Haters are real – if a person does not believe there are no haters, that person hasn’t done anything extra special with their life and that’s real talk. It’s a lot of cats out there who are opportunists and even more a lot of cats who want to make you as miserable as they are. The biggest thing you have to know is these haters come at you by always coming after your time and your money. This article is going to help you understand how to protect your time and money from these characters.

Consumers Are the Biggest Victim of Having Time and Money Stolen

The whole role of a consumer is to happily give up their time and money to someone looking to make a profit off a consumer time and money. Unfortunately, African-Americans are one of the happiest consumers in the Western Hemisphere. We brothas and sistas consume products and services from others who don’t respect us. We buy without thinking products from firms that actively avoid using Black images in their marketing and advertising. We so desperate for certain material things that we sign bad loans and financing options that keep us brothas and sistas in perpetual debt.

Our level of consumerism is the biggest enemy of the African-American culture because we giving up our time and money without any return on investment. The sad part is brothas and sistas will straight up get mad at you for telling them or showing them they are throwing away their time and money. You have all of these cats out here flexing and fronting and throwing away their time and money chasing cognitive dissonance.

Don’t be like these cornballs out there giving others their time and money. Learn to recognize your time and money is yours and realize it’s cats out there always coming at what’s yours every day. Sit back and watch them come at you this week and take notes and you will be surprised. If you were not bothered that week, cats think you ain’t got time and money worth snatching. However, if you are being bothered all the time and got cats making demands for money, then you definitely got haters around you.

Protecting Your Time

The best ways to protect your time is focus on productivity and remove unproductive elements of your life. Avoid or reduce to a small footprint the consumption of unproductive content. For example, I only deal with on-demand media like Netflix and DVRs that I can watch when I set time for it. I also avoid reading material that does little to improve my life in a meaningful way. You will be surprise how your life will be your life again when you focus on productivity and remove the negative elements out the picture.

Second, get rid of people who are not providing you any benefit. I getting personal but I had this lady in her 40s tell me some “friends first” ish like we still in our teens and I just sat there looking at her in amazement that she would actually say that crap. Both of our pubic hairs and reproductive organs are old as hell, I got a child and been around the world and back and have to hear that kind of crap? So you know the bottom line was that was not what I was feeling that crap and all of her was unproductive to my effort of being happy.

Learn to stay around productive cats because that is the same vibe you want. You want to be around cats who make things happen and you see them put the real kind of work to get it done. But you should also make sure you only engage in productive activities. Creating a meetup.com event to play a battle of the sexes whirlyball match here in Atlanta with strippers and computer nerds (yeah, we get down like that here in ATL) is way more productive than hanging at a social nightclub just sitting around.

Protecting Your Money

Protecting your money is removing everybody and everything going after your money. When I decided to clean house on my money, I got rid of that ignorant $100 smartphone plan and got a cheap MetroPCS. The funny part is I get more productive communication out of that cheap $40/month phone than I ever got out of that $120 smartphone bill, real talk. Look at everything you paying for monthly and get it cheaper.

Second, I realize I had so many “automatic billing” cats all up in my banking account and they all had to go. I pay them when I pay them and that’s that. Credit cards, never again and I focus on debit cards. There is absolutely no purpose to have a credit card in this economy when everything is cheap and good quality used out there.

But most important, avoid those family members and friends and people in your life who like asking “for a favor” which is asking you for money. You set those cats straight and let them know not to come at you about money again. I had cats and we ain’t even related say to me that because I have a job, I should have money and try to run some kind of hustle on me. The funny part is once you let cats know to get the heck away from your money, they don’t call you no more for some strange reason.

Summary

Time is the gift God given you and money is the gift you given yourself. Do a check right now all around you and write down all of these cats who are making demand for money from you. Also, look at all of the unproductive things you engage in and write it down. Once you see all of the energy vampires in your life, take action on taking them all out.

Make 2012 the year you take your life back and focus on you. Be at peace with yourself by removing distractions and learn to take back your money and time from others, by any means necessary.

Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal and other outlets had an interesting article and a lively debate about Target desperately worried about “showrooming” practices with mobile technology. Showrooming is when someone goes into a store and scan an item with their mobile phone, check for a lower price online and order online instead of the store and essentially, the store is just a “showroom” for the products instead of a place to buy.

I discussed using “showrooming” where we create an app similar to the Tesco iPhone application where cats in the hood can scan products from suburban malls and large grocery stores and help the hood business form a product list to sell directly to the hood.

