Your Access Is an Asset

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Most people who leave a great job leave the access behind with it. Kahlana Barfield Brown did the opposite.

She started as a six-dollar-an-hour intern, slept on her sister's couch, and spent roughly a decade at InStyle, rising to Beauty Director. The job came with access most people never get: front row at the shows, every product on the market sent for free, meetings with the designers. Most editors treated all of that as a perk. She treated it as inventory.

Her insight was that the access was content nobody else could make, and the magazine did not own it. So she built a personal brand while still on payroll. She treated her Instagram like her own magazine: a clear point of view, a consistent standard, only what she felt good about. The partnerships grew until she was out-earning her salary on work the magazine's name was not attached to.

The move from collaborator to owner came down to a single conversation. After four sold-out collections with Target as their first Future Collective design partner, a mentor told her to stop collaborating for everyone else and own her brand. She launched KBB by Kahlana. It now sells in Target stores across the country.

She is honest about the fear that almost held her in place: she worried the relationships would vanish with the title. They did not. The phones rang after she left, and the relationships were hers all along.

Three takeaways from the conversation

The access your job gives you is an asset the job does not own

Kahlana describes the front-row seats, the free products, and the designer meetings as inventory rather than perks. The magazine handed her the access, but it never owned what she built on it. Her move was to claim that access as content nobody else could make while she was still on payroll.

Run the channel you control like your own magazine

Kahlana was a magazine editor by trade, so she ran her Instagram like a publication she owned: same editorial standard, same point of view, pointed at herself instead of the masthead. The example is almost anticlimactic. It started with one good camera, and these days a phone does the job. The discipline is the asset, not the gear.

Stop collaborating for everyone else and own your brand

Target had approached Kahlana about a fifth collection and the easy money was right there. Her mentor cut in with one word: ownership. That conversation is the moment she stopped taking the safe collab and started KBB by Kahlana. The deals feel like the win. Ownership is the one that compounds.

Watch the full conversation

About this guest

Kahlana Barfield Brown is the Founder of KBB by Kahlana, a clothing line sold in Target stores nationwide. A Howard University graduate, she started as a six-dollar-an-hour intern at Essence and spent roughly a decade at InStyle, rising to Beauty Director. She was Target's first design partner for Future Collective, with four sold-out collections, and collaborated with Nike on a custom Air Force 1.

Resources

How Gravy Wealth helps high earners shift into ownership: gravywealth.com/create

Take the complimentary Ownership DNA Assessment and see how you compare to other professionals making the shift. Methodology reviewed by Archie Jones, Senior Lecturer at Harvard Business School. go.gravywealth.com/DNA

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The Owner Mode podcast on Apple, Spotify, and everywhere podcasts live: gravywealth.com/podcast

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