Emilie Rodriguez
Nadia Lloyd
Nikki Porcher
Entrepreneurs are facing extensive challenges in the wake of COVID-19 against a backdrop of civil unrest and racial tensions.
For Black women entrepreneurs, those challenges are tenfold. From an unprecedented financial landscape to changing consumer behavior and unpredictable strategic hurdles, they are learning firsthand that they must adapt quickly in order to survive. In partnership with PayPal, three entrepreneurs participated in a roundtable discussion to learn from one another: about the hardships they have endured in 2020, how they successfully adapted to the pandemic and share about the opportunities they see ahead.
Ashé Birthing Services
New York City, New York
Nadia Lloyd ARt
Toronto, Ontario
Buy From A Black Woman
Atlanta, Georgia
Emile Rodriguez founded Ashé Birthing Services to fill the gaps she saw in health care, particularly related to education and advocacy. Alongside her doula partners, Rodriguez provides traditional birth and postpartum support to mothers and families centered around nutritional, physical, emotional and spiritual well-being. Throughout the pandemic, she has adopted a hybrid care model to meet the needs of her clients and started building a virtual network of doulas, midwives and other birthing service professionals.
When the pandemic hit and Nadia Lloyd — an artist and designer who organized large creative community events — had to pivot her business, she began selling face masks featuring her artwork. After politicians and professional athletes began to famously wear her masks around Canada, the explosive popularity of her Black Lives Matter (BLM) masks increased demand for her products and pushed Lloyd to overcome scalable growth challenges to expand her operation. She now ships thousands of masks worldwide.
In 2016, Nikki Porcher started Buy From A Black Woman, her nonprofit organization, to empower, educate and inspire Black women business owners and the people who support them. The nonprofit organization provides tools and resources to help drive success across Porcher’s growing network of business owners, including educational programs, funding, virtual coworking groups and an online directory of Black women-owned businesses.
Adapting
Sustainability
Community
Reliability
Mental Health
Opportunity
Adapting
I had a really bad case of COVID for two and a half months, and that definitely derailed my business for a while. With birthing services, we were at a standstill because we weren't allowed to be in hospitals. At first, everything was virtual, then we switched to a hybrid model with virtual prenatal and early labor support. Postpartum has been on a case-by-case basis, depending on the need to try to reduce risk. Of course, that required us getting PPE and COVID testing regularly and just trying to adapt and provide the best care possible.
I applied for 34 grants myself, and underemployment through [New York] state. When I came home and got the letter of decline for underemployment, I was so frustrated because I wasn't making any money, people needed support and clients had to triage their needs between paying rent or getting a doula. It was such a hard place to be in, so I started fundraising to raise money to provide care to people that needed it the most. We've been able to help a lot of people that way and have fundraised more than $18,000. We're used to creating a solution ourselves.
Well said. We're natural born hustlers. For me, the pivoting happened by accident. I hand-sewed two face masks for my son and I. We took some photos, posted them on social media and people went bananas right away asking, “Where can we buy these?” What I decided to do right away — to keep my sanity, to keep busy and to feel useful and helpful — was to sew face masks to donate to frontline workers. I donated about 60 a week for a couple of months until I realized the supplies were getting really expensive. I thought, “Not a penny has come in in six-to-eight weeks. People are asking to buy, so let's connect the dots here. Let's start selling.”
I’m so grateful for that little burst of inspiration, because that's what's kept me and my son afloat and created incredible opportunities. It wasn't in my plans to ever become a mask maker, but I think, as an entrepreneur, we have to roll with the punches, right? It's always a great idea as an entrepreneur to listen to those little voices of inspiration in your head, because those are really the ones that help you navigate all of your challenges and take you to the next level, help you grow your business, help you continue to pursue your passions and see where life takes you, because it's full of surprises.
One of the things that we did [at the start of the pandemic] was reach out to our community to see how business owners were being affected, like Emilie's example of not getting funding, not getting approved for the PPP or not getting unemployment. We have to make sure that we are educating people properly on what grant opportunities they can apply for. We even created our own Black Woman Relief Fund and were able to help 24 Black women business owners. We just gave them a thousand dollars each, but that thousand dollars really helped them pivot their businesses, because sometimes it's just that one bill that's going to just bring you down.
