Teneshia Carr was not born with a silver spoon in her mouth.  A daughter of a father who owned and operated two delis and a mother who was a roving nurse.  Her parents were her inspiration to be an entrepreneur and not seek a job with a paycheck at the end of the month.  She wanted to own the space she occupies. Ms. Carr learned that, “there is nothing else but working for yourself.”

And work for herself she did.  She launched Blanc magazine in 2011. Born from a sense of frustration when she started, “it was the typical angry story, just out of frustration.”  Blanc, which means white in the French language, was in her words, “The irony of a black woman from Philadelphia owning a magazine called Blanc is on purpose.”

To say that Teneshia has succeeded with Blanc as the magazine that, “is a creative platform that presents a diverse and underrepresented perspective of the fashion, art and music world,” will be a major understatement.

A talented editor, photographer and now co-founder of a content agency, Teneshia still have time to rewind at home journaling “mindless writings.”  The passionate magazine founder and I had a very pleasant, fun, and educational conversation via Zoom.

So without any further ado, here is my the lightly edited interview with Teneshia Carr, owner and editor in chief of Blanc magazine:

But first the soundbites:

On the reason she named the magazine Blanc: “I thought if I could figure out how to make a Trojan horse for people who look like me to  sneak into the side door of fashion that just wasn’t letting us in, was something that I wanted to do.”

On the secret of a good publishing model: “You need to figure out how to do something that’s relevant, do something that matters to your readers and to advertisers to allow them to keep supporting you.”

On why Blanc survived and thrived where others failed: “I think Blanc has stuck around because we work with a wide array of creatives, and those creatives go on to work with some of the biggest stars, the biggest talents, and the biggest magazines in the world.”

On sticking to print: “They say, do that digital, girl, but they are adamant at the legacy that comes with the advertising that they create lasting forever in a print publication.”

On Surviving as an independent magazine: “In order to survive as an independent or a niche magazine, you have to understand that circulation isn’t going to save you. Nothing is going to save you. You need to figure out how to do something that’s relevant, do something that matters to your readers and to advertisers to allow them to keep supporting you.”

On the creation of BabyRobot agency: “There’s other ways that while for the past 15 years, I’ve built this community, I have to really figure out how to create experiences that, connect to them as individuals and connect to them as my audience. So that’s how you rule the world, diversifying. But leave your lighthouse untouched.”

On Blanc and its influence: “It’s not built to be necessarily the influence. It is the lighthouse to shine on the influencers themselves.”

On being an entrepreneur:  “I grew up with the entire idea of being an entrepreneur… I was taught that there is nothing else but working for yourself.”

On her journey those past 15 years: “The entire journey for me has been Rose Garden because it’s full of the beauty and full of the thorns.”

On Artificial Intelligence and its role: “It’s amazing. You didn’t think about a tool as something to fear. You thought about it as a tool to enhance the thing that you’re doing.”

On the impact of AI and other digital platforms: “We’re heading to the land of the falseness. That’s going to make Blanc and other niche magazines who are doing really cool things still interesting.”

On how she rewinds at the end of her day: “I do a lot of journaling, just mindless writing in the evening. And that really helps me relax from the day.”

And now for the lightly edited interview with Teneshia Carr, owner and editor in chief of Blanc magazine:

Samir Husni: My first question to you is, 15 years ago, you embarked on a mission that manifested itself with Blanc magazine. Can you tell me what that mission is, and why did you choose an ink on paper magazine to manifest that mission?

Teneshia Carr: First of all, the irony of a black woman from Philadelphia owning a magazine called Blanc is on purpose. I thought if I could figure out how to make a Trojan horse for people who look like me to  sneak into the side door of fashion that just wasn’t letting us in, was something that I wanted to do.

I wanted to figure out how to tell stories with people that look like me, with creatives from around the world to share that one perspective, to share their different perspectives on what luxury is, what beauty is, what fashion is, what culture is. So, when I started, it was the typical angry story, just out of frustration. I wanted to be the next Anna Wintour.

I wanted to be the next, not just fashion editor, but the next great fashion storyteller. And I knew from the constant rejections that it just wasn’t going to happen until I figured out how to build my own space. And that’s what I did.

Samir Husni: And then 2020 happened.

