I Sold My Company for Nine Figures. Here Are 3 Hard Lessons That Got Me There

I was the founder of Briogeo, one of the largest black -owned hair brands in the United States, but at first, I had no idea what I was doing. All I knew was that I had a product in which I believed, a deep desire to create something and the will to solve the rest on the road.

It worked: In 2022, I sold the brand for a sum of nine figures. While looking back in that experience, I realized that the most valuable knowledge does not come from textbooks or investors, it comes from what you learn in the trenches. That is why I now teach what I learned in my new Manufacturers mentality accelerator.

Here are three lessons that I share in the accelerator. They are things that I learned in the difficult way, and that you should start doing today.

1. Hire values, not only experience

One of the best hiring that I have not done experience in beauty, never worked in the supply chain (became Briogeo’s first operations manager) and was still learning English. But that she Did Have hunger. He was motivated, collaborative and paid attention to every detail.

I invested a lot in training and she invested in herself, absorbing all knowledge and becoming one of our best results. He worked wonderfully on all teams and also built solid relationships externally.

That experience showed me that skills can be taught. What cannot be taught is integrity, impulse and alignment with the central values ​​of your company. When he hires first for those things, you build a team that grows with you, and stays with you through the hard parts.

2. Do not let the product out of the brand

For a while, we were killing him on the product side, but our brand told a fractured history. Our Instagram looked in one way, our website from another. Our emails do not match our visual marketing. All those who executed Creative were playing the brand through their own lens because we had tasks to really define it.

It wasn’t until I backed away that I saw how much we were leaving on the table. Our product was resonating, but our brand was a meeting with the same level of clarity or consistency. We brought a brand agency, we built an integral style guide and finally obtained everything, from the tone of voice to the typography, on the same page.

Once we made that turn, all the customer experience rose at the level. The brand began to feel that it had a soul, keep only one sku.

3. Stop trying to do everything yourself

In the first days, I wore every hat because I couldn’t allow myself not to do it. But just after the business was generating real income, I did not stop. I get to all roles (operations, marketing, finance, partly because I was accustomed, and partly because I thought it could do everything faster.

That mentality reached a cost. I burned. I lost the critical growth windows because it was not the bandwidth to concentrate on the general panorama. I waited too much to bring the right leaders when we needed them.

What changed things for me was to invest in an executive coach. It helped me see that clinging too much was not the strength was a responsibility. It defies me to leave, to trust and start building a culture where talented and aligned people of values ​​can take the initiative. That’s when the real scale became possible.

I did not learn thesis lessons from a play book. I learned them doing things wrong, then slowly discovering how to do them well. That process, proof, error and evolution, is what gave me form as a founder. And the more I share thesis stories with other entrepreneurs, I realize that they are not alone in the learning curve. None or we are.