The ADNA Explores the Entrepreneurial Journey of Bold Blind Beauty's Stephanae McCoy
May 18, 2024Season 4Episode 6
Stephanae McCoy
Episode title and number: The ADNA Explores the Entrepreneurial Journey of Bold Blind Beauty's Stephanae McCoy 4-#6
Summary of the show: In this cross-promotional episode of "The ADNA Presents," Roy Samuelson speaks with special returning guest Stephanae McCoy, founder of Bold Blind Beauty. Stephanae shares her creative passion and the evolution of Bold Blind Beauty from a simple blog to a global community. She discusses the personal and technical challenges she faces as an entrepreneur with sight loss, and how storytelling has become a central focus in demystifying blindness.
Listeners will gain insight into her self-taught skills in audio and video production, her strategic pivots, and her deep commitment to inclusivity and authentic connection. Stephanae also offers valuable advice to aspiring entrepreneurs and highlights the importance of believing in possibilities.
Bullet points of key topics & timestamps: 00:00 | Welcome and Introduction to Stephanae McCoy 00:11 | The Entrepreneurial Journey of Bold Blind Beauty 01:01 | Exploring the Essence of Beauty Beyond Sight 04:04 | The Power of Storytelling in Demystifying Blindness 07:47 | Behind the Scenes: The Making of Bold Blind Beauty 12:27 | The Personal Challenges of Entrepreneurship and Disability 18:04 | The Future of Bold Blind Beauty and Final Thoughts
Episode title and number: The ADNA Explores the Entrepreneurial Journey of Bold Blind Beauty's Stephanae McCoy 4-#6
Summary of the show: In this cross-promotional episode of "The ADNA Presents," Roy Samuelson speaks with special returning guest Stephanae McCoy, founder of Bold Blind Beauty. Stephanae shares her creative passion and the evolution of Bold Blind Beauty from a simple blog to a global community. She discusses the personal and technical challenges she faces as an entrepreneur with sight loss, and how storytelling has become a central focus in demystifying blindness.
Listeners will gain insight into her self-taught skills in audio and video production, her strategic pivots, and her deep commitment to inclusivity and authentic connection. Stephanae also offers valuable advice to aspiring entrepreneurs and highlights the importance of believing in possibilities.
Bullet points of key topics & timestamps: 00:00 | Welcome and Introduction to Stephanae McCoy 00:11 | The Entrepreneurial Journey of Bold Blind Beauty 01:01 | Exploring the Essence of Beauty Beyond Sight 04:04 | The Power of Storytelling in Demystifying Blindness 07:47 | Behind the Scenes: The Making of Bold Blind Beauty 12:27 | The Personal Challenges of Entrepreneurship and Disability 18:04 | The Future of Bold Blind Beauty and Final Thoughts
Welcome to the AD& A Presents. Today, we have another very special returning guest, Stephanae McCoy of Bold Blind Beauty. She has joined us and shared so much about her entrepreneurship journey that we wanted to explore a little bit behind the scenes on how she gets all her stuff done. And Steph, thanks for joining us.
Stephanae McCoy:
You Roy, it's always such a pleasure to be here.
Roy Samuelson:
I can hear your smile already. We usually start with what you love about audio description. I'm going to change the initial question to you and ask what you love about being an entrepreneur.
Stephanae McCoy:
What I love about being an entrepreneur is the creative process. I think it's really apparent. I am a creative at heart. So anything that has to do with coming up with ideas and making those ideas a reality is something that I think is really central to who I am. You know, when I started the Bold, Blind Beauty journey, it started with an idea of how to Help people to understand what blindness is, what it looks like, and most importantly, the capabilities of blind people. And so the idea came about through a talk that I did with blind women about how to apply makeup. You know, a lot of people think that blind people don't like makeup. They don't care about how they appear, you know, dress wise and those types of things, and nothing could be further from the truth. From the truth, these women were so engaged and asked so many questions about makeup application and things that it got me to thinking that this was a need and it was something that needed to be talked about.
Roy Samuelson:
I love it. And it sounds like that idea you initially came to that passion. That's been your driving creative force is evolved so much beyond makeup.