Teneshia Carr: And then 2020 happened. There were quite a few Black-owned magazines that were popping up around that time.

They didn’t really have a luxury advertising, but they still had a really strong point of view. There was Fashion Fair, Crown Magazine, and New Knew was another one. It was just like a renaissance that was happening around publications, Black editors, Black designers, and Black magazine owners.

It started bubbling up around 2018, 2019, when all these little cool magazines started popping up. When I first started Blanc (2011), years before, there weren’t any Black-owned, Black female-owned, the advertisers just didn’t publish with us. Essence didn’t have luxury, fashion advertising.

When 2020 happened, the whole thing stopped a little. You would think that because of what was happening with the streets and the social revolution and all the Black calls on Instagram, that all of this money would start pouring our way, and that just wasn’t the case.

I think Blanc has stuck around because we work with a wide array of creatives, and those creatives go on to work with some of the biggest stars, the biggest talents, and the biggest magazines in the world.

We are, quite frankly, to pat my own back, just consistently good. We are consistently telling really good stories. So, 2020, to imagine,  I couldn’t get my issue from London.

I print in the UK. I couldn’t get my issue anywhere. So, I lost the print run. I couldn’t distribute it, and I had to fulfill my obligations to the advertisers. I had to fulfill what I needed to do for my advertisers. But everything just stopped.

The world stopped. It was really hard to pivot to something else, because we’re so old-school print. Digital’s fine and digital’s cool, but I don’t really care about that.  No advertisers, I care about it. But, like, print is the thing. It’s the thing.

It’s smelling the copy and and knowing the difference between a digital print and a real print and, feeling the paper and the weight and all of that. It still means something, and it still meant something, but I couldn’t, it was impossible for six months or eight months to do anything. I think the only reason why I survived is because of my advertising partners.

I don’t have very many, but the ones I have are really dedicated to the way I tell stories. They really are wanting to see us grow, but it’s hard because there are only so many partners that are willing, unfortunately, to support in a real way.

The pandemic stopped things, but then it restarted. We got a boost, and that boost quickly died out. We got a boost of advertising, and that quickly died out and we went back to our regular partners. I think we’ll keep going because every time I meet a client, they go on and on about how valuable what I do is, how valuable the magazine is still for them and their business, how important it is.

They always get on me about getting more digital now. They say, do that digital, girl, but they are adamant at the legacy that comes with the advertising that they create lasting forever in a print publication.

Samir Husni: Back in 2011 everybody was into digital and social media. Did somebody say, Ms. Carr, are you out of your mind? You’re doing an ink on paper magazine?

Teneshia Carr: Well, people still say that, and they keep saying it to me.

People were saying it, but the thing is because I don’t know how many other people could have started the thing that I did in a way that I did it without any investment, without having any contacts or any connections. I focused on having the creative network first, and then I figured out everything else. Like, I knew that I wanted to make a magazine.

I had no idea how the business of magazine was run. I don’t need to know that stuff. That stuff is fine.

I just need to know how to make a magazine. So, imagine me focusing on creating the work and then figuring out how to build a magazine business. I had to do those two things.

I could not figure out then how to build the concept of Blanc digitally. That just wasn’t my focus. I just wanted something eternal.

I wanted to create a perfect coffee table magazine that you can put on your coffee table, and whether it’s from 10 years ago or four years ago or from last season, it’s still relevant and still feels relevant. And that’s what I wanted to make. I didn’t want to make a beautiful website that no one cares about.

I wanted to make something that was forever.

Samir Husni: Excellent. So, tell me, as you are climbing every mountain, so to say, do you really want to rule the world as your issue 28?

Teneshia Carr: Yes.

Yes. So, my theme of the Rule The World issue, and the other issue themes are based on song titles.

“Rule The World” is a nod to Beyonce or “Pieces Of You,” which is one of my favorite issues. That’s a Jewel song. So the themes are always rooted in music, mainly sad British music.

In order to survive as an independent or a niche magazine, you have to understand that circulation isn’t going to save you. Nothing is going to save you. You need to figure out how to do something that’s relevant, do something that matters to your readers and to advertisers to allow them to keep supporting you.

And you have to diversify. I can’t just print Blanc because that’s just not enough space for the stories I want to tell and the things that I want to make. I had to do what everybody else is doing.

