An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis

Instead of spending an inordinate amount of time working on your weaknesses, doubling down on your strengths will probably yield a higher return. Your strengths are generally based on natural talents and strengths or things you love doing so you invest a lot of time. If you focus on your strengths, life will be a lot more enjoyable. Your weaknesses are someone else’s strengths so leave those things for them to do.

As a part of our series about business leaders who are shaking things up in their industry, I had the pleasure of interviewing Jill Johnson.

Jill Johnson is a nationally-recognized thought leader and trailblazer working to foster an inclusive entrepreneurial ecosystem for people from historically excluded populations. Jill co-founded the Institute for Entrepreneurial Leadership (IFEL) in 2002 and serves as the Chief Executive Officer for the nonprofit organization. IFEL leverages the power of relationship capital to create pathways to success for Black and Latinx founders, entrepreneurs, and small business owners. Jill is a member of the Women’s Forum of New York, the Women Business Collaborative, and Harvard Alumni Entrepreneurs. She serves on the board of the Horizon Foundation for New Jersey and is a member of the America250 Innovation, Science & Entrepreneurship Advisory Council. She holds a bachelor of arts degree in economics from Harvard University.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”? What led you to this particular career path?

I would say the foundation for my IFEL journey began in my teens. For over 20 years, my parents had a newspaper publishing business. This was my introduction to small business ownership up close and personal. My siblings and I were in the office working on different aspects of the company, allowing me to see a small business’s inner workings. There was a lot of upside and glamour to my parents being business owners. They owned a newspaper, and with that came clout, access to important people, and a say in issues that mattered to the community they served. However, I also observed the real issues that business owners face — cash flow challenges, production disruptions, employee management, and long working hours. One of their publications was the Minority Business Journal of NY/NJ, so we had many discussions about business issues around the dinner table. While I grew up relatively comfortably, I learned the value of hard work and sacrifice, as well as how to be an advocate for those unable to advocate for themselves.

Following college, I started my career in the financial analyst program at Goldman Sachs in mergers and acquisitions. It was there that I saw a very different side of business ownership. It was a world where capital and resources were plentiful and allowed entrepreneurs to scale up their businesses. In that world, the goal was an exit and our work included helping entrepreneurs extract the value that they had created which led to generational wealth for their families. In all the years that I had worked with my parents, I had never heard of exiting as an objective. Their expressed vision, similar to that of their peer black business owners, was to pass the business on to the children.

Following my time at Goldman, I worked with my parents again for several years before jumping into the dot com boom scene to write business plans for people raising money. In this world, I observed who was able to raise money with relative ease and who had difficulty. While the tech landscape was new territory, the common thread for black entrepreneurs was capital constraint. I continued writing business plans and doing general consulting work for several years, always wondering what it would take to get more black business owners on the path to wealth creation through entrepreneurship.

Sadly, when my parents decided they no longer wanted the daily grind of running the newspaper after 20 years, they shut it down — no sale, no family legacy, no wealth creation. My father, still passionate about minority business, continued his involvement as an advocate for the black business community. As we continued to discuss the issues, the concept of the Institute for Entrepreneurial Leadership was born.

I would say that IFEL was his vision and I was the one who operationalized it. My father and I worked together for a few years before his retirement at which time I became CEO. He always talked about the power of what’s possible; keeping that in front of me is what has allowed IFEL to move forward in our mission to tackle the most pressing black business issue of our time, access to capital.

Can you tell our readers what it is about the work you’re doing that’s disruptive?

IFEL’s entire mission is about disrupting the status quo when it comes to the lack of inclusion in the entrepreneurial ecosystem. From a purely economic standpoint, it just doesn’t make any sense that investors are forgoing opportunities for returns and profit through the continued systemic exclusion of whole groups of innovators. While the data continues to reinforce that diversity delivers results, people in positions of power and control continue to exclude. Our disruption is forcing a lot of people to come to grips with why the data is being ignored while creating a pathway to change for those who are genuinely interested in inclusion. We have spent too many years talking about the problem of access to capital. I want the result of our work to be that in 20 years, it isn’t something that we discuss in the same way.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

Funny enough, during my early days I did not realize that you were supposed to raise money for a non-profit by asking friends, family, and associates to donate. In the African-American community, generally, people are used to contributing to their church, school fundraisers for their kids, youth sports teams, and the like…things that impact them on a personal level. I learned that I had to make the ask of people who are used to writing checks and I had to put in the work to expand our circle of people involved in charitable giving. After 20 years, I now realize that as a nonprofit leader, asking for money is mostly what I’m supposed to do.

