Madam C.J. Walker

The move

Sarah Breedlove is born in Louisiana in 1867. The first child in her family born free. Both her parents had been enslaved. Orphaned by 7. Married by 14. Widowed by 20 with a daughter to feed. She washes clothes in St. Louis for $1.50 a day.

In her thirties she's losing her hair to a bad scalp condition, common for Black women stuck with harsh lye-based products and no running water. So she makes her own formula. Sells it door to door. Renames herself Madam C.J. Walker. Names the formula. Builds a manufacturing operation. Trains a sales force she calls Walker Agents.

By 1916 she employs 20,000 women across the US, the Caribbean and Central America. Her agents earn commission, own their own patch, and get trained in business as well as hair. She builds her own factories. She funds the NAACP's anti-lynching campaign.

She dies in 1919 with an estate worth over $600,000. That's more than $10M today. She also left a blueprint for Black women in business that didn't exist before her.

Why it was risky

In 1905, starting any business as a Black woman in America was the risk. Banks didn't lend. Shops didn't stock. The law didn't protect. So Walker trained thousands of Black women into a sales force that worked when no department store would carry the product. The formula was the easy bit. She built a whole selling system from scratch, right next to the one that shut her out.

The numbers

From washing laundry for $1.50 a day to a $600,000 estate (over $10M in today's money) and 20,000 women selling for her around the world. The first proof in American history that a Black woman could build it, grow it and own it.

The lesson

Haircare wasn't the bet. Building the system the system wouldn't build for her was. Walker's company only existed because she trained the sales force that didn't exist for her, made up of women nobody else was training. R.I.S.K. is for founders ready to build the thing that kept them out.