Welcome to The Heart-Led Business Show, where compassion meets commerce and leaders lead with love. Join your host, Tom Jackobs, as he delves into the insightful conversations with visionary business leaders who defy the status quo, putting humanity first and profit second. From heartfelt strategies to inspiring stories, this podcast is your compass in the world of conscious capitalism. So buckle up and let your heart guide your business journey.

Well, welcome back delightful listeners to another episode of the heart-led Business Show. Today we're fortunate to have the fabulous Alice Maria James. As the host of Read This Author's Corner and the spirited Executive Director of the Black Authors Hall of Fame, Alice is on a mission to spotlight the splendid tapestry of dysphoric literature. With over three decades of creativity in the fashion world, she's now weaving narratives that uplift voices of color and inspire generations. So join me as we dive into Alice's heart-led journey in business and her passion for illuminating Brilliance. Alice, welcome to the show.

Wow. Well, Thank you. I love my introduction.

No worries. I always love to give a little flare to the introduction as well.

That was a beautiful flare.

Alice, I'm really excited to talk to you today because I think what you're doing is so important and so heartfelt, and I wanna share that with the audience, but also to get your journey as well into the whole heart-led space. But before we do that, I always like to ask the first question, which is, what's your definition of a heart-led business?

I think I have two things that come together to make a heart-led for me. One is it's that thing that you would do whether you're getting paid to do it or not, it's just one of those things that they say, I can't help it. And then the other thing was, my pastor had said to me many years ago that thing that kind of gets under your skin and you are looking for somebody to fix it. Like, why can't they fix this? What's wrong with this? And you have all of these ideas and all your imagination ghost solving that problem, but you don't see it as your problem to solve. That is the calling on your spirit to fix that problem.

Nice.

That's what she told me. She said, when you're in that spot, that's what you're being called to do.

Wow. Yeah. I like that. That's the first definition of that sort that I've heard. And I really like that. That's good. It's like kind of a more guttural instinct to lead and to help others. So tell us a little bit about your business and what makes it heart-led.

It was evolved very organically. What I do now was not like, okay, this is the next step on my journey. What actually happened is at 57, my lungs started to act up and my pulmonologist told me, you can no longer work in fashion. You can't be around these fibers and I'm like, you don't understand. This is what I do. This is what I know. What do I do now? What is that shift? So that was a jolt. That wasn't even like, I'm planning my transition out. No, this was like, you don't go back, so what I decided to do was to, take up coaching. I joined a coaching program getting my coaching certification, and a good friend of mine introduced me to a team of people that she worked with that was all into the field of like just unearthing the black history. Black inventors. I know the person that started the Black Tennis Hall of Fame and all of these things and I was like, this is right up my wheelhouse. I love this because truth be told, I came here from Jamaica at age four and I went through all my schooling here. I didn't learn about black inventors the women in Hidden Figures. I didn't know that Garrett Morgan had invented the traffic light. I knew none of this until I was in my 30's. When you go through your life, you ask me about Greek mythology. I could talk to you all day about, I could tell you about the Ming Dynasty. I could tell you about all this other history that happened hundreds of years ago, and I couldn't even tell you something that happened 50, 75 years ago. So I knew for the last 20 years how that was like, eating at my soul. It was one of those things that were like under your skin, like how do you get that out there? Now that it's being unearthed, how do we feed it out there to the world and to meet people that were doing it? And were welcoming me in and educating me. I was just like, oh, this is so good. And one of them Dr. Caldwell, Dale Caldwell, he was director at Rutgers. He was like, Alice, you should do a podcast. You should do a show. And he was working with a studio and he had airtime, and he literally paid for the airtime for me to go to the show. All I had to do was get from North Carolina back up to New Jersey where I was from. And I started doing this show and it was so well received by the authors that had been writing and doing research and had all of this information and no one to talk to about it. So they pulled me in and they hugged me so tight. They held me so tight and they thanked me so much and still do please keep doing this work. We really appreciate it. We need you. And there is something absolutely beautiful about people telling you that the work you're doing is needed, and it's important

because it's so funny in the sense that as entrepreneurs we put all this effort out and what we believe is like greatness out in the world, but it's infrequent that somebody comes back and says, thank you so much for doing that and putting that out there. So yeah. I totally understand like the joy that comes from hearing that and especially when you put, all your work and your life into it and all the effort that you do

And it was so new to me because I'm a visual creative and I never saw myself as a literary creative. And I thought it was us and them, and I honestly in the beginning did not really feel like I would be accepted into the literary world. I didn't feel like I was that scholar. You have the scholarly literary people and you have the flaky design creative people. I was never a flaky design creative person, but I understand that people loop everybody into that same pot, right? That's what I thought was going to happen, but it is absolutely not what was happened. they were actually happy to, if I could describe it this way, they knew that they were the mouth and they needed us. So I was what they needed to complete the face.

