I just feel like you should always
tell your truth.
I just feel
you should always speak up
and say what you mean, how you,
how you feel.
And so
most people are so non-confrontational,
and I don't think
you have to be confrontational
to tell your truth.
Welcome to disruption now
I'm your host,
and moderator, Rob Richardson, as always,
it's an honor to be here with you.
I'm here with a Isoul
Harris, who is the editor
in chief and founder of Edition Magazine.
We have a lot to talk about with him.
But before that,
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So but for now, Isoul Harris.
How are you doing, brother?
I'm good. I'm good.
How are you?
I'm doing well.
You know, I can't complain. It's
wrapping up the end of the year,
been a very good year.
And,
you know,
looking forward to 2022 and hope,
hopefully we're not still talking
about the coronavirus.
So no, exactly, exactly.
But you're right,
2021 has been a great year.
It has.
Yeah, it has.
So you launched a Edition magazine,
lots of other things.
And I want to get to all of that.
And all the great work
that you're doing to support
black creatives means a lot to us here.
We do a lot to support black creatives
and anybody doing that.
I'm very happy about so.
Well, let's talk
about how you even got
into this business, into this,
into a Edition magazine.
So how did you end up like envisioning,
in Edition magazine
in terms of like what, what,
what was the thought process?
What was the vision
that you
that that you thought about
and how was that coming so far as you,
as you got,
as you just had your launch this year?
Okay.
So Edition
I'm going to backtrack just a little
Editions I'm not actually the founder. So OK.
So the publishers of modern luxury,
which is the largest publishing.
You're the editor in chief.
I'm the Editor in chief exactly
Yeah. So I didn't.
I was.
I upgraded you my bad. I know.
I know, I know.
I just I just put it out there.
The future you're going to be
founder of some other things
in the future, but go ahead.
Absolutely. I believe in manifestation.
So that's why there you go.
That's fine.
So, yeah,
so they the publishers of modern luxury,
the they have their largest chain of
luxury magazines in the country,
and they had an idea to basically
basically connect black people
or people of color, rather
to the luxury space
and historically
and traditionally black people
and people of color
have been disconnected from that space,
and they have been
basically disillusioned
and not from that.
So they came to me, I was
I had just come back left Atlanta
was there for COVID
stayed and helped my parents
everything and came back to New York
because I'm
working on some other projects
and they just called me out of the blue
and they told me that they had this idea
to do a magazine that blends
luxury with,
you know, with black culture.
And I was like, Whoa,
that's basically my career,
in a nutshell.
So I think everything that I've done
so far has brought me to this point.
And it's not a coincidence.
I think that
also working with
Roc Nation,
who are partners in this venture.
Jana Flieshman
I've known Jana for, I guess, 20 years.
You know,
we've worked together over the years.
So just in working with people
who I've known for so long
who have been supportive of my career,
you know, it's been really great.
But I would like to know part
of your journey with you know
So you've been in fashion for a while,
I guess in.
Talk to me about a time
when, you know, things
didn't go according to plan.
It might have been a setback,
and you now see that as
an opportunity
that actually made you better.
Can you think about the time that
sticks out of your mind?
Well, I think
anything ever goes as planned.
No, a dull life is definitely not linear.
Nothing goes according to plan.
But let's say
something like a major setback,
something that really didn't
go according to plan.
And you're like, OK,
this is not
how I envisioned it to happen.
Well,
I think my whole career is really that I
I went to grad school,
I went to the Morehouse
then I went to grad school.
You are Morehouse. OK?
And so after grad school,
I decided that I wanted to teach.
I've always wanted to teach.
It wasn't like some kind of
fallback career.
I actually did want to have
a teaching experience.
And so I did that for two years.
And while I was teaching,
I quickly realized
that this is not something
I wanted to do for the rest of my life.
And so when my kids were sitting there
like working,
I would
look out the window of my patio,
that was attached to the classroom,
and I could see
the whole world out there like,
what am I doing?