A lot of times, as Black women business owners, we start our businesses because whatever we're doing is not working — whether we're working a full-time job and not being fulfilled or not being seen or not being heard. We were already prepared to pivot, but we didn't even know we were prepared because we had been doing it all our lives as Black women business owners.
Strategic Pivots AND Adaptations
Sustainability is really big for me — and for all birth workers — because the burnout for doulas is two years. It's really intense work. Being able to guide someone on such a ceremony as birth requires that we take radical care of ourselves so that we can hold space on that level for people. So, I started partnering with another doula, Myla Flores, and then I slowly started adding to my team, because community is really important to me. We have to do birth work in a sustainable way, or we can't help. If we're not helping ourselves and healing ourselves first, we can't help other people.
Sustainability
Nurturing Sustainable Growth
I don't think we dream big enough for the things that we are worthy of."
You want to make sure you're creating a business that is sustainable, because you never know where it's going to take you. You don't want to be the business that blows up and then all of a sudden you go under because you're so overwhelmed. I always tell business owners that whatever your dream is, think bigger than that. I don't think we dream big enough for the things that we are worthy of. Especially as Black women, we're always thinking, "Oh, well this is enough." But is it really enough? Or have we been told all our lives that this is enough?
Yeah, I think a lot of consumers are now seeing the value of shopping and spending with people, places and organizations that really have them front of mind. I want to work with businesses who understand the value of having customer relationships, customer support. And I'm sure that's why, Nadia and Emilie, our businesses are thriving right now, because we understand that it's not just us. We have to make sure that we're doing things for our community, that we're using our platform and we're also partnering with organizations that are using their platform to put people like us front of mind.
I want to say in reference to that, even though we had to social distance — and we still have to — it's made us come together in a new way. I think that that's a silver lining in all of this. I started a directory called The Bridge, connecting Black and brown obstetricians, lactation consultants, doulas, yoga practitioners and chiropractors with each other. A lot of times people will call me and say, "I heard through the grapevine that you're a Black doula." In 2020, that should not be how we find each other. I thought, “This is a need, and this is something that we can do to further prioritize our community's health and well-being."
Community
Building Engaged Virtual Communities
If there's one thing that I learned about myself and my process in the last nine months, it’s that my job as an artist is to use my voice to create, and that my creations have a purpose in the world. The one thing that I will take from COVID-19, even if I stop making face masks, will be the reminder to keep using my voice to engage people. I think that my job as an artist is to use my voice to engage people and, in turn, create change.
The virtual thing has really made connections a lot stronger. Now, we're having more intimate conversations, because we feel comfortable. I'm in my home, maybe I'm wearing pajamas talking to you. I'm relaxed. I'm able to remove that layer of protection that I might have if I met you at a networking mixer event, where I can have an intimate, organic, real conversation, get to know who you are as a person, as a Black woman, as a business owner, as a mother, as a daughter, whoever, whatever you are.
The whole virtual thing suits an introvert like me perfectly, because I have never been the one to go out to networking events and do small talk — it drains me so quickly. But I'm finding that through the virtual interactions, somehow I'm energized. It has the opposite effect, which I didn't expect.
EVEN THOUGH WE HAD TO SOCIAL DISTANCE, [...] IT'S MADE US COME TOGETHER IN A NEW WAY."
Same. PayPal saw a need and thought, "We can help with that. We're not going to wait. We're just going to help the people that need it the most who are not able to get funding.” They also recognized that we were drowning. It definitely helped a lot. My PayPal Empowerment Grant went towards making us a virtual platform, and it also paid the company's bills and for any lost wages. In addition, it took off the load of stress of having to worry about that, so that I could focus on helping people and projects such as free childbirth education.
It’s amazing work that you're doing Nikki, and thank you. Honestly, thank you for supporting other Black female entrepreneurs. To your point, I've never applied for a grant or a loan, whether for the artist side of my business or the event-planning side, because I was discouraged before even starting. Even just going into a bank to ask for a loan, I walk in there thinking I'm already wasting my time.
We all know, when it comes to Black women businesses, we are the least supported, the least funded. We don't have access to a lot of venture capital. We're using our savings or we're using ourselves to keep funding our business. When PayPal gave out their Empowerment Grants, they were saying, “We're going to pour into these businesses that have been lost during COVID and aren’t getting the funding that they need.” Having that process really puts PayPal front of mind for a lot of consumers and a lot of merchants.
