How this serial entrepreneur hit millionaire status after leaving Microsoft

Keisha Credit is a serial entrepreneur who is not only making money for herself but is also paving the way for many more diverse entrepreneurs. She is the founder of Lucke by Keisha, a custom wig-making firm; Ego Centric Beauty, an organic hair care line and Super Lit apparel, a Christian t-shirt company.

Aside from these three businesses, she is also the founder of Keisha Credit coaching/consulting. From her entrepreneurial moves, one could easily be under the mistaken belief that she comes from a family of successful entrepreneurs.

However, Credit started her business moves without much knowledge of entrepreneurship. Not only has she managed to build successful businesses but one of her ventures became so profitable by hitting the million-dollar mark.

In recent years, Credit changed the name of her consulting business to Business Bestie due to the ‘confusion’ her surname, which she named after her business, Keisha Credit coaching, was causing. According to her, “people just didn’t understand that Credit was my last name and that I wasn’t doing credit counseling…”

She continued: “So it was very hard to market…so finally found something that stuck and now I’m doing Business Bestie, which is my entrepreneurial coaching and business coaching…” she told Forbes in November 2019.

In addition to her consulting business, Credit also became the CEO of a business that is in a local business accelerator, Jones and Foster. She also started running Paca Y Paca, which is an Artisan candle company that was just getting off the ground.

Prior to venturing into entrepreneurship, Credit left her work at Microsoft and she has never looked back. She said that while studying programming at the University of Washington, she started her first business venture—a house-painting company. “I wanted to create opportunities for my friends. I didn’t realize at the time I was acting like an entrepreneur,” she told the University of Washington Magazine. After graduating, she went to work for Microsoft, as her parents wanted.

At Microsoft, she worked as a program manager which gave her the opportunity to travel the world and capture customer experiences to bring back to headquarters, she told the University of Washington Magazine.

“But I wasn’t fulfilled,” she said. “I didn’t feel important. I felt like a number.”

After running successful craft businesses and selling one, Credit is also sharing her skills with potential entrepreneurs. She partnered with Amazon to deliver a workshop where she spoke on ‘Art of the Side Hustle.’ Amazon first wanted her to be on a panel but she wanted to deep-dive into issues and engage more with her audience, so she asked for a workshop instead. Amazon agreed.

She subsequently organized her own workshop which sold out within six hours. “It was a packed room…they really realized this is where people gain a lot of value and it was a great learning moment for me to ask for the things that you want…go out there, push for it…I think it really worked out to be mutually beneficial,” she said.