Oh yeah. And giving them the voice as well. That's amazing. Especially, in today's day and age where we need to hear different voices and different perspectives to really understand each other and to really lead with heart at the same time. I'm just curious, so you're growing up in that time where, you know it's completely whitewashed, right? The history and everything is all whitewashed. What did it feel like to finally realize all of the black voices and the black inventors and all that were pushed down because of the whitewashing? How did that feel to discover that?

It felt unfair in some ways, because as I said StrengthsFinder describes me a learner. So I am that learner. So I am that person that if I knew that there was something to dig for, I would've been digging, you don't know what you don't know. So I didn't know that I was missing all of this stuff. And then when I start learning it in my 30's, and it was wild how that came about. Just as a quick story, I was in the fashion industry, but then I had started an interior decorating business and a part of it, I started offering black artwork. And as the person that started that, it was like a networking kind of thing. She started it and one of the games that we played at this networking event where you meet these artists was black history of inventors. That's how I learned it. Playing a game while was selling art. It was a game back in the 90's, somebody invented a game. I learned it from that game and I was like, why didn't I even know this? There was 12 people that we learned every black history month. We learned this about the same 12 people, and it was then where I was like, where's all this information? How do you look for it? How do you find it? And this is still before the internet, it's not you going to your local library and give me this information. It's still not there, so it was really, it's only in the last, I would say, eight years that now I am absolutely flooded with information and I have my social media set up that it channels that information into me. I don't wanna hear anybody's tea, I don't wanna anybody's drama. Give me all of that insight that I didn't grow up knowing. Allow me to pass that back to my nieces and my nephews. And the other layer of that is if I grew up here, went to school here and didn't learn anything about black history, African American history here. I have even less information about Jamaican history, so I have a lot of catching up to do.

Yeah. Oh my gosh. I can't even imagine it. I think part of the issue with our country too, in terms of race relations is that, as a white man, I'm like, I don't know what I don't know as well. And in learning all this, I'm like, I cannot believe this was left out. And yeah, it's great to have Black History month, but if you're repeating the same 12 people that are being celebrated, or it's like there's gotta be more than 12 black people that have done great things in this world. I can think of thousands already, it's it's credible.

Yeah. And the saving grace was when I grew up there was Ebony Magazine. And Ebony did give you a lot with the current event. So you knew when oh, what's his name? Andrew Young, and Barbara Jordan when they were elected. So you knew what was going on in the here and now. They didn't cover what happened in the past and I understand part of the covering up, but the covering up of the quote unquote bad also covers up the good as well. And for me, what is a little bit disheartening right now is that we finally got to the place where all this information has finally been excavated and it's there and I feel like the bulldozers are now calm and trying to push it back down, which is, it has really set a fire under me that there's no time to waste in having it out there. It's easy to hide something that only a few people know about, right? But if you make sure that as many people as possible know about it, it's really hard to hide that.

Exactly, and especially now with the internet and everything, the connected world that we have, it's, a lot easier to get that information. But it's also a double-edged sword because we're only fed the information that we want to see as well. I'd love to dive into the black author's Hall of Fame and how that came about and what you're doing with that.