As does the trust factor, because you’re verified through PayPal. You have to go through a list of checks and balances to even get a PayPal account for your business. If I did that as a business owner, you know my business is legit. For consumers, you see the PayPal sign online and it is one you can trust, especially for Buy From A Black Woman as a nonprofit. The PayPal Giving Fund has also been a good tool; sometimes at PayPal checkout you can see an option to donate to Buy From A Black Woman pop up, and that brings visibility to our organization.
Cultivating Customer Trust
Reliability
At Buy From A Black Woman, we have a resident therapist. We have monthly sessions for Black women to actually get free therapy. You can schedule one-on-one, but we also want to make sure that you understand that you’re not alone with it. So during our community therapy sessions, there's a chance to see other Black women, just like you, going through things, just like you, which makes you feel just a little bit more safe and content with what you're dealing with.
I resonate a lot with what you ladies have shared. We love control, and we love to orchestrate everything around us and stay busy so we don't have to sit down. COVID brought us a lot of things, and one of them is that we really had to sit down and take care of ourselves so that we can make it through this year. It really is life or death, emotionally. If we don't prioritize ourselves as women, as mothers, as business owners, as sisters, we're not going to make it to 2021.
Mental Health
Prioritizing Self Care
I vividly remember a moment in January, where I was dealing with some anxiety and depression, feeling absolutely overwhelmed with the speed of life. And then COVID happened. It was like somebody pulled the parking brakes. I have to take a deep breath and remind myself of where I am now and really think about what I want the future to look like, because the last nine months have really helped me clean sweep of things that are not important to me. They’ve helped me to refocus and reconnect with things that are important, like going to the easel and painting daily, if not weekly — being creative, not just being an entrepreneur.
There's so much power in the words that you speak, Nadia. Things are being exposed and brought to light. We are seeing people for who they really are, and we're able to make a choice — if that's who we want to be with, if that's who we want to work with, if those are the people you want to be in company with. Just to be able to go ahead and really find your sensor and be your true, authentic unapologetic self, because nobody can even question what you're doing right now, because we're all in the same space.
The way that we're able to connect through the power of social media — that we're able to have a meeting with a person who's in a different zip code, a different country — is now heightened because we're all seeking out-of-the-box opportunities because of COVID and the fact that we just don't know what's going to happen. That anxiousness is there, but at the same time, we are preparing: “Let me do everything I need to do to make sure that I'm not working backwards.” We're all in the house. We're all on an equal playing field now. The worker bees are really shining right now.
I say very proudly that I'm a Black woman. If I had to die and do it all over again, I'm coming back as a Black woman. You're not going to change my mind about that. Despite everything that has happened, this is who I am, and this is who I will always want to be.
And we don’t have to compete with each other. Birth support has been around forever, it just wasn't called a “doula,” it was your sister and your neighbor and your friends. And that's because we all knew what birth looked like, and we were all equipped to support each other. I think that that's kind of my ultimate goal, so that people feel empowered to know this information so they can actually have informed decision making in their birth experience and informed consent, and all these things that have been taken from us very intentionally can be also reclaimed.
Opportunity
Looking to the Future
As an artist, what I do is a representation of me, my experiences, my life, my struggles, my ups and downs. In terms of putting together a BLM mask and having the goal being to get conversations going, that was directly tied into having to take inventory of my own experiences with racism and wanting to connect with people from my community of all colors, backgrounds, creeds, races. We can really build a strong community with a mission and a vision that's aligned, which is to create a more positive planet.
Yeah, I think the beautiful part about community is the fact that everyone has a role to play. And if we all play that role, then it works. And I think that this is like our front line, for each one of us.
And if it's done from a place of authenticity and passion, then it makes the obstacles that we have to face on a daily basis easier to surpass, right? Because these are passion projects. These are things that have a huge meaning to us. It's in our blood. And so it makes it easier to keep going despite challenges, roadblocks and negative feedback. It just keeps us going if it comes from the heart.
