this past the six figures and people are asking you questions now like do you want to get investment do you want to start talking to investors and I'm like I don't know what any of this means I'm basically still doing this for fun and I don't feel equipped enough as an entrepreneur in the traditional sense to make these decisions as like a 22 year old you know person who's navigating post-university life and so I got severely burnt out and it was affecting my health and something I've like widely discusses like women's health issues and how it impacts them in terms of you know their wellness and productivity and I was diagnosed with polycystic ovarian syndrome when I was 19 and it was something that was affecting my ability to be productive and I realised that me working in this way actually wasn't best suited for my body and my brain and the way my body was you know wired and what it was fighting against and I had to make a very hard decision to be like you know yes people know you as this but you're gonna have to say goodbye to it because if you don't you're gonna lose yourself in the process and you're really gonna not only burn out but like affect your health I would say the first guy to be organised in my opinion was a mess people enjoyed it I believe I was there as well I don't think it was a mess you didn't come to the first one no you didn't come to the first one I know for sure actually the only saving grace is what actually became a dream nation tradition was like I said to myself there's so many things I haven't delivered on but if I give people free run punch the whole night screen then that will at least cover a lot of problems and it did so that so that's the reason why whenever we do like God lives in a lot of things like the dream nation there's normally free run punch throughout the whole night really what does success look like for you I think success first of all my success is underpinned by my ability to actually define it I think that in of itself is a superpower because again as I mentioned earlier a lot of us just defer that success to other people to define for us so for me an actual win is being able to sit down and have the conversation with you of saying actually this is what my future looks like or I've won because I've been able to achieve this and I think this is a difficult question for me because as someone that's now embraced this whole lifelong learning and optimization and being that kind of person that's always like literally obsessed with like self-improvement success to me is funnily enough I've gone to a place where success to me is more about the process and enjoying the journey as opposed to arriving at a destination because one thing about a destination is you're going to arrive there but then when you arrive what would you do after that right like what's the what's the meaning what's the point and I think the beautiful thing about embracing journeying is that you get to constantly rewrite like you hit a pit stop and then it's like this is great we sit down we brainstorm and then we keep on going so for me success is being able to define my success first and foremost for me success is being able to enjoy the journey of pursuing the things that I really care about like I actually love doing I think that it is a privilege and I know that you know I'm sure there's a lot of people listening that have passions and dreams and things that they want to do but they actually have a whole host of other blockers right and I think it's important to acknowledge that it's not going to be easy for everyone right we're starting from different places there are people that are coming from backgrounds where they've had to move heaven and hell just to get to where they're at and that's not where they want to be so I think even that the privilege of being able to pursue the things that I enjoy being able to pursue something like to my sisters to me it's a privilege and that's a success in of itself to me success is actually being able to pursue like content creation because that's a privilege in of itself I have the resources I have the materials to be able to do that success to me also looks like being able to pursue like relationships I really care about like I have friends family a community of people that actually really care about me and love me and support me maybe like you know it can be difficult at times you know relationships are hard even between myself and Courtney sometimes it's difficult because there are things that we have to overcome but the success is the fact that I still have that right like the fact that we're even still friends for it's been a long time I haven't gone for a really long time the fact that we're still friends and we'll continue to be friends like I often joke about with Courtney and say I'm going to be the one that's like hiding your teeth in the old I'm gonna be the one that's wheeling you towards the window or something or like jamming your wheelchair and stuff but for me success is being able to continue to invest in those relationships those lifelong relationships that I know will stand the test of time and then I think lastly for me success is also like being happy with myself like actually being content I think that both of you will know this but I definitely have perfectionist tendencies and it was definitely extremely severe when I was younger like I was the kind of person that didn't even sit and rest and be like oh actually Renee you did good let me give myself my flowers and sit down for a second I think part of the restlessness that I had and part of the reason why I was constantly doing multiple things at different times was because I didn't actually allow myself to celebrate myself and like sit and bask in the fact that I'd actually done some really cool stuff and for me success is very much giving myself the opportunity to actually like say Renee you did okay there like you did good like affirm myself and actually think oh you know you're cool you're good like you can stay for a minute you don't have to be jumping to project to project you don't have to be jumping to a metric to metric you don't have to constantly be chasing there are periods that you can actually sit down rest and say you've done a good job you guys followed the I guess the three steps I'm always teaching entrepreneurs all people are leaders in general like what all leaders