Lavonya Jones on Teaching Students in the Metaverse, Coaching Sustainable Success and Role Models

Hello everyone, and welcome back to Seed to Harvest. I'm really excited to be joined by Lavanya Jones, Director at the Georgia Social Impact Collaborative and an entrepreneurship instructor at Morehouse College. Lavanya is passionate about entrepreneurship as a solution to economic injustice and inequality, and as a third-generation HBCU graduate, she's currently an entrepreneurship instructor at Morehouse and founder of social justice media company, Consciously Funded. She creates pathways for students at minority-serving institutions into entrepreneurship, technology, and venture capital. Lavanya, thank you so much for joining us today.

Thank you for having me. It's an honor.

Of course. And to get our listeners started off, I know no day is the same, and you just announced that you joined the Georgia Social Impact Collaborative, but to give our listeners some perspective, what does an average day look like for you?

So an average day, I have these encouragement playlists on YouTube and Spotify. So as soon as I wake up, I always start my day with one of those playlists to get my head in the game. So no matter what comes that day, I'm ready for it. Um, and then typically I start reviewing my calendar, honestly, cuz I have so much on my plate. I never know like what's going on. Until that day. So I usually review my calendar. I, I review it the night before and the morning just to make sure I haven't missed anything. And then I, I kind of get started. Typically right now is getting caught up on what's been going on. We call it GSIC for short with the Georgia Social Impact Collaborative and just reading through everything and getting caught up so I can move the organization forward.

Mm-hmm.

Uh, then I also have some consulting clients. So my days are typically split between my role with GSIGNOW, my consulting client, and then also my class. So we're in finals, so I'm grading. Uh, so that's usually how my day goes. And then I end my day typically very late.

Doing the emails like 11:00 PM. I was definitely doing that last night. Yeah.

Emails. Oh man, that's. I catch it when I can.

I like always wanted to be a writer and now I do a lot of writing, but email is definitely the medium in which I do the most now.

Yeah, I mainly, like, I usually check my email, you know, if there's anything like urgent I need to answer right then, but I typically hold off on email till Friday, honestly, cuz that's the only day that I can like really focus on my email cuz my days are jam-packed. And so, you know, I usually wind down, sometimes I'll wind down with a TV show. Other times it's just really just kind of scrolling social media. It just depends on how tired I am. So sometimes it's a, a TV show. And then too, depending on what's going on in the world, sometimes in the news, like I've been trying to stay up on what's going on in Ukraine with the war. So it just kind of depends on how I'm feeling at the end of the day, what I end my day with. But it's either a TV show that's gonna lift my spirits and make me laugh. Or I'll get updated on the news, or I'm scrolling social media and checking all my messages and responding to people on social media, and then I go to sleep. And so that's my typical day. I work all the time.

All the time.

But I don't work on the weekend. That's good.

That's good.

We do not do work on weekends. So we work real, real hard during the week, and on the weekends we sleep.

Love that. Love that. So to, to go back to the class that you teach at Morehouse, I would love to hear what the specific areas of technology you might focus on in your educational curriculum and why. And like, if you can provide us with a bit more of context for what the curriculum for the class looks like in general, I'd love to hear more.

Sure. So previously, entrepreneurship is a little new for Morehouse College. In the past, we had Um, a senior capstone course where they really went through the Business Model Canvas and the director of the Entrepreneurship Center taught that course. So we are now launching a minor. So this was the first year we taught my class, which is the Entrepreneurial Mindset class, which really just deals with the mindset you need to overcome all the challenges you will encounter as an entrepreneur. And we went through what's called an Opportunity Discovery Canvas, which really Focus on the students understanding what value they were providing and who they, who they were providing that value for. Like, what problem are you solving? And that's what it really focused on. And I added an element of them aligning their solution with a sustainable development goal, one of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. So, you know, I gave them extra credit if they Incorporated some type of technology that would automate the business. You know, because we talk about in my class, we have a session where we talk about wealth. And so it's like, you want to get your business to the point where you're making money in your sleep, right? That's, that's what all these unicorns and, you know, Amazon, Facebook, they're making money while they're sleeping. And that's where you want to get your business to. So, but one of the things that's also new for Morehouse this year.

