She Turned Her Side Hustle Into a 150-Person Business. Here's How She Used the 'Wealthy Mindset' to Her Advantage. "I know that I'm the moneymaker," Blavity founder Morgan DeBaun says.
By Nicole Lapin •
This story appears in the November 2023 issue of Entrepreneur. Subscribe »
Want to grow a side hustle into something bigger? Morgan DeBaun knows something about that.
Back in 2014, she was working full time at Intuit when she started a side hustle. It was called Blavity — a media company for a Black audience. "It wasn't an immediate, 'OK, I'm going to quit my job to pursue this,'" she says. She had bills to pay, after all. But she started plotting her way forward, and eventually went all in.
Today, Blavity is very much her full-time job — along with employing 150 others. DeBaun has raised $12 million, the company's website says it reaches 250 million millennials and Gen Zers each month through its multiple websites and projects, and now it also develops technology to help companies recruit diverse employees. Here, DeBaun lays out her path from side hustle to full hustle — and why you should think differently about what makes you "wealthy."
