Do It Scared

We sit down with our producer Dominique Hypolite and talk about the courage it takes to stop living inside someone else’s box and start building your own. From a cushy job in a male-dominated industry to betting on herself as a single mom, Dom shows how alignment, accountability, and “Do It Scared” thinking can change your whole life.

• Dominique’s Range Card and what a Professional HYP Woman really does

• How we met through alignment and community in Phoenix

• The Power Stance moment that pushes Dom to build The HYP Network

• Leaving security behind and navigating fear without a safety net

• What it means to bet on yourself and keep winning daily

• How our accountability partnership turns into We Have Range

• Why creative control creates freedom and reduces code switching

• Why We Have Range and why our stories matter

Credits

Host: Myshell Gresham IG: @myshell_gresham and Ivoree Jordan IG: @ivoree_ree_jordan

We Have Range IG: @wehaverange

Studio: Sin City Podcast in Las Vegas, NV IG: @sincitypodcasts 

Maverick/Producer: Dominique Hypolite IG: @niquethenvoice @gethyp.today

Transcript

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Who lead their life with courage. What does it mean for you to bet on yourself?

I don't know if there is any way to express what it feels like to bet on yourself and win every single day. But I can say that I'm still scared every single day. As a mom, I have three people, three human beings that depend on me to make it happen. So betting on yourself is something that it's blind faith.

And you hear that people do it scared, do it, do it.

So we are filming from the Sin City podcast studio in Las Vegas.

Woo-hoo. Yes, the We Have Range Podcast. And as you know, behind every great production, there's a badass, there's a Maverick, all of the adjectives that I probably don't have words for, but we want to introduce to the world Dominique Hypolite. You're gonna get it. It's okay. We're gonna get there.

You can keep going.

Hypolite

Because this is this is what we're here to do.

It has HYP in the name, so you should know that. Um, she is our HYP girl, she is the reason behind all of our flow. Um, she keeps us in order, she's the button pusher, um time manager, time manager. She keeps us in order. Our AAD, I uh uh our ADHD medication. Okay. Well, that's a new one. Let me put that on my card real quick. She has a lot on her Range Card. So with that, Dom, please tell us about your Range Card and what you mean to The We Have Range production.

First, let me say Nique The N*Voice checking in live and direct from Sin City Podcast Studios in Las Vegas, Nevada. I am with two of the most phenomenal women, I think, outside of the women that raised me, that I have probably ever come into contact with. There's been, I just have to tell y'all this because I'm probably gonna cry. I am a big baby. I am like emotional.

But if you cry and then I cry, don't do that.

But you're you got the lashes, the lip, like you're gonna be all right. You're gonna be all right. I think it's important to highlight what y'all are doing. My Range Card is Professional HYP Woman. No, let me go back. Mom, mother, mama, mamacita, right? That's there's who watched Love Island. I can I can't be the only one.

That's where my Range stops.

What? Love Island. Mom is the first one on my Range Card. Then we have Professional HYP Woman, CEO. Everything from Renaissance Woman to artist, creative, therapist, uh, enthusiast, obviously, HYP is in my DNA. So it's not unheard of for my last name to be butchered. Yeah. But, you know, along with Nique The N*Voice, I also have a lot of other pseudo-titles, which I already kind of mentioned a few. We've gone through that with y'all. The Maverick, I'm renaming you The Billion Dollar Broker because in our in our one-on-one conversation, baby, the the percentage that you touch is that 1%. And I think that's what we're here for, right? To kind of highlight that 1% that isn't technically the 1% within what society deems as popular or making it or successful. There's a lot of individuals in this world that are highly successful in what they do, but we don't necessarily have a platform. So I don't know what the question was, but I think that was the answer.

It was your Range Card. You gave it. But I think the question is how did you come to We Have Range? How did we so we

met a few years ago? Talk about that. So then we can just talk about the love fest that happened after that, and me realizing how dope you are and saying, we need you. So talk about how we met.