Stephanae McCoy:
Oh, definitely. Definitely. Cause that started out like, sort of like the. The thing. Uh huh. And then of course, beauty fell into that. And of course, the way I view beauty, for me, it's always been a personal thing. It came from my grandmother. My grandmother used to say, you know, you can take a person who's ever so beautiful on the outside, but if they're ugly on the inside, you'll know it. You know, it's just very apparent. And yet on the other hand, you could have someone who may not be as physically attractive, but if they have a beautiful spirit, a beautiful soul, you see that just as well. And honestly, when I think about it, I, you know, when we're young, all of us are like beautiful when we're young, right? Cause we place a high priority on youth. Aren't focused on that. What's inside when we're young, we are going to get older. If we're less fortunate enough to, to get older, what are we going to have to fall back on? You know, because as we get older, depending on our genes, sometimes that exterior beauty fades, you know, if you don't have anything else, that's more substantial inside of you, you know, where are you at? So for me, beauty has always been deeply personal. It's always been something that truly resides on the inside. And one of the lessons that my sight loss has has shown me is that beauty is just, it can be experienced in a myriad of ways. Even having the background of my grandmother's stories and things about beauty is far deeper than what I thought.
Roy Samuelson:
I love how you explore that. That deepness beyond the, the makeup, the people that you involve in your podcast, the people you involve in your articles, the, the videos, all of that substantialness, the, the, the bold of the bold, blind beauty really revolves around the story of, of people's sight loss. I love how you say in the, on your actual website, How you've, how you've crafted what Bold Blind Beauty is. Demystifying blindness through storytelling. That seems to have been a super core value that you've brought to the website. And everything really tethers and anchors to that. And I'm curious about how that storytelling anchors to your creative process.
Stephanae McCoy:
So initially, when I started Bold Blind Beauty, the tagline was because it did revolve around beauty, real beauty transcends barriers, and those barriers were not just the physical barriers in our world, but those barriers that are erected by us humans in society. And I do believe that, and it does go much deeper. But then as. The site has evolved over the years and this creative process, I started going through it as I do periodically. And I thought about it and it's like all these stories and I'm sharing of these, these amazing people who are all on the blindness spectrum. It is through storytelling that we're able to make a change. And impact society and challenge people to think beyond the exterior to think beyond people's disabilities to think beyond the differences, because really differences. Are not a bad thing. I think differences are beautiful, and it does make the tapestry of life so much more interesting, you know, to have those interlocking threads of different colors and textures, and it just makes it so. So beautiful, you know, and when you think about the world and everything that's in it, and, you know, we're all the world's populated with all these different people. If we just had 1 sort of person, or 2 sorts of people, it'd be rather dull, but we don't. And so when I think about the creative process with bold, blind beauty and the things that. You know, I do here and the storytelling really came to the forefront. You know, I couldn't articulate that in the beginning. It's grown. Um, I like the word pivot, although I think it is overused, but we've had to pivot so many different times and so many different directions. Even that process has been so illuminating to me. Because I'll think of something and it's like, okay, I want to do this. This is the idea. This is how we're going to do it. This is the plan we're going to follow to get to the end goal. And then as we're like midway through, sometimes not even midway through, we have to pivot and it ends up being a great detour. You know, a lot of people get anxious with uncertainty. I'm one of them. But when it happens, when we lean into it, it can really, um, bring about some miraculous things.
Roy Samuelson:
Yeah, I hear that. I love the, uh, the pivot from the focus on barriers to the focus on demystifying blindness feels like it's also so aligned with, with where you're headed. That seems to also align with the, the spectrum of blindness that you talked about the nuance. We've been talking about the nuance and audio description since as far as I can remember talking about how those different approaches really matter. And I see in your weaving of the tapestries of these different people's stories within the bold blind beauty, um, content that demystifying comes through so clearly now that you focused on demystifying blindness through storytelling, that clarity. Just source and it's no wonder that you're having the successes that you are in the outreach that you have Can we talk a little bit about the behind the scenes? One of the reasons I wanted to interview you again is to to really explore how you get what you get done like you ship You deliver. You have articles. You have podcasts. You have videos. You've got newsletters. You're an entrepreneur. How? How?