However, this practice is scaring the hell out of stores because the truth is, it was showrooming that killed off the large chain book, camera and recorded media stores. But showrooming is now impacting the sale of low-margin electronics and that is what worrying stores. I remember when Best Buy staff treated me like I’m some worthless customer and from that point on, all I do is go to Best Buy, try out a product, snap a pic of it on my mobile phone camera and then order it online when I get back home.

But here is the problem with showrooming when it comes to African-Americans entrepreneurs and that is the issue the big box are scared of. See, showrooming will devastate the profit margin of your business if you sell stuff that others can get online. That is known as white-label products that anybody can get from Alibaba.com or China or from a manufacturer and that is what 99% of these so-called African-Americans specialize in and that’s a serious problem we have yet to address in our community.

Exactly 100% of all that Multi-Level Marketing program stuff these brothas and sistas peddle are white label stuff that others can get cheaper if they knew the right channels. When you see brothas and sistas selling handbags and stuff like that, all of that is white label stuff you can get from online at a cheaper price, including those ghetto clothes they sell in the hood.

Some of you cats want to tell me that you got this new hustle and trying to tell me you are a travel agency when you are doing nothing but using a white label web site that put your cheesy logo on it. Then some of you cats got the most ignorant nerve to come at us talking about you sell coffee as if your simple Black ass personally flew down to Risaralda, Columbia and inspected the coffee beans yourself..STFU with that! You talking about selling coffee when you selling that cheap crap being traded on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, get an education before coming at me talking about you sell premium coffee, okay?

If you look at the business models we discovered in the hood, you should notice the only business surviving in the hood are those entrepreneurs made unique. Fried foods like fried catfish, fried chicken and hot roast beef submarine sandwiches, you can’t white label that. Funereal homes cannot be duplicated and state laws prevent liquor stores and tobacco shops from being duplicated easily also. Everything in the hood that is up and running is not white label products and that is what we need to be careful about when talking about revitalizing the hood.

With that said and this is extremely important – this is why I argue that we brothas and sistas need to focus on manufacturing in our hoods and produce original products to sell worldwide. We need to produce stuff that cannot be duplicated easily and push those products worldwide the same way LVMH push their products worldwide and cats buying it up. And those are the type of business we need to create more than white label products and white label services.

I’m saying this because on Facebook, I get solicited by cats always trying to sell me some MLM hustle that is basically something you find on Alibaba.com that you can get started yourself. I see sistas selling the same handbags you find from the same cats up in the Bronx who got it made in China and bought wholesale from Chinatown. Come on, we need to be serious about setting up real business operations in the hood that ain’t some crap that will crumble once the hustle been exposed.

Because as soon as a brotha or sistas open up one of these white label retail stores, the brothas and sistas who are smart phone savvy is going to start “showrooming” themselves and tell others where they can find these products cheaper. That is why a lot of these Korean retail outlets in the hood is failing and shutting down fast because a lot of brothas and sistas are buying those products online or from the dollar store. Me and you should not be repeating their mistakes and allow our business to be nothing more than a place for showrooming.

Think about my Liquiditi beverage kiosk stand I ran in downtown Atlanta last summer – all those drinks I was selling were not exclusive and could have been bought elsewhere, couldn’t they? I seen cats look at my Gatorade and then see they walked to CVS at the Underground Atlanta and they would walk right back past me with the same Gatorade I had for sale. See, I didn’t have anything unique to offer these cats and that is definitely a lesson learned.

That is why we have to realize we cannot launch these white-label business that feature products that cats are conditioned to run to Wal-Mart and get or just browse our store, ask to see our product and then go on Amazon.com and order it. If we do open up those kind of business, then we better be ready to sell at a low margin and hope we can make our money from volume instead.

Showrooming has some advantage in the hood where we can at least have them conduct transactions in our community and the more we have cats conducting transactions, the money stays in our community to recycle among our people. The key is to offer drop shipping so hood retailers don’t get stuck buying low-margin inventory upfront and just make a commission off the sale like a $299 flat panel television set, delivered in five days or less.

So with that said, if you think about launching a business, please don’t fall in the same trap as these other African-American entrepreneurs and hustle some white label crap. Cats will pick up on the fact they can find that white label stuff elsewhere and you cannot price compete as a new business, you will always lose if you try to go that route.

Instead, we brothas and sistas should look into making sure we can customize these white label products to the point they are unique or focus on manufacturing. I’m going to talk about this in another article but you brothas and sistas in America are straight 2012 ignorant and dumb as hell when there is a global population of over 2 billion that love and look up to your Black American ass and will buy from you if you setup your hustle to sell globally. But you sitting up here in America still looking for a “good job” and ish.