need to know we're friends it's always tell people it starts with a vision you as a leader you have no excuse to not have a vision for what is that you want to go on today but once you have that vision it's done around providing a team that can deliver on that and you guys sound like you've done it in two ways it's you have each other firstly and then you have like probably your direct team around you say managers etc but then your community now becomes part of that team as well and lastly what you've done done is you've made sure that that community has the resources that are needs to build to succeed and to me it's like the fact that you followed those laws are ultimately like it shows in your success so well done I don't know if you're on purpose but you're doing it right you're doing it right hey there thank you so much for listening to today's episode one thing that we want to do is want to make this as interactive as possible and with that I would love to hear if you have any questions or dilemmas you would like us to address in the episode to do that visit dream nation dot co forward slash podcast and submit the form that you'll see there I think we all have seen like the whole influence of worlds the world has changed a lot in that regard and we know there's a lot of money to be made in that space I guess well if I was a listener of this podcast right now what I would be wanting to ask you is how on earth do you get a brand partnership how do you do that so I think the first thing is people are often deceived into thinking it's about the size of your platform and one thing that I learned like from doing YouTube and I think this was one of the key things I was able to bring to like our dynamic was like okay we don't need to be big we just need to be strong right we need to have a strong message and we need to build a strong community not necessarily in size but in devotion and one thing we've always put first is one our content has to be valuable there's no point wanting to monetize in my opinion content that is not valuable in some way even if it's entertaining entertainment is valuable you know it provides us all with relief and things to be able to engage with in our spare time you know I think about how long I spend on Netflix is it valuable yes am I learning maybe not but things like that you have to think how am I actually bringing value to people and reiterating that as well to make sure your content is just getting better as important so firstly focus on the content itself once you feel like you're strong with that you can either pitch to brands in terms of oh here's what we're doing this is the specific way we see ourselves partnering with you would you like to come on or sometimes you will just find that brands will never to be you know just contact you because brands need those partnerships as well you know it's just it's a mutually beneficial partnership so what we have seen is that people have contacted us and then it becomes about knowing what your value is and being able to not look at not just look at the value you provide for your community but also the value that your community has whether it's in the numbers whether it's in their buying power and whether it's in raising brand awareness what are you doing and how well can you organically integrate that brand that product whatever into your content and that's an art form in itself I think you have to be very mindful of you know thinking about the key stakeholders in that partnership you've not only got yourself and the brand but you've also got the listener or the viewer the community member who's engaging with that and wants to feel like it is seamless and so once you think about that I think the next thing is being confident and bold enough to ask for what you are worth and to really know what your numbers are worth which is something which we have known from the jump I think being content creators respectively but brands haven't always wanted to hear because I think and one thing any entrepreneurial creators going to have to be mindful of is people will want to take advantage right we're living in a capitalistic world everyone's trying to get things for a rate which benefits them more so than you and you have to be mindful that you may have to turn down things if the numbers aren't right if it doesn't align with your values and you have to be willing to turn away so that first thing of just making sure you're in love with the content first really does matter but once you do start making those you know the big bucks it's mainly going to be based on what can you offer so really think about your packages what do we offer to brands for us it's like add integrations in the podcast but then you can also separate that into what we have a youtube version and an audio version if you just want the audio version it's this much if you just want the youtube version is this much if you want to sponsor a whole episode if you want to just have a segment where do you want that segment to be placed breaking it all the way down to really thinking about what is most valuable and how do we price that and now that we're doing that way more often we've brought in managers who can purely focus on the brand partnership side because you know being hosts being founders doing the community engagement and then now doing the admin and all of that managing those relationships and searching for new opportunities is actually really long and quite hard so if you can find a way to collaborate even in that sense whether it's building relationships with people in PR building relationships with people who are working on brand partnerships with internally for these organizations you are well within your right to do that and just pitch yourself and really believe in your source in that sense believe in what it is that you are building shoot as many emails as you can forward but really invest in those relationships have the right conversations with people who can put your name at the table because I will be honest even independently as a creator it sometimes does come down to who knows you right and it's not even just the size of your audience especially when you are smaller there are so many fishes in this pond you need to just be known you need to be the name so solidify your brand build those relationships think about the value that you have for your community as well as for