Support Black Businesses!!...Or Not.

Hey friends, let me just say this before some of you guys kill me. I love my community, but we need to get it together, especially if we’re trying to run a business and be successful. I will only be expressing myself through personal experiences. I’m all for supporting black business owners but some honestly don’t have any business owning a business. They lack professionalism and the support system within our community is very shameful when comparing to other communities. I’ve experienced many black businesses that lacked professionalism because they saw me as a friend before a customer. There’s no such thing as “friend” when it comes to business, that’s just my opinion. People get too comfortable and you never want to get comfortable when it comes to business. You’ll start losing money, people will not respect you or hustle and they will walk all over you. I see that happen too many times in my community. The professional aspect breaks down into many parts. Communication, setting ground rules, how you handle your customers/supporters, branding yourself, accountability, consistency, and many others. I’ve seen black businesses lack all that and more. You can’t expect someone who’s paying their money for your business to continue to get your services if they’re not satisfied. Some of us built up this mindset and ego of being a boss but missed the main characteristics of being a boss. Now when it comes to support within the black community, I see it as a joke honestly. We have to take a step back and see how other communities support their own. The Caucasians, Hispanics, Jews, and Asians in my eyes are very successful in the business world because they know how to support their own and carry the professionalism we lack. In Broward County where I’m from we don’t support one another unless there’s clout attached. There’s so much talent here but so little support. Even with me, I have close friends and family that don’t support me but they support people that don’t even know their name but of course if I had clout to my name they would’ve been my number one supporter. It’s not like that in the other communities. We really need to get it together because we’re making it hard for us as if it’s not already. Being honest, I would have to hate to stop supporting a black business but some of us are taking it too far. If we came together and supported each other, corrected our flaws we would be killing the business game because we really do have what it takes to own multimillionaire businesses. I hope you guess didn’t take my message the wrong way and understood my point. I’m here to support black businesses but if we don’t get it together we will lose at the end, until next time friends.