Mandy Bowman, Official Black Wall Street

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Yeah, that is a good question.

I'm a non technical founder, So I started out my career in the digital marketing social media space, and I think that's what helped me grow Official Black Wall Street. But on the tech side, you know, I had taken some some web development classes, very very different from building an actual app, and so for.

Me it was a major learning curve.

I definitely had just have a lot of mentors and advisors to help them to help me actually interview you know, developers and you know, our a CTO just to make sure that we were considering.

The right things.

So yeah, we, I say we at that point, it was just but I had even back then, I was so accustomed to saying we all the time. But I had launched the app, the website for Official Black Wall Street, the first one in like twenty fifteen, and that one I had built myself.

I knew for a fact that.

I did not want to do any of that again for the app or something even bigger, because it took a lot, and so for me, it was it was literally just all about trial and error and finding the right people who had the right skills, which again was a lot of trial and error.

Yeah, when you think about, you know, organizing this database of black owned companies, a lot of our companies' businesses, unfortunately, are not supertect happy. There's you know, a category of them are, but a lot of us have mom and pops and et cetera. So I wonder how you go about, you know, engaging them to the directory when they already have some issues just getting their technology up.

Yeah, that one was tough.

Like you said, I've noticed when it comes to technology, a lot of our businesses are way behind. I mean, you know, we have other businesses talking about taking advantage of you know, VR technology and AI, and we're still trying to get our business owners online, like just a

So for us, it's all about kind of holding their hands.

We have, you know, two different type of customers and for those we hold their hands and we you know, we refer them to our partners to help them with with all of that.

You know, many have tried to organize black companies onto a platform but have not reached the success you have. I remember even Diddy, you know, like a year ago, was talking about building you know, some things to help organize us. But you've you've found a lot of success here. What would you say differentiate you or your offering or was different about your strategy or your value prop like what made you the one to shoot out of the crowd?

I like to say I was a secret sauce. Outside of that, I think my like I said.

Before, my background was in the digital marketing social media space. Before we even had a website, I had a community that I was growing online. So before we had a websit or anything like that, I was like, you know, let me create some social pages and share the businesses that I'm coming across. And in doing that, we had literally built a community of over one hundred thousand followers

And ready to.

You know, ready to take the lead in those areas because of our social media presence and the community building that we did before we even had a product.

Yeah, I mean you said a couple of things you said that I think are necessary to highlight you know, you know, just because because you have you know, a well funded, you know, initiative doesn't mean you're gonna go. Like you talked about, you built a community first. And what people so often missed is if you haven't engaged community, people who really believe you can almost sell them anything

Yeah, well, yes, I don't know that, correct me. I don't know that was a good guess though I had.

When I first, you know, started the idea for official Black Wall Street, I was creating a resource my my background. I went to school for entrepreneurship, and kind of this evolved into a business. So I didn't in the very beginning see this is, you know, being a business.

But I lost my train of thought.

No, yeah, I mean I just imagine when when you're building a community, people will follow you anywhere. And so when you've built this community, like, what the things that you do to get people interested in joining your group?

Yeah, it was all about trial and error and with social media, there was a lot of that, so figuring out what our customers actually wanted, what our users wanted to see. So at that point in time, they wanted to learn about different black owned businesses.

Well where are they in the US.

We had a lot of users who were in New York, Atlanta, La, Houston, so you know, highlighting the different businesses in those areas, you know, doing different community events in those you know, local community events in those areas, also collaborating with local organizations.

So all around the country.

There there are you know, different black professional groups than black entrepreneurial groups, and so connecting with those people. But really it was all about I think one of the biggest mistakes me and other entrepreneurs make starting out is creating something and being like, Okay, this is what I would want to see, uh but for for for this, in the very beginning and building that community, it was like, okay, well, who is who is you know in our community? What's that?

When you are building something that helps people find, you know, actual physical locations, rick and mortar locations, I imagine you've got to do a lot of work in a particular area in order for there to be enough in said city, said town. Did you find it an imperative to be hyper local first and wherever that may have been?

Yes, uh so we didn't exclude other businesses in other areas.

But it's when you have a marketplace you you.

You come across that, you know, the chicken and the egg problem, which one comes first?

Which one do you focus on first?

Uh So for us, the easiest thing to do was to figure out which cities you wanted to zero in on first. You know, I had already built that that community, so it was like, okay, where are.

Most of these people located?

They were in New York, La Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, and so then it was drilling down into those specific areas to find the businesses and find the people.

Very similar to like Uber and a lot.

Of those companies, and you know, when they first started, they were just in specific locations and then expanded outwards.

And you were doing you know, social media for major brands before you did this, Like, what did you learn about how all things work in those brands that might have helped you, you know, scale Official black Wall Street.

I think the biggest thing so I had out of college, I.

Worked in the music industry, so I was at Atlantic Records in digital marketing. Then I went to Complex Magazine and Essence Magazine and Social and.

I think being at.