That is the reason why I felt like I had to build an agency. I built an agency called BabyRobot Studios, with my partner, Scott Omelianuk (former editor in chief of Inc. and This Old House magazines). I built it because that’s only one piece of a touchpoint to the community. How else can I connect? How else can I engage? How else can I, with my partners, with my advertising partners, how can we engage and connect authentically in other ways? But the magazine, that’s the lighthouse, baby.

You don’t touch that. It’s perfect.

But there’s other ways that while for the past 15 years, I’ve built this community, I have to really figure out how to create experiences that, connect to them as individuals and connect to them as my audience. So that’s how you rule the world, diversifying. But leave your lighthouse untouched.

Leave it pure, leave it beautiful. It’s going to last forever and the advertisers will love you. But figure out other ways to build a brand, touch your community, and engage in your community.

And that can be digital for you. I’m working on it. I’m going to build it. It’s going to be amazing. It could be social, but for me, it’s going to be real life experiences when I partner with my advertisers and connect with my audience. So that’s how I’m going to rule the world.

Samir Husni:  It has been said magazines were the original influencers. What has been the influence of Blanc?

Teneshia Carr: I think we’re influenced by the idea of finding the people who are creating culture genuinely.

Magazines were the original influencers. That’s absolutely correct. And then fashion designers and fashion editors were the other first influencers.

But for us, it’s the community. It’s the people who we research and find, those next big artists, and those next big musicians. Like, Blanc is the other part of it, which is, it’s a clean slate.

It has nothing to do with the editors. It has nothing to do with my team. It’s about the contributors page, which changes every single issue.

We work with hundreds of new teams, every single issue on purpose, because that is who matters, the contributors, not necessarily the masthead. It’s about figuring out how to find those people who are on the precipice of becoming, and allowing their light to shine as influencers of culture. That’s what Blanc is built on.

It’s not built to be necessarily the influence. It is the lighthouse to shine on the influencers themselves.

Samir Husni: You’re so passionate about the magazine. Does this mean that your last 15 years have been a trip in a rose garden?

Teneshia Carr:  I grew up with the entire idea of being an entrepreneur. My mother was a nurse, and she was essentially a freelance nurse who went around, she had certain clients, and she moved from client to client.

My father, without a high school diploma, he started two cheesesteak stores in Philadelphia. One was called Carr’s Deli, and one was called Sandwich Masters. The point is that I was taught that there is nothing else but working for yourself.

There is no such thing as going to some job and getting some paycheck, and living life. That was never a part of my DNA. Whatever I was going to do in this world, I was going to sit inside whatever that thing is.

I was going to own the thing that I sit inside. There have been years of struggle and years of drinking champagne, and that’s the journey of being an entrepreneur. Every successful entrepreneur can tell you a dozen moments that they have been unsuccessful and they have failed.

For me, the entire journey has been worth it because I can’t do anything else. Now, at this point, can I maybe go and work for someone else? Maybe, but I could never do that before. It just wasn’t even in my DNA to think that way.

The entire journey for me has been Rose Garden because it’s full of the beauty and full of the thorns.

Samir Husni: Dealing with all the creative world, from music, to art, to fashion, do you have any fear from AI?

Teneshia Carr: No. I think I’m aging myself, I remember when Photoshop didn’t exist and you didn’t fear Photoshop. You were like, oh my God, I can get rid of all these pimples off this girl’s face.

It’s amazing. You didn’t think about a tool as something to fear. You thought about it as a tool to enhance the thing that you’re doing.

Now, if you aren’t talented and you use this tool in this way, I think that’s no different than people who used to over-process their photos in the eighties and nineties. And you used to say, oh my God,  look that’s so heavily Photoshopped.

In Blanc, most of our photos are shot in film still, by the way.

Most people don’t know that, but we encourage so many of our photographers to shoot on film. They don’t charge us the same rates. We tell them this is the theme, go explore.

It’s like testing ground to be experimental, to be different. And most of them say oh wow, a lot of people don’t let us use film. And I’m like, dude, go use film, go do it.

It’s a bit more expensive, but the print quality like this is (holding in her hands issue 28 of Blanc), this is shot in film. The difference you can tell in the whole story, you could tell them the stories that we shoot on film.

