IAM1280 – Founder Creates a Community Service for Young Girls

Shantay Carter better known as The Nurse Philanthropist, has been a registered nurse for the past 21 years. She is the Founder of Women Of Integrity Inc., Men Of Integrity Inc., and Co-founder of Nurses Of Integrity. She's an award-winning Empowerment Leader and Public Speaker. She is also the best-selling author of Destined For Greatness. Shantay is a proud member of the NAACP, Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated, The Nassau County Medical Reserve Corp., The NY Chapter of the American Nurses Association, and the Greater NYC Black Nurses Association. Her passion & purpose is to educate, empower, and inspire the youth and her fellow nurses. Shantay believes that being of service is one of the greatest rewards in life.

• CEO Story: Started as a volunteer for a non-profit organization, which led her to the urge to create a that serves girls helps the suburban communities, and creates a support system for women.
• Business Service: Giving prom dresses, shoes, and accessories as donations to young girls prior to their prom day. Also, having an event for aspiring women in the business sector.
• Secret Sauce: Understand and meet people and adapt. Share the potential opportunities with other people. Invest in yourself.
• CEO Hack: Having a positive mindset. Your health is your wealth. Meditate, write a journal, and work out. Build a solid team.
• CEO Nugget: Self-promotion is the best promotion. Believe in yourself, your business, your vision, and your goal.
• CEO Defined: You have the opportunity to create change and have an impact. Setting your standards and rules. Reach back and help the next person. Everyone is to be part of your team. Create your destiny.

Website: womenofintegrityinc.org

Facebook: WOIINC

Instagram: WOIINC

Book: Destined-for-Greatness

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Transcription

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00:16 – Intro

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkness values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO podcast.

00:43 – Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresham with me. I AM CEO podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Shantay Carter of Women of Integrity, Inc. Shantay, it's great to have you on the show.

00:52 – Shantay Carter

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

00:54 – Gresham Harkless

Yes, super excited to have you on and hear about all the awesome things that you're doing. But before we do that, I want to read a little bit more about Shantay so you can hear about some of those awesome things. And Shantay, better known as the nurse philanthropist, has been a registered nurse for over the past 21 years. She is the founder of Women of Integrity, Inc., Men of Integrity, Inc., and co-founder of Nurses of Integrity.

She's an award-winning empowerment leader and public speaker, and she is also the bestselling author of Destined for Greatness. Shante is a proud member of the NAACP, Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Incorporated, the Nassau County Medical Reserve Corps, the NY chapter of the American Nurse Association, and the greater NYC Black Nurses Association, and her passion and purpose is to educate, empower, and inspire the youth and her fellow nurses. Shantay believes that being of service is one of the greatest rewards in life. Shantay, super excited to have you on here about all the awesome things that you're doing. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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01:52 – Shantay Carter

Yes, I am. Thank you. Thank you.

01:54 – Gresham Harkless

Absolutely. Thank you so much. And so to kind of kick everything off, I wanted to rewind the clock a little bit and hear a little bit more about how you got started with all the awesome work that you're doing.

02:03 – Shantay Carter

Okay, so I started Women of Integrity back on November 30th, 2010. During that time, I was actually going through a very bad breakup, fell into depression, and kind of was just spiraling downwards. It was affecting me with my family, at work with my colleagues, and my friends. And I've been blessed to have some amazing women in my life who are my support system. And my best friend, Stasia intervention, they called my mom and was just like, we think she's depressed and something's going on. Cause I was still functioning, going to work but just going into my room and kind of just staying in my room and didn't come out.

So, my mom, talked to me, My dad, may he rest in peace because he just passed away recently. He talked to me. Thank you. And they were just kind of like, you know, you got to get out of this, you know, you got to snap out of this. So I realized that I wanted to take that negative energy and channel it into something positive. So I always wanted to, or as I should say, I enjoyed working with the youth. When I was in college, I was an RA. When I came home from college, I volunteered with a nonprofit that my girlfriend started, it was called Save Our Young Black Men based out of Brooklyn to help mentor young boys.

And then I just felt like, you know, we needed something for the girls. And in Long Island where I live is kind of like the suburb of New York City. People tend to think, well, if you live in the suburbs, everybody has money, we're in a house and a white picket fence and everything's all good. And that is not true. We have many underserved communities in Long Island, believe it or not. And I just decided that I wanted to be able to do something to help those communities. I wanted to also be able to create a support system that could benefit our young women. Like I said, I was blessed to come from a strong support system of women and I wanted to create women of integrity to kind of be that resource for the women and young women in our community.

04:04 – Gresham Harkless

Nice. Well, I appreciate you so much in terms of being able to kind of create the organization and everything. And I think that you know, so many times we think of, you know, success being, you know, what you know, or sometimes answering certain questions and checking these things off the list. But a lot of times you go as far as your environment is and that determines your altitude and how successful you are. So I love that you had that strong support system as you said so well and didn't stop there. It sounds like you decided to kind of create that for so many other people who maybe didn't have that in their lives as well.