We all need a little help along the journey. Who have been some of your mentors? Can you share a story about how they made an impact?

I don’t have a mentor. I have a circle of go-to people I lean on for different issues and from whom I get advice in different situations, but I don’t have a mentor as such. I would consider my parents to be the most impactful people in my life as far as establishing my foundation for both visionary thinking and operational practicality. In my parents’ business, my mother was the practitioner who worked hard and got things done. She taught me to put in the work to produce the highest quality. She is very creative so I also learned how to deliver in a way that stands out. My father has always been a visionary. He always looked at the possibilities, never being limited by what you see right in front of you. His focus was always on what things could look like. My father was also a great connector, he earned people’s trust, and he valued relationships. As a result of my parents’ influence, my vision for the future stems from my focus on possibilities. My superpower is in connecting the dots to move from vision to reality in a way that is creative yet practical. It’s this approach that enables our organization to deliver unique value to our stakeholders. I have my parents to thank.

In today’s parlance, being disruptive is usually a positive adjective. But is disrupting always good? When do we say the converse, that a system or structure has ‘withstood the test of time’? Can you articulate to our readers when disrupting an industry is positive, and when disrupting an industry is ‘not so positive’? Can you share some examples of what you mean?

I think disruption is good by definition. The only way an industry can be disrupted is if enough people find value in and adopt the new solution leading to a fundamental change in how we do things. If there is the ability to disrupt, then it means that something is not working and needs to be disrupted. In that disruption, there will always be people who lose or are not happy. Generally, they are the ones who most benefit from the status quo. Change is inevitable, so you can either see the change coming and prepare to ride the wave or let the wave drown you. Companies that are creating models around the sharing economy are prime examples. Since the launch of Uber, WeWork, and Airbnb, more people have been able to move about more freely because of disruption to the status quo. We may not like it when disruption causes us to learn new skills, change our behaviors, or divide our pie with others; but yes, disruption is good.

Can you share five of the best words of advice you’ve gotten along your journey? Please give a story or example for each.

• Listen more than you speak.

I’m a bit introverted by nature so it’s tough for me to walk into networking events and just start blabbing away. My natural comfort has always been in asking questions. What I have learned is that by asking questions, you put others at ease and give them the license to talk about themselves, which many people like to do. When you learn about others, you are better equipped to drive the direction of the follow-up and ultimately how the relationship develops.

• Focus on your strengths.

Instead of spending an inordinate amount of time working on your weaknesses, doubling down on your strengths will probably yield a higher return. Your strengths are generally based on natural talents and strengths or things you love doing so you invest a lot of time. If you focus on your strengths, life will be a lot more enjoyable. Your weaknesses are someone else’s strengths so leave those things for them to do.

• Surround yourself with people who can do the job better than you.

If you stick with your strengths, it means there is room for others to do what they do best. If you love big-picture work, you need people who love figuring out the details around you. You might love to cook, but hate to clean up. (I would be happy to clean up in exchange for a great meal because I hate to cook.) If you match your yin to another’s yang, you get superior capabilities that would not have been possible on your own.

• Find the opportunity in everything.

How many times do you hear everything happens for a reason or find the silver lining? It’s absolutely true! The challenge to you is to figure out what the reason is. So often we are focused on bad things that happen, that we don’t keep our eyes open for new opportunities. Following a split with a business partner some years ago that put my business in a precarious position financially, I could have become depressed and thrown in the towel. Instead, I used it as an opportunity to reflect and pivot. I emerged stronger and more clear about my vision and purpose. And, today our organization is in the strongest position it’s been in 20 years and I enjoy the work that we do. The breakup was what we needed to push us to pursue bigger opportunities to take our work to another level which has happened. We only got to this point by being open to the opportunity that arose out of a bad situation.

• Act fearlessly.

