- Mar 10, 2018
- 7
- 1
I have heard many complaints about black businesses, the vast majority coming from black people.
"They never open/close on time."
"Everything is too expensive."
"Nothing looks professional."
And such comments deter not only us, but other ethnicities from giving us business... but shouldn't we take a look at the root causes of these issues?
The vast majority, between 94-98%, of black businesses are one man or one woman operations, and less than 0.2% of black people work for other black people. So what does this tell us?
Almost every black business has a cap on its success, and it begins and ends with the fact that the owner has only 24 hours in a day, only so much knowledge, and only so much energy.
This leads to the stigma of black businesses having too high prices (one man operations usually lack of economy of scale, which is access to cheap plentiful production), not being professional (a business owner trying to be his own secretary will probably sacrifice polish), and having subpar customer service (one person can only handle so many customers and serve so many functions).
So let's talk solutions. It's not as easy as urging black entrepreneurs to hire others. If so someone would've hired me I am a black member of Corporate America, and the money is good but I want out. I want meaningful work. But in my job search, I found that there are all sorts of barriers that keep us from hiring each other.
So my question is: What can we do as a collective to create jobs for each other? What do black business owners need?
"They never open/close on time."
"Everything is too expensive."
"Nothing looks professional."
And such comments deter not only us, but other ethnicities from giving us business... but shouldn't we take a look at the root causes of these issues?
The vast majority, between 94-98%, of black businesses are one man or one woman operations, and less than 0.2% of black people work for other black people. So what does this tell us?
Almost every black business has a cap on its success, and it begins and ends with the fact that the owner has only 24 hours in a day, only so much knowledge, and only so much energy.
This leads to the stigma of black businesses having too high prices (one man operations usually lack of economy of scale, which is access to cheap plentiful production), not being professional (a business owner trying to be his own secretary will probably sacrifice polish), and having subpar customer service (one person can only handle so many customers and serve so many functions).
So let's talk solutions. It's not as easy as urging black entrepreneurs to hire others. If so someone would've hired me I am a black member of Corporate America, and the money is good but I want out. I want meaningful work. But in my job search, I found that there are all sorts of barriers that keep us from hiring each other.
So my question is: What can we do as a collective to create jobs for each other? What do black business owners need?