04:34 – Shantay Carter

Right. Exactly. Nice. That's why I created it.

04:39 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, so I wanted to drill down a little bit more. Can I hear more about, you know, what you've been able to kind of build with the organization and how you're making that impact and serving?

04:46 – Shantay Carter

Sure, definitely. So, you know, we start out just kind of like, it was like an idea I came up with in my basement. I reached out to my friends, like, what do you guys like to be a part of this? And kind of what were our common goals that we wanted to achieve? And so from there, we started to build, you know, like I said, it was just a small Facebook group. And then we grew into this organization where a 501c3 nonprofit. And we are known, that our signature event that we're known for is our prom dress drive, our free prom dress giveaway.

I mean, because when we host that event, especially our prom dress giveaway, to see those young girls come in and be able to find dresses that they need for the prom, the looks on their faces, the smiles are priceless. Like that's something like, you know that, okay, I'm here, I'm fulfilling my purpose and I did my job because that's something that is ingrained and embedded into your mind when you see those smiles on those young girls' faces to know that I don't have to worry about now getting a prom dress because now I have this.

We also do a prom makeover, just a remarkable experience. And then we expanded into doing a women in business brunch, networking brunch. So this is for our aspiring entrepreneurs or already entrepreneurs or like-minded positive women who wanted to come out for a day, and we would have brunch, we would have some amazing guest panelists to talk about different areas of business, whether it's, you know, contracting grants, nonprofits, for-profits, So just a whole array of different backgrounds and specialties in the business sector, all women entrepreneurs, and we just would have an amazing time.

The women would leave educated, empowered, inspired, and enlightened, and it would just be an amazing event. And that event would usually be our fundraising event. We've been able to achieve those things through those community outreach events. And also partnering up with other community organizations to do the work as well. But I will tell you, when the book opportunity came about, Honestly, I was scared. I kind of shut it down initially. And I was like, no, I'm a nurse. I'm working full-time. I don't have time to write a book. And I remember the young lady that approached me, she approached me on social media first, who was the visionary of the whole anthology, because it's an anthology of myself and 9 other nurses.

And then when I thought about that, I said, you know what, you're right, what do I have to lose? So honestly, it's been one of the best decisions ever in my life. And then Destined for Greatness went on to become a best seller on Amazon 2 years later. It definitely has been a godsend. It's opened so many doors for me to do other things and to highlight the work that Women of Integrity is doing and led me to be able to create the other organizations, Men of Integrity and co-found Nurses of Integrity. So it's definitely been a blessing.

07:38 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, I appreciate you sharing that so much, especially talking about the apprehension of wanting to do that initially, because I think so many times we have those blessings, those opportunities that are basically waiting to blossom and we just need to take that step. And a lot of times, as I talked about, building those dishes before you need them, you were doing really great work, you met somebody and she was planning to see to have that opportunity for you to blossom even more. But not only are we kind of affecting ourselves, we're also affecting all the potential opportunities that we have down the line when we don't take that step. So I love that you were able to do that and share that.

08:11 – Shantay Carter

Thank you, Napa. Yes, and like I said, I don't regret it. Like, looking back, I'm so glad I decided to kind of confront my fear and apprehension and move forward. It's been one of the best decisions ever. And, you know, coming from creating Destined for Greatness, it led to Destined for Greatness Journal. Then we have this year I came out with the Destined for Greatness Planner for Success. So it's a whole little series where we have the book, the journal, and then we have a planner. So just all ways to create multiple streams of income and stay relevant and kind of promote the brand and the organization as well.

08:50 – Gresham Harkless

So absolutely you get to continue to make that impact in so many different ways. So I absolutely love that. And so what would you consider to be what I like to call your secret sauce? And this could be for yourself individually, the brands are a combination of both, but what do you feel kind of sets you apart and makes you unique?

09:06 – Shantay Carter

I'm a Libra. So, you know, we always kind of trying to balance those scales, but I'm pretty transparent. I'm your friend and I am loyal to the end and I'm gonna rock out with you. I'm gonna promote you. I'm gonna, that's just kind of who I am, right? And I think that what I've learned is not everyone is like that. So I think what has set me apart in starting this nonprofit and really starting it from scratch with no knowledge of how to start a nonprofit. I just decided that this is what I wanted to do.

I put in the work to research, researched a lot of late nights and I researched to figure out how to do this. How do I create this? You have to understand and learn people and understand to meet them where they are and understand where they are. You have to be able to adjust to that. You can't necessarily change someone. But I also realized in this in growing the organization and just even going to myself instead of trying to, you know, hog up all the potential opportunities, or if it's cash money because I don't want to share.