What am I going to do beyond this?
And so I would complain to my parents
all the time. You know.
And one of my birthdays my 24th birthday came around
and I was complaining to my father
and my father said, he's basically
like Isoul just stop it.
What in the hell do you want to do?
And I said, I want to write.
And he was like, Well, just write.
And I said, well it's not that easy Dad.
He said, It is.
It is that easy. Go do it. And so
Right exactly
Like our parents to tell you
they don't allow you to get it, get it.
Make that excuse. Like, No, it is.
Exactly
According to my dad I can just go
by a magazine to say,
Hey, give me the editors job
But so I was in Atlanta at the time
and I was literally
walking down the street
and I saw this newspaper.
It's like one of those free weeklies,
you know?
And I picked it up
and I looked at the message
and I found the editor's name
and I called her
I just called her out of the blue
and I just told her
who I was, who was nobody, really.
And so
and so I told her what I wanted to do.
And she she said, Come down, talk to me.
So I went and talked to her.
And from that day
on, I became her assistant
So I would teach from like seven to three
and then I would work.
It was
the paper was Rolling Out
that was the up,
and I was working for Rolling Out from like four
to like two in the morning,
and I did that for two years straight.
And so after that,
I had they gave me
the managing
the managing editors position and I actually replaced her after two years
Wow. So that's yeah.
So that's how I got into it.
That's how I got into, you know, into it.
I started as an entertainment journalist.
Yeah, I mean, are so many lessons
in what you just said, right?
I mean,
you know,
your father just told you to go out
and do it.
You saw an opportunity
and an opportunity
wasn't like the most glorious thing.
Being an assistant is hard, hard work.
But you put everything into that,
and I tell people this all the time,
especially early on in their
in their career,
that you value learning over money
because if you learn
and you put everything into it,
the money will follow.
Especially if you're passionate
about it, right?
Absolutely. Like, I have to be here.
I have to be editor in chief right away
because I have the talent
It's not how it works that way, right?
I mean.
That's that's such a great point.
And I have this conversation with people
all the time about don't
be married to titles
like so many people are married
to titles all the time.
And I understand why because, you know,
especially people of color,
you do want to have respect.
You do want to have that attached to it.
You want your experience
and your title
to speak to your experience.
And I get that right.
But I would not be sitting here right now
if I was married, or attached to titles.
Now I've taken the job
that got me back to New York.
that got me to become the editor
in chief of Uptown.
It was actually a demotion in a sense to,
I guess, in a traditional sense
because I was a managing editor
at a magazine called 944.
But when the opportunity
came up for uptown,
it was for a senior editor.
I had already been senior editor
maybe two or three years before that,
but I saw beyond that.
I saw this as a chance to get me
to the media capital of the world again.
And then I knew I could go on from there.
So I took it.
You know,
and people are like,
Why are you doing that?
I said, Because I have a plan, you know,
and it worked
you know,
within a year and a half, I was Editor and Chief of Uptown.
So.
Yeah, I mean, people get into these paths
like they get caught up in titles
and Isoul
I think the other problem is people
also get into what I call
the golden handcuffs.
You have a
you have a job that you don't like,
but it pays well and you stay there
and you think, like, Well,
I need to have a job
that pays just as good as this
before I move on and look,
bills are there realities are there,
but also I mean your life is there.
If you stay tied to something
that have these golden handcuffs,
you will have a whole lot of regrets
10 15 years from now
that you weren't able
to fulfill your purpose.
At least that's how I feel.
Absolutely, absolutely.
And I see it all the time
and I have conversations with friends.
You know, some of my friends.
from back in the day,
they no longer my friends,
but they questioned my decisions,
you know they're like, why are you leaving?
Like a secure a job in teaching,
you know, you have your summers off
as if that's like, that's like this.
That's like, yeah.
yeah you got your summers off. I'm like.
But now I think about it,
had I listened to them.
I would not have.
Any of the experiences I've had,
like I literally
have traveled the world.
