Breaking the Blueprint
Welcome to Breaking the Blueprint — a blog series that dives into the unique business challenges and opportunities of underrepresented business owners and entrepreneurs. Learn how they’ve grown or scaled their businesses, explored entrepreneurial ventures within their companies, or created side hustles, and how their stories can inspire and inform your own success. This piece is in collaboration with HubSpot Podcast Network’s Amplifying Voices campaign partnership with The Gathering Spot. In 2019, Charli D’Amelio shared a video on TikTok doing the Renegade dance. The video blew up and is inarguably her claim to fame. Since then, she’s amassed 150M followers on the app, done brand deals with household names, and her family has an unscripted reality docuseries called The D’Amelio Show. Thousands of TikTokers followed her lead, did the dance, and attributed it to D’Amelio, but she didn’t create it — Jalaiah Harmon did. Harmon’s erasure from her dance is
Welcome to Breaking the Blueprint — a blog series that dives into the unique business challenges and opportunities of underrepresented business owners and entrepreneurs. Learn how they’ve grown or scaled their businesses, explored entrepreneurial ventures within their companies, or created side hustles, and how their stories can inspire and inform your own success. Innovation and creativity are driving the new workforce, and many underrepresented professionals are making career pivots to monetize their talents through entrepreneurship. The U.S. Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship report more than four million minority-owned companies in the United States today. Despite these numbers, minority business owners still face systemic barriers to accessing capital, resources, and support. These barriers prove why choosing where to start or scale a business is essential. Read ahead to learn about some of the best cities supporting underrepresented founders in elevating their businesses. 1. Houston, TX Houston, Texas, is one
Welcome to Breaking the Blueprint — a blog series that dives into the unique business challenges and opportunities of underrepresented business owners and entrepreneurs. Learn how they’ve grown or scaled their businesses, explored entrepreneurial ventures within their companies, or created side hustles, and how their stories can inspire and inform your own success. It can feel isolating if you’re the only one in the room who looks like you. Meeting peers and mentors with a unique understanding of your lived experience and business roadblocks can help you connect the dots needed to grow your business and community. However, finding spaces for this kind of connection can be challenging for Black Americans. In this post, discover in-person and virtual events nationwide where Black entrepreneurs can strengthen relationships and build expertise. How to Prepare for Attending a Conference The United States Census Bureau reported almost 1.4 million self-employed Black people in September 2022, an
Welcome to Breaking the Blueprint — a blog series that dives into the unique business challenges and opportunities of underrepresented business owners and entrepreneurs. Learn how they’ve grown or scaled their businesses, explored entrepreneurial ventures within their companies, or created side hustles, and how their stories can inspire and inform your own success. Black-owned banks have been pillars of the Black community since the late 1800s when they were founded to fight against the economic inequality Black Americans felt in accessing financial services. Despite being in a new millennium, these banks are still some of the few institutions that offer equitable support for Black business owners. Read on to learn more about the history of Black-owned banks and how you can use them to start your business. The History of Black-Owned Banks Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company was the first bank to serve formerly enslaved persons in 1865. Capital Savings Bank opened
Welcome to Breaking the Blueprint — a blog series that dives into the unique business challenges and opportunities of underrepresented business owners and entrepreneurs. Learn how they’ve grown or scaled their businesses, explored entrepreneurial ventures within their companies, or created side hustles, and how their stories can inspire and inform your own success. The LGBTQ community is small but mighty, contributing trillions of dollars and thousands of jobs to the economy each year. Despite this, LGBTQ individuals still face marginalization. The community continues to fight against historic and current systematic discrimination, which can present barriers to achieving equity and equality — even when trying to start or grow a business. While progress is slow and not always linear, the good news is there are many resources intended to help give LGBTQ entrepreneurs a leg up. We’ve assembled a list of some of the best out there, which can help LGBTQ
Welcome to Breaking the Blueprint — a blog series that dives into the unique business challenges and opportunities of underrepresented business owners and entrepreneurs. Learn how they’ve grown or scaled their businesses, explored entrepreneurial ventures within their companies, or created side hustles, and how their stories can inspire and inform your own success. LGBTQ+ people often face higher rates of isolation and discrimination, meaning that this community can especially benefit from gatherings that foster support and connection. This is especially true for LGBTQ+ entrepreneurs and professionals, as finding opportunities to learn from people who share similar life experiences can be challenging. In this post, we’ve curated a list of annual events and conferences for LGBTQ+ entrepreneurs and professionals. Whether you’re seeking mentorship, training from experts, or just some old-fashioned socializing with like-minded business owners, these events are made for you. While most have already taken place for 2022, keep your eyes
Running your own business can be a great career choice for people living with long-term disability or health condition. This may relate, in part, to the increased flexibility around working hours that self-employment brings. Working for oneself can also promote a sense of being a master of one’s destiny and not having to contend with misconceptions and discriminatory attitudes from others that are often encountered while job hunting. For entrepreneurs of any background, business networking, be this receiving the support and advice of others, identifying collaborative opportunities, or expanding the customer base, remains an essential undertaking. Unfortunately, as in almost every other walk of life, networking is not without barriers for disabled entrepreneurs. In this post, we’ll discuss why networking can be a challenge and best practice approaches to networking that disabled entrepreneurs can put in place to stay on top of both the competition and their own health. Why
Welcome to Breaking the Blueprint — a blog series that dives into the unique business challenges and opportunities of underrepresented business owners and entrepreneurs. Learn how they’ve grown or scaled their businesses, explored entrepreneurial ventures within their companies, or created side hustles, and how their stories can inspire and inform your own success. Networking is connecting with other business professionals, building relationships within and outside your field, and diving into your story to establish the “why” behind your work. Effective networking highlights your expertise and that of your peers so that you can find a middle ground of opportunity, collaboration, and collective problem-solving. Because of the power of networking, professionals are often told to focus on building their networks. That is easier said than done, though, because people from marginalized communities — specifically individuals who are Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ+) — have historically been underrepresented and left out of
Welcome to Breaking the Blueprint — a blog series that dives into the unique business challenges and opportunities of underrepresented business owners and entrepreneurs. Learn how they’ve grown or scaled their businesses, explored entrepreneurial ventures within their companies, or created side hustles, and how their stories can inspire and inform your own success. Zippia found that 67.5% of all content creators and influencers are white. As people look to influencers to find someone like them to take inspiration from, the overwhelming amount of White content creators means that Black consumers likely have a hard time finding what they’re looking for. In this post, we’ve compiled a list of Black influencers from various industries with authentic perspectives and advice that are worth following. Black Influencers to Follow on TikTok 1. Marquees Brownlee — Technology Youtuber Niche: Technology and software Marquees Brownlee is a tech influencer known for his reviews and instructional
Welcome to Breaking the Blueprint — a blog series that dives into the unique business challenges and opportunities of underrepresented business owners and entrepreneurs. Learn how they’ve grown or scaled their businesses, explored entrepreneurial ventures within their companies, or created side hustles, and how their stories can inspire and inform your own success. White-owned businesses receive an average of $18,500 in outside equity at funding, compared to just $500 for Black-owned businesses. On top of that, it can also be challenging for Black entrepreneurs to find mentorship, resources, and even community with other business owners with their shared experiences. Thankfully, there are cities where Black entrepreneurs, past, present, and future, thrive and have access to the resources and support they need. Read on to discover five of the top cities for Black entrepreneurs. Top Cities for Black Entrepreneurs 1. Washington, D.C. Sometimes called the Chocolate City, Washington D.C. was the first majority