How Casey Richardson is bringing access to knowledge, community, and money to Black female entrepreneurs
Discover the ways Casey Richardson used her experience in tech funding to found BLAZE Group and empower a community of Black women who are entrepreneurs.
Two and a half years ago, Casey Richardson's lifestyle was differently. She was from the Bay Area and worked for Bank of America, structuring massive loans for tech companies. But she found that she was often the only Black female member of the team -- and throughout her 10 years being as a finance professional, she never saw any funding allocated to any Black business.
"It proved to me that not just did the information not get there, but that the capital was not being distributed to my communities," Casey recalls.
In October of 2020, Casey decided to change her mind.
With her extensive experience with tech-related funding as well as business, she quit her 9-to-5 job and founded the BLAZE Group -- Building leaders and accepting no Excuses in order to offer guidance, education and a community for the traditionally underserved group of Black female entrepreneurs.
In 2023, BLAZE Group is a company that BLAZE Group offers online courses via the Blaze Knowledge Academy, group coaching as well as an online community an app, on-site retreats and a biannual summit, and proprietary research that is led by Casey and her team of global experts.
How could she have done it in just two years? The answer is a combination of providing tools that satisfy a certain unmet need, a deliberate audience building, and choosing the right tools and team.
From finance expert in corporate to the game-changing entrepreneur
Before becoming an entrepreneur full-time, Casey worked as a financial professional, structuring multibillion-dollar loans for tech companies. This kept her up-to-date with technology advancements. However, she noticed a gap between her colleagues and the companies they funded. "I was always the only Black woman on the team. It proved to the world that I had a degree, my knowledge as well as my experiences were unavailable in my local communities."
Black women make up the most successful segment of entrepreneurs in the United States -- but just 3% of them have "mature" companies, while the majority of entrepreneurs self-fund startup capital. There's a major disparity regarding the amount of funding and other resources that are available to Black women entrepreneurs compared to their white male counterparts.
As of the summer of 2020 Casey took part in the demonstrations against the brutality of police. The community she felt and the strength she found that she had not felt in everyday work. "I was more alive when I protested more than I did during all my years in the sexy business," she says. "I found myself rubbing shoulders with those who were brave enough and brave enough to make decisions which actually are important."
At the end of October, she had come to terms at the end of the road for her job in finance at a corporate companyand not because of her success and was, but because of it. What else could she utilize her expertise? What could she do to use her experience in technology and finance to assist other Black women be successful?
"I'm very comfortable within these four walls. Yet, I'd bet on myself every day and believe I could take up even more space in the world. So I quit."
She took a break from her job, moved to Africa, and started creating BLAZE Group, a location-independent company that is empowering Black women around the world to accomplish the identical thing.
BLAZE The Group specifically targets entrepreneurs in the initial three years of building their business, which Casey refers to as"the "entrepreneurial phase."
"BLAZE exists to really help them understand how to lead their businesses to keep them around. And we do that with technology-enabled solutions. We are one of them." she adds.
To reach out to this group, Casey had to build genuine relationships with them.
The reasons to build your email database (and how to start)
Casey decided to develop a highly business-focused online course from the jump -- but it was important to build an audience prior to when she even launched her initial product.
Casey didn't want that to happen with the launch of BLAZE's initial product. Thus, she approached the first audience-building activity with a specific goal in mind that was to create an email list.
Why do people choose email subscribers over the social media users? "I realized that I was looking to be able to get personal relationships," explains Casey.
"On Instagram, you don't control the relationship. You don't know which email address they have or If their handle change, you better hope you are aware of what their current handle is," Casey says.
"I wanted to own relationships , and be in front of them regularly to create that reputation and establish trust."
Reaching out to her existing networks
15-minute discovery call to her intended public
1. Contacting her current contacts
There's a lot of advice online on how you can grow your audience, and most creators believe that their initial customers are strangers who discovered their site via social media. If you create with your first audience it's missing an enormous sources of help this includes your family and friends!
Casey reached out to everyone within her circle to let people know she'd started a newsletter about entrepreneurship and asking if they'd like to subscribe.
"I began by looking over my recent text messages, Instagram DMs, Twitter and Facebook... I set the timer and did as many of them as I could, in five-minute increments," she describes.
Numerous family members and friends took Casey up on the offer as she started to create an impressive email list prior to the build into her product's launch.
2. 15-minute discovery call with her target group of customers
One of the most effective ways to get to know them is by talking to them.
Casey published a tweet on her social media accounts, revealing her plans to create an educational course designed to help Black women understand business management. "If you would like me to talk with you for 15 minutes and have questions, please do let me know," she added.
She was aware that those who set up a call to her were her primary people: Black women interested in entrepreneurial endeavors.
Instead of chatting about course content or selling her own, Casey asked questions like, "What keeps you up in the night? What's your most feared worry? If you only had one year, what do you wanna have to be?" She used the time to make the women feel heard and valued. In turn, she discovered what she needed to include in her class contents.
"Just being there for them and helping them feel secure is a big component in the magic."
"By the conclusion of the majority of these calls, people were asking, "Can I buy the course now Do you have a discount on the course?" Casey remembers. She was still building the course, but she collected the email addresses of those who signed up and promised to let them know when it launched.