Mm-hmm.

is introducing our students to the metaverse. And so some of our classes we've done, mainly the humanities classes, so our sciences, English, history classes were done in the metaverse using the Oculus headsets.

Oh, wow. Yeah.

That's cool. So they like got to go through an artery, you know, go back in the day. I think one class actually went through a slave ship.

Wow.

One class, they were like on the battlefield in the, you know, American Revolution. Another class, they got to sit down with a Black author from like the early 1900s and go through one of her books. So what I'm in the process of doing now is developing an entrepreneurial course in the metaverse for the fall.

That's super cool.

So we're kind of thinking about, you know, how we will do it. It'll still be focused on entrepreneurial mindset, but we've even talked about incorporating, I won't name the organization cuz we just had conversation, but incorporating a larger organization's curriculum and just putting it in the metaverse. So we're kind of, and making it like some type of certificate. So we're looking at different ways of how we can give students that real hands-on experience. 'Cause with entrepreneurship and venture capital, you have to do it to learn it. It's not something you can learn from a test.

Mm-hmm.

Or even really a book. You know, you can read all day, but you really have to be hands-on and actually do it. to really get in and really grasp how to do entrepreneurship, how to do venture capital, what it's like. So using this metaverse Oculus technology to be able to introduce students to that hands-on, real-life experience.

I love that. And in terms of your experience, who would you say are the people, either investors, founders, other educators who have had the most profound impact on your journey? Wow.

So for investors, I will start with Brandon Brooks of Overlook Ventures.

Mm-hmm.

He's amazing.

Incredible. Um, shout out, shout out Brandon and Janine.

Yeah. Just even his journey has just helped keep me encouraged cuz this journey is hard. It's not easy being, especially being an entrepreneur slash now director slash professor. Wearing many hats. So Brandon really helps to keep me encouraged. Also, of course, Arlan Hamilton's journey and how she didn't take the traditional path. She was an outsider, and now she's become like this model for how to do VC in a way that it serves all people and not just a small group of people. And then my ultimate, like, shero Is Melissa Bradley from 1863 Ventures. Like, she was a Black woman in VC before it was cool to be a Black woman in VC. She's a professor, she's a serial entrepreneur. So much of what she's doing is what I have wanted to do, am doing. I got the pleasure of meeting her this year because she's helping us with putting together our Center for Black Entrepreneurship at Morehouse and Spelman College. And she's just amazing and just all she's overcome. And the fact that she just keeps at it, she keeps a positive attitude. So they really inspire me. From an entrepreneur standpoint, I would say is Dr. Randall Pinkett. He's a tech entrepreneur in the Boston area. And I love that he has a Black entrepreneur that has grown his business to be a multimillion dollar business. Like it's definitely over a $100 million business. I don't know the exact amount cuz he 'Cause he's private, but he's never taken any investor capital.

Oh, wow.

Never, never taken any investor capital. He built the business with 4 of his college buddies, and he's just amazing in his thoughtfulness, in his approach to entrepreneurship. His, he's just a wealth of knowledge. And so his journey encourages me 'cause again, he had this large tech business before it was cool to be a Black tech founder.

Yeah.

And the fact that he was able to do it right after college with his college buddy, he's an engineer by trade, uh, and just how he's been able to grow without having to take any invested capitalism.

Yeah, that's incredible. So you are also a business coach and you've established and led initiatives for competency development, coaching, action learning, mentoring, 360 feedback, over 800 hours. So what are the most common topics that come up in your conversations?

The most common topics, of course, fundraising. How do I get money?

Oh yeah.

How do I get money to start this business? Or, you know, while I'm making money, how do I make more money? And working through strategies on how to do that. Definitely customer discovery, because every entrepreneur wants to skip that part. And so I always start with like, well, first of all, before we talk about anything, who's your target audience? Who, who are we building value for here? Very rarely do they have that figured out. So I usually spend a lot of time helping people figure out who their target audience is and being clear on the value that they provide. Mm-hmm. Because everybody wants to skip that step.

That's so interesting. That's like part of our investment thesis is we invest in founders that are like obsessed with that aspect of the business, like the customer discovery part.

Yeah. Most of the people I run into, they wanna skip it.

Yeah. It's definitely not the, mm-hmm. the easiest part, but I think that it's so valuable to use it directly.