Being at those companies, especially the digital online publications Essence and Complex was super helpful because it I learned content and content is king. So when it comes to marketing Official black Wall Street, when it came to growing our platform, even going viral in different areas, you know, being for example, being at Essence, it taught me the type of headlines

Key for me.

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Knowing that they exist definitely not enough.

I think when it comes to support, there has to be it has to be intentional.

One thing that I've found is.

That there is always this massive energy towards buying black when something happens, you know, when there's you know, some like police brutality, or there's a large you know, luxury brand that does something that it is always reactionary. So I think for us, in order to move things forward, at least on our end, it has to be a more intentional push where we're not just doing this as

Uh.

And number two, I think we need to be intentional, intentional about giving grace when it comes to black businesses, and not just not just when it comes to the day to day supporting, but also you know, when there is a black business that gets acquired, you know that is that is being an If you are an entrepreneur, you know that that is an amazing accomplishment. So being you know, having some grace and understanding how things work on the other end would definitely help.

Yeah, along those lines, I was reading this article when you said buying black should not be a trend, it should be a habit. And with that said, like, it's not always easy to buy black, Like, how do you discuss this being a responsibility in that sometimes we probably should go a little bit out of our way to support black owned businesses. You know, what would you say that?

I would say that it's it's necessary. You know, we we don't have the same access we we also don't have the same the same number of businesses, uh, the same variety in our communities. I mean you go to some even some black communities and you know there are Asian owned businesses on every single corner, and that we we don't have that all the time. So I think it's necessary for us to, you know, even if it made you got to go out of your way a little bit to support I mean, how else are we

Point unless we actually go out of our way to support.

Them so that they have the demand to do so. So yeah, it's it's like an ongoing cycle, but the only way for us to actually push through.

And I mean, we've been doing this for god knows how long.

You know. I have an advisor who you know is old us with my dad, and he talks about, you know, we were in college, we did something like this too. So at some point we have to do something different if we want to see something different.

Like I said this on a different episode, but like I don't shop at Target because I believe in the mission, Like I shopped there because they have what I need. And it's purely just that, how do we get more black owned businesses and black owned companies to just be utilities to where it doesn't necessarily matter to even communities outside of our community, to where it's not just us, but they just simply have what you need.

Yeah, I think that you said businesses being purely utility.

Yeah, in that we're not necessarily I don't support Target or I don't support Walmart. I just go there because they have the thing, you know what I mean. And so in that way, they purely are the tools because they're the vehicle who have the stuff on the shelf

Yes, that is a great point. That is a really good point.

I feel like we, especially in doing this, we have so many basically businesses that are necessities every day necessities and terms of you know, getting more businesses into that space. I think it's it's all knowledge and resources and a lot of you know, there's that education gap and a lot of our communities. We don't have an example of

Yeah, you know, I was reading a posts about you guys having you know, you've recirculated about ten million dollars in sales and business services back into black owned businesses. So, first of all, congratulations, and you know we salute you for that. What are some of the best effective messages or best effective methods of encouraging black people to spend their dollars with black owned businesses? And here's why. I

That is a good point when the staff that you have mentioned the dollar in the black community circulates.

For six hours.

In Asian and Jewish communities is a month and twenty days on average. But I think the best message that I have found is the benefits of supporting black owned businesses. You know, when it comes to one circulating our dollars back into our community, creating more jobs, and creating more conglomerates. You know, when we talk about you know, anytime there is a black owned business, I gets acquired you know social media.

You know social media is.

Yeah, people are usually pissed about it, and it's like, no, this is this is how it works.

This is how we generate more wealth.

We always talk about generational wealth in our community, and this is like a major way that we get to that point. So I think I think the best the best messages making it personal. You know, this is the reason why I support black owned businesses, is because I want to see more wealth in my community, and that

Through to people.

And so you have this initiative to expand of Official Black Wall Street out to ten countries, you know, super ambitious. Proud of you though. I salute you for undertaking this. Talk about you know, the challenges that exist when you know, starting to distribute to other countries, when there's different cultural implications, different econom implications. How are you navigating those types of conversations.

So expanding outside of the US has been a goal that we have had maybe since our first app iteration. We have you know, in growing the platform we have been we received emails and messages from people in South Africa, the Netherlands, Canada who were just like, yo, we need this too, Like how can we get this into our country and our community. Uh So, for us we I mean, we're not launching in ten different countries like tomorrow or next year.

We definitely plan on doing it one by one.

So we we've connected with you know, local organizations in South Africa and the Netherlands, which is you know, we're considering starting and making it more of a collaborative effort so that we one gain access to you know, knowing the different pain points that they're going through as well, but also having some one on the ground who already knows, you know, the area, already knows the culture and can kind of act as an ambassador or a laison for official Black Wall Street.

