Black History Month: Successful Black Entrepreneurs Offer Tips for Aspiring Business Owners

As Black History Month winds to a close, let’s take a look at Black business ownership in the United States: 22% of Black adults say owning a business is essential to financial success. (Pew Research Center) In 2021, there were 161,031 businesses with a majority Black or African American ownership, an increase from 2017’s 124,004. The gross revenues of these companies rose significantly from 2017 to 2021, growing from $127.9 billion to $183.3 billion. (U.S. Census Bureau’s Annual Business Survey) However, Pew notes that “while Black-owned businesses have grown significantly in recent years, they still make up a small share of overall firms and revenue.” In addition, despite the growth, majority-Black-owned businesses “made up only about 3% of all U.S. firms that were classifiable by the race and ethnicity of their owners in 2021. And they accounted for just 1% of total gross revenue.” In comparison, in 2021, about 14% of the U.S. population was Black.” These businesses employed about 1.4 million workers in 2021. Who are Black business owners? Pew reports that 53% of the owners of majority-Black-owned businesses are men, 39% are women, and 8% have equal male/female ownership. This is a smaller gender gap than for all...