BLACK BUSINESSWOMAN STRIVES FOR AUTHENTICITY IN ALL THINGS

Farissa Knox, author, entrepreneur, and founder and CEO of RLM Media, WhatRUWearing Productions, has been making a big impact in the industry when it comes to nurturing diverse cultures authentically. Photo provided by Farissa Knox
Farissa Knox, author, entrepreneur, and founder and CEO of RLM Media, WhatRUWearing Productions, has been making a big impact in the industry when it comes to nurturing diverse cultures authentically. Photo provided by Farissa Knox

 Black businesswoman strives for authenticity in all things

BY TIA CAROL JONES
     Farissa Knox is the founder and CEO of RLM Media, WhatRUWearing Productions, as well as an author, producer and entrepreneur based in Chicago. Knox has been making an impact in the industry, with her mission to nurture authentically diverse cultures.
     RLM Media, Knox’s integrated marketing and communication advertising agency, celebrated its 12-year anniversary at the end of 2020. She said the agency has experienced a lot of growth and expansion in services and what it can do for its clients, and a strong pathway forward for the next 10 years.
     “We’ve been successful in building the ad business because we treat the individual humans that we talk to on an everyday basis, not just as clients or sources of revenue, but as human beings that they are on the other end of the phone,” she said. “I have allowed to let my business to grow bigger than me, where it’s not about Farissa Knox anymore, it’s about the other 12 people who work there and what they do every single day and all of them holding a piece of the business, instead of me holding it on my back.”
     Knox said that allows for the agency to expand and grow and understand different client categories and have real deep knowledge experts, besides herself, in leadership roles, on the team who make for a successful business.
     Knox said in the last year, she has been creating and figuring out what else she wants to put out in the world. She has started to write her second book, which she said is a reflection of all of the different parts of who she has come to be as a woman, wife, mother and businesswoman.
     Her first book, “Love, Sex, and Friendship: In No Particular Order,” was published in 2020. It chronicled Knox’s life as 20-something and living in New York. Knox also was the producer of “PR Girl,” a reality series that highlighted the lives of three Publicists in Chicago. The series is available on Amazon. She said she is also open to scripted format to tell people’s stories.
     “I just really love real life, whether it’s reality TV format or even scripted but based on real life, whether it’s my real life or someone I know really well. There’s so much value and richness in our individual life stories that I get a lot of energy and excitement out of that,” she said.
     Knox said she has been able to cultivate an atmosphere of diversity, inclusion and sustainability, because RLM has always been a place where she wanted everyone to feel welcome. She said it was true, even before it became a trendy, cool thing to do.
     “That’s from me being a Black woman and understanding that not all spaces make us feel comfortable, whether they understand that’s what’s happening or not. For me, it’s always been about understanding the individual human that works at my firm and what matters to them and what things they want to bring to this collective and how can we make room for all of those things to be true at the same time,” she said.
     Knox said what people get wrong when they are thinking about equality and diversity is that they have to give something up for the other person to add more to it. She said that is not the case.
“There’s room for everybody to be 100 percent themselves without asking someone else to dim their light. I think that because that’s the way I approach life, that’s how I approach talent building and folks who work for me,” she said.
     Knox added, the hard thing now, with working remotely from home because of COVID-19, it’s difficult to interact with people on a personal level the way someone would at the office in-person. She said those interactions help people learn more about the people they work with, from chatting about a movie they watched over the weekend or something unique to them. She said she is looking forward to being back in the office space and building back some of those cultural things into the day-to-day professional life.
     “That’s how I approach it, I’ve always thought of diversity and inclusion from the aspect of there’s room for all of us to be and if you don’t fit that mindset then you’re probably not a good fit professionally for us, as well,” she said.
     With Knox’s personal brand, she is authentic. She said in this day and age, people are starved for truthful information. She said what she tries to do is not just focus on the end result, but about the process, so people understand the work, energy and time that went into planning and executing something.
     “I hope on my production side of things, whether it be TV or my future books, that people see an element of that in all of my work. The authenticity, the room for others and entertainment,” she said.
For more information on Farissa Knox, visit www.farissaknox.com.

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