We brothas and sistas got to start focusing on manufacturing and other entrepreneurial endeavors that make us unique and not sell this white label stuff any cat can get off Alibaba.com as our hustle. I strongly feel we can sell just as much Black-manufactured handbags in China than Gucci if we are serious and setup our own handbag manufacturing plant in Detroit and have super quality assurance and the finest leather and materials and craftwork, even an ex-con can make this kind of ish happen.

In summary, let’s step out in this world being original and not get caught up in white labels because cats will definitely start “showrooming” and the hustle will not become profitable. Focus on customization, original manufactured products and create real business that can reach a global consumer base where we set up economic viability for generations in our community, our hoods and our family.

One of the things I realize we brothas and sistas have not learned growing up in the classroom is simulation. We have been taught visualization where we think and fantasizing of being successful and wealthy and we execute where cats are just waiting for us brothas and sistas to fail. But what I realized we have not been taught was simulation.

I bring this up because I went to a restaurant that I never seen before with a date and I didn’t have the kind of money to blow like that. But when I got in, the hostess at the restaurant told me they didn’t open yet and invited us to stay and they would give us free drink and meal as they were just simulating day to day operations. So me and my date got a full course meal as the waiter and the cooks were trying to get the order right. They gave me my check and the amount said 0.00 and they wanted me to simulate receiving it.

Now, with what I just described, you ever heard of any Black entrepreneurs around us do something like this? Not me because what I always see in our community is we open up shop and expect to be successful day one and get mad if we didn’t get it right and start complaining Black people don’t support Black businesses. No, the truth is we don’t do dry runs and we don’t create prototypes or simulations and that is a big mistake in Black business and explain why we don’t last long and get in trouble fast after opening up a business.

In addition, we got a lot of our own Black people who ridicule something like simulations because they either are too macho or too spiritual or whatever crap they got up in their head preventing them from practicing. They think they too good to look like they practicing the hustle or God will show up and personally help them stack paper on day one of their business opening up. These are the same Negroes that would go see a college football spring and summer training camp not realizing the football team are simulating but will laugh at an entrepreneur or this blog if I bring up creating models and simulations so practice our hustles.

All technology firms and experts (including me) run tests and simulations worldwide of our technology to see how it works. Bio-engineering firms do all kind of test on lab monkeys and simulations with computers on their next drug. But when it comes to starting up a Black business, some of yall don’t want to simulate or test anything and just visualize the hustle, go open up business and hope it works out alright.

We got to incorporate simulation in the Black community and start embracing the practice. This includes doing role playing, doing prototypes and full run trials. Let’s explain each of the stuff I just mention.

Role Playing. This is where you “play store” with monopoly money or toy money as a kid. You bring in another person and you create the scenario such as creating a cash station to accept payment, store receipts and inventory products. You can do this role playing with your children and they love playing with you this way and they learn and become inspired to be an entrepreneur.

Prototypes. These are a working model of the actual product you are trying to peddle. The goal is to be able to feel and touch exactly what you want to bring to market. As you work with the prototype, you test to see if it has that feel and the more comfortable you are seeing and interacting with your prototype, the more comfortable you are with releasing it to the public.

Test Trials. This is where you test the end to end process of your hustle. This is really the part your family and friends should be involved in supporting you where you tell them how to use the product or what steps to take and you see the whole process in real life being done using real people. You find out the parts where things need improvement or find out your strengths that you can capitalize on.

With that said, I would like to see more African-Americans engaged in simulations. We have to really educate and stress to our own Black people that simulations are not a waste of time and if cats still want to grumble, tell them to step on somewhere and drop them from our friend/associate list. Because if we are truly going to create economic empowerment frameworks, something we Black folks haven’t done before, we are going to have to simulate.

Dream and Hustle will be running simulations throughout 2012 here in Atlanta and will invite cats to participate. For example, we may create a simulation to help side hustlers learn how to setup tables to sell products so when the next For Sisters Only event rolls around, the participants will have enough experience to rock and roll. We can help some cats simulate selling from a food truck with “paper food” and play money so they can understand the process. And the next level is getting a full retail building and let cats help simulate running it. All of this builds up experience among Black entrepreneurs.

See, this is not the same as “incubators” which is still the execution and not growth. You cats don’t need “business mentors”, you need hands on experience just running through the hustle game where you get the feel of how to do business. We are going to conduct a mobile payment simulation as well as a stock market simulation for the hood where cats can go online and simulate making transactions.

