Imani Blair is no stranger to the camera or a stage. She is at home in the limelight – it’s where she thrives. Born and raised in Richmond, VA, Imani is a multi-talented performing artist, podcast host and producer, actor, and music engineer.

From a young age, Imani has made herself a star, pursuing her dreams and actively creating her dream life. Her journey has had its highs and lows, and she has evolved from every challenge with grace and leveled up after every success with the confirmation that she is who she knows herself to be.

In this chapter of life, confidence is her essence. She’s clear on who she is and she’s living life on her own terms.

Imani currently produces her own podcast called Lick the Rapper full time, she produces another podcast called Brown Ambition, and she is the Assistant Director of the stage play Hypocrite the Musical. “I do something for all three of those projects every single day,” she says.

Giving us a closer look into her world, she shares, “I have to work out before I do anything, or I’m never going to work out. I have to work out when I’m still half asleep – I like to get to the gym while I’m still groggy and confused [laughing]. Once I leave the gym, I walk my dog, try to make a healthy breakfast, and then I get to work. I’m behind a computer all day.

“Every day I’m doing production. I’m working 90% behind the scenes right now and I want to change that because that’s not what I love. I’m good at it and I’ve been doing it for so long for that reason, but [my calling] is really to be a performer. I like to be on stage. I like what I do, but it’s not really my purpose.”

It’s not easy to tell. Imani is the type of person who turns whatever she touches into gold. She works intently and pours herself into everything she does. “For me, it’s so hard to stop [my work] when it’s not done. It’s painful for me. I would rather just do it.” Despite being so good at it all, she knew early in life that her highest passion was entertaining.

“I was six or seven years old at cheerleading camp – I was a cheerleader, that was my thing. This was a camp with hundreds of girls, and they picked five of us to be the all-stars of the camp – the five girls who cared the most and cheered the hardest, who did the most and I was one of them.” Imani’s laughter is contagious – in this moment, it filled the room. “The five of us had the option to either do a cheer by ourselves in front of the whole camp or group up and do a cheer together. And I remember the other girls had grouped up to do a cheer and they were looking crazy to me. And all of them went out there and did it and I went out there by myself and did it. And I was so happy and so pleased. That was the first memory. I remember being like ‘yall look craaazy’ – I was six! I cared so much.”

As children, we are our purest. When we’re that young, we don’t have a complete awareness of what we should or shouldn’t do. We do what we want to do – we’re more instinctive. Confidence is one of those innate traits – Imani’s was there very early on and it showed. As she’s come of age, her thoughts on confidence are shaped from experience and self-awareness.

“Confidence comes from winning. And I was a winner at a very young age – like, constantly winning. That sounds so funny but yeah, confidence comes from winning, and learning comes from losing. Both are very necessary. If you work for something and you get it, it gives you confidence. In Hypocrite, I wrote in a line that I thought was funny. My mom wrote the script, but I wrote a line that I thought was so funny and she didn’t understand it. I was like, ‘Mom, trust me, this is going to do it.’ So when the show happens, and the line gets read, and everyone is dying laughing, that gives you confidence. So now I know to trust my instinct – [based on] little things like that. So next time I come up with something funny, I’m not scared to throw it out there because I know what happened last time. But if you’re living in fear and you never take the risk and you’re telling yourself ‘I probably shouldn’t’ or ‘it’s not going to work,’ you’re never going to have the confidence because you’re never going to [give yourself the chance to] win.”

Despite Imani being confident by nature, she is transparent about the duality of that truth and feeling insecure. “A lot of people don’t know this about me, but I’m really insecure. I know it sounds so crazy, but I have to affirm myself constantly. I get really nervous about work. I always feel like I’m going to mess up. And I think that’s because being a child performer, you come up under the spotlight of perfection and it’s something that I deal with to this day – I constantly think about messing up. I wake up out of my sleep sometimes thinking something isn’t done. My alarm will go off and I wake up in a panic. So I have to constantly tell myself affirmations like ‘you are enough, you are smart, you’re so good at what you do, you’re so talented…’ because those dark thoughts do creep in, even with me, as funny as it sounds.”

Imani’s journey has come with its obstacles, both personally and professionally, yet this was how she developed the fortitude that would become one of her greatest assets.

“I moved to LA at 17 chasing a dream, and that was hard. I was out there for two years by myself, poor, trying to figure it out, trying to make it work, and that was my story until I was 27 years old. Hustling, trying to chase a dream, trying to figure it out. I went to school in Atlanta and I was there trying to figure it out, too. Atlanta is just Black Hollywood – very pretentious. It was hard. Not to say it won’t work out for other people, it was just difficult for me.

“[In the entertainment business,] you’re in rooms constantly hearing what you need to change. Someone told me I needed to dye my hair and that I couldn’t sing… there was constant criticism. I started to feel like I was in a lifelong audition. [Looking back,] yeah it gives you confidence. Yeah I can walk in any room. Yeah I can be on any stage, but it breaks you down, it makes you really tired, it makes you very bitter. But, now I feel like I can do anything.

“I’m also realizing now how much the trauma [of being a child performer] affected me in dating. If me and a guy were having issues, I would take it personally not knowing that it was just an unhealed perception from [experiencing so much criticism as a child]. A lot of things that affect us in our adulthood we don’t realize stem from our childhood.”

Her self-reflection tells the story behind her conviction, resilience, and growth. When discussing how she’s overcoming, Imani speaks candidly. “To be completely honest, it’s something I’m working through right now. It’s not something I’ve overcome. It’s not something I’ve gotten over. It’s not something I’ve healed from. I’m working through it constantly with my affirmations, my gratitude, having a relationship with God and my family, grounding, not overworking myself, not overdoing it, taking my breaks, chillin’ if I want to, you know just living a life. A soft life.” Her laugh conveys complete self-assurance.

Staying inspired is one way Imani remains committed to her work as an artist and creator and performs at her highest. She names three sources of current inspiration. “My mom is a huge inspiration – she’s incredible, a jack of all trades, an amazing entrepreneur, mom, everything. Umm… Beyoncé, of course…” (Without hesitation we both scream, “Our girl!”) She continues, “…we live in a time and age where people act like it’s so trendy to like her, but I don’t care – it is what it is. If you’re not inspired by her, something is wrong [laughing]. I don’t even want to hear anything you gotta say, really. She is incredible.

“And then I would say a lot of the Broadway performers, writers – songwriters and script writers. [They embody] talent at the highest level. Right now in the music industry, Beyoncé is one of the only ones, if not the only one, showing talent at the biggest level. Nobody else is doing that. On Broadway, they do that every single night. Everybody’s at the top of their game every single night. Every song. [My mom and I] went to a Broadway show recently and I was really inspired.”

The wisdom of Imani’s journey, even at such a young age still, is made clear in her advice to her younger self. “The rules are fake. I grew up with this set of rules… You’re supposed to go to college and you’re supposed to get engaged, and get married, and have a kid. And if you do all of these things, life is going to be perfect for you. You’re going to be good – that’s all you have to do. And none of that is the truth. And I think that if my younger self had known that, I could have lived more freely and not lived trying to follow these rules and look a certain type of way and do a certain type of thing.” Her desire for freedom shows up in the way she lives her life – her passion for entertaining, her creative nature, her choice of a non-traditional career path. Her freedom itself, like her confidence, is already who she is.

Imani’s mantra: “A mantra for my whole life… I think that love will get you through. Why do I feel like I’m going to get emotional… my family has always been here for me. They’ve always been my backbone. Through everything that I went through, that real, unconditional love from my family has been the most important thing. I just want to love.”

Imani is on Instagram @imaniblair.