This week has an exciting and busy networking week for me. On Wednesday, my husband and I were selected to speak to an audience made up of hundreds of young entrepreneurs as part of Clark Atlanta universitys’ Leadership week. They were very curious about learning the secrets to success in business. One of the secrets lies in the one’s ability to network and that’s something that we both do well.
On Thursday, we were invited to a luncheon featuring Donald Trump’s “Apprentice”, Dr. Randall Pickett. Prior to the luncheon, we were able to spend some one-on-one time with Randall and the Judith Cole, Vice President of the Kaufman Foundation, a $2 billion dollar foundation that focues its efforts on advancing entrepreneurship and improving the education of children and youth.
It was quite enlightening to listen to Dr. Randall Pickett’s speech that discussed “wealth” vs. “income”. The statistics were rather alarming, but quite realistic for an urbanite like myself living in the heart of the SWAT (that’s Southwest Atlanta) to all those outside of the ATL. Can you believe that African Americans and Latinos spend $1.4 Trillion dollars a year, that a hell of a lot of money. But when you look at our net worth as compared to whites, the numbers are dismal: white households have a network of $121,000 and African American have a net worth of only about $19,000 and that is probably pushing it.
We understand working for Mr. Charlie and collecting a paycheck (income) on Friday only to spend it on nice cars, decked out rims, gold teeth (grillz), fine clothes, shoes and purses, but we still can’t seem to understand the ownership piece (wealth).
It appears that everyone else understands that we make a lot of income and spend a majority of it so they advertise and market their products and services to us and what do we do? Buy them.
I am all about ownership and sharing my knowledge and lessons learned to help others become successful business owners and market their products and services to whomever will purchase them.
Why can’t more of us be on the other side of the counter, owners of businesses, and then sell/market to us so that more dollars are circulated in our community and neighborhoods? Are we afraid, are we too stupid and don’t have the skill and ability to run a business? What is our problem? Please comment and let me know your thoughts…