It makes or breaks your business. Yeah. The other thing is helping people, like if they have one product, kind of figuring out how they can create multiple cash flow vehicles with their one business instead of having like 8 or 9 different businesses that's bringing in money. How can we create multiple avenues of revenue through this one business. And so helping people kind of think through that and other things that they can offer, uh, is what really comes up a lot. So, and then of course now how people can get investments, you know, looking at people's pitch decks. What do I need in my pitch deck?

So I'm curious, like in those specific areas, what are some of the frameworks that you often walk through with aspiring or very, very early stage entrepreneurs?

I always go back to that business model canvas cuz it's so easy to one page. Here's some questions. Let's think through these things. Let's dig deep and helping them, uh, get that business model canvas tight. Uh, with customer discovery, I actually have kind of a template of a list of questions you could ask customers.

Mm-hmm.

And just, you know, have people adjust them. I usually recommend like 3 to 5 from that whole list. That people can adjust to fit their target market. But I also, HubSpot has a customer discovery question generator.

Oh, cool.

So I always recommend— Oh, sweet.

I'll link that in the show notes.

Yeah, I always recommend that, uh, customer discovery question generator, cuz you just put in your business and industry and it at least gives you a starting point.

Yeah.

So those are some of the frameworks. And then in my coaching model, I use what's called the growth coaching model. And so it looks at what are your goals? What's the reality of what's happening right now? What are the opportunities to kind of get to where you want to be? What are you willing to do? And so narrowing down exactly what the entrepreneur is going to do to achieve where they say they want to go, getting a timeline. I need a date on when you're going to do that by so I can hold you accountable, but then also helping them to think through. How are you gonna make this a habit? How are you gonna sustain this and not just do it one time in your business, but sustain it throughout your business? What does that success look like and how do you know you've accomplished this reality you wanna achieve? So my coaching process kind of goes through those questions and helping, uh, people reframe. I always tell people, if you have a coach, specifically a business coach, that is giving you advice, they are not coaching you. That is mentoring. Yeah. A good coach knows how to ask the right questions to pull that goal out of you and pull those, that information out of you. And, you know, you may have to think through if it's something you don't know. Okay, well then I'm gonna ask, well, where can you go to find that information instead of me giving you that answer? Because when people can come up with their own answers, they're much more likely to do it than me telling you, you need to do this. I love that. Because most of us don't like people telling us what to do. I know I'm one of those people.

Yeah. I'm actually meeting, I'm meeting with my coach right after this, and I think that's the one thing that I Really appreciate so much is it is just a very safe space to explore the questions that she very thoughtfully asked about different aspects of my personal growth or my business growth. And you don't often get that time as an entrepreneur, so I feel like having a coach can be really beneficial in that it's that protected time where you get to reflect on both like strategic and like shorter-term tactical frameworks to approach things. So. I would definitely, it's probably like one of the best investments I've made in like personal growth. Yeah. So what would you, or so as a venture capital fellow lead at HBCU VC, you offered a venture capital fellowship and clinic to students at historically Black colleges and universities, also called HBCUs, and Hispanic Serving Institutes, HSIs.

Yes.

So your comprehensive approach offers skill training, mentorship, and access to professional networks. So I'd love to hear about some of the impact this program has had and where some of your students might be today.

Yeah, absolutely. So a lot of our students from HBCUs and MSIs, they're coming from what we call innovation deserts. So many of them have never even heard of venture capital. They're not attending schools that have a venture capital class. Thankfully, Morehouse does have one now. We're one of the few HBCUs that do. Just wanna give that shout out. But they've never heard the term. They have no idea what it is. And it's, it's the whole environment is just new to them. So one, the impact is just them understanding how wealth is built and how the startup funding cycle really works. It's not, you know, I'm gonna put my business on Instagram and I'm gonna go viral and be a millionaire tomorrow. That's not, that's not how that works, but that's how a lot of them think it works. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So just getting them understanding of how that startup funding cycle works. The other part is, which I think is the most important part, is the network. Because a lot of Black and brown founders and investors lack access to networks, right? They're not in the circles. So HBCU VC has one of the top community of Black and brown founders and investors in one place. You will not find A better community than HBCU VC and their Slack.

I love that. Yeah, I've heard like incredible things about the, the Slack there.

