Black Atlanta entrepreneurs share struggles at ‘family meeting’

A little over a week ago, Ryan Wilson and Lakeysha Hallmon, entrepreneurs and leaders in Atlanta’s Black business community, were texting about a disturbing trend they had noticed.

All around Atlanta, Black small businesses are shutting their doors. Wilson, co-founder and CEO of networking hub and coworking space The Gathering Spot, and Hallmon, founder and CEO of Our Village United and the Village Retail at Ponce City Market, said they knew they had to do something about it.

The next day, Wilson said on social media he and Hallmon were “calling a family meeting.” On Tuesday night, about 500 people came to hear Wilson, Hallmon, entrepreneurs like Slutty Vegan founder Pinky Cole and leaders of financial institutions and nonprofits talk about the realities of being a Black business owner at this moment.

Credit: Olivia Bowdoin

“Family is personal, family is intimate, and in family, you can be imperfect, but there’s space for you,” Hallmon told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on why they decided to call it a family meeting. “Everybody in this room, we’re an extension of each other.”

The room was packed. People stood three rows deep once all the chairs were taken and members also spilled into other parts of TGS for the series of panels on what has caused the current economic realities, what established entrepreneurs are experiencing and how to take care of their mental health.

“This season has been difficult, right?” Wilson asked in the opening minutes of the gathering.

“Whew, Lawd!” a woman in the audience exclaimed.

Attendees had the opportunity to anonymously tell the group something about their business or being an entrepreneur that no one else knew.

Credit: Olivia Bowdoin

“I need help and often times I’m inundated with uncertainty,” one audience member wrote.

“I don’t know what’s next. I feel like I’ve hit the ceiling of my business and I’m not sure if continuing on … will be enough for me,” another wrote.

A roaring economic rebound from the depths of the economy has turned into a slog for many. Unemployment remains historically low, but Federal Reserve action to tame inflation has meant higher interest rates. It’s cooled the economy, which for some has sapped sales, and made it harder for many to borrow.

Though the rate of price increases has recently slowed down, it’s still tough for many.

Alex Camardelle, vice president of policy and research at the nonprofit Atlanta Wealth Building Initiative, told the entrepreneurs their struggles were not individual issues, but structural.

“We don’t have the policy environment that creates the enabling conditions for the vast majority of Black-owned businesses in this city to thrive,” Camardelle said.

Nearly 9% of employer firms in metro Atlanta are Black-owned, the highest rate of any major U.S. metro according to a report from online loan marketplace LendingTree . Yet Black small businesses in Atlanta earn 17 cents for every $1.00 earned by all other small businesses, according to a recent AWBI report .

Atlanta has the second-lowest economic mobility numbers in the country because of disparities in income, savings and debt, according to a recent Annie E. Casey Foundation report.

But entrepreneurship is often seen as a key to Black wealth growth and well-being. The AWBI report found that as the share of Atlanta’s Black-owned businesses per capita goes up, child well-being does as well.

A July survey by the National Federation of Independent Businesses, a nonprofit small business advocacy organization, found though the vast majority of U.S. business owners surveyed are optimistic, inflation is still a top concern and cost pressures, particularly labor, are impacting small business operations and their bottom line.

It’s a reality Cole echoed during the event.

“I don’t really have a revenue issue, but I can’t keep talent,” Cole said, “because nothing is stable. People aren’t spending their money, so as much as I want to pay my employees more, if I pay them more, I’ll make less money. So, my bottom line is going to be red.”

Credit: Olivia Bowdoin

Cole, alongside Jasmine Crowe-Houston, founder of food surplus management company Goodr, and David Moody, president and CEO of C.D. Moody Construction, were blunt about their difficulties.

Crowe-Houston said when she is asked about her five-year goals, she’s just focused on making it to next year and told the other entrepreneurs to do what they need to do to keep their business going. “If I can be here in five years, if I can be around that’s great, but I want to make it through 2025 first,” she said.

Moody founded his company 36 years ago and said there are days where he thinks he should just give up, but he told the entrepreneurs to not let fear stop them.

“Get up, fight through that fear, dust it off and keep going,” he said. “It gets hard, and we all will be knocked to our knees, but I promise you this, we’re all stronger than we realize and you will get up and you’re going to keep going.”

Throughout the night, business owners talked about how they were seeing a consumer pullback because of inflation and political uncertainty.

“There’s a tightening,” Vanessa Coore Vernon, CEO and creative curator of The Bohemian Brands, told the AJC.

“I think people are even more conscious of how they spend, and why they spend, and what they spend it on,” said Vernon, whose stores include the Souk Bohemian and Nomad in Ponce City Market.

For Crystal Sheppard, owner of Kinks and Curls Natural Hair Boutique in Lawrenceville, 2024 has been more difficult because of people’s routines and spending power changing.

During the coronavirus pandemic, everybody was working from home, so Tuesdays at 10 o’clock “were booked solid,” Sheppard said. “But now, as people have (gone) back to work and fell back into routine, groceries being higher, I’m actually trending less in revenue than I was last year.”

Sheppard also said that in 2020, there was an outpouring of support for Black businesses, but that has all dried up now.

Hallmon, of Our Village United, said grant dollars for diversity initiatives have been frozen, which has impacted her organizations.

“We’re feeling the impacts of that, and it’s trickling down to the small businesses,” she said.

But amid difficult business realities, the family meeting gave Vernon hope.

“Being here is just about continuing to be a part of this really beautiful community and seeing ways we can leverage and utilize each other to keep us all sustainable and in business and growing,” she explained.

More than a dozen organizations, including the Fearless Fund, Invest Atlanta, Access to Capital for Entrepreneurs and the Russell Innovation Center for Entrepreneurs, also showed up to offer small business support and resources.

Credit: Olivia Bowdoin

Sheppard said it was helpful to learn she was not alone and that businesses no matter the size are struggling. But she said she wishes more support existed for Black entrepreneurs outside of Atlanta.

“I come and see that when I get to Atlanta, it’s just so many resources for Black businesses, but as soon as you step out of the Perimeter, it’s far and few between,” she said.

The evening ended with Joy Bradford, a licensed psychologist and founder of mental health resource guide Therapy for Black Girls, discussing self care for founders with Hallmon.

“Your business can fail and you still are not a failure,” Bradford said. “You are not the work; you are the person who operates the business.”

As the entrepreneurs left TGS, they were handed a small notecard with words of encouragement from their fellow founders to show them they were not alone, they were family and could weather this storm together.

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