Stephanae McCoy:
Honestly, you know, I sit here and I ask myself the same thing and then it's like, you know, there must be something wrong with me because when I really sit down and think about it, there's a lot. Bold, Blind Beauty started out as a simple blog.
Roy Samuelson:
Yeah.
Stephanae McCoy:
Just a simple blog, writing some articles. And then I reached out to other people and asked them to submit articles. And then, uh, later on down the road, we started doing videos. So we had to have a YouTube channel to host those videos. And then someone on my team thought it'd be a great idea to create a podcast. And I'm like, okay, I did the research and found that that was a great idea. It was a matter of how to do it. Because I had no idea, you know, I had to learn how to build out the website. I knew nothing about blogging. I knew nothing about web design. I knew nothing. I actually took a whole year or a year and a half or so just to do research. I took some online courses to teach myself how to do it. And then how to deliver so everything that I have done behind the scenes, I've taught myself for editing the audio for the podcast. I use audacity when I first opened up audacity. I was scared to death because I had never seen an audio editing program before. And I'm looking at this thing and it made no sense. And I'm thinking, there's just no way, you know, I don't know how I'm going to do this, but thank goodness we have YouTube. Because YouTube is where I go to, to learn most of the things that I do. Actually on our YouTube channel, I took courses on how to make the best out of our channel and how to do thumbnails and how to do the uploads, what to put into the description, putting in channel markers, all All of that stuff was stuff that I had to learn how to do, and I'm still learning every day. I'm learning more stuff with the website, particularly WordPress. That's who I use for my website has changed so significantly. Through the years, since I first began, I honestly can't keep up with all of the changes because not only am I working with WordPress, but also the e commerce component and then my print on demand service, which provides the products. That I host on the store, it's like so many things are interconnected. I am pretty tech savvy. So with, you know, platforms that I use, I use Google for nearly everything because everything's hosted in cloud. So if I lose access to, you know, my computer or whatever, it crashes, everything is hosted there and I can get it. I I don't lose anything. It's really a lot. It's a lot. And organization, I think is, is very key because I have to know where to pull the different pieces of information that I have. I have a very advanced file system that I use on my desktop and on Google drive. As well as even in my email and everything where I sort of pull everything together.
Roy Samuelson:
Uh, the laundry list from YouTube to Google to WordPress to Audacity. You and I have a personal joke that's been running for several years about, uh, why iPhones are better than Androids. And I think you've proven me wrong yet again.
Stephanae McCoy:
To be honest, they both have their values, right? And it is a matter of personal preference, but you know where I'm, I'm always team Android. But I love, I love my iPhone friends too. I love you guys. Totally, no.
Roy Samuelson:
We just went public. I love how the self tie from YouTube to everything else that you have taken the initiative to to get done what you need to get done. And I can't help but think that it comes back from that initial idea, that passion that you have to get this message out, that that has been the driving force. I'd imagine a lot of the frustrations being a person on the blindness spectrum adds extra challenges to the, to the process. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Stephanae McCoy:
It definitely does. And that's the one story that I almost never talk about.
Roy Samuelson:
Really?
Stephanae McCoy:
I share the stories of all these other people. But I never share the story that I'm actually living and just how challenging it is. You know, entrepreneurship is hard for anyone and you will never hear me say, it's all about coming up with an idea and putting it out to the universe because there's so much more to it than that. And honestly, anybody who will tell you that they either have the fine. Finances, the resources, people, whatever they have behind them to get them up and running, or there's something else going on. And if, if somebody saying that you need to question how, how they're doing it, it's, it's difficult not being able to see very well. And when I say not being able to see very well, I cannot see out of my right eye at all. I have no, no vision. Functional vision in my right eye, my left eye can only be measured with finger counting or hand waving. So I very rarely use a screen reader. I rely very heavily on magnification. Thank goodness. I can still do that. However, um, I will use screen reader technology when there is a lot of text or something, but you add in the time that it takes to do the task that I do with my level of sight, sight loss, it will blow your mind. And, and it also increases my anxiety and stress levels because it is so important to get the message out there. To me, the message is so important. It supersedes everything. And that means even my own story, which I don't talk about. So thank you for asking that.