They're speaking out of their own fears
and insecurities,
whether they realize it or not,
and these can be well-meaning friends
and they could also
be parents or loved ones,
they're speaking out of their fear
to take that leap.
And they're,
I mean, secretly kind of like,
have a little bit of misunderstanding.
Sometimes there's jealousy,
there's levels to that.
I'm not saying people are going out
hating on you,
but I'm saying, like, there's like,
I wish
I could be that person to take that leap.
And if someone's taking that leap,
they must not be thinking it through.
Or at least they say that in their mind
to justify why they haven't taken
why they haven't taken that leap,
why they haven't
lived to their full purpose.
And look, I tell people like,
you can make every excuse
you want to in the world,
but you do not have to stay in the job.
The world is really, really abundant.
The world is more abundant
than it's ever been.
It's just your mindset
and how you approach things.
So, so my really
good friend of mine, Nikia Hicks
We always say to each other
whenever we start to talk about
what we don't have or
what doesn't exist
and we stop ourselves
because we don't live in lack
But you just
you cannot live in any kind of deficiency
like, we are not deficient in
anything like if you're rushing.
Stop, breathe.
You have enough time
to do what you're doing
and to get where you're going.
You know, stop breathe.
You know,
you have enough time
to make your deadlines you know
But when we start acting so frantic
and so frenetic.
That's when everything just crumbles.
You know and other things just fall apart.
So you're.
Absolutely right. I completely agree.
That's good advice for me
because we all get overwhelmed sometimes.
too I feel that way
like you're
not going to be able to hit it?
You got to just sit back,
breathe when you get to that point
and have yourself enough time
to be able to see the whole.
The vision and then step back.
Right? Exactly, exactly.
All right.
So let's talk a little
bit about Edition. So you
you're the editor in chief.
Mm-Hmm.
What do you see
as the vision for Edition
right now in the next five years?
Like, what is it
that you want Edition to be known for?
So I was talking about this
with our vice
president of marketing, Eric.
Who's a really brilliant guy.
So we share the same vision
about Edition. Originally
So I have a envisioned Edition
as a place where
a platform where black people of color
can come together
and really have the support.
And the resources to create
and to be on the same playing field
as their mainstream counterparts
have over time.
You know, I feel like we've had
we've had great black publications, you know,
Ebony, Jet, Essence, Black Enterprise,
all these
great publications
but we all know that they have
a certain set of problems
that other mainstream
publications do not have.
And I feel like
that is something
that we need to address.
And so what do you think that it is?
But you can get to that too finish your point,
but I want to know what you think.
Those problems are.
What it means to me.
Well, the main problem is, you know,
everything comes down to money, right?
And so it's advertising
and it's advertising and.
Corporate America,
looking at certain magazines
as not being luxury
or black people
not understanding luxury
or our understanding of luxury
being different
than our white counterparts understanding of luxury.
I've experienced this firsthand.
I've worked throughout my entire career.
I've worked at black publications
I've worked at niche publications,
I've worked at mainstream publications,
I worked at one of the top architecture
magazines in the world.
And during my time there, I realized that
I would talk
to people in the sales department
and they would ask, or
let's find someone to do like this spread.
So I would find someone.
And then they would say, well,
they're not really our esthetic.
And what would that esthetic be?
So it's things like that.
It's like that coded language
that's created
to keep certain people
outside of this world.
And I feel like Edition is that.
They're getting to define
what luxury is,
and that luxury is a very
narrow point of view.
Exactly, exactly. Exactly.
So I feel like
we want to give people the codes
we want to give people the tools to decipher
all these things
that have been working against you
as a creator.
All this time, you know,
So I feel like Edition is really that
So how will you?
Because I think one of the issues with
some of our traditional publications,
they've done a lot of
great work, obviously.
But I also believe that
they don't innovate fast enough
or fail to really innovate.
I think as part of the issue, right,
they want to.
I mean, I've seen this
a lot of our legacy
civil rights institutions, the NAACP,
you know,