There was a time when I was invited to play golf with a few other people. I have taken a few lessons but would not categorize myself as a golfer by any stretch. I was comfortable with the situation; however because at least one person was less of a golfer than me and the other two people self-proclaimed that they were awful. Well two days before our date, two people canceled. The person who invited us had his assistant call to ask if I still wanted to play. Let me set the scene, this person was the owner of a sports team and we were playing at his club. For a split second, I was ready to say “no.” Truth be told I was fearful of the embarrassment I was sure would follow on the course. Well, in a split second, I pulled it together and said “yes” realizing that this was an opportunity to have his ear for several hours alone uninterrupted. The day was great. It was like having a private lesson and I did a lot better than I thought. (I did hit 180 balls at the driving range the night before to ensure that I could just get off the tee.) The icing on the cake is that we were able to talk about a business opportunity for one of our clients which led to a collaboration between his group and our client in a coffee house venture. Our golf outing is a shared experience that binds us. I was fearful for sure, but in acting fearlessly I was able to make the most of the situation.

We are sure you aren’t done. How are you going to shake things up next?

Through this journey, I’ve found myself more confident in my voice and ability to speak my truth and act on my purpose. All roads along my journey continue to lead to access to capital as a central theme. I am determined to use my energy, talents, and connections to create pathways to capital access that do not currently exist for Black entrepreneurs. Continuing to talk about the problem is inadequate and unacceptable. I won’t be done until we get to solutions.

Do you have a book, podcast, or talk that’s had a deep impact on your thinking?

Good to Great by Jim Collins

4-day Work Week by Tim Ferris

Born a Crime by Trevor Noah

Color Brave, TED Talk by Mellody Hobson

Can you share a story with us? Can you explain why it was so resonant with you?

Recently, a college friend told me that she had never met a Black family or individual that made a substantial living from owning a business until we met in 1990. Because my parents interacted with many other black business owners, I never thought of owning a business as out of the ordinary. It was just the path that some people chose or were forced to explore by way of limited career advancement opportunities. My parents had peers in both categories.

When my friend revealed this to me after knowing her for nearly 30 years, I was shocked and saddened. Having a business that is successful enough to earn a living shouldn’t be a rarity in the black community. I felt even more saddened when I thought about the fact that with as successful as my parents had been with their business, they were not able to extract value from the business when they wanted to retire. They simply shut the business down, as is the case with far too many black-owned businesses.

This story resonates with me because it speaks to the reason that I am passionate about the work that I do today. The black community is losing wealth with each business that doesn’t achieve an exit or pass on to the next generation. People are starting businesses, yet no assets are being accumulated and no wealth is being created. This has to change, and I am committed to helping more black business owners understand the options for wealth creation through entrepreneurship.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

Everything happens for a reason…while there is a lot in life that is a manifestation of our efforts, there is a lot that we can’t explain or anticipate. Because it is out of our control, there is no use worrying about it. As one of my sons always says, “I can only control what I can control.” Throughout my life, I’ve tried to be very honest with myself about the cause of my successes and failures. Did I prepare the way that I needed to? Did I put in 200 percent effort? Did I plan adequately? Many times in evaluating a failure, my answer was no. Even then, you have to learn, let it go, and move on. Dwelling “in” the problem isn’t productive. When you can say that you did everything you could have done and the outcome isn’t what you wanted, maybe it’s an opportunity to pivot and go in a different direction. In every situation, I think about what I am supposed to take away from the situation. If you use failures and disappointments as learning experiences, you will always come out ahead.

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.

Lucky for me that the work that I do every day is inspiring a movement to remove systemic barriers to entrepreneurial wealth creation for black entrepreneurs. The lack of inclusion in the entrepreneurial ecosystems is something that I have observed throughout my life. My career path has given me a unique lens through which to view access to capital issues at both micro and macro levels. While the issues are complex, at a basic level, inclusion starts with more people knowing more people on a personal level who are different from them. This leads to understanding, empathy, and mutual respect. Our movement starts there. If each person takes action to do this, I believe we will see the needle move.

This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!

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Meet The Disruptors: Jill Johnson Of IFEL On The Five Things You Need To Shake Up Your Industry was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.