- August is National Black Business Month, a time to recognize and celebrate the contributions of African-American entrepreneurs.

According to the latest data from the U.S. Small Business Administration, there are about 3.5 million black-owned businesses in America.

For an update on black businesses here in Detroit, I spoke with Bartell Welch from the Detroit Black Chamber of Commerce and Kai Bowman from the Michigan Black Business Alliance.

So I have a couple stats I can kind of throw out and we can get going talking about this in terms of that black business owners own about 3.5 million businesses nationwide, employ about 1.2 million people, so that has a huge impact.

But yet, when you drill down to Detroit, they make up a large percentage of businesses, but what type of businesses are they and how extensive are they?

Talk about those challenges.

Bartell, first I'll go to you and then I'll go to Kai.

- First of all, thank you for having me.

But like you said, it is really a challenge here in Detroit.

Detroit has about 62,000 small and minority enterprises of which around 51,000 are minority business enterprises.

And out of that, there's literally about 80% of those that are black-owned.

But despite the large number of black-owned businesses, only 95% of them, of that 51,000, operate with just one employee, right?

So that really highlights the challenges of scaling and accessing your markets.

So with the Detroit Black Chamber of Commerce, in partnership with the National Business League, we're supporting over 13,000 black-owned businesses in Detroit and over 40,000 across Michigan to try to focus on growth and sustainability for these businesses.

- And you work from both sides of the aisle, so to speak.

You are involved with business organizations but you are a business owner yourself of multiple businesses.

- That is correct, that is correct.

So I, along with my wife, own a marketing company that's been in business for about, wow, almost 14 years now.

We've had offices ranging from Sterling Heights to Detroit.

We also have an interior design company that's been in business over five years.

Then I run a local non-profit organization as well focused on news, film, and bridging.

- Great, so you get a lot of different perspectives.

And I saw the one business is called Red Diamond.

I saw where you were going with that.

And awesome, kudos to your Catholic connections as well.

I come from a family of Catholics.

So Kyle, tell us about the Michigan Black Business Alliance and the things that you do.

- So we formed in March of 2021 with the mission to help close the racial wealth gap.

And we do that in a number of ways.

We have four core programs that we operate but we also do a lot of advocacy on the policy side.

It's no surprise how we got to this point as the state of black business in our country.

There were very intentional policies to prevent us from accessing capital from traditional banks.

And so there were laws that were put in place.

And so what we kind of do a lot of our work is being equally intentional about reversing some of those policies and working with our legislators to figure out how we can create laws and policies that will positively impact black entrepreneurs.

So at the city level, we've worked with various council members in the city of Detroit to sometimes when there's legislation we've fought for the food ordinance, the food grading ordinance.

That was a two-year fight where we believed that it was going to be and our members believed that it was gonna be something that negatively impacted restaurants across the city.

And so we fought to the first time around was to actually make sure it didn't happen.

And then we came back when we gave a number of recommendations to council members and city officials and they came back a year later, they did the hard work to come up with a solution that we thought would work for entrepreneurs.

I mean, we weren't as successful with the cashless ordinance that was passed a couple of years back, but which it's now resulted in, it's a misdemeanor to not accept cash as a small business owner, even though during the pandemic, we actually were trying to get people to not accept cash, to not spread germs.

And so it's every day it's a fight, but even at the state level, now you've got one fair wage, which is the law of the land now, which is going to again, impact our small business owners.

And so we're working with some of our state legislators to figure out how we can come up with solutions to for that piece of legislation to not have as large of an impact or as negative of an impact on small business owners until at the state level, they can come up with a solution that works for everyone.

- So what are some other things, Bartell?

I know you mentioned a couple of different organizations, ways you've been able to have an impact.

- Outside of government advocacy, some of the bigger, I mean, some of the also just as big challenges with black business is access to capital, right?

And outside of that, it's just providing development programs.

And networking opportunities to work with other like-minded businesses or businesses that can complement your work.

So, that's some of our opportunities as well that we're trying to be dedicated to, so empowered black businesses with a vision to transition these sole proprietors into small enterprises, so they can employ others and continue to like broader their economic revitalization of the city of Detroit.

- Maybe one business does one particular thing, another business does another, but if they get together, then they can offer more.

- Exactly, and that's our goal, since 1999, when we originally started the Detroit Black Chamber, which started as the Michigan Black Chamber of Commerce, we've been on that mission of striving to connect those elite professionals and business people to be able to work together to build this cornerstone of black-owned businesses in the city of Detroit.

- Also, you're bringing in young people.

I know you said that your nonprofit helps students in STEAM.

Already, we're into our last couple of minutes, but briefly tell me a little bit about that nonprofit.

- Gotcha, so similar to the Detroit Black Chamber and just black business in general, one of the things we have to realize is in order to keep our workforce thriving is we have to work with youth and give them access to the training, the education, and the resources to be able to thrive in our future, 'cause they are our future.

And one of the biggest industries right now are the industries within the STEAM or STEM realm, so science, technology, engineering, arts, and math, and the disproportion of black individuals within those fields, it's astronomical.

The jobs, there's over 20,000 jobs available in the STEAM and STEM fields that go unfilled every year.

And one of the reasons that many of them go unfilled, especially from a minority standpoint, is that it's not taught in schools.

It's not being given to, the access to learning about that is not being given.

So that's why Go 313 was birthed.

We started with the mission to provide equitable access to STEM education, to be able to provide youth that opportunity to see it as a thriving career for the future instead of just being a doctor, engineer, a lawyer, or someone that works in entertainment or sports.

So that is our goal.

- Kai, let me get you in one more time.

What do you think is the number one thing, the biggest thing that people need to know or need to advocate work towards as we're winding down Black Business Month?

- I think the number one thing is that every month is Black Business Month.

For us, every day is Black History Month.

Every month is Black Business Month.

We want people to consciously support black entrepreneurs.

It's not a, you're not doing them a favor by supporting their businesses.

It should be a normal practice for us to seek out black entrepreneurs, especially in the city of Detroit, city that's 80 plus percent black.

We should be leveraging our black business owners to, for any opportunities that come about, whether it's procurement, large events, whatever it is, we should be considering, they should be top of mind because these businesses are the backbone of our economy and we should be treating them as such.