Source: Marty McDonald, Founder & CEO, Boss Women Media, Danyel Surrency Jones, Head of Amazon’s Black Business Accelerator & Growth Accelerators, Annelise Campbell, CEO & Founder of CFG influencer marketing firm, Influencer Beverly “Auntie Bev” Coleman / Amazon
Amazon’s Black Business Accelerator recently teamed up with Boss Women Media to host an inaugural Founders’ Breakfast Masterclass that was teeming with #BlackGirlMagic and inspiration.
Source: Amazon
Source: Amazon
Source: Amazon
Earlier this Black History Month, Black female business owners across multiple industries were enriched at Boss Women Media’s impactful summit carefully curated to empower and connect them.
Source: Lady Jade, Marty McDonald / Amazon
Taking place in the ballroom of Dallas’ The Joule Hotel and emceed by Lady Jade, attendees were enriched by an extensive menu of breakfast bites over words of wisdom from successful entrepreneurs who detailed the “perfect launch” of their brands.
Source: Lady Jade / Amazon
Source: Unoma Okorafor, Founder & CEO Herbal Goodness/ Amazon
Attendees’ souls were also set ablaze via a live performance from gospel powerhouse Darlene McCoy…
Source: Darlene McCoy/ Amazon
before they received words of wisdom from Pastor Sarah Jakes Roberts.
Source: Pastor Sarah Jakes Roberts/ Amazon
During a rousing faith-affirming speech about sitting in the stillness of God’s perfect timing, the Woman Evolve founder reminded the entrepreneurs present that they were “working with something.”
“God has invited you into a space where you can slow down,” said Roberts. “When you come into a space where you can slow down, you’re able to grab the wholeness required to be the type of generational person, business leader, an entrepreneur who doesn’t just start a business, but sustains a business and then multiplies a business. Whether you know it or not we don’t just serve a God who does a little bit, he multiplies. But often times in order to multiply, we have to be willing to sit still.”
Source: Amazon / Amazon
She continued,
“If we only see us slowing down as a loss, or seeing that we’re going to be further behind than where we were, we will miss the opportunity for multiplication. Marty [McDonald] has not just invited you to a breakfast, she has invited you to an intersection, one of those intersections where you accelerate by slowing down first. I wanna tell you that when God got ready to accelerate what he was doing on the earth, he used a woman.”
“Sometimes you need another woman to remind you that you don’t just have a vision, but that you’re working with something,” she added. “In this room, you’re going to be reminded that you’re working with something, don’t brush it off, don’t push it away, don’t bring up the statistics, hold on to the fact that you’re working with something.”
Later during the masterclass, Annelise Campbell, CEO & Founder of CFG influencer marketing firm, and influencer Beverly “Auntie Bev” Coleman shared insight on properly courting influencers to market brands.
Source: Annelise Campbell, CEO & Founder of CFG influencer marketing firm, Influencer Beverly “Auntie Bev” Coleman, / Amazon
Campbell also stressed that business owners should think about marketing funnel strategies like awareness, conversion, and retention with their consumers.
“I get you to convert, you buy, you have a great experience, how do I keep you in my marketing funnel?” said the CFG CEO. “Influencers are great at that because you leverage them and say, ‘Okay, here’s this launch moment, but we’re having a sale for Black Friday.’ So I wanna re-engage with you because your audience already knows about the brand, you already talked about them, that’s how you move them from conversion to retention and that’s important. Influencers play a different role in the funnel.”
Elsewhere in the program, Melissa Butler, Founder of The Lip Bar, Kendra Bracken-Ferguson, Founder & CEO of BrainTrust, Rachel Roff, Founder of Urban Skin Rx also spoke on the early days of their entrepreneurial journeys.
Roff shared that she formed her clientele by handing out before and after photos of skincare results at Charlotte, North Carolina barbershops, while Butler recalled appearing on Shark Tank where her brand was harshly criticized on a national scale.
According to Butler, while the moment was jarring, she used the rejection as fuel to grow her business.
“My reality was that I didn’t start the business for them, so I certainly wasn’t going to stop it for them,” said Butler. “I had to think about, who am I doing this for, and it certainly wasn’t the white man in the suit with the bald head, it was for the woman who rarely sees herself in beauty campaigns.
“You will always have to tap into that why because it will get hard, you will lose hope, your friends and your family will doubt you, you will doubt you, so when you rememebr your why and you keep pushing that button, you’re gonna get up that next day every single time because you know you don’t have a choice, you have people waiting for you.”
See more from the Boss Women Media’s inaugural Founders’ Breakfast Masterclass powered by Amazon’s Black Business Accelerator program on the flip.
Source: Marty McDonald/ Amazon
Boss Women CEO Marty McDonald Reflects On Her Founders’ Breakfast Masterclass
If you’re curious about how this sisterhood celebrating masterclass happened, its creator Marty McDonald gave BOSSIP’s Managing Editor Dani Canada exclusive deets.
According to the Boss Women Media CEO, after hosting a summit in September featuring Slutty Vegan CEO Pinky Cole as the keynote speaker, she was inspired to host a masterclass centered around tribe building and community for Black female entrepreneurs.
“As an entrepreneur, it can be lonely,” McDonald told BOSSIP. “And as an entrepreneur, you need to be able to tap in and call and connect with people who have been or are on your journey with you. I think that’s what makes the landscape a little bit easier, you can do it by yourself, but it’s much better when you have a tribe that you can call and lean into.”
Source: Amazon / Amazon
She continued,
“And so for me personally, when I saw and experienced that, I knew that this is what we needed to create in a very bespoke manner. I knew it because I also experienced it. The most valuable part of my business and the thing that I hold is the people that I could call on. And you better believe I have some people that I have built relationships with along the way that I can tap into and that I can call that has helped make it so much easier than me doing any of this by myself.
And so [I thought] if I could create a room and stack a room with women who could do that for each other, that would be game-changing,” she added. “There’s such a superpower with Black women doing it together, and in a way that’s not mean girl, in a way that wants to really help lift as you rise. I think that we can show the world so much more together. That’s why it was created and how it was created.”
The entrepreneur who created her Elle Olivia children’s wear brand in 2022, also sang praises to Amazon’s Black Business Accelerator, centered around a continued commitment to the success of Black-owned businesses backed by a $150 million commitment.
“Amazon has been a partner of ours since 2021, and they were 1000% the right partner for us to continue to create this momentum and to create these conversations with, especially as we think about Black women product-owned businesses,” said McDonald. “There are a lot of Black service-based companies, and it takes a different type of capital to create a product-based business. And so Amazon being a partner to lean in and say, “Hey, we have all of these other incredible Black-owned businesses that have been incredible sellers of Amazon, let’s bring them in a room and teach them how they can also do the same.” [They] make the event just invaluable.”
She continued,
“Then as I thought about it, I said, “Who else also needs to be in the room?” Not just the sellers, but if we could get some investors, some media to tell their stories, and influencers that will help promote these businesses, it will become a win-win opportunity for these women because they were planted in that room and they were given resources that really made an impact for their business. “And that’s my hope for those women,” she added. “And I felt like that was the energy that was created in the room as well.”
-dani canada
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