Raven Watson is a twin from Memphis, Tennessee, who is on a mission to impact millions around the world through her firms Pulse Staffing and Uptown Homecare. Watson also has a passion for inspiring female leaders, which led her to create the nonprofit organization Lynn’s Angel Foundation in honor of her late mother. With the organization, she educates and empowers women by providing resources such as angel investments and giving tips on access to capital.
Watson describes herself as a “woman on fire” who wants to change the world through her entrepreneurial spirit and philanthropic efforts and is empowering women and providing resources for young girls and women in business.
What does it mean to be a “woman on fire?”
What that means for me is I’m very intentional. Every year, at the end of the year, I create very specific goals and visions of what I want to accomplish. I already mapped things out five to 10 years, so I take those things that I want to accomplish at the top of the year, and every day when I wake up, my “on fire” is when my feet hit the floor. I go hide in my prayer room, and I pray over all those specific things that I want to accomplish for the day, who I want to impact, and who I want to be able to be a game changer for. Every person that I meet, I want them to leave better than how I met them. My own “on fire” is that I’m not haphazardly just navigating life. I’m very intentional about seeing people, getting out of my own head, and not worrying about what I could do for myself or what people could do for me. I worry about what I can do for others.
How do you think people should strive to have the success you’ve had?
You can’t quit. You’re going to have so many obstacles; it just is what it is. There’s not a way to work around that. Going into anything, whether it is a job for someone for the first time, they went to college for the first time, they have a part-time job, whatever that is, you have to take it on and be proud of it. Even if that’s not where you want to be, just take it on, and own it. One of my first bosses told me I was very hard to manage. She goes, “You’re a great producer. You’re amazing. You have just contagious energy, but you’re so hard to manage.” I walked away thinking what that meant, and I went back like, “Tell me more about that. Is that a bad thing? I’m lost because the way you made it sound sounds like a bad thing.”
She shared, “You’re hard to manage because you set your own rules. You have something in your mind that’s going to work, you believe it’s going to win, and there’s no way to talk you out of it. For the most part, it benefits us as a company because most of the time you do win. The bad part is when you have other people on that same bus who don’t have that same confidence, they get discouraged, and then when they see you win, of course, it picks them back up. But it’s very hard to control you.” There is no option of fear, but there’s no option of failing. I’m going to win.
