Women of color were hard at work opening businesses at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Nearly half of the businesses started in 2020 were minority-owned, with minority women driving the business creation. Financial concerns, job layoffs and lack of childcare were among the top reasons minority women became entrepreneurs.
“When the pandemic started, people started having these great realizations that I don’t want to do this anymore,” says Thresette Briggs, board secretary at the National Association of Women Business Owners and founder and Chief Performance Officer Performance 3, a leadership and development firm. “Another reason we start businesses is so we can be who we are and truly use our strengths and our gifts and the things that we have in a way that honors our authenticity.”
The unpredictable nature of the pandemic has not deterred female business owners. Most women who started new businesses said they are deeply committed to making their companies succeed and would do it again if they had to.
While 20% of small businesses fail within the first year and hundreds of thousands of businesses shut down because of the pandemic, why are more minority businesses opening their doors? Fair360, formerly DiversityInc spoke to new and established women of color entrepreneurs who shared their pathways to business ownership and what they have done and need to do to succeed.
The Importance of Connections
The number of Black-owned businesses is now more than 30% higher than before the pandemic, driven largely by women like Nneka Enurah.
Before the pandemic, Enurah was holding networking events to support women of color. When she held an event in September 2021, she was encouraged by the number of women who attended. That’s how Celebrate & Elevate was born. The goal of the organization is to share strategies for women of color to navigate the post-pandemic workplace.
“I felt galvanized to start something, specifically a community for women, with an emphasis on women of color,” she says. “The reason I specify that is that women of color sit at the intersection of many barriers throughout our career journey.”
Some companies discourage side gigs on concerns employees aren’t committed to their full-time jobs. Enurah, who is also an advertising executive at Amazon Ads, says the support from her employer is a big reason behind her success.
“I have the space, grace and time to do this work and still be successful at Amazon,” she says. That’s incredibly meaningful to me because that hasn’t happened previously in my career.”
Funding is often a big challenge for minority-owned businesses. Enurah says she has been able to leverage her relationships over the last decade to get many things for free. What’s also been critical to her business are the partnerships with people who are aligned with her mission.
“We’re okay for now, through the grace of God,” she says. “But we’re leaning into more opportunities and partnerships and we’re having many positive conversations. Now is the right time to lean into women and women of color because if women are winning, we’re all winning.”
Taking a Leap of Faith
Despite the negative impact of the pandemic, Hispanic women are more likely to own or plan to open businesses than non-Hispanic females. Much of the growth in the number of new businesses among Latinos has been driven by Latinas. One of those women is Giovanna González.
González was volunteering at a local YWCA as a financial educator and posting some of the content on TikTok. Everything changed in 2021 when one of her posts went viral. That’s when the sponsorship offers, the requests for her to be a money coach and teach financial literacy to students came flooding in.
“I’ve been doing it for free in my community for two years,” she says. “So to hear, you pay for this? That was a nice surprise.”
The first-generation Latina had a fulfilling career in investment management but made the tough decision to quit her job. González is the founder of The First Gen Mentor. The organization teaches young adults and low-income first-generation students about financial literacy, career readiness and the importance of generational wealth.
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“People were more glued to their phones during the pandemic as a distraction, which is a perfect time for me to be a content creator and be online and educating people and sharing all these tips,” she says.
González admits that starting the business was challenging because she didn’t have an entrepreneurial mindset. She leaned on her husband for help and enlisted the help of a paid business coach. González says she is the most professionally fulfilled she’s ever felt in her career.
“As an entrepreneur – and especially with the kind of work that I do, where I lead with the fact that I’m a first-generation Latina – I’m celebrated for my identity,” she says. “People give me business because I am who I am. I feel like I’m right where I’m supposed to be.”
Tapping Into Your Experience
The key to restoring entrepreneurship and employment in the United States will be the recovery of Asian American businesses post-pandemic, according to the Asia Society. Hui Wu-Curtis is one Asian-American founder looking to make her mark.
Beginning with her first part-time job in a call center during college, Wu-Curtis’s 20-year career in customer service and global leadership has prepared her to be an entrepreneur. In 2021, she became the founder and Chief Operating Officer of SupportU. The organization provides development opportunities to diverse communities, including minorities, women and the LGBTQ+ population.
“I wanted to create a company that embraces the diversity of people — give people a safe place to be themselves,” she says. “A safe place to try things and fail, but more importantly, to give them a place where they really can be seen for all of their potential and their talents.”
In addition to her leadership experience, Wu-Curtis has an MBA. Yet, she admits that aspects of entrepreneurship can be challenging, like navigating the complexities of a business plan or understanding the process of getting a loan from the Small Business Administration.
“As a founder, you have to have enough self-confidence to be able to go through the highs and lows and be patient enough in terms of what you want to do,” she says.
But Wu-Curtis is not deterred. She has goals of growing her staff and getting her business minority-certified.
“I want to grow the company, the organization to where it’s sizable enough that now we use our performance, our stories of our people of diversity as great narratives to share with the rest of the world,” she says.
Overcoming Funding Obstacles
Obtaining funding is often the biggest challenge for women of color business owners. Businesses owned by people of color are more likely to be denied loans and receive lower loan amounts than non-minority firms. How do women tackle the problem and pay it forward? Women of color investing in other women of color is one way.
Enter the WOCstar Fund, which stands for “women of color stars.” Gayle Jennings-O’Byrne is the co-founder and CEO of WOCstar Capital, which invests in minority women startups. Jennings-O’Byrne started WOCstar in 2018 and the firm made its first investment in 2020.
“If you can change the story and the narrative, you can change the capital flows,” she says. “And once we change the capital flows, we know we can change the world.”
Businesses owned by women of color generate $361 billion in annual revenue. To get the funding they need, businesses need to “build a bit more, sell a bit more,” says Jennings-O’Byrne. “The sales, those revenues become the investment as opposed to waiting for the investors to come with the dollars. The sales and revenue become the capital to build the company.”
About half of women of color business owners say there weren’t enough resources available to help them open their businesses. Startups led by women of color continue to be underfunded. This is where grants, programs and pitch contests come in. Even with inflation pressures and a recession looming, Jennings-O’Byrne is confident about the outlook for minority-owned businesses.
“Historically, we’ve had to do more with less,” she says. “We’ve had to build our companies without all of those loans, without the VC dollars. When I talk to women, they are recession-proofing their companies. They know how to thrive even in the face of recessions because, in many ways, that’s what our reality is.”
Leaning on the WOC Community
Mentorship and building a support network with other women of color business owners can be game changers for minority-owned businesses.
Jennings-O’Byrne says the support needs to start at a young age.
“We have allies,” she says. “We’ve just got to activate our allies early. All the tools, treasures, time and resources we need are in our community, but it’s about activating them early enough.”
Two years into running Performance 3 the company she founded before the pandemic, Briggs was thinking of quitting. She relied on her network of women of color entrepreneurs for support.
“Don’t feel like you ever have to go in alone,” she says. “Find your community of people and build and nurture those relationships in that community to the highest extent possible. Don’t be on that island by yourself.”
Enurah agrees. She thrives on leveraging her network and being the connector to help women of color succeed.
“We’re here and want to support each other,” says Enurah. “It’s not competitive because we know if we help each other, we all rise.”