So we met at was NASCAR NASCAR event, the W in Phoenix, and I ended up there on a whim, which is how most of my life has happened. Okay. And I'm just very, very intentional about alignment and calling out alignment when it's there. And that was how we met. Someone introduced me to you, Lloyd, Hopkins, CEO and founder of the Million Dollar Teacher Project, an amazing nonprofit that, and I actually was at the STN um, they STN is Social TV Network. Yep, social television television network, Phoenix, and they highlight nonprofits and they have an amazing production. And so I had gone to an episode filming, and then they're like, Oh, here, we're gonna go to this party, this million trillion dollar party at the W. And so Lloyd said, There's someone that you need to meet, and it was Myshell. I think we connected on LinkedIn, and it was like, Okay, why do I need to meet her? But it was one of those things where the moment that we connected, it was we were aligned.

But you said something in our text, we were like, oh my God, we're so aligned. Like it was this whole energy thing. I believe in energy, you know, I always talk about energy. Yeah. And so we connected over that, but then I started to learn about what you were doing. We were highlighting um black uh connection, black professionals in Phoenix, trying to find a network and bring them together, blending the business professionals with teachers and helping support teachers and what they do. And I was hosting some happy hours, and Dom came and then we just continued the conversation. We Have Range started to be birthed, and we probably should talk about how we got to the name We Have Range at some point. Absolutely. But from there, that's how we met, and then the rest has been history.

So yeah, and can I just say from my perspective, Dom, you had me at hello girl. So as an executive, I love that for me sales maverick uh that gets literally paid to read people, to pick up on personalities, to understand what it is about a person that's uniquely them. Uh, I can say firsthand that you had me at hello. And that is the special sauce that you bring to our show, to our podcast, to our production. We thank you, girl, and we give you your flowers.

I'm here. I can't wait to see you. Yes, you know, the the young ones, they do this, but no, we like to snap. Because you know, in the poetry world, creative world, that's how you show respect in when somebody has bars because you don't want to interrupt what they're doing. So I've been doing this for a long time. Then the clocking thing came, and I'm like, y'all need to give me my credit. Y'all trying to change it, you know, like give me my credit. That's what I do. So We Have Range is amazing. The call came. It was, it's it was never a conversation. It was never a question. It was a when, not an if. It's a how, you know, like how are we gonna do this? When are we gonna get started to hear the backstory? And we actually, I did a little bit of coaching with you on a couple speeches. I did, yeah. A few different speeches. I'm in the airport, you know, traveling, doing all the things. And then you're like, I need a photographer. And that's what I do. I'm a connector of people. We mentioned The HYP Network, that is my baby. I have four babies. Okay.

Tell us about your babies.

Okay, so all of my babies are six years apart. Um, I have a 19-year-old, a 13-year-old, a seven-year-old, and then I have The HYP Network. She, he, them, they, amazingness will be three in March of this year. Okay. And so, you know, it was time for me to have another baby, but instead of having another baby, I birthed the company. Um, I'm not gonna steal your segue. So I'm gonna have you ask me the question about my Power Stance moment because this is where it comes. This is where I tell you about my Power Stance moment. I'm gonna I'm gonna let I'm gonna give it to Ivoree because as the producer, we have things lined out as far as how is the conversation gonna flow. We have we're very intentional with creating that transparent space for people to tell their stories because at the end of the day, we don't, we only know what we know. When you know better, you do better. So when you surround yourself with individuals that take it to another level, you are nothing but challenged to find that 

Power Stance moment, recognize when you actually are breaking out of the box period.

Wait, is she asking you your

Power? No, she's about to ask me right now.

I ain't tell you yet. Y'all get ready, buckle break.

So, Dom. You're so multifaceted, you have incredible Range. Tell me about a moment in your life, and I know I imagine there's been many with all the amazing accomplishments that you have today. Tell me about a power stand moment that a Power Stance moment that sticks out for you.