So I definitely believe in sharing. I believe in putting people on. That's not to say you can't, you have to still use disarmament, Not everybody can put on, right? But you gotta know people that's gonna be genuine and who's worthy of that. So I say, yes, you wanna invest in your business but invest in yourself as the leader, as a CEO as well.

10:26 – Gresham Harkless

Absolutely, appreciate that. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit and I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. You might have already touched on this, but this could be an app, a book, or something from your book or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

10:41 – Shantay Carter

Well, I can tell you, I'm a COVID survivor. I had COVID last year. I was sick for about 2 months. And God willing, you know, thankful to God I'm still here today. And that really has changed my mindset. It's all in the mindset. So definitely I would say one of the hacks is that your mindset is going to determine your trajectory in what you're going to do. And having a positive mindset is definitely key. But understanding that your health is your wealth. I'm a nurse first, so I'd be remiss if I didn't throw something in about taking care of yourself.

Your health is your wealth. And after I got sick with COVID, I had to really start taking charge of my health. You know, I thought I was fairly healthy, but clearly I wasn't. And I had to make changes. So changing my diet, and working out. So these things have kind of now become my routine and practice in the mornings, which helped me to kind of start my day. So I start off with meditation, I write in my journal, and then I go and work out. I work out every morning to kind of clear my head and to be so I can be focused when I start my day.

And it could start out with just 30 minutes at a time and you build your way up, work your way up, but we really have to stress the importance of taking care of ourselves. If we're not taking care of ourselves, we cannot take care of others. So that's definitely kind of like my morning routine. When you're building your business, you also need to build a solid team. And teamwork makes the dream work. You have to be able to understand who's on your team, so you know their personalities, so you can know how to deal with them and understand them You have to appreciate them and value them but also then use their talents to make them feel more vested.

12:25 – Gresham Harkless

Nice, I love that and I think like you said it takes teamwork to make the dream work I'm almost wonder is that kind of like some of the CEO nuggets that you have, which are kind of like more words of wisdom or piece of advice to be able to kind of lean into that mindset and that understanding that once you see and have that vision of success, you need to do whatever you have to do to get there? Do you think that's part of the nugget?

12:47 – Shantay Carter

Absolutely. You have to do the work. You have to put in the work. And you have to also understand self-promotion at times is the best promotion, right? People have to feel that you believe in your product your service and your business before they can want to invest in it. If you're saying, oh, I own a business, but then you talk half-ass about your business, why would I support your business? If you don't even believe in your own business, right? So you have to believe in yourself, in your business, in your vision, in your goal, so people then can buy in and understand, okay, why should I support this organization? People have to also feel that they can relate to you. So you have to make yourself relatable to whatever your target audience is, do your research for your target audience, and make yourself relatable to them.

13:30 – Gresham Harkless

Nice, Absolutely love that. And I appreciate you sharing that. So I wanted to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. We're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on the show.

13:45 – Shantay Carter

So Shantae, what does being a CEO means that you have the opportunity to create your own destiny? You have the opportunity to create change and have an impact. You're setting your standards, you're setting your rules. But That also gives you the opportunity to reach back and help the next person. That's very important, I think, to be able to help your business to be successful and to grow. CEO doesn't just mean like I and everything is me. There's the E in there for everyone.

Everyone could be a part of your team and you need to incorporate them and you need to build a strong 1. Your foundation has to be strong. So to be an effective leader, you have to also know when to follow, right? Not just leading, you gotta know when to follow. You are in control of your destiny, the power to also reinvent yourself, to be better, you know, and to do things for the greater good. So CEO is really just taking control of your own destiny and creating your path.

14:46 – Gresham Harkless

Truly appreciate that holistic definition. And I of course appreciate your time even more. So what I want to do now is just pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know. And of course, how best they can get a hold of you getting a copy of the books and find out about all the awesome things you're working on with your brands.

15:02 – Shantay Carter

Thank you. So you could definitely catch me on social media. I'm on Facebook. Instagram is at s.carterrn for my personal, for Women of Integrity. We're at W-O-I-I-N-C on Instagram, and Facebook, it's Women of Integrity, Inc. You can find us, we're on Twitter and LinkedIn. I mean, we're pretty much everywhere. And the same for Men of Integrity. The books are all available on Amazon, so you can get them, or you can reach out to me personally and get them as well. I can sell them directly to you. And yeah, thank you for having me. This has been amazing. I truly appreciate you even considering me to have me on and to be able to share my insights. So thank you so much.

15:47 – Gresham Harkless

Absolutely. It's definitely our pleasure. I truly appreciate you for the awesome work that you're doing. We're definitely going to have the links and information in the show notes as well too, just to make it even easier so that everybody can get a hold of you. But definitely want to wish you a happy 3 years, 3 years, and 12 years for all the awesome work that you're doing. Appreciate it. And I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

16:04 – Shantay Carter

Thank you.

16:06 – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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