What is your why? Women of NAWBO took turns asking each other this question at their National Association of Women Business Owners Friday the 13th at Encore Event Design in the West End.
It started as just a flippant question from New Pittsburgh Courier photographer Rico Martello, but it wasn’t meant to be rhetorical. One woman answered then another until every woman took a turn sharing why they chose to become business owners. Every woman had a reason for why they decided to leave the safe employment of working for someone else and risk everything, their careers, their savings, and their dreams on themselves. Some said they realized through working for other people their whole lives they had learned everything they needed to run their own company. Other women had a sadder path to entrepreneurship—the dreaded pink slip.
“I said never again would I put myself in the position for someone else to have that kind of control over what I do or what I don’t do” said Renee Galloway, owner of Sweet Inspirations, author and special guest speaker of the night. “I hadn’t had an interview in 21 years and I didn’t have a plan.” She continued with a tale of caution that “It is not an issue of if you will be downsized but when. That is why you are called a human resource.”
She went on to expound upon her journey to success by outlining the key points in her book “Done: Prioritize, Plan, Succeed.” Amongst others in attendance were soulpit.com founder and president of NAWBO Donna Baxter.
Baxter, who admits her role model is rapper turned entrepreneur MC Light, haughtily jokes that she was into entrepreneurship back when a domain name was $50.00. A play on the fact that they are relatively cheap as a few dollars today. “I started Soul Pit because I would see flyers saying Sly Jock is going to be at the cabaret in East Liberty and I would type it up on a blog for my friends.” Although she admits falling in love with Pittsburgh while attending the University of Pittsburgh, even though Pittsburgh was more segregated than she would have liked as far as spreading promotions for events. “If you only tell other people in your own community about things, how are you going to maximize attendance? So Soul Pit was kind of like a pit bringing it all together.” Her advice to all entrepreneurs is “Get online before you get left behind.”
The importance of being online was part of a larger theme for the importance of networking with other women and why NAWBO was the perfect vessel to do so.
“You can join as many local groups as you want, but you should always have one national group you belong to,” she said. “Imagine if you wanted to be an author or you had a product that you wanted to take on a national scale and already having 5,000 women in more than 60 cities that you could just call upon and say can I present my book at your meeting?”
Stacey Barlow-Hill, who is the owner of the building where the meeting took place is a mother of twin 7 year old girls still considers herself a mom first. “This is a dream I never thought of for myself, this started because of my children, when I got pregnant because daycare was so expensive I stayed home and it became a hobby and after prayer one day, I decided to go for it full time.” Barlow- Hill said being Black is still a bigger obstacle than being a woman in 2015.
“I used to have my picture on my sight and honestly when I removed it, sadly I got tons of phone calls and got busy and I just left my face off.” Barlow-Hill is still contemplating if now that she has been in business five years and has built a name for herself if she will be able to put her face back on her own business site or if it is too much of a risk to her business’s future upward trajectory.
The event succeeded in signing new membership to NAWBO including Barlow-Hill herself. Chefs, authors, business coaches consultants, one boasting to have raised 40 million dollars in loans for start-up businesses all had sayings most important to them. Key quotes to leave you with are from Galloway’s speech “Delegate, nothing is worse than doing something well you shouldn’t be doing at all.” And last, “Remember, time is the great equalizer. Everyone only gets 24 hours. Time is more valuable than money. People have gotten rich, went broke and got rich again, but no one can get time back.”
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