So it has to be just deciding that I was tired. I'm tired of sitting in a box that somebody else created for me. So the fact that again, alignment, I took the word crazy out of my vocabulary three years ago. Yeah. When somebody says something or something happens that is serendipitous, that's your word. Alignment's my word, serendipitous is Myshell's word. It, you know, normally you'd be like, oh, that's crazy. Like, whoa, how did that happen? No, that's alignment. So calling out those moments where it's like, there's only one reason for it to be the way that it is, because it's alignment.

And what stands out for you? What's that moment? What's a what give it an example?

So it literally is creating this company, deciding I'm not gonna sit in the box that somebody like I spent almost 40 years of my life trying to figure out what box I was supposed to sit in.

What did that after we met? I remember you were thinking about it on the journey. It was three years ago when we met, by the way.

Uh, I think it was only two. It was only two, it was only two. So I it was only two. It was only two. I think you were getting like full steam when I met you. I really picked up traction. Um, I blindly quit my very cushy salary job as a single mom of three. Uh, if you would have asked me six months prior to resigning, I manifested my dream job. I sat in front of an owner, a CEO, and he low-key kind of like poached me from the position that I was in, the construction industry, very male-dominated industry. And he asked me, you know, we had a three-hour lunch. It was basically my interview, and he asked me what I wanted. And I gave him a number and he literally gasped for air. And within 12 hours, I had an offer letter in my inbox that was more than the number that I had mentioned. Three weeks paid vacation, um, a company vehicle. I I didn't have to pay for gas. I didn't have to pay, you know.

And this is you going out on your own.

This is this is the job that I left. Okay. Okay. Because I got tired of sitting in a box that somebody else created for me. And I decided I was gonna build a box and stand on it. I went, I was in a cycle every year for three years in a row. Same season, same feeling. If nothing gives, I'm gonna quit by September. And I was applying, applying, applying, applying. Each year, something different happened. So it's like, okay, this shift is what it is. Yeah. Last year, going into my 30s, my birthday is also actually my last day at my job is the day before my birthday. Okay. So this is, you know, 2023, the last year of my 30s. I'm about to turn 39. And I literally told myself, like, what the fuck am I waiting for? God is telling you every year, every season, and this is where I'm gonna cry. Because I'm also in a space where I have a child every six years. Super smart. You're out of diapers, you're in school, I ain't gotta pay for daycare. You can make your cereal on, you know, on Saturday morning. I don't have to wake up early anymore. Let me just start all over. So this was my baby. And I just did it. I would not recommend, I do not recommend just quitting your job with no, with no game plan because I what I'm doing now is not what I set out to do. I was doing BTS and videography for a chef.

But you kind of had a plan, but I think, no I didn’t have no plan Myshell, you knew you wanted to be a creative..

I I knew, well, I've always been a creative. Okay. I danced with the Boston Ballet. I was in my first my uncle. Big shout out to Kreateabuzz Films, big shout out to the Hypolite bloodline, big shout out to Braithwaites. Like, my great-great uncle is the author of To Sir, With Love, which is a very, very formative book that was made into a movie, which Sidney Portier, if you know anything about anything, my uncle is a documentary filmmaker. Like, I have greatness in my blood. HYP is literally in my DNA. Like, they gave you the name, baby. They gave God gave it to me. God did, and God continues to do, God continues to show up. So it was God who kept saying, like, you're when you're not happy, some and I think that's the hardest thing for us as women, right? And and probably as mothers because I gave up on my dream every six years. I had a baby.

Now I have to focus. You made me think of something. A lot of people, what separates those who are kind of moving about their day and just getting through whatever their box is to becoming an entrepreneur or doing that next big big thing is fear. Fear. Were you scared when you stepped out?

