Empowerment

Charisma Floyd

Posted on February 26, 2018

Meeting people who are positive and not with the drama and pettiness is truly a blessing in this day and time. I had the opportunity to meet some fantastic artists and people while I performed spoken word pieces at Charmed Life Artist Round Up event in 2016. Since that time, I have built wonderful friendships with some of the people I met. Charisma Floyd being one of those fabulous people who quickly engaged me with her bubbly personality. We engaged in thought-provoking conversations about colors and their ties to our personality, life-issues, and we lost it when we found out we were from the same area. What a small world, but I’m happy to have been graced by Charisma’s presence. She is an inspiration to all women who are determined to live authentically without the woes of society interrupting their fierceness.

Charisma currently resides in Sumter, SC. She is the CEO and founder of the LiveYou company. Charisma wears a lot of hats as a mother, college professor, ESL language trainer, social entrepreneur, author, coach and writing consultant. She graduated from South Carolina State University where she received her bachelor’s in business management and a graduate of Southern New Hampshire University where she earned a masters degree in English.

Hitting rock bottom and crawling out of the pit of despair is nothing new to Charisma Floyd. Imagine facing a failed marriage, a struggling career, the loss of your first company, and your reputation. These were all devastating experiences that Charisma fought her way through. Courageously facing each hardship positioned Charisma to be a lighthouse to those struggling to navigate through the boisterous waves of life. Her company LiveYou was created when Charisma realized that the lessons she learned were so invaluable and needed to be shared with people who found themselves where she once was in her own life. Through LiveYou, Charisma is teaching others how to really live a life of fulfillment on purpose while being the truest version of themselves.

Being a mover and shaker while trying to live out your dreams will have you overjoyed one day and the next day ready to pull your hair out and throw in the towel. With much spunk and grit, Charisma refuse to tap out of the fight now and quit on her dreams. As a woman, Charisma’s perception of herself has been blurred by the never-ending societal views placed upon her even as a child. With a faulty view of herself, it was a challenge for Charisma to stand up and proclaim with confidence who she is to the world. Unrealistic expectations gripped her for many years until she set out on her own quest to discover the woman she was always created to be. She has warred against racism, sexism, and ageism in her professional career as a college professor. Nevertheless, standing up against the ignorance of others has opened the doors of opportunities for those who came behind her. Using her skills and talents as an entrepreneur is a joy for Charisma, but the disrespect she has faced and the lack of a real mentor in business grieved her for a moment. Refusing to allow those hindrances to stop her has built up a resiliency in Charisma that wouldn’t have come any other way.

Self-publishing her first book Live You: Be The Real You and gifting her adoptive mother with a copy has been one of Charisma’s greatest achievements. She has stolen the hearts of thousands through her LiveYou video series. She speaks candidly from her heart in hopes that those watching will see her realness and use those precious life gems spoken from her mouth to excavate their own true identity. Contently living life without being smothered with the materialistic “get rich or die trying” ideology has brought her much gratification.

As a philanthropist, Charisma is eager to impart her wisdom to educate, equip, and inspire those in her community to live a better life. To accomplish this goal, she desires to partner with key investors, educators, and city officials, to create programs and business ventures that will, in turn, create opportunities for a better life for residents who are often overlooked. As an advocate for educational advancement, Charisma will eventually open up a learning center for young elementary and middle school students who are at high risk and often mislabeled with learning disabilities. Understanding firsthand the difficulties single parents face, a single parent housing development is a part of her plans to help single parents secure educational and employment opportunities, along with securing resources for families dealing with a loved one who suffers from any form of mental illness. Knowing the power of unity, Charisma believes that with the right people working together, proper training, and financial backing, she can help people in her community have access to self-empowerment.

As a pillar of strength and valor to her community, Charisma looks up to those who have come before her withstanding the odds against them and making history happen such as Joyce Meyer, TD Jakes, Michelle McKinney Hammond, Josephine Baker, and Dr. George Washington Carver. Her mothers Sarah Rivers ( adopted mother) and Stephanie Owens (biological mother) both played a pivotal role of inspiration as well. Overall, she has been inspired by great minds who dared to defy social conventions and societal norms to help make a great difference in the lives of so many people.

Exemplifying what it means to live out your dreams, Charisma’s advice to women pursuing their dreams is…

I believe that every woman should borrow a line from Beyonce. She famously sang, “Dangerously in Love”, but I believe the real song we should all sing is: “Dream Dangerously”. You have to dream dangerously to get out of the rut of your everyday monotonous experience. Your dream ought to offend and challenge all the broken ideas that do not work, but yet are still upheld as “standard ways of thinking”. Dream big like Joseph the dreamer even if it “pits you” because it will eventually land you in the palace. I have learned that God gives us dreams to propel us further than we ever could have imagined we would go. Its the dream that delivers not only us, but our communities, our families, and friends. Every time that someone did something significant, it is because they dared to dream big! So, Dream and Do it Dangerously.

When Charisma’s history-making journey has come to its completion, she wants to be known as a woman who lived fearlessly while being a servant-leader who took a leap of faith and decided to listen to the plan and purpose that God had for her life. It is her earnest prayer that she will have mothered millions through the students she taught, the clients she coached, and the audiences that she spoke to with a message of life. Charisma wants her children’s children to continue to expand the vision of life that God has given her. All in all, Charisma hopes that her legacy will speak to planting seeds of life and showing others how to do the same thing.