brands and how you're going to make that manifest and once you do that I think it's just a matter of time you know it's just a matter of time and being as consistent as possible with that right formula people come forward with the budgets that you need right so just think about what revenue models match your actual goals what brands could align with that we made a whole list before we started TMS these are the brands we want to work with and when we met our managers two years later we gave them that very list and we say hey yeah you make that happen and we want it to happen in this way right we don't just want to engage with these brands to just like hey here's this foundation go buy it we actually want this to be something about impact and the work they're doing for women so we need to make sure we're aligned with them and so making sure that they're even plued up on what we're doing and the fact that this is more than just a podcast it's more than just a media empire it is a movement is important for us absolutely and just to add to that really quickly go ahead yeah but no absolutely love everything I was literally like yes Courtney yes um to add to that really quickly always prioritize the relationship that you have with your community always always always they are where you get your money from and because of that you need to be at least for us we are very transparent with our community especially women we're very much like yo if we're making money from this we'll let you know and we'll also let you know where that money is going right so and we'll even give you a slice right exactly right we prioritized before we were even making money we were looking at our bills and we were still giving money there were days that we would go to a little and we would see that berries had increased in price again but still we were prioritizing giving and I think it is remembering where your money comes from and remembering that the value comes from the value you've provided to your community how many times do we see even within our own communities that folks think that because they've got x amount of followers or x amount of whatever all of a sudden they can just be pushing any kind of product any kind of where any kind of how yeah it's a relationship and it is being bold enough in especially if you're a content creator being bold enough to say hey guys I create this content for you I really care about you and I'm actually giving you this much value just to let you know I'm also monetizing this okay like please actually support me and support this there are going to be sometimes where content creators or even entrepreneurs in general will have to say I need your support and I think it's not shying away from that transparent relationship that we have with folks that's been a testament to two my sisters and then again like being very picky about our brand partnerships right as Courtney said we had our list from beginning when we were there in our bonnets doing that first episode we said we're going to work with this big boy this big boy this big and we're wearing our pajamas two three years later it's actually happening right and it's that consistency as well and our unwavering dedication to the vision that we have for two my sisters right and also co-write that vision that you have for yourself if you're a content creator for example or an entrepreneur sharing that right so and making it very clear that money is necessary in order to do this so for us like making sure that giving was a central tenor of two my sisters really demonstrated to our viewers that oh okay if I do give my money and if I do invest in them I know I'm investing in something that's bigger than the two of them yeah I'm not just investing in their latest Porsche or their self-driving Tesla yeah as much as that is nice like and even being super transparent to say that me and Courtney we don't like actually pay ourselves from two my sisters it's actually reinvested majority if not all of the money that we make is reinvested into two my sisters so it's even making our peace with the fact that oh this thing that we're doing this venture this content creation that we're doing we might not actually see the fruits of it personally for a while but it's worth it because it means that the longevity but also the trust that we have with our viewers with our community with our sisters that's where we're going to make the most from that's what we're going to leverage the most so it's prioritizing that above everything I don't even know that you guys weren't really paying yourselves like that but that once again these are these are the common traits I see in people that really go into the seeds having that long-term perspective because I know to an extent both your situations that you've made sure that you have ways to look after yourselves but having that I guess that approach of that diversified income tree essentially means that you are able to make the money you're making and I say reinvest it into your brand which it's showing like you're growing you're doing things other people would never dream of really being able to do it your stage or how long you've been in this game and that's because now I know it's because you're reinvesting all your money back into it which is really wise there's so much more to dive into in terms of the content in terms of how you're building this business especially around brand partnerships I'm going to ask you on camera so you can't get out of it easily that I would love to do a workshop with you guys at some point collaborate on actually doing something because I think there's so much to dive into that perfect and then the last thing that I'm going to ask you about for today is in terms of demonetisation of your business is your book deal so so many people would love to be able to say they'll offer get a nice deal have a few zeros in there I'm not going to ask you how many zeros are in your deal for now but when you're ready to share you can share but I do know behind the scenes that you guys did something very unique when it came to pitch in your book could you tell us about that well I remember it like it was yesterday um what was interesting about the whole book shenanigans that we went through was we actually turned down our first book deal yeah so we were approached at the time I was actually doing a writer's program um with another