Celebrating National Black Business Month

My parents were the ones who got me into business. They were educators, and around the time I was headed to FSU for law school, they decided to open a childcare center. However, my dad got sick, so I decided to put off school to help them with the business. Little did I know I’d fall in love with the work. Here we are, all these years later, and now I’m the sole owner of that childcare center.

Now, growing up, we never saw or noticed color. My parents didn’t shelter us, but I didn’t think about it as a kid. As I grew older and realized there were way fewer minority-owned businesses, I started realizing that what we had wasn’t ordinary. It was special.

So, to me, Black Business Month is about bringing to light the perseverance of these businesses and struggles they've endured. There’s a need to showcase their stories. I hope that, as a result, we can encourage other black business owners to grow, take that next step, or even better, encourage black entrepreneurs to start something for themselves. We all need to find inspiration somewhere to be willing to make that leap of faith. And hopefully, someday, being a black business owner will be commonplace and something that most people will see as ordinary.

But, to that end, something exciting I want to share is that after almost 40 years in business, I opened a second location. We opened it last October, so not yet at a full year yet, but it was an exciting reminder of how far we’ve come. It’s like having a new baby I get to raise. Down the line, I may open another location, but for now, my hands are full. I’ll just keep chipping away at the work like I’ve always done.