Dr. Lakeysha “Key” Hallmon is the founder of the Village Market and now is a published author. Her first book, No One Is Self-Made, is a book about leadership and how we can become better leaders by embracing our community. She also tackles many myths and beliefs about leadership and success, and she was our latest guest on Meet The Author.
Why do you think being a self-made leader isn’t a real thing?
Because it’s not. It’s not possible to build a company by yourself. It is not possible to even reach scale by yourself. Everyone cannot be your investors. But there are people that can give you these soft skill type things and also tangible investment dollars of the team that helps you feel at your early stages and the team that you’re attracting once you scale and grow larger. In the story of thinking about self-made, I think it’s a very individualistic approach. When I’m thinking about the community that I hold dear, individualism is what’s holding us back. We need to be done with that whole conversation and go get back to being village-made people, stewards of village and building our companies to be edifying a community.
Why do you believe the Black community is so pressed to do it by themselves, being self-made, or brag about doing it by themselves?
I think what people are trying to express is that it’s been hard, that I wasn’t raised with hundreds of thousands of dollars. I wasn’t raised with a fund to launch my business. I had to grind. But what I encourage entrepreneurs to understand is that you didn’t, even in your most lonely hours, you didn’t grind by yourself, that there are people there, there are critical players in helping you foster these dreams — the people that pray for you is the people that lift you up when self-doubt comes in, all these people are critical. I also think in our community, there is a culture around the notion of self-made, but we didn’t create that. I think we began to hear words and what we’re trying to say is, that I’m self-determined, that I have intrinsic motivation and self-reliance, all those things are important to be successful, but that the mindset and also the culture of I got out the mud by myself is untrue.
‘Great masterpiece’ was not self-made
What was the biggest lesson you learned while writing this book?
So, the biggest lesson is not forgetting the journey. Also, the biggest lesson was just like, I haven’t built the business alone. I also didn’t write this book alone. I had to call on friends and say, can you help me remember what happened on this day? I had to call on people and say, help me remember. Also had a great editor, so they helped me get the best writing out of every sentence. So, even in this process of writing, though my name is on this book by myself, there are a lot of people that assisted on making this book to be this great masterpiece that it is.
What is the hardest part of releasing your own book?
The hardest part of writing the book is probably the process now, telling people about it. To me telling people to go buy this book has been the hardest part, but I love the writing process. I love the editing process. Harper Collins and Day Street Imprint have been great partners, so that part has was not hard for me at all. I actually loved it. But now having to go in the world because I’m truly an introvert who pretends to be an extrovert, having to go out into the world, and tell people about this book will be the hardest part of it.
Give some tips to the person who wants to be an author one day but is struggling to finish their first book?
Good question, because I love the writing process. If you don’t have the time to write, you do have time to record yourself. So, record your notes when you have these “aha!” moments that I feel like are little nuggets from God, record them in your phone, and that ends up being a chapter in your book. Start to have conversations with your friends and record those. Let your friends know. Record the conversation with your friends to help you recall moments. The other part is that writing a book takes discipline.
