Just when you think it is safe to leave the house, there is an invasion. An invasion of a different kind. This past weekend, Atlanta was invaded by thousands of beautiful Black brothers and sistas sporting their nappy and natural hairstyles at the World Natural Hairshow. It was an awesome event to see the various kinky, natuaral afros, twists, sisterlocks, puffs, and dreads that people were sporting.

People came from all across the southeastern part of the US to attend this event. My daughters and I all are natural and we learned a lot of information on how to care and maintain the look. My 11 yr old daughter, Elizabeth also interviewed several of the participants and asked them to share with her why did they decided to go natural, how long have they been wearing their hair natural and do they feel their hair makes a statement or identifies who they are. You can watch the responses on www.nappyandnatural.com.

Nappyandnatural.com is a community on the web where people can for information, view photos and connect with others who love their natural hair, are transistioning or just plain curious about nappy and natural hair.

Sistas are tired of spending Valentine’s Day, their birthday and many of the other holidays alone. Just yesterday, a good friend of mine informed me that she had taken her profile off all of the online dating list because she was having a hard time finding a “good” black man.

Boy, if I hear this again, I’m going to scream. My friends tell me that I do not understand because your married to a so called “good” black man and that I haven’t been in the dating game in 18 years.

The advice I give to them is don’t limit your possibilities. The world is a big place and if you can’t find a man of your own race, just go out there and find a “good” man. I often tell them that so called “good” men come in all different shapes, sizes and color.

I tell them that you do not have to be alone, it’s okay to date outside of our race. It was interesting to find this video that discusses the fact that an increasing number of Black women are dating and marrying interracially. Check out this video and let me know your thoughts….this subject can be a little controversial.

Click here to watch video

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…

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