So I understand that people are afraid, but there are a lot of AI artists doing a lot of really cool things, there are a lot of photographers, a lot of creatives that don’t use anything that are doing some real cool things too. I mean, it’s okay.

All of it’s okay.

Samir Husni: I’m seeing so much like fake art, fake pictures…

Teneshia Carr: When they pass it as a real art, that’s the thing that’s scary, but I just think there isn’t anything we can do about that.

Like the moment that we started accepting images that were, literally wastes were reduced by seven inches, that people look completely different from retouching. When we were starting to accept that in advertising and in print as facts, we were already coming here anyway. We were already coming to the land of the fakeness anyway.

As if it just got here and now everybody’s scared, but we’ve been moving here. If you look at some images again from the nineties and the early two thousands that were so over processed that the people were unrecognizable. That’s where we were heading.

We’re heading to the land of the falseness. That’s going to make Blanc and other niche magazines who are doing really cool things still interesting. It’s going to make us interesting in a couple of years because people get exhausted with not knowing if something that they’re seeing is real or not.

And they know that when they pick up Blanc, they see the film edges. They know that that was shot on film and that was just printed and that’s it. There’s nothing else.

So I think it’s going to be more important to have those kind of bastions of purity, like print, like people who still shoot film, people who still accept film for print, because I know how rare that is.

It’s going to be all the more important to keep figuring out how to publish this stuff, these creatives, they need this platform, they need publications that are still going to be accepting this kind of work.

Samir Husni: If somebody comes to you and says, Ms. Carr, I want to publish a magazine today, ink on paper magazine, do you tell them you’re out of your mind or you give them a different advice?

Teneshia Carr:  I would say you are 50 years too late. If you’re still hearing that and crazy enough to keep going, then you just might have the juice to come out with a couple issues.

I would say it takes a certain type of person to look down the barrel in the face of this impossible thing and say, yeah, I still want to do that. That person can’t be persuaded to do anything else because I’m one of those people. You couldn’t tell me 15 years ago to not do a magazine.

You couldn’t tell me today to not do a magazine. I would do it.

Samir Husni: Before I ask you my personal question, is there anything you would like to add, a question you would like me to ask I didn’t ask you?

Teneshia Carr: No, I think that was pretty good. I think it was pretty fun.

Samir Husni: So my first personal question, I could not but notice the spider tattoo on your hand. What’s the significance of the spider tattoo?

Teneshia Carr: So this is Anansi, Anansi the spider. He’s a trickster spider.

He has seven sons. My husband has a deep affinity for spiders. And so instead of a wedding band, I got this Anansi.

And this is me, who is Djibouti the turtle. Also a trickster turtle. This is the trickster turtle and this trickster spider.

They’re based on folklore. This is the African folklore.

They’re little tricksters who trick the other animals in the forest into doing what they want.

Samir Husni: If I come to visit you one evening unannounced, what do I catch Teneshia doing to rewind from day reading a book, watching TV, cooking?

Teneshia Carr: I do a lot of journaling in the evening. For a long time, I didn’t unwind at all. I didn’t know how to relax, or I was always thinking about work or always checking emails, the worst thing in the world that has happened to us is the fact that we have constant access to our phones and people have constant access to us.

I turn off all the notifications on my phone so it doesn’t even light up because I would be checking it all the time. I do a lot of journaling, just mindless writing in the evening. And that really helps me relax from the day.

Samir Husni: and my typical last question, what keeps you up at night these days?

Teneshia Carr: I think trying to juggle between two businesses, building the agency, BabyRobot Studios and the magazine together. They’re separate, right? They’re sisters, but they have their separate purposes. They’re totally different: one is an agency and one is media.

It keeps me up at night. Realizing that I have to put a lot of all the things that I’ve learned over the past 15 years into my business.  I’m having to learn all over again about a new business that I didn’t anticipate. So it just means that I have to get in a frame of mind. It’s a new challenge that I didn’t expect to run.

It’s just content, right? I make this content for print. I can make this content for white label and give it to the same client and charge an agency rate. It’s this totally different business, totally different self. It’s a totally different set of clients.

It’s totally different. And you just don’t anticipate it until you actually are going to set up an agency. It’s going to be totally fine.

So that’s what keeps me up at night.

Samir Husni: Thank you.