Dare Mighty Things. TM Smith
that Nike ran for the film and was then invited to present his work in person to the leadership team at Nike world HQ in Portland.
As Sekou begins to retell this story, you can literally feel his energy rise. His eyes light up and his hands are more animated while his voice takes on a much deeper timber. “Nike brought me to the campus to deliver a special piece I had written. They put me in a room with a bunch of Nike executives...and when my turn comes up and I jump up from backstage, I’m screaming, ‘I want soldiers!’ I go into this whole piece and everybody was like, ‘What the hell is happening?!’” Sekou explained with a big smile on his face.
“I made the Battleground team look great and they loved it, the executives loved it, the client loved it, and the light bulb went off. I loved doing this and I was having fun.”
Turning point—define his space
This was also the moment when he began to reevaluate his value to the clients and also stand up for himself. “I saw that I was able to bring a greater value. If I can capture the whole essence of a three-day meeting in these five to ten minutes—then I could bring more value and should be compensated for that.
“There was a disconnect, because I was being paid like an afterthought. I realized, ‘I gotta own this myself.’ There’s a perception of spoken-word poetry, but there’s a differentiation between that and what I was delivering.” This gave Sekou the confidence to redefine his artistry as a unique category called “poetic voice” and he began to tear down the walls of separation that existed between his artist world and business world. “I wanted to tell the world that ‘poetic voice’ is what I’m doing and I want you all to meet each other. To bring the fans of my poetry, and the clients of my business work together. Here’s who I am: Come holler at me.”
Sekou set out to demonstrate that difference for his audience. He understood that spoken-word poetry was his biggest asset as well as his biggest stumbling block. People had preconceived notions about poetry, and he was finding it wasn’t always positive. “I realized I needed to change that paradigm. I needed to create a new language and new brand elements, and original marketing. I needed to put a new language and a new perceived value in the world’s mouth and in their mind.”
Today, Sekou feels like he has absolutely arrived. He’s been a full-time poet for 15 years and hasn’t looked back. “I have been able to pay my dues and pay for my own apartment and cover my bills. And then ultimately as I began to build my business, and my company and my revenue, you know, I paid for my first home through poetry. I proposed to my wife and bought her a ring with poetry. You know, I’m going to raise my kids on poetry.”
The two personas that Sekou found most impactful on his journey are:
THE RULEBREAKER
It's easy to see that Sekou redefined the rules of the game so it fit his style best. He was able to see that if he kept playing by the rules of using music and a beat to present his words, his real talent would be hidden. And instead of giving up, he broke the rules and took the stage out of frustration and offered his vision of what it could look like. It was a huge gamble, because it could have fallen flat. But it didn't, it was the break he needed to start his own path. While that path was revealing itself, Sekou was still trying to determine what would be best for him. "Going to those open mics caused me to actually fall in love with something that I didn't even know existed. I realized that I wasn't just falling in love with the art form, but I'm falling in love with the possibility of what I can create, which means that I'm opening myself up to a world of unknowns, with no model and nothing to follow."
THE ADVENTURER
From the beginning of Sekou's journey he was convinced of a few fundamental strengths that he would remain focused on. First, his love of music drove him toward the hip-hop genre. Second, his passion for entertaining and theatre allowed him to remain zeroed in on the delivery of his message. Finally, the family history of entrepreneurialism allowed him to adjust as his journey continued. The main thing Sekou had going for him was being committed. "I remind myself to keep your eyes on the prize and your perspective wide." Sekou is fiercely focused and locked onto a goal. “You'll never get through the darkness. You'll never get through the hard times. You'll never get through the naysayers telling you you're crazy for quitting your job to become a full-time poet. Whatever your version of that is that the world is telling you, no, you'll never get through that if you're not tenacious."
Sekou was not going to let the record label rejection deter him from his goals. Throughout all his rejections from the labels, he stayed true to his ideals and what he felt was right. "I was going to be an artist and was going to make a living off my art. And record labels couldn’t see that, their bad. I'll build it myself.”
"I've arrived. I'm successful. I celebrate that. And like most entrepreneurs, like most successful people, one of the biggest challenges is to stop and celebrate the success. All we're doing is looking at the next day. We get consumed by, you know, that sort of serial entrepreneur."
Melissa Price
“We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we’re curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.”
- Walt Disney
Melissa R. Price
Who: Melissa Price
What: dPOP!
Where: Detroit, Mi
Previous: IT project coordinator, Quicken Loans
dPOPculture.com @dpopculture
"What's your passion? What do you want to be when you grow up? We began to think about how we could look at this [internal company] as a brand. We were starting down a path of acting as our own company within a company."
- Melissa
TL;DR SUMMARY: In 2007 a young woman arrived in Detroit looking for a job. She landed a mid-level position at an established financial company, despite her lack of a college diploma. This is the classic tale of grit, determination and entrepreneurial spirit allowing that young woman to earn a shot at becoming the CEO of a company of her own. The journey really begins more than 30 years ago with this same young girl dreaming of dancing as a featured ballerina on a big stage in New York City. The story takes a detour somewhere in her college years, as she began drifting around, feeling unsure of what she really wanted to do with her life. She moved from Florida to Michigan and found herself making ends meet in the retail world, before she found her home at Quicken Loans. This is how Melissa proved the endless possibilities available to someone who thinks and acts like an entrepreneur from inside a major company.
In 2001 Melissa Price found herselfin Detroit, MI, of all places, after following her boyfriend from her life-long home in Jupiter, Florida. She recently dropped out of college and was drifting a bit, struggling to find her place in the world. She was in a new city, with no college degree, and was in the process of interviewing for a mid-level position at an established financial company in Livonia, MI. To be accurate, she had her eye on two different positions at the company, as she was hedging her bets a bit. Today her title is both innovative and fun, like her career. Her business card announces her as “Keeper of the Vault,” but back in 2001 she was hoping for any job with any title.
“There were two positions available. One was at the help desk, and one was a project coordinator role,” Melissa explained. “They paid the same, the projects were similar, only with the project coordinator role, I would have the opportunity to immediately report to a senior leader. It was one of those decisions that you make in your career that you say to yourself a few years later, ‘Thank God I chose that one.’”
The company Melissa began working for back