Here is what you and your people around you can do right now. You should get together not to start a business, but to simulate running a business. See what kind of business you want to side hustle and yall work together on simulating the process. Look, cats who form a band simulate performing in front of a live audience and so do athletes who practice the sprints and runs. We need to start doing it in business.

This is probably what set Dream and Hustle apart from the rest of these characters because me and my people actually do run simulations and trials and know how important simulations and prototypes are to the process. You can best believe most of the economic empowerment models that been talked about here on this blog is being simulated overseas or in the hood right now as you are reading this.

In summary, African-American entrepreneurs need to go beyond just writing out a business plan and start doing simulations of the work flows and the process of hustling and get the practice down right. When I needed to shine shoes as a young adult hustling downtown Chicago, you know I shined all of the shoes that were around the house with my family members wearing them before I hit those streets. With that said, let’s start incorporating simulations, modeling, prototypes and test trials into our hustle to get ours.

Peter Bregman wrote an 5 out of 5 stars excellent article about motivation and why it isn’t the problem of people who cannot accomplish. I strongly suggest this is the article that people read to begin 2012 and we will explain on that article as it relates here.

Link: http://blogs.hbr.org/bregman/2012/01/your-problem-isnt-motivation.html

The article Mr. Begman wrote enlightened me about the biggest problem I see around me, especially doing this blog. The truth of the matter is I noticed there are other Dream and Hustle wannabee blogging cats working in full-time mode trying to “motivate” cats with copy/paste clichés, embedding rap hustle videos and just running their mouth day after day. But on a bigger level, we have the same issue in our community with people who keep talking about “motivating” our people for years and our people ain’t making any progress.

Motivation – Proven Failure in Our Community

You cannot “motivate” anybody and in fact, these cats out there can’t even motivate themselves to take positive action, even to improve their own life. For years I wrote this blog on Dream and Hustle and wondered why cats didn’t take anything I wrote to the next step. I was misguided and believed I had to “motivate” my readers more and that was a mistake that these other hustle bloggers are still making thinking they are right when they themselves ain’t accomplishing anything except talking that “motivation” angle over and over again.

The only thing that matter in this game is having the ability to follow through – that is what Peter Bregman stressed in his article and that is the bottom line truth. None of you cats, especially you African-Americans need to be motivated, inspired or educated no more because that is what been tried unsuccessfully in the Black community for the past 125 years is that “motivation” and “inspiration” propaganda crap. The truth is, you cats need to learn how to follow through.

How to Follow Through

To follow through means you commit yourself to taking action. If I’m saying I’m going to create the business model and location wiki for this blog, that mean I’m committed to the actual work that it takes to make it happen. To make it happen, I create the environment which is setting up the software and written checklist on what to do. I have that checklist right on my dinner table so when I sit down, it is right there for me to pick up and proceed to do actual work.

Even though the work appear daunting, I think about the young brothas and sistas out there and that’s who I’m putting in this work for. While that may be hard for some cats to understand, I’m built with love for my younger generation and that’s enough to keep me accountable to them.

Once I get started, in some way I just get into the mode and just do something. The goal is just do something and even if you are not doing it right, that is not what is important. What is important is committing yourself to doing something as once you are actually doing it, your brain will kick in and help you improve the process and make the experience more enjoyable.

Then Something Funny Happen

Once you commit yourself to the actual action, your dopamine get adjusted to the actual work you put in and you start loving it. This is how cats learn to love their hustle of starting a business and how some cats just absolutely love their job because now it makes them excited. The truth is, many African-Americans been conditioned to hate work and even shun having excitement of working. But I remember all the brothas and sistas who for some reason, love towing cars, love driving a taxi, love fixing people air conditioner or working the factory line – that is a positive thing that keeps us living long.

Following Through is the Real Answer

Think about times in your life where you did something like paint a room and an hour into it, you had the radio bumping and you were all into the work. Or you did some volunteer work where you made care packages for soldiers serving overseas or made food baskets to hand out to the needy cats at your church. Even though the work appears tedious and boring for some reason, you were all into it and getting it done because once you got started, that was it. That is the science you need to have with your hustle and goals in 2012.

You should definitely associate and only subscribe to cats who know how to follow through. That is known as walking the walk in slang terms. I remember plenty of times in my life where I had so-called friends who talked about working out at the gym and they gave up and expect me to give up and I eventually cut their ass loose while I stayed on my mission.