You know, we've talked about these stats and I don't love them, but you know, their reality is, you know, most black owned businesses have relatively small payrolls by and large, and two thirds, you know, like sixty six percent have fewer than ten employees. And this is these are like twenty twenty numbers, like very recent numbers of fourteen percent you know, ten to forty nine employees and just three percent,

Man, it really hurts even hearing it out loud. But the first thing I thought of was one the access to capital. A lot of the business owners that we work with, if they don't when they don't have the knowledge of receiving that capital and knowing what's possible and what their options are, and so for them, you know, they're starting out in a negative and there is no space for hiring somebody else. It's like, Okay, we can get an intern, but that's about it because we have

Funding, VC funding, All of that has to to.

All that has to change in order for us to actually get the funds that we need to launch and scale.

Yeah, I'm gonna give you another one that may even help further this conversation is like they're according to I think US Census, there's one hundred and forty thousand, nine hundred and eighteen at least registered US Black or African American owned businesses. As Lord knows, we have many that are just not registered. And we're just doing this and so across all sectors of the economy, and they a trip they have ray I'm sorry, in sales generation one

Oh man, I have two that immediately immediately came to mind. One is prioritizing tech in some way, shape or form so that we're not trailing behind the industry. And two, I think one thing that one thing that I've seen a lot a lot of black owned businesses do not have a marketing budget and or don't understand the importance of marketing.

And my background is in marketing, so for me, that is.

An official Black Wall Street is essentially a martech company.

But you know, so it is extremely important to me. And I think the.

Communicating that importance to businesses where it's like, you know, these are the things that you should have, as you know, a business owner if you want to grow and scale. But I found that there are so many, so many business owners large and small who just don't have a marketing budget, or don't prioritize marketing, or don't have a sales strategy or funnel, and so they are all these kind of missing pieces that are kind of that are glued together, and it just it doesn't.

It doesn't work out when it comes to scaling.

So knowing how to to automate, you know, those different processes and being strategic things like having a strategy for sales. And if you're not a salesperson, I'm not a salesperson, so we have someone who specifically does it well as an entrepreneur. I am the the salesperson, but you know what I mean. But yeah, I think you know, those

Where are we making money? Like, in what industries are we making the most money?

I've seen a lot, well, at least when it comes to our platform we have.

I've seen that we have a lot of businesses that are in professional services. There are a lot of businesses that are in food and beverages, and a lot that are in beauty.

So when you say professional services, let's break down what that is like. Is that consulting or bookkeeping?

That's like consulting, bookkeeping, you know, CPA marketing. People in those basically people who took their professional skills and Step, I'm going to make a business out of this.

Done And you talked about earlier, good to continue on it if you.

Weren't finished, No, that's I'm good.

And so you talked about earlier you had this database of a community and you could look and see, you know, where is it. Where does it make the most sense to launch official Black Wall Street talking? You know, we've seen the lists of best cities for a black entrepreneurship. You know, I want I would love to hear from from you. Where are you? Where do you see if you were to locate or relocate a service, Where do you think, geographically are suitable places that offer the best chance for success?

Oh, I would say number one is Atlanta. I think Atlanta's probably at the top of everyone's list. But there is, you know, this massive community of black professionals and black entrepreneurs and so, you know, collaborating and partnering with is something I think we must do. Uh is a lot easier in that kind of atmosphere where there's so many different creatives and and you know, entrepreneurs around you.

So Atlanta is a definite.

I'm a little biased on this, but I would say New York only because there are so many opportunities out here and so many companies that you know, you can you know, corporate companies that you can network with. There are also so many founders out here. But I think I found Atlanta, Houston, New York, which I'm a little biased, so you can take that one with the grain of salt.

I think those are also Miami.

I feel like there has been this growing, you know, black tech community in Miami as well.

You're obviously paying a lot of attention to not only your the growth of directory listings on your platform, but also that those companies and thrive. What gives you hope about what you're seeing, Oh, that's a good question.

What gives me hope is just the quality of the businesses.

I think that was one of the reasons why I created Official Black Wall Street as a resource in general. You know, I this started out, as you know, a passion project. I wanted to support the businesses in my community. So I'm like, all right, let me just you know, create a list and see what's out there. And there were so many beautiful, dope, amazing businesses everything you can think of from you know, black owned banks, restaurants, gas stations. And I was like, wow, this is this is amazing,

You know. So I think that alone has has given me a lot of hope. Also, there's this.

Major kind of people prioritizing, know, like socially conscious brands or brands that at least align with their value. I think forms that come out with this this article saying that you know, socially conscious spending is at an all time high.

So we see the trend is there.

We see that people are are are more focused on black owned businesses.

Maybe not as.

Much as you know three years ago, but there is a bigger focus on black owned businesses. There's a bigger focus on you know, spending based on value. And I think the world is the world is finally seeing the amazing things that we produce. Uh and I think that's one of the one of the things that excites me about doing official Black Wall Street, Like we have black owned multi vitamins and and black owned puzzles and toys and dolls, and there's just a wealth of amazing businesses out there, and so.

Yeah, I'm very hopeful about it.

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