What ACTION Have You Taken?

For all the pledges we've seen on LinkedIn from CEOs and other senior leaders in Fortune 500 companies and financial institutions, where are the results?

What have you actually done (not talked about doing, but actually, personally done) to make things better since George Floyd's murder?

The ACTIONS That I've Taken

George Floyd was murdered on May 25th.

I Used My Voice And Took A Stance

Like most Black people, I didn't really want to deal with George Floyd's murder.

But I ultimately concluded that I had to write something about it to protect my mental health. It was supposed to be just a single article, but ended up becoming a three-part series that you can read here:

• Part 1: How Do I Keep On Keepin' On?
• Part 2: Beyond The March: Dismantling The System That Enables Police Brutality
• Part 3: How To Demonstrate Leadership During This Crisis: A Guide For White Allies

I Created A Small Business Directory

In the form of a long article, I created a small directory of small businesses in the DC area that companies looking to diversify their supplier base could utilize.

It's far from a comprehensive directory in terms of the number of businesses listed. It wasn't intended to be a large directory.

But it is comprehensive in terms of the insight that you get into each business owner.

I run a video communications business, so my small business directory has at least a short video pitch from each business owner and, in some instances, a long form video interview and/or a video of them actually doing the work that they specialize in.

You'll get some real insights into the business owners in my directory. It's much more than just company names, logos, and website links.

I Started Producing A Weekly Video Series Called Working While Black

Working While Black is an interview series designed to advance the dialogue on diversity, equity, and inclusion in Corporate America.

Through Working While Black, Black executives have an opportunity to share their experiences in the workplace and use them as a teaching tool for companies that truly want to create environments where everyone has an equal opportunity to advance to the highest levels of the company.

Here's one episode where our guest Cheron Burns explains the circumstances that cause so many Black women executives to leave Corporate America entirely (not just switch jobs) to start their own businesses.

If you have a "pipeline problem" you want to fix, you'll get some insights from Cheron and Erica on how to do that from this interview:

Working While Black comes out every Wednesday. You can click here to view the complete series.

I Invested In Black Woman-Owned Businesses

Chef Jazmine Moore literally saved her own life by learning how to cook with cannabis.

After graduating from culinary school, she was diagnosed with Crohn's disease and went down to 84 pounds on traditional medication.

Chef Jazz developed a cannabis-infused diet for herself and now she's more than ten years removed from taking any traditional medications for Crohn's disease. You can hear her tell her story here:

After healing herself, Chef Jazz went on a mission to help others enjoy the healing powers of cannabis. She was doing this way before it was cool to be talking about medicinal cannabis.

After seeing one of Chef Jazz's cooking classes back in 2019, I knew that with her own cooking show, she could help many more people as well as carve out a place for herself in the multi billion dollar cannabis industry.

So I told her to buy a stainless steel table to use as her teaching platform and I'd start producing a cooking show for her.

Here's an episode that shows how special Chef Jazz is as a cannabis educator:

We record weekly and publish episodes three to five days per week.

You can view the complete Green Panther Chef Show library here.

I Advocated For Diversity In The Maryland Medicinal Cannabis Industry

Just as race restrictive covenants and FHA redlining prevented Black Americans from buying real estate decades ago, government-sponsored disenfranchisement of Black Americans is happening right in the state of Maryland through its medical cannabis licensing process.

Listen to Jume Akinnagbe share her story of how she mortgaged not only her future, but the future of her friends and family who she borrowed large sums of money from in order to apply for a medicinal cannabis license during a special licensing round just for minority business owners.

It wasn’t until after investing millions of dollars in application fees that Jume and other Black business owners discovered that the licensing process was rigged against them all along.

When I found out about Jume's story, I knew I could help her and business owners like her by helping them get this issue in front of more people.

I told Jume's team that the talk show format was the best vehicle for getting their story out and I produced an episode for them.

Click here for the full interview.

All The Above Is What I've Been DOING Since May 25th

What you have you actually done?

I'm talking specifically to the people in Corporate America who have the connections and the budgets and the other resources to make some real progress happen NOW.

What have you actually done?

Everything you see on this page, I paid for, as well as lots of stuff that's not on here because I'm not new to this work. I've been doing this for years.

The costs for all of the time spent planning and recording and editing all these projects has been all on me.

Producing broadcast-quality video is not cheap.

But this work is important and it has to be done, so I set about doing it because lending institutions, venture capitalists, and other institutions like traditional media are certainly not doing anything to support Black women business owners.

Where Is Corporate America?

I'm wondering when (if?) Corporate America is going to live up to the press releases and show up and help.

You can see my work and see that I'm not just out here talking and making pledges, I'm out here doing the work.

Where is the corporate support?

Trust me, I reach out to everybody on LinkedIn who posts about supporting change. It's been two months and I'm still waiting for any of these companies and financial institutions to respond.

I’m out here trying to rescue Black-owned businesses, including my own, right now.

Where is the corporate support?

We're dying out here. Literally.

Black people are literally dying in disproportionate numbers due to covid and Black-owned businesses are dying as well.

Fortune 500, I've seen all your social media posts. But I'm out here in these streets doing this work in the small business community and I've seen no evidence of you doing any of what you've said you were going to do.

Where are the billions of dollars that have been committed?

I Want To Help You Be A Part Of The Solution

I only need two things:

1. You have to be serious about doing something to help right now. Please don't try to waste my time with hollow rhetoric. You have to know that I'm going to see right through that. And this issue is too important for me to suffer fools, so don't come at me with foolishness and get your feelings hurt.
2. Give me a responsive point of contact to work with. With open communication, we can make a lot of good things happen quickly. In this context, "good things" means saving businesses. Come into this wanting to work quickly and efficiently because that's how we have to do things in the small business community. We ain't got time for no bureaucracy. The small business community is in crisis right now.

You can be a real hero and be a part of something significant.

Small businesses are a tried and true wealth-building tool. Keeping a small business alive will have ripple effects for generations to come and you're capable of tossing a pebble that will initiate those ripples.

But this isn't something you have unlimited time to deliberate. We lost 41% of Black-owned businesses just in the two months from February through April.

If you want to make a difference, you have to do that now.

You've seen what I've been able to do on my own. Imagine what I could do with your support.