I do the same thing with dating, some of these sistas don’t follow through or follow up and I cut their ass loose because I made that mistake of dealing with loser sistas who didn’t want me to follow up on pursing love and happiness. True love is not an emotional or some kind of impression and that’s why a lot of these sistas are single and always getting played by dudes who know how to manipulate. The truth is love is having the ability to follow through and make things happen – that’s real love and don’t let anybody tell you different.

And this Internet thing got a lot of phony cats hiding anonymously because they don’t want to be accountable or follow through and can disappear with ease and no skin off their back. You should already know what’s up with that and unfollow from that kind of garbage as fast as you can. Real talk, why the heck would you give anybody trying to be anonymous towards you the time of day? Don’t deal with cats who ain’t about having accountability and following through.

If you are an entrepreneur, you are going to learn fast to fire cats and dismissed cats who cannot follow through. Because you are going to have to learn to follow through yourself if you going to make it somewhere. So I really suggest reading that article Peter Bregman and commit yourself to a discipline of following through with what you want to do and realize all it takes is to just commit to showing up and start doing it.

The hardest part being an entrepreneur is so much things that need to be done at the same time. You got to work the day job because it pays the bills, you working hard to start up hustles to supplement the paycheck and you got people calling or interrupting you trying to get a piece of your time. You only have 24 hours in a day and you need at least 7 hours for sleep and probably 3 hours for commuting depending on where you live an another 3 hours for meal preparation and consumption. With such little time you have to yourself and all this stuff going on, how do you manage to get things done and keep your sanity?

From my experience, when I’m overwhelmed with things to do, I would begin to feel lost and confused and out of habit focused on small stuff that don’t matter like cleaning or organizing the desk instead of doing work. I would make myself busy on something except what I really need to do and that was a problem I know most people have who reluctant to commit to the mission. However, what I learned over the years it so develop a high-level method to the madness – have an execution plan and protocol on dealing with all my matters and tasks. With that said, here are some of my own methods for handling those multiple tasks.

When it comes to dealing with people, I created a method of returning phone calls and initiating phone calls to let people know what is going on. If I don’t know how to deliver for people or understand what they want, I have to know this before proceeding with confusion, a common problem of mines when I was starting out in the game. So if I’m confused, I’m picking up the phone and asking that person to help me understand what need to be done or understood.

See, I don’t pretend I’m this genius that can walk away to a backroom, put in skilled work and come back with some awesomeness. Instead, I’m more comfortable when I talk to people and we both understand what we want out of this. With that said, I no longer deal with people who want to play games with communication because I do not have time to walk around feeling confused. I hate to be frank, but of all the sistas around the world I’ve dated, it is my own African-American sistas that play communication games thinking I’m suppose to figure them out while Kim Kardashian, Lucy Liu and Jennifer Lopez is telling me exactly what I want to hear and what they want and expect from a brotha.

If it is a project that I’m working on, like starting a business operation or a home project, I need a plan of attack fully documented and in memory on how to deal with each phase of that strategy. The goal is to first track all of the phases for multiple project and define those phase. For example, if I need to find a job, the first phase is to make sure I understand what the market is looking for and that is written down as Phase 1: Market Research as my notes and I write down what needs to be done such as read the job requirements and see what they asking for.  Then Phase 2 is to tailor myself to those demands through creating a resume full of propaganda and reading books and building a portfolio to demonstrate my knowledge on a subject, like Enterprise Service Bus programming.

Throughout the project, I make sure I understand what phase the project is in and with multiple projects, which project matter more than others. For the longest time and this was a mistake of mine, I would operate on a first-in-first-out focusing on whatever was at the top of my list to knock out first. I don’t think like that no more. What I do now with my list is to see what can be knocked out immediately because I realize the secret is making sure you are having accomplishments.

Accomplishments are key to me, even if it is a small thing and it is a strong morale booster. I think it is a good thing to go home from a busy day knowing you accomplished something instead of letting something remain unfinished and it is over your head and you still thinking about it. That is why I do not mind doing the small stuff and may push out the big stuff because I always want to know I’m accomplishing and I’m winning. I learned that when I’m feeling accomplished, I feel more confident about my life and ready for whatever but when I’m not accomplishing things, it bothers me and make me feel like the rest of these regular cats out there who are just settling for less.