Roy Samuelson:
Yes. It's an honor to hear your story and to know the level of dedication that's going on behind the scenes. The challenge is, as a entrepreneur. Adding on the disability just, uh, compounds things, but that drive seems to keep you going. When those obstacles inevitably come up, those, the irony, barriers in technology, what are your go to ways to, to get through the, the anxiety, to get to the finish line when things feel like they're just not going the way you want?
Stephanae McCoy:
Oh, that's such a good question. And it's a complicated one at the same time. Honestly, I think it just depends on the situation. It depends on the day, you know, what else might be going on in my life? Because that's the other thing, uh, to it, you know, this that I'm doing is. Is difficult and I still have a life, you know, I, I have a dog that I have to care for. He needs my attention. I have, uh, grown children and grandchildren, you know, when they're here, I can't do my work. That means so much to me. So it's about prioritizing, you know, what comes first and trying to really be present in the moment. But when I'm feeling super anxious, a lot of times, the thing that helps me most is just to unplug. Just to stop everything, it's still sometimes causes me a little bit of anxiety and I'll feel it because my heart will race a little bit. But when I unplug and pull away, it allows me to rest and then to refocus. So, then, when I come back to it, the answers are usually there. They're, they're a little more clearer to me because sometimes when I'm working through the problem, I'm so focused on that barrier. That's right in front of me that I can't see whatever is right behind it because I'm just literally, I'm going to say it. I'm blinded by the barrier. This right in front of me, or maybe it's not even right in front of me. Maybe the answer is right in front of me, but I can't see it. Because I'm so clouded by the, uh, the anxiety and the stress.
Roy Samuelson:
To be able to see how staying present and also unplugging, it's almost counterintuitive that that is the solve. That that perspective change gives you the ability to see the barriers in a different light, in a different perspective. I'm still using the, um, uh, the sight analogy here. But there's something about the, that perspective change. I think about a quote that I heard. 10 years ago, Salvatore Ambulando, I'm probably mispronouncing it, but it, it basically translates in Latin to, it is solved by walking. And it's that step of literally getting outside, getting some fresh air and moving and changing perspective. Somehow that, that helps. And it's, it is so counterintuitive. It feels like nothing. I can hear your work ethic is so strong that, that. That heart racing of, I'm going to unplug now, I can relate to that.
Stephanae McCoy:
It's true. And, you know, as I said before, to, to friends that are close to me, I had to literally write out the word breathe. Wow. On post it notes. So, I have it on my laptop, I have it on my mirror in my bathroom, and I have one on my nightstand. I have it everywhere to remind me when I look at that word, it's like, okay, it's time to just step away. Because sometimes when we're so focused, the answer's there. It's just that we're so focused on the problem, we can't see the solution.
Roy Samuelson:
Wow. Yeah. How do you feel about where things are headed with bold, blind beauty? As far as your process, you've talked about the pivot, you've talked about the new approach and you've shared some behind the scenes, you know, the self taught aspect. How are things going? Where do you see things headed with bold, blind beauty?
Stephanae McCoy:
So the beginning of this year, we had a plan, and unfortunately, things weren't going to plan, and now I find myself in this weird space of, I did say I was going to put myself out there in 2024, so, um, I have begun that process, and I'm beginning to. Share the scenes. I begun the process of putting myself out there by having some brand photos taken. So I'm working on doing a truly behind the scenes leading up to that actual brand shoot. So I'm working on putting together the video, you know, editing it and everything, and I'll share that story. I want to pitch my local TV news stations here in Pittsburgh about the story of bold, blind beauty, uh, specifically for global accessibility awareness day. 16th, so I'm hoping that I can get on if I cannot, that's fine. I'm not going to let that prevent me from continuing to pitch to, you know, sell whatever store it is that they might want to be able to, uh, present and I do have some higher goals in terms of, you know, Cause I would like to do it on a local level and on a national level and really globally. I know that this is possible because we even have global team members. So we have a team member in Russia, a team member in New Zealand, team members in Australia and Canada. And for me, that is so huge because if you would have asked me. You know, would I be working with people in these countries, you know, several years ago, I would have said, well, how am I going to do that? How am I? No, that's not going to happen. You know, I'm here in Pittsburgh. We're not, no, we're not global, but we are. So I think that's another story that needs to be told the people behind the scenes who dedicate their time to, um, help me share the message of bold, blind beauty. I think that is just as important. It's, it's just so critical because when you have a story that is so compelling that other people believe in it. Believe in it to the point where they're like, we want to help you to do this and no, you don't have to worry about paying us. That to me is huge.
