It took Binta Niambi Brown several years to walk away in 2013 from the comfortable life she had built for herself as a corporate lawyer. She was going to start her own business, in a tough market that was already flooded.

By 2015, she had launched Fermata Entertainment, a production and artist management company based in Brooklyn, New York. Her boutique record label, Big Mouth Records, followed shortly after.

“I could have gone and worked for a record label as an executive and there were certainly opportunities to do that,” Brown says. “But there was a particular problem that I wanted to solve and I believed that I had a solution to it. I felt compelled to try that and see if I could build something and be successful at it.”

There was a particular problem that I wanted to solve and I believed that I had a solution to it – Binta Niambi Brown

This past year, Brown’s record label won its first Grammy and produced a song that’s been streamed tens of millions of times. Her story can serve as inspiration for others who dream of taking a similar leap from an easy and secure way of life into the unknown.