Innovators: How a NY Black female cannabis entrepreneur beat imposter syndrome and found allies

Note: This is one of a series of profiles of Syracuse-area startups that are among those picked for a Syracuse Surge program to nurture minority entrepreneurs.

Over the past year, Brandy Young has built her business, Rochester-based Certainty Analytical Labs, with help from a Syracuse program geared specifically toward Black and other minority founders.

Young’s company – which started with cannabis testing and is now growing to cover other industries – was one of five businesses selected last year to participate in CenterState CEO’s yearlong Syracuse Surge Accelerator program.

As a Black woman entrepreneur navigating the uncertainty of New York State’s new cannabis industry, she needed all the help she could get: Black women are the fastest growing demographic of entrepreneurs in the country, according to research from GoDaddy, but they face disproportionate financial hurdles.

That’s why the accelerator was a blessing, Young said.

“There’s something freeing about an environment where you feel like you’re not going to be judged, and you have people sitting around the table that look like you,” she said.

Along with four other teams, Young went through workshops, coaching and strategizing to take Certainty from a small startup to now servicing more than 50 clients, with plans to expand into environmental, food and pharmaceutical testing, she said.

Her cohort was the first to graduate from the new program earlier this month, and she believes the lessons she picked up during her time from the program’s coaches and fellow participants have helped her kick her business into high gear.

“Prior to starting the accelerator, we had just gotten the lab permitted to test cannabis, and we were getting our first tests approved and maybe servicing just a handful of clients at the time,” she said.

“Post accelerator, we service more than 50 brands; we’ve added to our testing portfolios and expanded our services; and we have a very good understanding of our customers, their needs and their pain points.”

There were three key lessons Young said she learned over the past 12 months.

The first was how to communicate the value her business brings to clients. “We do more than lab testing; we offer assurance and we help demystify the lab as a ‘black box,’ as it seems to be for so many of our cannabis customers,” she said.

The second takeaway she said was the realization that “imposter syndrome is ubiquitous.” Put another way, Young’s feeling that she didn’t belong in her position, that everyone else was smarter and had all the answers, was “forever present.”

“And just accepting that and understanding it and putting it into its place and into a category has helped me take chances, and be OK with being uncomfortable, because I know it’s not a unique thing to me.”

Lastly, Young said she learned the value of a team, of good advice and of a good community.

Because members of the accelerator cohort were at different stages of their businesses, and each CEO had a different level of business acumen, Young was able to siphon good ideas and feedback from her colleagues, including another woman “who is very strong, assertive, and has a great product that clearly brings great value to the world.”

“It’s been a blessing to be in a group with other women that deal with some of the same issues that I deal with, and not trying to code-switch or be something that I’m not, and living in that space and owning it was a great thing,” she said.

Young started Certainty with an eye toward the cannabis sector because of the state’s mandated promise of righting the historical wrongs of the war on drugs. But as a scientist and businesswoman, she knows the company needs to expand beyond that one industry. So, she’s begun branching out into others, such as environmental testing and pharmaceuticals.

“So, that’s where we’re growing,” she said.

However, being “the only female, Black-owned and operated cannabis testing lab in New York – and probably in the country” is also something to celebrate, she said.