Thoughts On Part II of the “PowerPreneur” Series

[Recap of Part I of this series can be found here.]

So last night I attended Part II of the “PowerPreneur” Series organized by Velvet Suite Marketing, and supported by the Office of the Mayor and Black Enterprise Magazine at Do Restaurant.

[Sidenote: Do Restaurant  is a really cool new “musically-inspired” pizza restaurant. Founded by Christian Ruffin (One Stop Productions), it should be a great lounge spot on the weekend, and a good place to watch the playoffs. Christian and his wife Necasha are extremely nice, and always go out of their way to speak to little ol’ me.]

As opposed to Wednesday’s event at the W Hotel, the layout of Do Restaurant forced networking – a good thing as my objective was to gain a better understanding of AF-AM entrepreneurs through conversation (read: interviews). I arrived around 6:40pm where, pretty much, the only open seat was at a table with a fledgling non-profit grant writer. We immediately began to discuss Part I (the good and the bad), and surprisingly, she agreed with me. Then the conversation moved into Lean Startup Methodology territory, and I lost her. I could just see her eyes glaze over. To get the conversation back on track I “pivoted” to the “business plans are bullsh#t” subject – guaranteed fire starter as it challenges conventional notions (but makes so much sense). More on that later.

Now let’s talk panel discussion. Both panels had great entrepreneurs (Donald Woodward, Chaka Zulu, Ronda Racha, Stacey Key, Mychael Knight, Terrinee Briggs, Isom Lowman) and the questions from moderator Melissa Johnson were one level deeper than Part I. Not sure if they read my recap or not. I felt some more people in the audience walked away with specific action items in addition to being inspired (inspiration + action = good things). If Part I was freshman year in college, then Part II was sophomore year (both are good, and I applaud Velvet Suite for starting this “school”).

All in all, the “PowerPreneur” Series was an awesome start to Black Enterprise Entrepreneurs Conference Weekend. Ok, if we’re being honest here, I hate the term “powerpreneur” because I think black people are to infatuated with status (topic for another post). But I really couldn’t have imagined a better pre-cursor to the BE Conference. Great events, great entrepreneurs, great venues/environments, great event management, and great women (yes 80% of the audience was female).

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