Blog: StuffFlyPeopleLike.com Niche: Fashion, Music & Entertainment Founder: Rae Holliday & Gabriel Williams Twitter: @THESFPL Everyone wants to be part of the in crowd these days, but if you ask Rae Holliday and Gabe Williams, founders of the fashion-fused entertainment blog, Stuff Fly People Like, they'll just say, ‘Why be normal?' "Normal†is what your parents would want you to be, and people that end up just like their parents…well, you know how that story goes. In 2008, these two corporate machines thought they were at their prime. Educated, career-oriented and establishing their adulthood, but along the way they realized something wasn't right. And like most people, they couldn't figure out what. Knowing that much of the American population strives for that 8x10 piece of paper that declares "you've made it†in one form or another, the two Brooklynites determined they fit the societal prototype, but one day their discovered there had to be more to life. Having a deep-rooted love for entertainment, fashion and music, and tired of visiting multiple sites each day for the latest news in all three subjects, Rae and Gabe came together to give the people something a little extra special. There was stuff White people liked and there was stuff Black people liked, but when Brooklyn's finest came together, stuff fly people liked was born. And now, the duo is known as The Fly Guys, gate-keepers of all things fly. So knowing that fly people need love too, BlackEnterprise.com continues to pay tribute to Black bloggers everywhere and recognizes Rae and Gabe for a site that has moved to the forefront of the entertainment space. Stuff Fly People Like is… A void that we always had, but we never really knew… that we had. We were both in corporate America [when we decided to start this blog]. At the time, I thought I had my dream job: it was a Fortune 500 company; I was managing million-dollar accounts, but then there was still a void that was there and until we created Stuff Fly People Like it was never fulfilled. We created Stuff Fly People Like, and now we're writing, going to all these events and consulting a lot of these people. It's like the void has been filled, and we didn't even know that this was what it was. So many people go to school and they think that when they get this degree or that they reach this certain platform or when they become the CEO of this company that their will would be filled, and we thought that too. [But] the void wasn't filled until we actually became happy doing what we really wanted to do. SFPL speaks to… People who are just like us. We are really trying to expose that fly person who is not a millionaire yet, who has not sold a million copies yet, who might not even be signed, who might still be an independent artist, but they still have that unique flyness that we think that the world should see. It's nothing for us to email the label and see if we can get a Rick Ross or see if we can get a Diddy, and it's nothing against them but I think there's definitely a person out there who [have been] fly their whole life who don't get that same type of exposure. We want to uplift those people who are just like us, who just don't have that limelight. We want to give them that limelight so to speak. A fly person is… Somebody who stands out; not somebody who's willing to camouflage into the rest of society. It's somebody who's willing to be different. They know that they're different than everybody else and they're not really afraid to show that. That's a fly person. We determine who's fly… [By seeing who goes] against the grain. We know the masses usually go with what the popular kids are doing, [but] a lot of what fly people do is based on individuality and less about what the masses are doing. What really determines what fly people is to us is uniqueness, whether it's fashion, music or entertainment, just how unique it is, is how we determine what fly people like. Someone's not fly if… [You think] the norm is the best thing to do. We just want to get out there and get as much as we can without being that nuclear version of what American society wants us to be. We are very pro do-what-makes-you-happy, very pro don't-leave-this-earth-without-leaving-an-impact and very pro make-your-parents-happy-but-make-yourself-happy-at-the-same-time. Click here for more... People look to us for… Everything that's fly. You can go to a HypeBeast or a HighSnobiety to get what's commercially fly, but people wanna know what's fly in the streets, so they come to us. We started this blog because… Five years ago, everyday we would go to the blogs–the YBF; Concrete Loop–and discuss everything that was on these blogs. We always felt that there wasn't always one blog that incorporated fashion, music and entertainment. You would go to one for fashion…one for music or…one for entertainment, but there was really no place where you could go for everything. There were so many blogs with "the stuff.†There was Stuff White People Like, Stuff Black People Like, Stuff White People Hate; there were all these things and we were thinking to ourselves, fly people like stuff too. What we thought was only going to consist of telling people what stuff fly people like, turned into this whole lifestyle. The best advice we've gotten since working in this space was… From June Ambrose: It was the very first day I (Rae) met her. She said, "No matter how many celebrities [you] meet, no matter how many big time clients that [you] meet, always understand that this is a business and that these people are never really your friends.†It sounds really harsh, but it was truer than I thought it was. She said, because of our platform we're gonna get celebrities who wanna be our friends and we're gonna get other bloggers who are gonna wanna be our friends, but at the end of the day she needed me to really view this as a business and never get too attached; this way, when something happens [we're] not really surprised and can keep on moving without the hurt. The best advice we would give someone breaking into this space is… It's less about creating a voice and more about keeping a voice. A lot of people come out the gates strong…people come into politics and they're very gung ho; they wanna change this and they wanna change that, and the minute they sign a big deal, it's out the window. Somebody's telling them what to do and how to say it. I (Rae) write for SFPL, for Uptown Magazine, for Vibe Magazine, [and] it's very important that it's my voice and that you can hear the same voice…no matter whose publication it is. I don't ever want it to seem like somebody can pay me to alter my opinion. Be sure to check out the rest of the digital thought leaders as they're revealed each day by logging on to BlackEnterprise.com/BlackBloggerMonth.