The average black-owned business is stated to fail about 80% within the first year of opening. This rate is very high and expected, with all the challenges that black entrepreneurs face to maintain their dreams.
The #1 reason I do not support black businesses is the lack of availability. Yes, you heard me right! You ever go into a corner store, and the people that own it in your neighborhood don't look like you? Most people have to go clear across town to even get to a black-owned business.
Why is this? Black people have been held back from receiving loans and any money that can help them progress in their business or even dream of owning their own companies in their neighborhoods.
Have you ever wondered why it's so easy for others to come in and capitalize in your neighborhoods, but you can't seem to get a break?
It has always been made difficult to receive help that is so easy for others to get. No matter the requirements, it always seems to have red tape blocking the financial benefit.
I call it a generational setback because it keeps us from getting out of poverty and having something of our own to pass on to our kids.
Just look at the PPP loan.
Minority businesses are the last to receive loans. The 2020 PPP loan minority business owners had their applications denied twice as much as white business owners.
According to the PPP data that Associated Press analyzes. It shows many black business owners were not able to get the loan.
But one thing many didn't count on is people using their relief money to start a business and invest.
Another reason our business close faster is, black people don't always support other black people. Some people get so caught up in their ego they do not understand that they alone are helping with the setback of their communities by not backing businesses from their people. We will get into this further in another blog. But for now, let stay on track.
The 2021 black-owned industry has begun to blossom all over the place, and I'm here for it.
Yes, I love to purchase my items from a black-owned company across the US via "the internet." But, I want to see more storefronts with quality customer services, quality items I wish to purchase.
In retrospect, we can build a black wall street all over the country just a little at a time since we are the biggest consumers in the United States of America. If we take half the money we spend in other establishments and put it to use in our community, we would not have to shop elsewhere but our community. We could have a center for our children, business centers, finance centers, housing centers, food banks, health care, homeless centers.
Maybe I am a big dreamer, but nothing is impossible if we work together.
I would love to shop black in my backyard, one area complete with stores and essentials needed—grocery stores, retail, coffee shops, food, drugstores, and banks, a black experience. Again, not excluding others, but it's nice to see more people that look like you owning and working in the community.
The #2 reason I don't support black businesses. WHERE YALL AT!!
Most black businesses are found by word of mouth like many other businesses but don't always hit the more prominent targeted consumer.
In addition, advertisement is so expensive that many had a hard time in the past getting people to see their business.
Thanks to Social Media, the word is spread faster and allows a bigger audience to see and support, but we need better communication and listing, so everyone knows.
You know you hit it big when big social media platforms begin to notice you and widen your audience across the country, and that's what we need to aim for if we want better.
My heart flutters as many of our people work their butts off to get the knowledge needed to run a business effectively. Yet, the gap for owning our businesses is closing slowly but surely.
As a Black-owned female business, learning new ways of conducting business has been an experience, with many new learning skills that I didn't have before, and it's hard. Although the lingering thoughts of will I fail pressed against my head, I still get up every day with the drive to put that behind me and keep moving forward even if my support only comes from family and friends.
I don't plan on failing; I know what I'm up against, and I am willing to learn and adapt to push through hard times. I may not be the smartest, the wittiest, or the most focused at times, but I am the hardest working woman and too stubborn to fail. What's great about that is I know a lot of men and women just like me that are also pushing.
This pandemic is challenging, but it also has lit a fire under our asses to learn more about business and not want to work under other people who don't value you and your gifts.
Our communities have been underserved and blocked from doing what's best for our surrounding areas for generations. Unfortunately, these blockages have harmed society and disintegrated the core values of what communities are.
I want more faces like mine in our neighborhoods and outside. Black businesses are dear to my heart because I own a business. My father and mother also ran their own business for many years, A black-owned art gallery that shared art from all people to the public. This is the inspiration behind what I do now.
See, when we own our business and put it into our community, instead of just being in the community, we can be responsible for the wealth going in and out of our community; we can control what we want there and what we do not. We can't forget how we thrived, and our children thrived before the angry mob of whites people burned down anything that would show our greatness.
So we must take hold of businesses, share our knowledge, help each other and support one another in making things better for us, like in my post Our Lives Matter "The window of opportunity is open. We need to know precisely what we need and want from this new administration to help our agenda in showing Black Lives Matter." We are a part of this country too and for all that we fought through to be, we need our just due to making things right for our people and businesses.
I want to support as many black businesses as I can in my town, not just everywhere else; we need more of us in those places to give us what we need. So, if you know of any small black businesses put them in my comments let's start talking about them and getting them seen.