Meet LATASHA BRISCOE: Planner, Designer, Creative Strategist

We had the good fortune of connecting with LATASHA BRISCOE and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi LATASHA, can you walk us through the thought-process of starting your business?
Twenty Years ago, I found a passion in planning events for family and friends. My mom watched me putting into a LOT of work and effort. She also watched me spend all of my little bit of money on those events with no return on my investments. My mom was one of my biggest supporters and helped me often on the events but she saw a potential in me that I never knew existed. One day she surprised me with an Employee Identification Number (EIN) and all of the other formation documents were born. She even named my business. While I have gone through several rebrands, the name, LB Innovations has remained the same since 1999.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
LB Innovations is a full-service event planning and design firm serving the Washington, DC Metro area and wherever our clients call. I do weddings and events with purpose. I also create custom florals for events and funerals. If I could run LB Innovations in a manner that most ideally fits my vision, it would be a full-service venue that accommodates various sized events. The space would serve as a showroom and incubator for creative entrepreneurs offering a work and meeting space for them to operate their businesses. I am actually in the process now of bringing this to a partial reality. As a business coach and strategist, I would love to see small businesses truly build a community that they can lean on each other for ideas, resources and connections without feeling like they lack mutual benefits in their professional relationships. The LBI Collective will become an environment that breeds creativity and nurtures growth through community. Yes, it’s all been said before but I have witnessed professional networking environments where folks show up in the moment, to sell themselves or find out who is offering something they could use. I would love to see people stick around to really deliver on the open-ended promises they recite during icebreakers. You know the ones that drop names, accolades and resume highlights so that we can believe that they are qualified but never follow-through or position themselves to really execute any level of support. If time or money was not a factor, I would help everyone get their passion started into a profitable business. Neither of those resources are limitless for most of us so I am working hard to get this community started to really support small businesses.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
I am foodie. I love to try new things and experiment with new tastes. Having my best friend in town would mean she is coming for the ride. I would likely go on google or yelp and search for something crazy or that has been named the best place for something like Shrimp and Grits. We would try that and then another place the same day to compare and VOTE.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
God gave me the gift and the vision. My momma on the other hand played in intricate part in bringing it to the world. She saw the true talent that I had called a hobby for to long. I would also think outside the box in everything I created, hence the “LB Innovations” portion of my business name. Once I started growing in my business, I learned, very quickly the importance of collaborations and strategic alignment. I began serving organizations that I belonged to in a more active role to learn how they produced large events. My role as chairperson and officer in organizations such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Federally Employed Women, Zeta Phi Beta Sorority Incorporated, and Phenomenal Young Women to name a few, allowed me to create new partnerships within my community and networks that I would not have been introduced to otherwise. Additionally, I have met amazing people along the way that have shared advice, best practices and extended the opportunity for me to create new connections.

Website: www.LBInnovations.events

Instagram: @LBInnovations

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lbinnovations

Twitter: @LBinnovations

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LBInnovations

Image Credits
Lindria Docket