A Detroit success story
How 3 black, female entrepreneurs scored big.
DETROIT – All entrepreneurs must overcome challenges to score big in business. But Detroit’s black female entrepreneurs need to overcome more than most, facing gender and race bias on top of all the usual problems of competition and cash flow.
But the story of three black women in Detroit shows that success is possible, if one shows the savvy and the grit that it takes to make it.
April Anderson started Good Cakes and Bakes five years ago, turned a profit in less than two years, and now caters to a wide range of customers including corporate events for Quicken Loans, JPMorgan Chase and others.
Adrienne Bennett achieved the milestone of becoming the first black female licensed master plumber in the United States. Today, her Benkari plumbing contracting firm has won contracts at some of the biggest local projects.
And Roslyn Karamoko opened her Detroit is the New Black apparel company as a pop-up and today operates a storefront downtown.
All three women brought financial smarts and a tenacious attitude to their fledgling startups. Most of all, they demonstrate the passion needed to make it as an entrepreneur, especially as a black woman in Detroit – a city that still suffers the scars of poverty and racism.
Ray Waters, head of the Detroit Development Fund, an agency that helps mentor and finance startups in the city, said the most successful of the city‘s black female entrepreneurs are “absolutely driven and have a huge passion.”
“They like what they do, which is really critical because you’re going to face bumps all through the process,” Waters said. “(They) surround themselves with mentors, some good people who have been successful. And as important, they’re willing to listen because as a good business owner you don’t know everything, and those that are willing to listen to people and be willing to change things as they go forward are the ones that will be more successful.”
Overcoming prejudice requires grit and resolve. “When you’re the first and you’re minority and you’re in an industry, that means you’ve got some hurdles to cross,” Bennett said.
Anderson, Bennett and Karamoko agree that if passion is a prerequisite, a successful black female business owner in Detroit needs a lot more. Among those factors:
Understand the numbers
All new business owners can be stunned by how expensive it is to open a new enterprise. So financial savvy and a hard-nosed approach to the numbers is essential.
“A lot of businesses don’t close because they don’t have a good product, they close because they don’t have the capital to fund the next month,” Anderson said. The key, she said, is “making sure that you know what it is that you need in order to survive each month.”
Bennett, asked her greatest challenge, said: “It’s going to be the cash flow. ... In a small company like ourselves, that’s the biggest thing.”
Build on your strengths
All three of these women had impressive backgrounds before they started their businesses.
Karamoko worked for several years as a buyer for Sak’s Fifth Avenue in New York and overseas. That experience helped in many ways when she started her Detroit is the New Black apparel firm, where her women’s black V-neck T-shirt is her best-seller.
Anderson, like many black female entrepreneurs, overcame a lot. She had a child in high school and worked for several years on the assembly line for Chrysler building Jeep Grand Cherokees. But eager for a better life, she earned an MBA from the University of Michigan and worked for several years for Chrysler’s financial arm before starting her bakery business.
Bennett of Benkari served as a onetime plumbing inspector for Detroit and worked at a local health care organization overseeing plumbing issues for several years. The hospital system sent her to Disney World in Orlando, Florida, to learn customer service.
“I was like a sponge. I soaked everything up,” she said. Today, her firm emphasizes reliability and service.
Take advantage of help
There are now multiple training and assistance programs available through Detroit’s entrepreneurial ecosystem. Anderson, Bennett and Karamoko took advantage of all they could.
Anderson and Karamoko each attended a local program for budding en- trepreneurs. Bennett’s Benkari got a
$10,000 grant from the citywide competition and used it to buy new estimating software to price out a successful bid to work on a large project.
Karamoko went through the retail “boot camp” offered by the Detroit Economic Growth Corp. and later won
$25,000 at a Quicken Loans-sponsored city competition for startups.
Start small and build
Karamoko launched her Detroit is the New Black as a pop-up. Benkari started her plumbing firm in 2007 at first just selling plumbing suppliers and only later took on construction jobs.
And Anderson started with no paid employees until her cake business began to catch on.
All three women were able to build on their modest beginnings, gradually gaining revenue and customers.
Nothing less than 100 percent
For entrepreneurs in general, and perhaps for black female entrepreneurs in Detroit most of all, nothing but a relentless devotion to details will do.
“It’s 24 hours a day. You’re never really off,” Karamoko said.
But for those who do all of the above, success can be sweet. “I’m running (the business) with excellence, and I’m really proud of that, ” Karamoko said.