Are you fed up with the corporate bullshit holding you back? Welcome to Invest in Yourself, the digital entrepreneur podcast. The ultimate launchpad for entrepreneurs ready to seize control and unleash their creative genius. Hosted by Phil Better, the podcast mogul. Each week he's breaking the chains of conventional work with bold strategies, raw insights, and inspiring success stories from the digital entrepreneurs who took the risk and invested in themselves. This is your call to arms. Invest in yourself, break free from someone else's rules and build the empire you deserve. Now let's dive head first into today's explosive episode.

Welcome back to another captivating and exciting episode of Invest Yourself, the Digital Entrepreneur podcast. Today, we have the privilege of hosting an extraordinary entrepreneur whose journey is powerful testament to innovation, empowerment, and the resentless pursuit of impact. They hold degrees in science from Tuskegee University and the University of Wisconsin Madison. Our guest uniquely marries her academic background with a profound commitment to social entrepreneurship. In 2018, she founded an organization that be that has become a beacon of hope and empowerment, guiding over 300 Black girls annually on their path to social and economic advancement. Not stopping Lavera, she's launched a boutique consulting firm in 2020 because she wasn't busy enough, helping over 25 small businesses and nonprofits flourish through strategic business development and operations. Her vision continues to expand with the creation of an online social club connecting black women globally, addressing the challenges of loneliness among successful individuals. Most recently, she's introduced an innovative venture that reflects both her personal journey and professional expertise, promising to offer more than just advice, but experience that drives personal growth, connection, and, of course, breakthroughs.

Despite her busy entrepreneurial life, she finds great joys at home in Arizona, reading with her husband and and her son, or traveling the world creating memories. So let's dive into the mind and motivations of a woman who's not only building businesses, but fostering communities and crafting narrate narratives for empowerment. Please welcome the vision visionary, founder, and the CEO, and the and a and a simple force of nature, Yanni Williams. Yanni, thank you so much for being here. I'm excited to talk to you again. We talked about your podcasting expertise, but now we're talking business, which is always so much fun.

Thank you so much for having me. And what an introduction. I need that. I'm like, I need that. That was good.

Yeah. I I I always look at I'm not the star of this show. I am just this hype person. I get the opportunity to talk to amazing people who are stars in their own right. They are the rap stars. They're the rock stars, and I always wanted to be a hype person. So this is how

I feel. I'm answering

the goals of my life.

I love that. I love that. Thank you for having me back.

Oh, I'm excited. So we're gonna start off with the first question that I always ask. Why? What made you decide to become the CEO of Dear Diary and Diary Design? What what made you decide to jump into the world?

Yeah. I was thrown into the world. Do people actually choose entrepreneurship or does entrepreneurship choose people?

There's a bit of both. Like, if they grew up in entrepreneur worlds, they choose to go into it. But if they Yeah. If they they have that bug inside them that says, hey. We we don't fit in here. My last guest says I'm unmanageable.

Yeah. No. I get that. That's the thing. I completely get that. And I think that that is true for me. I never thought that I would be an entrepreneur. It actually wasn't even something that was on my radar as an option.

I am a millennial and so like many of many millennials, we were told we kinda grew up in the very, like, interesting like, we grew up with technology, but, like, the very early parts of technology, like, we were still on the, like, house phones and the dial up. And then, you know, I remember I remember being like, mom, can I get on the Internet for an hour? Are you expecting any calls? Right? Because we had to disconnect the phone, connect the computer.

Wow. And

it was like super sound. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I know. I know. The memory

of just hearing the modem connect to crack.