Look, I got videos in my phone right now where I am talking to myself and literally talking to the audience that is, you know, what was Truman Show or where you're like Abbott Elementary, like there's cameras there, there's no real cameras there, but basically like HYP’ing myself up, crying, saying, like, you gotta do it scared. Do it fucking scared. And that's what I told you guys in the hallway. I don't know if you remember as we're going to the elevator, like you just gotta do it. Yeah, we've been talking about it. We've we did the photo shoot. I couldn't be more excited to get to that point. I was pregnant. You were pregnant, you were beautiful. It was hot as hell in Phoenix. We ended up low-key breaking into another neighbor. You know what I'm saying? Like we got into this building that wasn't even, we weren't even supposed to be in, but that's part of the journey. That's the beautiful thing of the journey when you connect with people who are not only of like mind but like intention, and you can find that space intentionally creating space to be transparent. I operate in the realm of energy and transparency. There's nothing that y'all do that I could do better. There's nothing that I do that you could do better. But together, I mean, we've already talked about elevating and and this, that, and the third, and being in male-dominated industries. I mean, we're I want to talk about code switching with y'all.

We'll get to that, but before we do that, I reacted about fear.

Okay.

So you executed out of your fear, which is good. But it also took courage for you to leave a check that's deposited, whatever's deposited, but you know it's gonna be deposited. Um, the certainty of it all. Obviously. That's courage. We talked about that's what our platform is highlighting people who lead their life with courage. What does it mean for you to bet on yourself? Because that's what you did. You said absolutely that's what I did. And I'm betting on me.

Absolutely what I did. Yeah, I mean, I don't know if there is any way to express what it feels like to bet on yourself and win every single day. But I can say that I'm still scared every single day because I don't have that safety net anymore. And as a mom, I have three people, three human beings that depend on me to make it happen. So betting on yourself is something that I've you have to, it's blind faith.

That's an abundant mindset. It's blind faith. And you hear that people, do it scared. Do it scared, do it scared. I love that.

Hashtag Do It Scared. But I will say that that it's a lot of copyrights, right? It's a lot of copyright HYP. You're gonna hear it a lot as we work together. And and I'm scared, I'm gonna tell y'all, you copyright your own things.

Do it scared. I like what it is. Um, we love that, and this represents an amazing person, our producer, someone with incredible Range. I you're you're the essence of how we came together. And you are a perfect example of what it means when you bet on yourself, when you break out of boxes, when you soar beyond your wildest imagination, and when you do it anyway. So for that, Dom, we appreciate you. We thank you. Unboxed. And we appreciate you for helping us become unboxed and be the best Range in ourselves.

Can't wait to see what we do. 

18:55 Talk to me about what the is We Have Range. What is it? I'm a who yes, who who wants to take the mic first? Because where did it start?

I I'll start with how we kind of start working together. Like the origins of me going to study coaching 2001, finished right at the beginning of 23. Irene and I had met 2018, yep. At an event that I was that I had produced in San Francisco. And she walked up to me and said, I want you to be my accountability partner. I didn't know her. Um so already she had me at yes. Um, I was like, I had somebody cancel on the dinner. We had I was hosting a big dinner in San Francisco after the event, and I said, Come to dinner. She came to dinner, and I remember her talking about her goal for building her portfolio of clients. She's a power broker, and she gives this number and we connect, pandemic happens. I moved to Phoenix, pandemic happens, and we just stay in touch. Like we are supporting each other, being each other's accountability partner.

Accountability for what?

For what it is you say you're gonna do.

Okay, so everything professionally, working out, and you just do the thing, meeting deadlines, okay, all the things.

If you say I want to attain a new position in the industry, then how are you gonna get there? What are you gonna do? Copy. Checking in, I had gone into the onto the broker side of the business. I had no clue what I was doing. So Ivoree was on that side. I would call her and she would support me. So it was really me, her being my support. We were each other's support. And it's during COVID, not a lot of traveling happening happening, and I'll let you take it from there.

Yeah. And then so we meet, and I realized okay, I need someone in my corner, in my professional, in my personal space who motivates and inspires me. And someone, whether it's a work thing, a life thing, uh, bitch, I just need to run something by you thing. That is literally what turned me to Myshell. And I say it was very organic. I found myself being like, when I had personal or professional things I needed to change or shift on, I'm like, okay, I gotta call Myshell. Yeah. I need to tell her what I'm thinking about this thing. And the insurance industry is very fast, it's it's big, bigger than technology. Yeah. Uh, for example. So as we're navigating this space and trying to take space in such a big world, it's incredibly important for us to lean on one another. And often too many times people separate who they are personally from their professional aspirations. But chances are, when you think about your habits, if you are someone who's getting up late every day, if you are not mak– putting 100% into the life that you want to live, if you're not having that accountability person, it's unlikely that you're gonna meet your goals as quickly as you aspire to. So for Myshell, as the years went on, we just found ourselves in this perfect sync. And then one day we're both coming from some big thing.