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How Black Entrepreneurs Prevail In Times Of Emergency:
A Dialogue
I borrowed a sewing machine from a neighbor and started sewing in mid-March. The business just blew up overnight. Orders started to flood in, and I was like a chicken with my head cut off for a solid six weeks. Plus, I have a nine-year-old son; I'm a single mom. I knew it wasn't sustainable. I knew I was burning out. It forced me to look for a factory in my city that would be able to do everything for me. It's about rolling with the punches, realizing your need and being able to delegate and trust [others] so that you can be the conductor of the train, not the one throwing the coals in the fire.
THE ENTREPRENEURS
PAID FOR BY
I think COVID has been beautiful also, in the way that, through social media, I found out there are other doulas of color down the street from me. And we all banded together to form a community that's very intentional and really begin to center Black midwives again, because I think that that's really what the solution for maternal mortality is in the United States. Even though my community is in New York City, I want to be able to reach other people.
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What strategic pivots have you made during the pandemic in order to stay in business? How have you adapted to meet the changing needs of your clients and community amid the pandemic?
How do you manage your processes, procedures and goals to enable scalable, sustainable growth?
How have you fostered community engagement and made new virtual connections with customers, colleagues and partners?
How have technology or commerce platforms like PayPal helped you establish your business and reputation online?
How do you safeguard your mental health? How do you take stock of your goals, purpose and vision to stay grounded as leaders?
I WOULD NOT OPERATE WITHOUT PAYPAL.”
IF WE DON'T PRIORITIZE OURSELVES, [...] WE'RE NOT GOING TO MAKE IT TO 2021."
What does life look like post-pandemic? What are your goals moving forward, and what opportunities lie ahead?
BLACK
IN
IF WE'RE NOT HELPING OURSELVES, [...] WE CAN'T HELP OTHER PEOPLE."
MY JOB AS AN ARTIST IS TO USE MY VOICE TO CREATE."
IF I HAD TO DIE AND DO IT ALL OVER AGAIN, I'M COMING BACK AS A BLACK WOMAN.”
In terms of using PayPal for my business, there's consumer trust there, people know the name, people know that it makes me legit if I've got it attached to my website, to my application forms, to my online shop. I would not operate without PayPal. And in terms of being a solo entrepreneur and having to wear a gazillion hats, PayPal makes it really easy for me to prepare all of my paperwork at the end of the year. I can do my bookkeeping for two businesses in less than four hours and it's absolutely brilliant.
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BUSINESS
LISTEN TO THOSE LITTLE VOICES OF INSPIRATION."
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WE HAD BEEN DOING IT ALL OUR LIVES AS BLACK WOMEN BUSINESS OWNERS."
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Lloyd:
Lloyd:
Porcher:
Rodriguez:
Porcher:
Lloyd:
Rodriguez:
Porcher:
Rodriguez:
Lloyd:
Rodriguez:
Lloyd:
Porcher:
LISTEN TO THOSE LITTLE VOICES OF INSPIRATION."
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A lot of times, as Black women business owners, we start our businesses because whatever we're doing is not working — whether we're working a full-time job and not being fulfilled or not being seen or not being heard. We were already prepared to pivot, but we didn't even know we were prepared because we had been doing it all our lives as Black women business owners.
I’m so grateful for that little burst of inspiration, because that's what's kept me and my son afloat and created incredible opportunities. It wasn't in my plans to ever become a mask maker, but I think, as an entrepreneur, we have to roll with the punches, right? It's always a great idea as an entrepreneur to listen to those little voices of inspiration in your head, because those are really the ones that help you navigate all of your challenges and take you to the next level, help you grow your business, help you continue to pursue your passions and see where life takes you, because it's full of surprises.
I started a directory called The Bridge, connecting Black and brown obstetricians, lactation consultants, doulas, yoga practitioners and chiropractors with each other. A lot of times people will call me and say, "I heard through the grapevine that you're a Black doula." In 2020, that should not be how we find each other. I thought, “This is a need, and this is something that we can do to further prioritize our community's health and well-being."
Lloyd:
And in terms of being a solo entrepreneur and having to wear a gazillion hats, PayPal makes it really easy for me to prepare all of my paperwork at the end of the year. I can do my bookkeeping for two businesses in less than four hours and it's absolutely brilliant.
Lloyd:
Porcher:
Rodriguez:
Rodriguez:
Lloyd:
Porcher:
Ashé Birthing
Services
New York City, New York
New York City, New York
Buy From A
Black Woman
Atlanta, Georgia
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