Dear Family,

There isn’t a week that goes by where a LUX member with a high-paying six-figure job tells me they’re thinking about leaving to start their own business.

That conversation happens more than you might think. And every time, I feel the same tension. I don't want to kill the dream. But I also won't dress up the reality.

So when I see the headlines we've seen over the past few weeks, I sit with them differently than most.

Pinky Cole, the founder of Slutty Vegan, recently filed for bankruptcy. Uncle Nearest Premium Whiskey, founded by Fawn Weaver, was placed into receivership. And Anifa Mvuemba, the Congolese-American designer behind Hanifa, made the difficult decision to pause production.

Last year we also saw several Black beauty brands quietly shut their doors.

My first reaction is not surprise. My first reaction is recognition. Here is what I know from sitting across from founders at every stage.

Building something is relentless.

You are responsible for payroll, customers, strategy, hiring, taxes, growth, and culture, all at the same time. There is no shift change. There is no one above you to absorb the hard decision.

And the hardest part is acknowledging that the skills that get a business started are not always the same skills that keep a business alive.

The courage to launch is different from the discipline to manage cash flow. The creativity to build a brand is different from the financial rigor to understand when you're scaling faster than your infrastructure can hold. The passion that drives you past every obstacle in year one doesn't automatically translate into the systems you need in year five.

These are learnable.

But they have to be learned. And most founders are learning them in real time, under pressure, with real consequences. Black founders, particularly Black women founders, are doing this with additional weight.

Access to capital is uneven.

The networks that open doors are not always open to us. And the expectation is often that we produce results before receiving the resources others receive up front. That is the terrain.

It has to be named, not to excuse any outcome, but to understand why the margin for error is thinner.

This year marks almost thirteen years since I started building LUX. And that doesn't even include Billionaire Dreams, something I started back at Howard.

If you know, you know.

What those years taught me is that entrepreneurship is not a straight line.

It is seasons of growth, seasons of pressure, seasons of doubt, and sometimes seasons where survival is the only win available. I have made decisions I would make differently now. I have navigated pressure that didn't show up in the business plan. I have sat across from founders who were doing everything right and still losing ground.

That experience shapes how I see these stories.

Not with judgment. With clarity about what it actually takes. So today I want to say this directly.

To the founders in the headlines: your courage is not diminished by the difficulty.

You built something real. You carried real responsibility. That matters.

To the people watching: the complexity of what these founders faced does not fit in a headline. Resist the urge to reduce it.

And to the people currently building, or thinking about it, stay close to the fundamentals. Know your numbers. Build your team. Understand your capital structure before you need to.

Entrepreneurship is not easy.

But the willingness to try, backed by the discipline to endure, is the combination that moves things forward. That is always worth respecting.

From LUX, With Love

Matt

P.S. If you enjoy my newsletter, forward to it a friend who you feel could use some weekly inspiration and motivation.