One more thing and this is something I really want African-Americans to understand and that is failure is an accomplishment. In order to fail, a person have to try to do something. When something don’t work, learning from that failure is just as important as having success. In the Black community, you have a lot of sideliners and haters always talking about people are failing or messing up when those people try to do something but do not realize the importance of failure. When you start a business, you are going to fail buying the wrong product to sell or paid too much upfront but those are the things you learn and adjust and keep the doors open for business and keep serving customers.  Success and accomplishment comes from managing and learning from failure. As a technology expert, I plan to fail more than I plan to succeed just to make sure I create solutions that can handle failure scenarios – that is my profession.

In summary, the best way to handle multiple projects is to keep a clear vision of what you need to do. Focus on accomplishments, no small they are. Even failures are accomplishments and teachable moments. Make sure you keep a list but I actually use FreeMind open source mind mapping software to manage my tasks. The more we focus on knowing the task at hand and the goals we have to accomplish, there is nothing stopping us from making the progress to make our lives better and more fulfilling.

Black women in America have only one option in this world – entrepreneurship. It is the only option a sista got and if she thinks otherwise, she is lying to herself and trying to lie to me and you at the same time. In fact, I would say it is critical to a Black woman survival and to live a quality lifestyle she get out there and hustle, learn to do her own thing and run her own operation.

The days of that “independent Black woman” moniker through working a corporate job been wiped out of style since 2001. I was personally around since 2001 working in corporate America watching year after year of sistas losing jobs to mass layoffs, losing their home, losing their car, losing their fake socialite girlfriends and losing their dignity and respect trying to offer any guy sex who pays her rent or let her stay at his crib. This is all real talk right here.

I will also reveal something what many cats didn’t know about me and this is how real brothas do for their sistas. As a programmer, I been on tech assignments where it was explicitly written in the business plan to eliminate call centers, eliminate support analysts and when I go to the office floor of these workers, I see sistas. The same sistas hanging out in the clubs, the same sistas who got kids to feed, the sistas who are over 37 years old and just trying to save up money and all I can say is some of those tech projected ended up a failure and those sistas kept their job as a result.

As a result of that real-world experience, I better not ever hear another sista in college talk about working at a company for life after graduation. She should say she will use these corporate jobs as a stepping stone to launch her entrepreneurial goals in less than five years after graduation if she don’t want to be 37 and marginalized in a dead-end job wearing hair weave and still wearing tight clothes to compete with the young ladies.

Other sistas and these Black women magazines ain’t going to keep it real with you but Dream and Hustle will – that corporate America, 9-5 ish ain’t going to get you anywhere except barely keeping all your bills paid every paycheck. And let’s look at the job market – most of the jobs we see most sistas doing (customer service, data entry, paper pusher) in corporate are being outsourced to smaller companies (some ran by sistas just like you but those sistas got smart to the game).

Let’s say you believe you sistas do think you have what it takes to climb the corporate ladder. Even if you sistas are smart, these bigots all in the middle management layer will not bend backwards one inch for your career. If anything, these horny middle management bigots want you sistas to bend forward because that’s how they think of you, thanks to VH-1 and BET.

Then on top of the no-advancement, instant dead-end job these corporate bigots dole out for sistas, she got to deal with these cornball brothas at the job acting like they cool. These brothas still act like they in college hanging out at the student center trying to dare each other which one of them will screw the sistas first. So sistas now got to put up with these cornball corporate brothas interrupting her all day acting all friendly, smiling in her face when we both know what is up.

I mean, don’t get me wrong, it some good brothas out there in corporate who got a side hustle going, trying to get more than one income stream and you know him when you see him but most of these lightweight salary-taking brothas in corporate walk around acting like they ain’t getting the same low pay that the sistas are getting.

But we haven’t even got to talking about the corporate women and how they treat sistas. I rarely saw in my career women holding a position of power support, mentored and uplifted another woman in the same workplace. I mostly saw the sistas having an “I arrived” smile on her face with all the sistas working underneath her just hoping to catch a break and move forward in their career.  And some of these sistas are worst than the men in terms of kissing up to the management to be liked wearing slutty clothes and smiling all the goddamn time around bigots and sistas working the daily grind think they have to be the same way to come up in the world.

So wrapping it all up in the workplace, you working around mean and butch sistas who want to make sexual advances while you trying to get paid to buy groceries and pay the bills and roof over your head. And then you got women colleagues who are trivially protecting her “turf” and don’t want to see other women rise up and threaten her position. Does all that sounds right to you sista? Do that kind of workplace sound like the day-in/day-out crap you want to be doing for 20 years to get your kids through college?

