Luvvie Ajayi and all the accolades she deserves — by Connor Gillivan

She moved from Nigeria to Chicago at nine years old. Walked into a classroom where she was the new girl, the only one with an accent, and a minority for the first time in her life. She taught herself to lose the accent by mimicking her classmates.

In 2003, she started a blog from her college dorm room. Just writing. No strategy. No monetization plan. Just a voice she couldn’t keep quiet.

Today, Luvvie Ajayi Jones is a four-time New York Times bestselling author. Her TED talk has over 9 million views and sits in the top 1% of all TED talks ever given. She’s spoken at Google, Nike, Microsoft, Spotify, Salesforce, and Cannes Lions. Shonda Rhimes acquired the rights to her first book to develop as a TV series. And she built The Book Academy, a coaching platform helping other authors get published.

All of it started with a blog nobody asked her to write.

Luvvie was born in Nigeria. Her family moved to the US in 1994. She grew up in Chicago, attended Whitney M. Young Magnet High School, then studied psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

She started her career in marketing and digital strategy. But the blog, AwesomelyLuvvie.com, was always running in the background. She wrote about culture, pop culture, race, social issues. All with a voice that was sharp, funny, and unapologetic.

Her Scandal TV recaps went viral. Tens of thousands of daily readers. Shonda Rhimes, the creator of Scandal, became a follower. That attention from one of the most powerful people in entertainment didn’t come from a pitch or a PR strategy. It came from consistently showing up and writing with a voice that was impossible to ignore.

Here’s the first lesson I take from Luvvie’s story.

She didn’t ask for permission to start. She just wrote.

No publisher gave her a book deal first. No agent discovered her. No brand asked her to be an influencer. She published a blog post, then another, then another. For years. The audience built because the content was undeniable.

I know from experience. When I started posting on LinkedIn in January 2023, nobody was asking me to. I just saw a trend happening in content creation and decided to commit. I took Justin Welsh’s course. I posted every day. Within 6 months I had 30,000+ followers. The opportunity came because I showed up first.

In 2016, Luvvie published her first book, I’m Judging You: The Do-Better Manual. Instant New York Times bestseller. Shonda Rhimes called it a “truth-riot of a book” and acquired the rights through Shondaland to develop it as a comedy series.

She was also the first writer invited to speak at the National Museum of African American History and Culture. The event sold out.

Then came her TED talk in 2017. “Get Comfortable with Being Uncomfortable.” She almost didn’t do it. She’s talked openly about imposter syndrome nearly stopping her. She didn’t feel qualified to be on that stage.

She did it anyway. 9 million views. 23 languages. Top 1% of all TED talks in history.

In 2021, she published Professional Troublemaker: The Fear-Fighter Manual. Another instant NYT bestseller. Guided by her Nigerian grandmother Funmilayo, a woman who wore sunglasses at night and hired the most famous DJ in the country for her 60th birthday. Luvvie credits her grandmother as the original professional troublemaker.

She followed it with Rising Troublemaker for teens and Little Troublemaker Makes a Mess, a children’s book series. Four NYT bestsellers across different age groups. Same voice. Same platform. Different audiences.

Then she built The Book Academy. A coaching platform and masterclass for aspiring authors. She saw that the publishing industry lacked diverse voices. So she built the infrastructure to help more people get their books written, published, and marketed.

She also launched #BlackBizLuvv, infusing over $540,000 into small Black-owned businesses in 31 days.

Here’s what I take from Luvvie Ajayi Jones’s story as someone building businesses through content.

She turned a voice into a platform. Then a platform into products. Then products into a business. Blog to books to speaking to courses. Each step built on the last.

I see the same flywheel in my own work. LinkedIn content drives newsletter subscribers. The newsletter drives trust. Trust drives TrioSEO clients and course sales. Each asset feeds the next.

Luvvie also proved that authenticity scales. She never diluted her voice to fit a corporate mold. The sharpness, the humor, the cultural specificity. That’s what made her stand out in rooms full of people playing it safe.

Consistency compounds. So does courage.

What voice have you been holding back that could become the foundation for everything you build next?