Morgan DeBaun is no stranger to trailblazing. As the founder and CEO of Blavity Inc., she’s carved out one of the most influential media platforms for Black millennials. But in her new season, the tech entrepreneur, investor, and now author is less interested in breaking the internet—and more focused on helping women break free from the societal rules that never served them in the first place.
Her debut book, Rewrite Your Rules: The Journey to Success in Less Time With More Freedom, is equal parts self-coaching guide, spiritual reset, and life design workbook. It’s also deeply personal. “I wanted to put into the world a tool,” DeBaun tells ESSENCE. “Something that people could get value from as it applied to their own life. So much of today’s society is people telling you, ‘These are the rules I followed.’ In reality, those rules will not apply to the individual watching that content.”
Rather than another memoir or business playbook, DeBaun structured her book as a framework—one that prioritizes mastering yourself first, before mastering your method or growth. “Before you can go and serve other people, before you can go make somebody else money or even make yourself money,” she says, “you have to serve you.”
That message runs counter to what many Black women have been conditioned to believe. “We’ve been indoctrinated into a society designed for us to serve everybody else first,” she says. “That’s the rule you should break.”
She also acknowledges that the book is a nod to BIPOC, namely Black women because of their nimble resilience.
“My belief, and what’s been true in my career, is that when we are given information and we’re given access to equal information and those tips and tricks that are happening behind the scenes in other cultures, we’re able to take it two times as far.” With that, she still acknowledges the power of balancing joy and merit.
And DeBaun not just talking the talk. While promoting the book, she has also been navigating a new pregnancy—a surprise blessing, she says, that forced her to pause and reassess her plans. “The reality of the data is I’m pregnant,” she jokes. “So I cannot have a wedding in Costa Rica in 90-degree weather, twerking on a yacht at nine months pregnant. We need a new plan.”
That kind of grounded flexibility is central to her message: honor your reality, adapt to your current season, and don’t get too attached to how the dream has to happen.
A longtime coach and advisor to entrepreneurs, DeBaun spent nearly a decade refining the strategies in the book—strategies that work not only for founders, but also for career professionals who are at a crossroads. “Not everybody is going to be an entrepreneur, and I don’t think everybody should be,” she says. “But I do believe that everybody should live a life of success and joy and more ease.”
One of her favorite chapters, “How to Pace Your Life,” is aimed at those overwhelmed by timelines and expectations—especially women juggling career ambitions, relationships, and the desire for a family. “You want to have kids, you want to be a director, you want to travel the world—what do you do first?” she asks. “There is an order that’s helpful. You might not be able to have children at 50, but you can become an entrepreneur at 50.”
Financial clarity is another major pillar of the book. In “The Wealth Code” chapter, DeBaun urges readers to align spending with real joy—not optics. “Why do I have this ridiculous mortgage when I’d rather be traveling?” she says. “If my truest self wants to be in Bali or in a garden growing fresh dill for tuna salad, I need to align my money with that.”
For DeBaun, Rewrite Your Rules is a permission slip. “I hope this gives people permission to do what they already wanted to do,” she says. “To live in their truest self.”
And though the book was written with underestimated and overlooked communities in mind, it’s resonating far beyond. “A 50-year-old white woman came up to me in St. Louis and said, ‘I really needed this book,’” DeBaun recalls. “She said, ‘I haven’t been able to leave my job for more than a week.’ And I was like, ‘Becky, you make them so much money. You’re the problem. You don’t feel secure in your value.’”
That anecdote speaks to the book’s broader truth: rest, joy, and clarity are not luxuries—they’re strategies. And the most radical thing we can do? Choose them.
As DeBaun puts it, “Joy can be achieved. It’s simple, not easy. Be clear about that. But it’s possible and it’s so so worth it.”
