UIM Online With... 

Colleen Payne-Nabors, Tony Shellman, and Jasmine Lawrence

In a time of economic uncertainty and instability, African Americans still are fearlessly leaving the structured corporate world for uncharted entrepreneurial territory. With only 5 percent of American businesses being African-American-owned, there is still plenty of opportunity and undiscovered terrain for aspiring business leaders ready and willing to tackle entrepreneurship and experience its glory, challenges and rewards.

UIM gained insights into the world of owning your own business from three successful entrepreneurs: Tony Shellman, clothing designer and founder of groundbreaking hip-hop clothing brands ENYCE, Mecca USA and recently Parish Clothing; 16-year-old Jasmine Lawrence, owner and creator of EDEN BodyWorks, her own hair care line; and Colleen Payne-Nabors, a nuclear medicine technologist turned owner of the multimillion-dollar MCI Diagnostic Center in Tulsa, Okla. 

UIM: What do you believe to be the most imposing challenges to African Americans growing an established business?
Colleen Payne-Nabors: I think that one of the important challenges that we as African Americans face, if you are in a non-African-American environment or you’re doing something out of the norm for African Americans, it tends to be a little harder. As African Americans, we tend to not get the financial backing that we need. We’re always challenged to do the best job possible.

What do you expect to be the pitfalls and areas easiest to navigate?
CPN: Each year, I look at the things I can add to my company to stand outside of the box, and that is what has continued for me to grow. I have grown this company exponentially by constantly staying ahead to see what’s coming in the future.

Given the depressed retail industry, what does the future hold for existing and prospective small businesses in general and African American-owned businesses in particular?
CPN: Minority-owned businesses are growing at an alarming rate, which is wonderful because this country is (run) by the small business. I think there’s a lot of opportunity and a lot of growth for small businesses. It’s the backbone the American country, so at no point will they go away.

Talk about your plans and goals the time you first seriously considered going into business.
Jasmine Lawrence: When I first started, I made a business plan, went to Kinko’s and got business cards and ordered mixing products so that I would have something to show people when I told them about my business. I went to an incubator program with the people who did the business camp, and they gave me pro bono legal and financial advice, and I just learned a lot that made me even more serious about being in the business world. They taught me about trademark and how to license my name and my logo and having a mission statement and what words to use on labels and things like that that I didn’t know about my own industry. But they really encouraged me to do more research. And financially, they taught me how to budget and how to project. They taught me the difference between profit and revenue.

Describe some of the early challenges and setbacks you faced in opening your business. Do you think the challenges were specific to your industry or common problems for all start-up businesses? 
Tony Shellman: I think one of the early challenges was learning to manage myself. Each day we focused on the business because we didn’t come in as business managers. We came in more as young artists, young talented men. In the meantime, we knew the basics because that’s what we did. It was more or less cutting through how do you manage hiring people, how do you manage human resource stuff. All small companies have to grow into a corporation. It’s fun to being a small mom and pop operation, but it has to grow.

What lessons have you learned over the years that you wished you would’ve known at the start?
TS: Hindsight is 20/20. In all fairness, I don’t know how good it would be if I changed anything. I look back and say, ‘I’m glad this happened. I wished certain things wouldn’t have happened,’ but I guess that’s all a part of the process. 

What are the advantages of being an entrepreneur compared to working for another person or company?
TS: You get to call the shots, end of story. At the same time, just like I get to call the shots, I have to be responsible when I miss.

By Lenora E. Houseworth