From a high school dropout to a 7-figure business, meet Trudi Lebron

Trudi Lebron grew up in the inner city of Connecticut. She did not have a sense of belonging because there were not many biracial children in her community. She had to defend her identity to other kids. At a point, many did not even believe her father was her dad because he was darker-skinned than her.

At 16, Lebron became a mother of two. She had strangers hurling invectives at her because they assumed she was going to be a burden on America’s welfare system. It turns out that they were wrong.

After dropping out of school to have her children, Lebron homeschooled herself through high school and enrolled in a community college. She would take her kids to school in the morning, attend classes during the day, work in the afternoon and evening and sometimes stay up at night to do her assignments.

After graduation, Lebron met the love of her life who helped her to follow her dreams. Lebron went on to pursue a master’s degree in psychology and started working for a non-profit organization.

It was at this point that she noticed something was not right with the “system.” She told Forbes that while non-profits in youth and community services do a good job putting band-aids on situations, they weren’t creating permanent solutions. Lebron wanted to be part of the solutions and not the problem.

She made a transition from working at non-profits to starting her own company. Lebron told Forbes the transition started while working at a high school helping high-risk students graduate. According to her, one of the rules was that students who showed up late in school could not get breakfast.

“I was written up one morning because a pregnant student in my caseload came in late and I got her something to eat. It hit me hard that our values were completely out of alignment with our goals,” she said.

Lebron said she came to the realization that she was not going to be able to fix the system from the inside out, and decided to start her own business. However, she was handicapped when it came to starting a business and so she started listening to podcasts on entrepreneurship.

“On the shows, people would say things that I hadn’t heard before about money. That it could be easy to come by. That really blew my mind because I grew up thinking it was hard to get and might actually be bad,” she said.

Lebron quickly noticed that the entrepreneurial world wasn’t diverse. That was how she got the idea to start ScriptFlip.

While working full-time, Lebron started ScriptFlip as a side hustle. The company is focused on teaching entrepreneurs and businesses diversity, equity and inclusion. She started working on her website from her kitchen at night and meeting clients during vacation. Soon, she became one of the most sought-after for diversity education helping entrepreneurs build businesses with a social justice focus.

Lebron built relationships in the online world, hosting a podcast and being one of the critical voices around race equity and diversity. Soon, she was noticed, and by the end of 2016, she quit her day job to focus on her business.

So far, Lebron has had more than 2000 people purchase her workshop. She said her business has been bringing multiple six figures for years. In 2020, her company made seven figures. Now 39, Lebron is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in social psychology.