I feel like we were coming from some big thing, but I called you specifically. We were talking, you yeah, I think I had just broke up with another guy. I mean, I don't know how many guys ago that was, but whatever. It was definitely about that. Yeah. And I said, she called about we're talking dating. We're talking dating. That's dating. We're definitely talking about dating. Yeah. And I was like, I'm done with this, and I'm going back and forth. And I was like, why can't these men have Range? They can either do this, they can they can golf, they can either just do golf and nothing else, or they have terrible sex and nothing. Like it, you know, it's like yeah, it's these things, they don't have a Range. And I was like, that's it, because we were going back and forth over the name.

Yep.

I was like, that's the name. But where did the idea come from?

The idea was bred. We were trying to put into focus in the dating life of like trying to describe people. Wait, she's talking about the idea. Of We Have Range. Yeah. That's the idea. That's the idea of We Have Range.

But like, how did we come together to work together? We came together to work together because we had been wanting to work together. Okay.

And what we realized, if we can get each other hired, okay, okay, okay. I'm seeing it. This is what happened. I wanted her to work with me. Yeah. And a one in hundred, one in one hundred year pandemic struck in the middle of her trying to get onboarded with the firm I worked at at the time. And that stopped because that was the only thing that was gonna keep us apart was a pandemic. And so it stopped mid-process. Employers stopped hiring. So full circle, when we're talking about this dating story, and we keep, and I've, you know, progressing in my career and doing my thing, and she's doing her thing in her career. And I'm telling her about launching the coaching. Yep, yeah. And then we get on the topic of dating and what it looks like, you know, and uh we immediately start talking about how finding your person. And for me, I had just found my person who's now I just met, you had just met Dion. I had just met Dion, my husband. And I we were, I was here I am at my point in my life and my story of he finally represents all of these million things that make up what's perfect for me. He has all the things that that I want, but on the flip side of that, Myshell was at the end of a dating situation. Yeah, and she was talking about, you know, on the list of things that we have as standards, as people, yeah, you know, when you have three to ten things, this we ain't grading people on a curve, okay? We we trying to we trying to find partnership with someone who's going to be what we need and to help us take us to the next level.

But to take the story to the We Have Range, yeah, we wanted to, we talked about it would be so dope to have first of all, Ivoree’s 13 years younger than me. Who’s counting? I mean, I'm just saying, like we we are so we're alike, but we're so different from generation, from our backgrounds. We was like, it would be great to merge and tell our story. I love it. And then have other people on to tell their stories.

We have been now mentoring, coaching each other, building each other up. We literally, when we both met to where we are now, we we've accomplished so much. And I believe we've done it so much more quickly because we've had each other. And so what we've decided in that conversation is first of all, we are going to work together. We are going to be partners. We, and whatever we we do, we're gonna have the creative control of it, we're gonna own it. And what we have to offer is a platform that allows everyday people to share these stories. We were like, there has how many professionals are out there right now without someone they can call at every point in their career and or professional journey. Not everyone has a best friend, not everyone has a spouse or a partner that they can rely on. There are people, I imagine millions of people all over the world who are like, who's that person that's gonna be it for me? And we believe by showcasing the ordinary people, not just celebrities that are in our sound bites and our news feeds, right, with the world telling us that's only those people who sometimes who somehow made it behind camera are who matter the most. No, there are people who are every day who could use our help, and we could do it in many ways. Providing a program, a platform, providing a media platform, being relatable, being relatable, yeah, and making sure we draw in all of the people Myshell and I together have met and know thousands of people in corners of so much of the world, and how can we showcase these amazing people to share their Range? 

