Top 10 New Jobs Pursued By Black Entrepreneurs
In media, today, black people are often showcased as athletes, actors, and singers. You open a magazine and the first black person you see is Kanye West talking about his newest album and you check out your Instagram feed and hear Zendaya answering questions about her newest role in another Marvel flick. However, black people are more than the monolithic roles that society checks them off as. Rather, they are also keeping stock of their capital in the stock market and pivoting their brands to fit exactly what their followers want. Simply, many individuals within this community are highly skilled business moguls and entrepreneurs blazing a trail for others in their fields.
Therefore, below is a compilation of the many entrepreneurial roles frequently pursued by black people:
1. Brand Ambassador
With the advent of social media, brand ambassadors are needed more than ever to sell and display products of a brand positively. You've probably seen a brand ambassador at least five times a day, depending on how often you're online, praising the positive effects of this or that diet tea or giving you a full look at themselves wearing a product in real-time to show you how inclusive a clothing line is. In this line of work, the word of a brand ambassador is golden.
2. Makeup Mogul
The great resignation has been in full throttle for the past two years, and it thankfully doesn't seem close to stopping. Many black people, especially women, did a fast track of their passions and knowledge base and discovered that they were well-versed in makeup. Growing up wearing lipsticks and eyeliner and hearing the most raving and critical of reviews for certain products made them well aware of what people wanted to wear and what people wanted to look like, so all it took was strategy, determination, and capital to get their makeup lines running.
3. Social Media Manager
In the age of the internet, the determinants of your success online (e.g. follower count, number of likes, etc.) are equal or similar to those for your life offline. Thus, your brand is your capital. Those who take care of branding for a variety of individuals are social media managers; they wear multiple hats, including creating content, analyzing social media metrics, devising social media strategies, and more. A social media manager is all-in-all a jack of all trades.
4. Skincare Designer
Healthcare has not been a safe space for many black people, particularly in the case of misdiagnosed dermatological conditions that occur as an effect of how medical students are often (if not, always) taught to diagnose on white skin. Therefore, black skincare professionals have taken it upon themselves to develop safe remedies for conditions that often plague black skin, such as eczema, vitiligo, hyperpigmentation, and ingrown hair.
5. Youtuber
You can't be a Youtuber without a winning personality, which is why many black people pursue roles as influencers and content creators on Youtube and succeed at doing so. We're funny, empathetic, kind, and when asked, we give advice that you may not want to hear but need in the long run.
6. Clothing Designer
Those who have experienced a continuous onset of pain or prejudice in their lives often turn to art to sublimate their pain, which is the case for many black individuals. The process of creating articles of clothing is often said to be a meditative experience for the ways in which it reveals an individual's skillset and returns them to their roots. For instance, witnessing one's idea of a dashiki dress being brought into reality, stitch by stitch, can be gratifying for African American, Liberian, and other African textile designers.
7. Investor in Restaurant/Food Business
We, as black people, do not know everything, but one thing we do know is how to season food well and choose the right kinds of food to eat. Therefore, many in the community have taken roles as investors of various barbecue, soul food, and seafood restaurants, as well as brands of alcohol, including Sean Comb's investment in Cîroc Vodka.
8. Innovator
If you've heard of the George Foreman grill, then you probably know what an innovator is. This grill and George Foreman, himself, epitomized black excellence before there was such thing as #blackexcellence. He was aware of a need that the people had and resolved that need before anyone else could think of doing so. Quite simply, with Foreman as an example, an innovator leads the race before anyone gets to the starting line. They have the ideas, the skills, and the determination to bring their thoughts into reality, despite any adversity.
9. Stock Market Investor
Okay, I don't like math. Nobody I know likes math, but black people, like all people, like money, so we get the math done. Legends like Robert F. Smith of the Vista Equity Partners, which invests in technology and software companies that endeavor to improve economic justice, and John W. Rogers, Jr., the founder and Chairman, Co-CEO and Chief Investment Officer of Ariel Investments, have dedicated their lives to making strategic investments to not only support themselves but to support others in the community who come from modest circumstances.
10. Indie Writer
For too long, black people's voices have been regulated and edited by the larger public; however, with the growing trend of self-publishing, many black writers have found a home for their stories. For example, popular book vlogger, Mina Thomas of MinaReads, noted that upon reading Christina C. Jones' novel Something Like Love that she “cried over my first ever experience reading about a bisexual Black woman like me…. Indie romances often provide me with representation that is often slow to show up on the traditionally published market.”
