Madam C.J. Walker was born Sarah Breedlove in 1867, the first child in her family born free after the Emancipation Proclamation. She started out earning $1.50 a day as a laundress. By the time she died in 1919, she was widely recognized as the first self-made female millionaire in America — built entirely on a line of hair care products for Black women, sold door to door, one relationship at a time.
She didn't inherit a platform. She built one, then handed the ladder down behind her: Walker trained thousands of Black women as sales agents, giving them a path to financial independence at a time when almost no other paths existed. Her company wasn't just a business. It was an economic engine for an entire community that had been locked out of most others.
Walker was also outspoken about giving while building — she funded scholarships, supported the NAACP's anti-lynching efforts, and donated to Black schools and orphanages long before her company had “made it” by any conventional measure. Giving back wasn't something she scheduled for after success. It ran alongside the building, the whole way.
That's the same order of operations behind DOBETTER TOGETHER. You don't wait for the company to be big before the community gets taken care of. You build both at the same time, on purpose.