So I hope you sistas are convinced that there ain’t no real future for Black women in corporate America. If you live in Atlanta, go downtown during business lunch hour. Go on Peachtree Ave from Baker and walk down to Marietta Ave. Look at all those tired-ass working sistas over 30 – real talk. You really want to be like them? So while you over there on Peachtree Ave, go to the SBA office right there in Peachtree Center Plaza and get real with your current reality and your future. You got to do your own thing.

So with that said, how should sistas move forward?

Save Your Money Up like a Fuzzy Squirrel Save Acorns. Look, if you sistas have to work a job, then call a spade a spade – just work that job. Every day, you remember  four words – f*ck you, pay me – and make that your motto. Put in your work and leave the work at work. But when you get off work, then start looking at side-hustles to bring in additional money and grow that into something big.I discussed plenty of side hustles on this blog that you can reference such as setting up services that can be done over the web or with cheap computer equipment that don’t cost a lot to get up and running.

Form a Real Clique among Sistas. When I used to work at Kraft Foods back in Chicago, the very older sistas there had their own investment club with other older single women on the South Side of Chicago. The funny part is they would come to me about what dotcom stocks they wanted to invest in and I helped them get the ones and these stocks were rising like $30/share a day or even a week before splitting and rising again and they were happy. Meanwhile, the young adult sistas just starting their careers were walking around spending money looking lavishly just to look good and ish. Sistas need to do what the old school sistas do and start forming side money/entrepreneur cliques based on either side hustles they all can do and do group buying from Alibaba and sell out of the trunk at their own job, for example.

Focus on Technology-Driven Hustles.  Sistas should avoid entrepreneurial activities that require labor intensive work. If a sista want to sit up all night making cupcakes or fish and spaghetti plates behind a hot stove, more power to her. But sistas have kids to raise, have to spend time pampering herself and going out and being a socialite or whatever.  So the best kind of hustles are those that involve data workflows which are processes that can be done through a computer. Drop-shipping e-commerce is a data workflow. Importing crafts from Africa women to sell among markets in America is data workflow. Doing taxes are data workflow related. Setting up an digital signage or smart poster company is data workflow related. Focus on these types of hustle so a sista can run down to Costa Rica with her kids and still be on the Internet doing business when she have to.

In summary, a sistas really don’t have a choice but to have multiple revenue streams at the end of the day. All it takes it just looking at these tired washed out sistas already in corporate and say you don’t want to end like that make that motivation enough to change a sista situation not to go down that same path. That is why it is just as important for sistas to take side-hustles just as serious as men. The days of that “independent Black woman through corporate America” are over and kids need to be fed, so that is why sistas have to look beyond the paycheck.

One of the funniest thing I experience is when cats want to “ignore” someone. I don’t really get people who think by shutting off communication that they are “sending a message” to someone. Maybe these are the type of people that mommy and daddy ignored when they were a child and they think they can hurt someone else buy ignoring. I’m sorry, that “snubbing” thing is one of the most stupidest thing I ever heard.

Let me give people a bit of advice that think “ignoring” or “snubbing” or “not acknowledge” or whatever they want to call it is an effective communication strategy – it is not. The only reasons I can think why anyone would employ this dumbass strategy are (1) they egotistically believe they are in control of how other people think or react to their actions or inactions (2) they really don’t have anything effective to say.

The worst part about “ignoring” and this is the part that makes me laugh is those who employ this strategy – they being silent allow the person they ignoring create propaganda speaking for the person doing the ignoring. If a cat that want to snub ain’t got nothing to say, then cats can start speaking for that other person about the situation and turn the tables. Even worst, it allows their foe to plot strategies while pretending to be affected by the snub. Just because someone ignores somebody does not mean they are going away and disappear – that’s just meaningless thinking.

Haven’t we learned so many times from history, you cannot afford to close communication off and “ignore” or “snub” people? No real leader, no real warrior, no real business person cut off communication with their foes and adversaries. Always treat people with dignity and respect, always let people know you are fair and open for discussion.

Now there is a difference than not being bothered with somebody and ignoring somebody. Some people you come to realize is full of crap and you just don’t bother with them anymore because they are a waste of your time. But some cats when they are ignoring others are spending energy doing just that, hoping that their actions of snubbing sends a message.

Don’t spend a second trying to ignore or snub because that requires work. Just don’t bother with cats who ain’t about what you about and just move on. Besides, where they going to go when you ignore them?

Several months ago, I was at the Small Business Administration Center seeing what resources they have. I didn’t want any SBA resources at the time, just wanted to see what the SBA was about. I signed in the desk, sat down and was sitting right next to this brother who had the most internalized pissed-off look I’ve ever seen. He look like he was very frustrated. I saw he had his business plan in his hand waiting for an SBA counselor. See, some of yall think I’m angry but you really don’t know how angry and frustrated most of these cats out here on the streets with a legit hustle are feeling. I was sitting next to one of those frustrated cats.