Yeah. So the, the people that the students get to interact with on a regular basis, and I'll give you an example, just even because of HBCU VC's relationship at Morehouse and Spelman, we took our fellows to the Startup Grind Conference in California. Arlan Hamilton happened to be a speaker. She is a supporter of HBCBC. So I literally just sent her a Twitter message like, hey, our students are coming to California. I see you're speaking. Would you be willing to meet with them? And they were able to meet her and take a picture.

Aww.

That wouldn't have been possible without that community with HBCBC.

That's incredible.

And then just getting them in the field. So we have so many students now that have graduated from HBCUs and HSIs and right outta undergrad are going to work for venture capital funds. That's almost unheard of even at a PWI, predominantly white institution.

Yeah.

So it's just that journey of getting students in a place where they understand how wealth is built, putting them in a position where they can build that wealth. And really how I got into it, it was because we realized based on a report the founder Hadia had done that 40% of venture capitalists in the ecosystem that graduated from an HBCU 40% come out of Morehouse.

Wow.

And so it's like, if we're already producing that talent, we need to be preparing our students, right, to go and make that sale.

Community tighter and having a tighter pipeline around it. Yeah.

Yeah. So now, you know, we have a lot of those alum that are VCs are coming back and speaking to our class and doing office hours with entrepreneurs and really giving back because we created kind of that community. And that wouldn't have been possible Without HBCU VC.

Oh, that makes me so happy. That's what I'm like trying to do in a small way. I went to like a San Diego State, so we definitely weren't like high on lists of alum going into venture. We're also working on building a community through like a class and a competition there. So it's, it's been really cool to see, like hopefully in 10 years there'll be like a higher percentage. But as we're, as we're wrapping up, one, what's one thing you think any aspiring investor can do to set themselves up for career success, even if they're still in school?

Network your behind. So as a venture capitalist, one, you need a network of entrepreneurs, right?

Mm-hmm.

That, that deal flow consistently coming in. And then secondly, you need to know other VCs that you can share deal flow with. So for someone that's starting and just even learning the trade, putting yourself in an environment where you can Network with entrepreneurs, find entrepreneurs. Depending on where you live, that can be difficult, but it's much easier in this virtual world, right? With computers. I tell all my students, even students that, you know, are not really into social media, like, you need to be on Twitter. That's where the magic happens. Get on Twitter, follow these VCs, follow these top entrepreneurs. They show up in all these lists and articles. Follow them on social media, engage. So building that network of entrepreneurs, but then also Connecting with other VCs. Oftentimes I tell students to go to your alumni network first. I love that LinkedIn has a feature where you can go to your school's page.

Mm-hmm.

And you can narrow down alumni by where they work at, where they live, what type of things they do. And so I show my students how to do that and like just reach out and say, hey, you know, I'm a student at Morehouse College thinking about going into venture capital. Would love to talk to you about your experience and your journey and transition from Morehouse to, you know, your job as a VC. And just networking so much. And I, I can even attest, being at Morehouse, I have seen students that even weren't great academically. Yeah, but they networked their behind off and they got really good jobs.

Yeah.

Because they made sure they— I mean, of course they performed well and had, you know, some people are not the best students, but they can do the work. Right. And so I've seen them, you know, get really good jobs. So I think the most important thing is really Having that network, cuz even in learning VC and learning business, you learn best from people who are doing it.

Right. And everyone has like very different perspectives on like how to do VC depending on what region you're in, stage you're in. Mm-hmm. And so I think having a diversity of perspectives there can be super, super valuable. Yes. And well, I've so enjoyed this, Lavanya. And to wrap us up, do you, where can people find you on the internet?

I'm all over the internet. I'm on all the things. You can find me on Facebook @coachlavanyajones, one word, Twitter @coachlavanya. I'm on Instagram @coachlavanyajones. My website is consciouslyfunded.com. Where else am I? I'm on LinkedIn @coachlavanyajones.

There we go. Thanks so much for tuning in today to Seed to Harvest. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe wherever your favorite podcast listening platform is. I'll be releasing new episodes weekly, and if you have any questions or comments, feel free to let me know on Twitter. That's Paige Finn— Paige and then Finn with 3 N's. Thanks, and see you again next week!