On Finding Your Priorities and Confronting Scarcity Mindsets: Creative Entrepreneur Crystal Ngumezi
Leading up to our Summer ‘19 iteration of WORK, we'll feature select interviews with some of our conference's speakers and thought leaders. In this interview, entrepreneur and coach Crystal Ngumezi discusses navigating success. Click here for a look at Summer 2019’s conference schedule.
who:
Crystal Ngumezi is the CEO and founder of the Proverbs 31 Women’s Organization, a business coach and entrepreneur. Crystal has 10 years of professional experience in engineering, small business management and logistics, multiple brands in di erent industries, and rst-hand experience creating start-up businesses for herself and for others. As a content creator with an online following of over 24,000, Crystal has worked with Internationality Recognized Brands for content creation and social media marketing such as Dove, Clinique, Intel and Walmart, just to name a few.
How would you describe yourself in 3 words?
Loving, hardworking and resilient.
What are your thoughts on concepts of work/life balance?
I’m a big believer in prioritization. I believe that in different seasons of your life, priority is placed on different things. For example, if you’re starting a new business, you may spend more time working on that business for a season than you would spending time with friends and family. If you’re starting a new family, your priority would be spent more on investing quality time into that new family than it would be spending time working on extra work projects.
The more you value, acknowledge and appreciate the different seasons that come with life, the more you will understand when and how to prioritize. The balance of work and life is in your ability to properly prioritize for different seasons, and in your ability to be flexible when needed.
Can you describe a moment in your career in which you experienced growth?
The moment I experienced growth in my career was the moment demand for my businesses started to grow. Evolving from a corporate manager to the CEO of my own companies forced me to learn new skills, better manage and position team players, and find skilled talent. I had to learn how to take everything I was good at, turn it into readable documents and processes, and teach it to someone new. Transitioning from an employee to an entrepreneur has been a very tasking process for me because of the transformation of the mind that is necessary to really become successful at starting, running and scaling multiple businesses simultaneously. I had to transform my business strategies from management to sustainability and long term growth.
What's something you've unlearned lately that you are grateful for?
In order to become a successful entrepreneur, I had to unlearn having a scarcity mindset. A scarcity mindset tells you, “I can’t afford that,” “I don’t have enough,” “I can’t do that.” Whereas, an abundant mindset tells you, “This is a great investment,” “That’s not in the budget, but this is,” “I can do that by integrating this person or tool.” The renewal of my mind from scarcity to abundance has changed everything for me and my businesses.
What are you currently working on?
Currently, I am working on online courses and program curriculums for my Inner Circle Community. My Inner Circle platform was created to help Female Creatives, Small Business Owners and Entrepreneurs learn how to build better brands, make more money online, and run profitable businesses on Instagram. (Click here to learn more!)
About WORK: WORK is a biannual pop-up space, designed for sharing new ideas and approaches to creative and entrepreneurial work. The event's panels, workshops and speaker sessions explore personal and professional curiosity, storytelling, diversity and equality, business management and creative entrepreneurship. Our next conference pops up in July 2019 at Rowling Hall in Austin, Texas. ✨Click here for more information.