I did something that separated me from the rest of the wannabee clowns up in this game – I asked the brother if he can tell me about his business and why he look frustrated. Bottom line, he was trying to get financing for his business and couldn’t get it from the banks because he felt they didn’t like his business plan. After hearing his story, I explained to him that his biggest barrier facing him is his belief in orthodox methods for entrepreneurship that he probably read somewhere.

That brother is not the first person I encountered with who was frustrated and running into a wall trying to build a business based on crap they read from Inc Magazine, Business 2.0, or some other crap like Business Startup books, conference seminars or whatever. Those publications pretty same the same crap and for the business magazines, they just say the same thing year after year.

Look, you can read BusinessWeek all you want about how to deal with Venture Capital firms, but if you are Black like me, you simply probably won’t make it past the token minority receptionist. You can also have the best business plan in the world, but if your Black behind don’t understand bankers make up the majority of the elitist culture in America and very selective on who they give money too, then you just chasing a pipe dream.

Building a business is a people and networking skill, not nice written business plans and presentations. Just keep it freaking real – the status quo in this country has always been hostile towards empowering African-Americans unless they believe we hate our own race and only then they will reward us for having such self-hatred. Look around kid – money is thrown at self-hating rap artists who get rewarded to portray Black women as sleazy hos and want to rap about shooting/killing other Blacks and having material stuff. Look at the self-hating Black business leaders who work in these majority-White sectors who have nothing but condescending, elitist hostility towards other Blacks who don’t subscribe to the White privilege system of entitlement.

You can’t be reading those damn business books, going off to get your MBA or whatever because when all is said and done – when you go about it orthodox, you put your fate in the hands of status quo bigots who will make a discretionary decision whether your Black ass should go to the next level or not. And trust me, those bigots want nothing more than to have you worked that orthodox route so they can tell you “no” just to see the look on your Black face, just to remind you of your place.

Look, one of the best things that happened to me was growing up on the West Side of Chicago. See, most cats want to think I’m trying to romanticize the West Side ‘hood life’ or whatever and that only shows their lack of knowledge of the ‘hood’. On the West Side of Chicago, I had nothing but real role models of Black entrepreneurs straight hustling. Marva Collins started her own private school in the hood with no help or financing. My father always went out and made legit money putting in work just around the South and West Side of Chicago. My classmates’ parents made their money by being the candy lady, the barber or beautician out of their own house.

When I was in 11th grade, one of my classmates started driving for his father tow-truck business on the West Side of Chicago when he turned 16. We had an elder named Duwell who ran his own seafood store, own medical center and other business just on the West Side. I even remember going to the liquor store to by candy and found out the Black liquor store owner had a licensed cab business in the back of the business. That West Side cab business is how a brother got around to see his girlfriends in K-town when he didn’t want to catch the Cicero or Madison bus after dark. Now these are real people, real role models I’m talking about who straight hustling, doing their own thing without having to play that orthodox game or seek some status quo bigot approval.

African-Americans have over a 100 year history of unorthodox entrepreneurship from New York, to Chicago to North Carolina, down to Atlanta, all the way to Los Angeles and Seattle. That’s how we had to do it when these status quo bigots don’t want to see us do better than working a dead-end job. And today, ain’t a damn thing changed among these status bigots except some Blacks who want to believe they have a shot because they “did everything right” like getting an MBA, wrote up a business plan or whatever. It don’t work like that when you got people in position of power that hate you for no other reason than being Black.

When you are an African-American entrepreneur with a goal and dream to succeed, you have to accept the anti-Black culture around you at face value, reject it because it is not right and then do it your own way knowing God will be by your side. And when we African-Americans entrepreneurs do that, I’ve inspired to know from Black entrepreneurial history we actually accomplish anything we do because we rejected the negative mental barriers that status quo society want us to believe and accept. Black people have everything to gain and nothing to lose as an entrepreneur and that’s the mindset that made us successful in the past.

So all I’m saying is screw all that business plan and strong management team stuff – just go for yours by seeking to work with people that want to work for and do business with you. And believe me as many African-Americans who been around the block will tell you this – a lot of people from a lot of countries respect and admire African-Americans and very willing to do business with our people, so don’t buy into the negative hype you hear. Overall, African-American entrepreneurs have options and do not need to be playing the ‘orthodox’ game to succeed.