The 2nd Annual We Buy Black Convention just wrapped up yesterday and it was surreal. One minute I’m having a conversation with Boyce Watkins about the workshop he’d just wrapped up — in an intimate session, with serious Black entrepreneur attendees — like it was normal. The next minute I’m in the hallway on a bench talking to the owner of Melanin Beauty Suppliers, one of the few Black owned beauty supply distributors in the country. I turned the corner and ducked into a session on Black Hollywood, where G. Garvin and others who’ve worked on million dollar productions were giving away the game to conference attendees. If you missed it, you missed a lot.
The Founder of Black and Mobile, a delivery service catering to Black owned companies, was in the building pitching his business to a team of seasoned entrepreneurs to win cash. There was an entire concert put on, featuring some of the dopest artists in the country. I was looking for my phone (which was manufactured by a Black owned company) when I ran into the Founder of Champ Boxers. I happened to be wearing his product and we had a conversation about the next batch of colors and styles he planned to drop after the New Year. It seemed like at every turn I was encountering a Black entrepreneur who is literally changing the course of history.
I sat in on business workshops where experts like Brandon Cosby actually walked us through how he raised millions of dollars to finance a grocery store in a food desert and how we could do the same, in our communities. I also heard other experts break down how we could make real money, investing in multifamily real estate. Then I heard an entire workshop on how we as Black people can begin utilizing the franchising model to build wealth. All of what I just described in this paragraph literally happened in the span of a few hours, on Saturday. There was much more to come.
Sunday morning there was a focus on manufacturing. We’re moving beyond the phase of simply hustling products that other people make. Manufacturing is where it’s at. Black owned companies that actually manufacture their own products were schooling the rest of us on how we can also get in the game. At one point it occurred to me that all of what I was witnessing isn’t at all normal — at least in my life experience, that is. I was witnessing the making of Black millionaires. I was casually talking to Black people who are household names and learning from them how to replicate their success. How many people do that on a weekend?
The We Buy Black Convention also marked the 400th year since Africans arrived at Jamestown, Virginia. We were literally charting an entirely new course for The Next 400 Years. We were not just “talking” but actually doing and putting the pieces together for action. What I experienced this weekend was not at all common or normal — this was indeed historic.
There is no way to recap everything you missed over the three days in one article, so I won’t try. The highlight for me, however, was our business workshops. Shopping is cool but underneath the surface we had hundreds of Black entrepreneurs who came out with a mission to learn, grow and become the next Black moguls. If you missed the Convention, please make sure you’re at the next one.
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