March 11, 2026
Wilson provides women with common basic principles and the unwritten rules for succeeding.
Lauren Wesley Wilson’s best-selling playbook for women on the rules of getting ahead is prepared to reach an even larger audience.
What Do You Need? How Women of Color Can Take Ownership of Their Careers to Accelerate Their Path to Success is now available in a paperback version less than five years after its hardback release.
It’s a milestone that not every author can reach.
“It’s an honor that a paperback version gets to be released,” Wilson tells BLACK ENTERPRISE. “[This] means that you sold a significant number of hard copies … then the publisher comes to you and says, ‘We can make your book available to a wider audience because a paperback is cheaper than a hard copy.”
This achievement is also a testament to the fact that her guidebook, which draws on her own career trajectory, has stood the test of time.
A New Chapter Amid Tough Times For Black Women
In her book, Wilson provides women with common basic principles and the unwritten rules for succeeding in the workplace and advancing their careers
The paperback version of is releasing at an eerily similar time to when she began writing it: 2020, right when Black women were facing unprecedented levels of unemployment during the COVID-19 pandemic.
At its peak in May 2020, the unemployment rate for Black women reached 16.6% and remained in the double digits for six months, according to data from the National Women’s Law Center. By July 2022, the unemployment rate for Black women remained elevated at 5.3%, even as unemployment for women declined overall to its pre-pandemic rate of 3.1%.
Within the last year, the unemployment rate for Black women has increased again. In 2025, Black women started the year with an unemployment rate of 5.4 percent. They ended it at 7.3 percent, the highest rate in four years, according to The 19th.
“The unusual nature of this increase in Black women’s unemployment is a testament to and a direct result of the anti-DEI and anti-Black focus of the new administration’s policies,” William Michael Cunningham, an economist and the owner of Creative Investment Research, tells BE. This is demonstrably damaging to the Black community, something we have not seen before.”
With this book, Wilson wants women, especially Black women, to understand they are in full control of their careers.
“This book is a guiding light for those who feel like they’re not in control of their destiny,” said Wilson. “I want to be able to provide tools, resources, advice, and tips to help you get to the other side.”
Before the Book, Wilson Was The Woman Who Needed It
Wilson’s book came from an honest place.
Before she became the founder and CEO of ColorComm and before she said those four words (What do you need?) that have helped countless women, she found herself unemployed during a recession. She was living in the DMV area and was too embarrassed to tell her family that she had been laid off.
Instead, she made the more than an hour commute from Maryland to Washington, D.C. as if she were going to work, and spent eight hours each day applying for jobs from the library. It took her two months to find another job. That experience also taught her a valuable lesson.
“When people get let go, they oftentimes want to do a big LinkedIn announcement and tell everyone,” said Wilson. “You want to be strategic about the people you tell [because] you don’t want to decrease your value in the marketplace.”
Navigating being let go, building your personal brand, establishing your worth and confidence, combating burnout, and strategies for building the right professional connections are among the many topics covered in Wilson’s book. She said the information inside is the key to what everyone wants: access to information.
“This book is meant to last you 15 or 20 years because so much of what’s in it is common basic principles towards advancing,” said Wilson. The paperback version is now available on Amazon.
Wesley is a scheduled speaker at BE’s 20th Annual Women of Power Summit in Las Vegas at the Bellagio Hotel on Thursday, March 12 from 10:30-11:30 a.m. In “Strategic Relationships: The Unspoken Key to Success,” she will delve into “how to be intentional with your connections to make sure you’ve got friends in high places.”
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