Roy Samuelson:
I hear the, the message of bold, blind beauty. And I hear how you putting yourself out there does not contradict that message of bold, blind beauty, that you yourself by putting yourself out there are a part of bold, blind beauty. And I'd imagine that that. Acceptance yourself was its own process. How was that for you?
Stephanae McCoy:
It's really kind of weird in a way, because initially when I first started it, Bold Blind Beauty, that is, I created, you know, the typical things. I came up with the name, I came up with the website, the email address and everything, then the Facebook page, and then later on Instagram. At some point I had Twitter. I no longer have X. However, one thing I didn't do is create a page on LinkedIn because I felt like Stephanae McCoy was bold, blind beauty. And to some degree, I think people that have connected me recognize that. We had, uh, one of my dear friends who helped me to get bold, blind beauty to where it was in 2019. She passed away. She hosted a focus group for bold, blind beauty. And out of that focus group, the people who participated, the theme that came out of that was they felt that bold, blind beauty was me as, as a person. And that, I was reachable, they could talk to me, and that was what set me apart from other companies that were out there, you know, sort of selling their wares and sort of preaching at people. They felt like I was talking with people, not talking to people and that I listen and that they could relate to me and I could relate to them. And it's truly a give and take. Relationship with myself and the people that I connect with, you know, when I 1st started out, I said, if I could reach 1 person, then I know that I have, I have done well, and I've reached more than 1 person. I have a folder that I call. foot folder where I keep messages that people send me when they tell me things like, you know, that article you wrote about how you felt about your white cane and how you came to accept it, how you came to accept your sight loss that really helped me to, uh, see my journey a little bit differently that. Is powerful and that is connection and that is why I do what I do.
Roy Samuelson:
Wow. Wow. What an impact of that. Do not quit folder and to be able to reference it.
Stephanae McCoy:
Yes. That's the other thing that I forgot to share. When you asked me the question about dealing with the anxiety and the pressure and stuff that I do go back to that and look at that because that I draw strength from that. Is
Roy Samuelson:
there anything else you'd like to share with our audience about your entrepreneurship journey, where things are headed? This is so wide ranging already. We've got, we've got gold here.
Stephanae McCoy:
Yeah, I just want to encourage people that if you do have an idea, number one, do the research. I think that's critically important. But don't let people dissuade you. If you feel strongly enough, believe in possibilities. That's what I believe in. I'm not telling people to believe in what I believe in. I do believe in possibilities because if I didn't believe in possibilities, I wouldn't be here right now. But do the research, be seen, be heard, be valued. Let people hear your voice. You're worth it. You know, we, we need one another in this crazy life.
Roy Samuelson:
Steph, how can we follow bold, blind beauty? You've already mentioned Instagram. You've mentioned the websites, Facebook, it's all bold, blind beauty.
Stephanae McCoy:
Yes. You too. The podcast is bold, blind beauty on air, and it's actually found on all the major podcast platforms. Just bold, blind, beauty on air. But yeah, everything else is bold, blind, beauty. Uh, if you want to reach out to me, uh, personally on LinkedIn, just under my name, Stephanae McCoy.
Roy Samuelson:
Very good. And if we could add one more plug, the bold, blind, beauty on air. I love air acronym. Could you share that acronym with our audience?
Stephanae McCoy:
Yes. I love the air acronym. Everyone on a planet needs air to survive. People with disabilities need air. access, inclusion, and representation, not only to survive, but to thrive.
Roy Samuelson:
Oh, you've got it down. Thanks so much for joining us, Steph.