friend of mine and we were working with um Harper Collins and I had met a lovely lady Nancy shout out to Nancy because if it wasn't for her we definitely wouldn't have gone any kind of any kind of book deal it was actually something on myself on Courtney's vision board for two my sisters in like five ten years time yeah so we engaged with one of the houses of Harper Collins and you know they loved it they said it was a great proposal and then they came back to us essentially with a figure I looked at Courtney Courtney looked at me and we said absolutely absolutely not and at the time obviously we had no experience of being in the writing game so we didn't know how much we were worth but we knew we were worth that and bear in mind we're navigating this with no agents no managers this is us we're like we're brokering our own deal and we're going they're like yeah we know what we're talking about and it's not that um yeah so we were kind of like is it bad mind of us to because obviously it's your first deal maybe it's like these are the things that happen right luckily we actually have a whole host of friends um who are in writing or who had had their books published so a really good friend of ours Vika TV had had her book um published by Penguin and she was like not that figure yeah so we said okay cool and then we went to go and hit up some of our other friends as well Aurel Chelsea taking up space they said it's a no from our stock so after actually hearing and it was really interesting because the majority of the people that we had approached were also black women and just hearing the experience of being in the publishing industry and also being um just basically undersolved we went back to them and said look we're not taking this deal can you add some money preferably can you like double or triple it because what you've given us is just nice we're not going to sit down and write this book so we weigh and we're hopeful you know all that kind of stuff they come back to us and the figure that they had given us for the second time was so like the raise was so minuscule and as much as we're competent writers and we knew we'll produce an amazing book we also wanted to do something that was not only worth our time but would really show that the publisher we were working with and this is no shade to anybody but that the publisher we were working with got the vision of what we were trying to do and the magnitude of it and what that figure was saying to us they don't get it a few like weeks later V asked us to host her um book launch yeah and we host it and we meet Miree Harper and she had just left Penguin and was going to Bluebird at Pan Macmillan and she was like I would love to talk to you guys she funnily enough she opened the conversation with have you thought about writing a book yeah we've got a story we've got a whole proposal what a contract that we didn't sign and we engaged in conversation and she got it and she took us to you know she brought us in as her first book signing at Bluebird which was you know a very big deal and we kind of had this very interesting conversation around money and she understood from behind the scenes what we were dealing with and what our struggles were with the first offer and so she went back and she really I we believe really advocated for us and pulled out an offer which was over double what we had gone from the last place and we were like okay let's go back and ask them for more again shooting your shot and we got it and so we're like we're so thankful we didn't have to split 20% with any age yeah like we broke we broken our own deal and 15 weeks later we had written a book amazing yeah that was another thing the turnaround time for our book was insane did you say 15 weeks yeah 15 weeks mad because we wanted to get it in time for international women's day yeah in 2023 well we had no idea of what publishing timelines until Mire said okay if this is going to happen then we're going to need the full manuscript like six to nine months in advance yeah so we're like ah do the maths we're currently in March April oh you need this in June tomorrow yeah and it's crazy because we had already been talking about the book for such a long time so it was more so this thing had come with a quickening and if we wanted to seize the opportunity as much as like I was just sitting around the world Renee was focused on so many other projects we were just like we need to get this book done and we did and now it's here no one saw us for a very long time I remember yeah there's this book book book book yeah okay thank you so much um I really have more I want to ask but I'm starting to fear for my life save it for the workshop save it for the workshop so Renee Courtney thank you guys so much for being my first guest you were amazing thank you I'm so proud of everything you guys have gone on to do if you let your going to do next I know there's still a few more secrets that you haven't yet said to the world um and I'm excited for when everyone else knows about that too but yeah thank you so much and uh yeah I'm gonna be watching the support and you guys from the sides my final question to you both is who should I have on my podcast as a future like to see on the Dream Nation podcast 20 seconds pressure oh my gosh put your shirt right for me put your shirt right to talk about the business of content creation and having longevity in this game so you actually has been a dream nation speaker before so there we go we can reach out and say what about you and this is hard I don't know how you'll get this guy but Andrew Huberman okay neuroscientist from Stanford yeah I think it would be excellent just a completely different angle to like practical dreaming and how to take care of yourself and how to like optimize to be a practical dream I think it would be excellent amazing great thank you both thank you for tuning into today's episode we release a new episode every Sunday so make sure that you subscribe and follow us so that you never miss out if you would like some more inspiration while you wait for the next new episode then check out the recommendation above don't forget to follow us on social media and you can send us a question or a dilemma that you'd like us to answer on the podcast there's a group of limbs you've been watching behind the dreams and we look forward to seeing you at the next Dream Nation events