Once the course was complete, she tweeted it to the email list that she had created using these two strategies. "There was already this excitement from everyone. They were ready to enroll."
What did they find? The majority of the women she spoke to in the initial call converted into customers.
After more than two years, Casey still offers free discovery calls in her sales procedure. Should potential customers have any questions regarding Blaze Business Intensive, Blaze Business Intensive, they are able to arrange an Free Perfect Fit Call with Casey.
"On average, it requires five follow-ups in order to conclude a deal. I don't think enough entrepreneurs know that," says Casey. "I use those calls to really make the sale."
How working with the right tools and people helps Casey scale her business
Presently, BLAZE offers online courses and masterclasses, group coaching programs as well as an online community. webinars as well as the TablexTribe app for mobile devices and a biannual online conference (a 2022 Webby Awards honoree to be recognized for its excellence in business and Finance), and proprietary research.
How does she manage all of those things with such a high level of intention and love?
Casey has set up an international team of professionals who help her scale different parts of her company, such as:
Blogger and content marketer based in Nigeria
A junior consultant located in London
Production and brand manager (her fiance!) who grew the BLAZE Group Instagram from 1,300 followers in May 2022 to 70,000+ at the start of 2023
An executive assistant in Kenya
A research analyst who publishes research documents across industries, helping BLAZE to find new clients for consulting
Production assistant to the semi-annual Blaze Virtual Summit
She does not just recruit new employees and hires the tools, too.
"I employ tools with rapidity," Casey laughs. "And I like that since there's an amount of scale."
A rise in revenues doesn't necessarily indicate that your business has grown, particularly when you're putting in more effort or are spending more money to achieve that growth.
"The rise in revenue must not be the primary goal," explains Casey. "If you're increasing your expenses in the same way the revenue is growing the bottom line won't alter."
"Scale happens when you can boost revenue but your expenses and the time that you invest do not change much."
Previous experience in tech has taught Casey the power of no-code tools Integrations, automations, and integrations are. In the process of establishing BLAZE Group, she leveraged the low-cost and no-code options such as Zapier to keep everything running seamlessly.
What Casey makes use of her course, community, and downloads
" was the first application I used to offer things on a larger scale." Casey shares.
Tools like give Casey "more time to do intentional things," like the one-on-one meetings she makes with potential clients.
Casey built her first digital product, the Blaze Business Intensive online course that includes . It's a self-paced six-week class that focuses on "Business Building, Business Management and Business Excellence for today's Black Woman."
"It was completely no-code. It was actually designed by me back when was doing the 14-day free trials," Casey remembers. "I constructed all of the course in the time frame and began selling it prior to the expiration date to be profitable."
(Want to be like Casey's? Sign up for the free plan for the time you'll need to get your course content setup, then you can upgrade when you're ready to begin selling.)
The course is part the Blaze Knowledge Academy an assortment of business education resources Casey developed on her site. The Academy also includes:
Numerous entrepreneurship masterclasses. Many of which are offered at no cost
Her online community, known as the Blaze Women's Network , with nearly 7,000 members
"People are able to join the Blaze Women's Network absolutely free," Casey explains. We do virtual coworking sessions, I host webinars, which then lead participants into paid classes."
Alongside introducing clients to products that are helpful, Casey's community gives members the opportunity to be surrounded by a welcoming and encouraging environment to meet other founders.
"It used to be that content was the king of the hill, but now things are shifting towards a culture where community is the king. Many are looking for programs that are centered around community... as well as communities that don't feel like spam are perceived as authentic."
The results of her experience with it have given Casey a rubric for the qualities to be looking for in a no-code creator tool. "You have an extremely flexible system that's allowed me to do some end-to-end solutions on your platform," Casey explains. "And I've used the similar scorecard when assessing software because I'm hoping to expand to it."
"It truly is beautiful to use strategies that transform the world through ways that are efficient and easily accessible to the people who have been marginalized in the past."
Don't try to do everything all at once
In light of all that Casey has accomplished within just two years of running BLAZE Her advice for new creators might come as surprising: Try to do less -- at least when you first get into the game.
"Keep what's important that is the most important thing" she says. Hustle culture teaches new entrepreneurs that it's impossible to finish all the work or content created. But Casey encourages other creators to remember "There's only one limit to what you can accomplish, no matter how amazing you are."
"You aren't required to master every single thing right from the box, and it's going to be really, really hard to perfect several things at once when you're just starting."
She suggests starting with a signature offering and then build upon that. "I began with my Blaze Intensive, my first course. It is my main course. Entrepreneurs should spend time figuring out what their unique product should be and the things they would like to be recognized for before they start adding on many other things."
There's plenty to consider at first: your messaging, target audience, marketing, technology, customers' satisfaction. But once you do? You open up the potential to explore a lot more.
"I am convinced that we have the capacity to accomplish millions of things. Maybe in 200 years. Because Blaze will still be around. But that doesn't need to be happening today."
We're thrilled to be being a part of the journey of Casey and can't wait to see what's coming next for Casey and BLAZE Group -- this year, 200 years down the road and every day between.