That came about Dr. Dale Caldwell. He's the person that started the Black Tennis Hall of Fame and at the time he started that he was the president of tennis association that controls the US Open, I don't really know all of their names. So he was the president of that and he had done a exhibit called, breaking barriers, and it was so well received at the US open that he decided to start the Black Tennis Hall of Fame. And then he worked with another person that's he's a professor that teaches patent information. Now, I won't say patent law, but understanding how patent's working. And he is the executive director of the Black Inventors Hall. And so when I started this. The show of talking to authors. I started getting connected with these people, these authors and Dale, he goes, Alice you should start the black authors Hall of Fame, we need awards. People forget about it. Halls of fame. You get to solidify their history in one place. you should start that. I'm just scratching the surface of trying to get this, talking to authors and now you want me to do this. But I follow my intuition. I am open for what the universe has for me to do, and it was, although I didn't see it as with authors, I did see it around learning history and understanding. So if this is how I do that, then I have to walk through the door that is open for me. So I was introduced to Max Rodriguez, who is the founder of the Harlem Book Fair. Which the Harlem book Fair is over 25. I think it's 27 years old now, and is the largest African American books fair in the country. At the height of it, everybody was at the Harlem Book Fair. Maya Angelou, everybody, the largest one, I think they said had 30,000 people in attendance. So I got to meet Max and work with the Harlem Book Fair, and he introduced me to Rita Dove, Poet Laureate and he started introducing me to these notable authors. They are famous in their own right, but there is a select group of people that know of them and know what they do. And I was able to do the first induction ceremony and induct like six people into the Black Authors Hall of Fame for the work that they've done over the past 40, 50 years.

Wow. So how long have you had the Hall of Fame?

About four years.

How many are inducted into it?

Right now we're still at that six. Things are constantly restructuring, right? So when I started the Black Authors Hall of Fame, Dr. Caldwell was at Rutgers and then he moved to Centenary University. We decided to make Centenary University the physical home of the Hall of Fame. There's a lounge at Centenary that's dedicated to his mother and father who were a part of the Civil Rights Movement and the work that they did and the Black Authors Hall of Fame. So it's a lounge that have these books and we have a signed book from Langston Hughes within the lounge, within the university. So we did the initial induction and then we started building out the foundation for it. So when people come in, they're like, okay, we're coming into something. And as life is always changing Dr. Caldwell is now on the campaign trail to become Lieutenant Governor. So there's a lot of moving pieces and one of the things I've learned in life is not to try to shove things in the way you want them to go'cause if you let it evolve, it'll probably be better than you thought it was gonna be.

It's pretty amazing when you let things happen the way that they're supposed to happen you're not forcing it, and obviously there needs to be some urgency to some things, but if forcing something to happen is never warrants a good result, usually it's like pieced together.

It's like the story of the butterfly, how it struggles to get out of the cocoon, but if you cut it open, it doesn't allow the butterflies wings to actually work. And the fluids don't go where they need to go that struggle is a part of what makes everything come into being. To me it's sometimes it's not a struggle, right? Because we have this vision. I needed to have this open and done by this date, and it's not. So now you're trying to force something that is saying no. Hold back is something more beautiful coming. Just keep working. Keep working.

Awesome. So what's next for you in terms of your heart-led journey?

Oh wow. I feel like I'm finally coming into my own because I started this as a part of a group of people that were doing shows, and then that bigger group became a smaller group, and then now I'm on my own. I'm like, people talk about you have an accountability. I'm like, no, I've never even heard of that. And so I finally feel like I've come into my own and I figured out some things that I've been trying to figure out. For say the past five years and I'm still evolving my coaching understanding'cause I feel my coaching understanding really informs my podcast understanding of people. And I just finished, a course on neurodiversion.

Oh, okay.

I interviewed a author, a young lady, and she's phenomenally autistic. She just inspired me. And then on top of meeting her and her energy and what she was putting out there, I always knew I had some sort of something that I couldn't fix. For me, not many things are broken. It's just, you just have to find a way to work around it. And back when I was, we used to watch the Huxtable and Theo was diagnosed with dyslexia. I said, I have that, but I have it for writing. Like my reading, reading comprehension and stuff. Never had a problem. Writing for me was always a challenge. So about two years ago, I actually took a dyslexia evaluation and found out that issue that I was having with my writing is a form of dyslexia. But they only talk about dyslexia really around the reading aspect of it. They don't talk about it. So I was like, okay. So then I started going down that rabbit hole of trying to understand and in understanding, I recognized the traits that they were describing as neurodivergent traits. It was pretty much every trait of every creative person. Not every different aspects of it was traits of pretty much every single creative person that I've ever worked with over the past 40 years, and we never saw it as something that needed to be fixed for them. We always said, oh, so and so has a quirk, right? You get to meet John and John's quirk is that he needs, I don't need you to color code things for me. I color code everything for myself. I can look at a page and when I was working in the fashion world, that was one of the things my production people will go, Alice, how do you give us our answers so quickly? I look down as the page is green, it's done. If the page had a yellow strip strike through it, I was like, it's almost done, but I'm waiting for this one question to be answered or this one test to come back. And that was my way of working. It wasn't a problem. It wasn't anything wrong with me. It was quite efficient and people loved it. I taught that skill to many of my coworkers. They adapted that process. So I'm going down this rabbit hole and I'm recognizing these traits are traits. That a lot of creatives possessed. So I'm like, I work with creatives and they might be seeing these traits as an obstacle, or if they're reading the clinical definition of it, they might see it as a problem. But I lived it for over 40 years. Just as a part of my personality, and I've seen other people live it all their lives just as a part of their personality. So how do I combine what I'm doing and encourage creatives to embrace the way their brains work.

