From Social Justice to Martial Arts: Carmen Sognonvi’s Story

Transcript

Hi, I’m Carmen Sognonvi and in this video, I’m going to share with you my story. You’ll learn about who I am, what I’m passionate about, and how those things will shape this blog.

I was born in Hong Kong and moved around a lot as a kid. We lived in Belgium for awhile (that’s where my dad’s from), we lived in Shanghai for awhile, then moved back to Hong Kong (which is where my mom is from) and I spent most of my childhood there. I moved to New York City for college and have stuck around ever since.

After college I bounced around various jobs and along the way, I developed a really strong interest in issues related to race, identity, and culture. Growing up biracial, race was something I’ve had to think about all my life.

In 2004 I started speaking, blogging, and podcasting about race. I launched a blog called Racialicious, which became really popular among folks interested in these sorts of social justice issues. And pretty soon I was getting invited to speak at colleges all over the country, and was interviewed by journalists at media outlets like CNN, MSNBC, and The New York Times.

All this happened while I was still working my day job and while I was helping my husband Serge launch a martial arts school. Oh, and I was also a bazillion months pregnant!

You kind of get the idea of how crazy things were! I’d leave the house at 6 am to be at my day job in Manhattan by 7 am, leave at 4 pm and head into Brooklyn, and stay at the martial arts school till 10 pm. Then wake up the next day to do it all over again, waddling around with my big huge belly.

Obviously there was no way I could keep all those balls in the air for much longer, so after our daughter was born, I quit my day job.

I say that like it’s no big deal but trust me, it was not an easy decision. We would lose a big chunk of our income. And that would mean we’d have no more safety net – we’d have to live off what we made from both of our businesses. And if the businesses didn’t work out, well, we were pretty screwed. So it was pretty scary.

Luckily things worked out really well. Our school Urban Martial Arts really thrived. We won a New School of the Year award from a major martial arts association after our first year, we’ve been featured in a bunch of media outlets like the NY Daily News and Fox Business, and I enjoyed the work so much that in January of 2010 I decided to retire from my work on race and focus on the school full-time.

I decided to start this blog to share with other people some of the lessons I’ve learned as the owner of a local business. I’m a big believer in the power of entrepreneurship. For me and Serge, it’s absolutely transformed our lives. It’s allowed us to do work that has meaning to us, it’s given us financial freedom, and it’s also intellectually challenging because everyday you’re confronted with new situations that you need to figure out.

I really want to help other local business owners achieve great results too, and that’s the goal of this blog.

I’ll be talking about how to…

• Make more money
• Attract more customers
• Retain customers you have
• Set up systems and processes that will help you grow

…and how to still have a life outside of the business.

If that sounds like interesting stuff, please sign up to get free email updates from me so you’ll never miss a thing! If you’re on the blog, just fill out the form below. Or if you’re watching this video elsewhere, go to visit https://www.carmensognonvi.com/newsletter

Thanks, and I hope you enjoy the blog!

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