And the people we haven't met already, right?

Right, yeah, and I think that that's the value of the platform in general is the ability to make copies of the keys. I I like to use the analogy like the janitor has a key to every room, whether you know what to do with that key or not is the key that's redundant. But you all are bringing light to different walks of life to show different ways of success. What does success look like? Success looks different for each individual. Talk to me about the ability to create something and not have to code switch.

The freedom, freedom, sing it, sing it, freedom, okay, of having our own platform. That means a lot. I mean, my I mean, being literally people who we are, used to being caged, um, and unboxed, unboxed keeps coming up, right? In the in in the most um literal way. We often have to be checking parts of ourselves in the spaces that we're in. So, what it means to be like we have creative control, we have a voice, we can share our stories, we can be us. You mean I can be Ivoree? What? Myshell can be Myshell, yeah. What? And we looking over the corner, like, wait, who's our boss? Besides our producer, Dom, who be on top of us. Right. But somebody gotta tell, somebody gotta keep y'all in line now.

Who's gonna check? Who's gonna check me, Boo?

Who's gonna check me?

No, but that's real. It's a it's a real freedom that only when you create something, like this is our creative space. You get a chance to think, no, we want to do it this way. No, I want to drop 10 f-bombs. No, I want to talk about this. Yeah, like it's our space to create, there is no parameters around us. Um there's certain things that we say we don't want to talk about, politics. Don't want to, we don't want to go into that space. We're not getting into politics or religious discussions, really about highlighting what people are doing. Now, if they have some political affiliation, that's that's their thing. Um, but this is about just trying to find a space of solitude away from the crazy and right without code switching, um or or code switching, because what we just did, who gonna check me, boo?

That's code switching, right? But the ability to show up authentically in every moment and just make decisions as yourself, yeah. Like we we really don't we do answer to somebody, to God, we all answer to God, right? So the ability to be yourself and then help others be themselves, show up. I think we talked about you talked about that earlier, where if you see her, you can be her. Yeah, so we are bridging the gap, we are showing representation of what you can do when you do it scared, when you just do it scared. I mean, we're our our last calls

a week ago. Was it a week ago? I don't even think it's been a full week. We just decided that we was gonna come here. Yeah, we just added this less than y'all was gonna go to the new edition concert. Then it was like, oh, well, let's all go to the new edition concert. Yeah, I didn't make it because I had to go to LA. So we'll talk about more about traveling and all that in in our later episodes. But then it was like, well, if we're gonna be together, let's have a meeting. Well, we're gonna have a meeting, let's let's let's try it on for size. Yeah, and here we are.

Let’s do a trial podcast at the Sin City Podcast Studios.

And here we are. And then we see this professional set and was like, oh, this ain't a trial. Nah. We're turning this on. It's up. Let's just do it. And it's up.

The Network GOOOIIINNN CRRRZZZYYY. Yeah. We Have Range, is something that is going to break ceilings, those glass ceilings that I think we all have a little bit of fear. And it exists for everyone, no matter race, creed. There are ceilings that, and it could be self-limitations.

It's limitations. There’s a difference between being an entrepreneur and just being self-employed. How are you scaling businesses? So, we want people to learn. Umm We want people to laugh, so we might have some ratchetness come thru.

Oh, we def– If if  I’m around it’s gonna be, it’s gonna be some mess. 

The HYP Network will make sure you get it all. It’s going to be we’re gonna have we’re going to be we’re going to have Range.

‘Cause listen, this show is about It’s about Range. There’s some many amazing people doing things. And normally, it’s about the brands are who gets the recognition.

So we're about pulling people from behind logos, pulling people from behind brands, pulling from people from behind sets, from behind the cameras, yes, from whatever you were doing to be in someone else's shadow. We are gonna pull you forward and we are gonna tell your story and we're gonna showcase your Range and we are gonna hear from you because that's what matters is who we are as people and how we come together. Because We Have Range. That's it, that's it.

It's a wrap. That's it, it's a wrap.