Oh, absolutely. I find that to be superpowers really, and, to label something as a disorder or something like that, just doesn't sit well with me personally but that's great that you're doing that. How can people learn more about your coaching and the podcast and all the other great work that you're doing?

The podcast is really doing well on YouTube right now. That's why I say I've finally come into my own. I was all over the place trying to figure out where do I need to focus? And then I just decided I'm gonna focus in on YouTube because everybody has access to it. At this time, I'm currently updating my webpage to offer more of the things that I'm doing because until I was able to actually get grounded, I was trying to keep it very close. The authors that I work with they call me host and coach. I'm doing interview. How, what should I do? What should I say? So my website's there you could get a lot of information about who I've already interviewed. I tell my authors this, I'm not a one and done type person. You know some people, you meet them, you see them, you have an interview with them, and it's over. You never hear from them again. I am always looking at ways in which to pull them back into something that I'm doing. I give you an example. The Centenary University invited me to be a part of their literacy program, and they had the International Literacy Foundation there, and they asked me to do what we were calling a taste of literature. So we did. I had my authors that talked about Africa in a section, and then I had my US authors, I had Caribbean authors, so the teachers and the educators that came to this literacy conference got to meet all of these different diasporic authors. And I reached out to all these people that I interviewed and said, Hey, I'm doing this. Would you like to be a part of it with me? Can I promote your book with this? I had them do a mini infomercial about their book, did a QR code for their book and the library set up monitors. So you got to see their infomercial. I had their physical book copies there and a QR code that they could go on and buy the book.

Oh, that's really awesome. That's a great way of giving back and showing heart.

Yeah, because I look for authors that are inspiring, empowering, and we are not tearing anybody down. We're not looking for the worst quality in people because those are the people that I'm attracted to, I wanna see them flourish. I wanna see them grow. I want people to know about them. I want people to know all that they're doing. So whatever I can do to show them off, I'm all for it. And it's easier for me to talk about other people than myself.

That's awesome. The world needs more people like you, Alice, and I really appreciate you taking the time today to share your journey and your gifts with our audience. And thank you for doing the work that you're doing.

Thank you for having me. Thanks for inviting me on. You're only my second interview, because I like the name of your podcast, heart-led Business, one of the things that I was gonna say that I learned was what I wanted to charge for. I didn't wanna charge people for being able to tell their story. I'll charge you so I can help you promote it more, but I won't charge you for telling it'cause I want you to be able to tell it freely.

Yeah. That's great. That's actually a really good business model too, because it's giving back and then you'll get the return at some time. Awesome. Again, thank you Alice for being on the show. I really do appreciate you.

Thank you so much for having me. This was a wonderful experience and hopefully I'll do something worthy of coming back again.

And thank you listeners for tuning in today and listening or watching the show depending on the platform of your choice. So make sure that you're checking out everything that Alice is doing. We're gonna put all the links down in the show notes, so make sure you're checking that out. Click on those links and make sure you tune into her podcast as well, and we'll make sure we put a link down in the show notes for her podcast. And while you're down there, why don't you do me a little quick favor, and that would be to give the show a rating and a review. I'd really appreciate it. Just spreads the word about the show and all the great things that our guests are doing. And until next time, lead with your heart.

You've been listening to The Heart-Led Business Show, hosted by Tom Jackobs. Join us next time for another inspiring journey into the heart of business.