Oral Bac 2012 G1-G2

At BLACK ENTERPRISE the staff working enthusiastically and feverishly to finalize the details of the 2011 Black Enterprise Entrepreneurs Conference to be held May 22-25 in Atlanta. This event, which each year attracts more than 2.000 accomplished business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs, always generates great excitement at the company. That's because the Entrepreneurs Conference, the largest annual gathering of black businesses in the U.S. is a living embodiment of the entrepreneurial achievement that BLACK ENTERPRISE has for more than four decades.
For me, our Entrepreneurs Conference represents a principle of business success that I have promoted and seen demonstrated throughout my lifetime as a business owner: We cannot build businesses of size, scale, and significance in the global marketplace without aggressively and effectively building our relationships with others.
In fact, isolation is the enemy, helping to kill off hundreds of thousands of businesses each year. Especially if you are a black entrepreneur, or aspire to be one, you need to establish mutually beneficial relationships within your industry, with customers, suppliers, other business owners, bankers, lawyers, financiers, and corporate managers to grow your business. It is simple common sense that if you are in business, the more people you know, the more business you can attract and the better informed you will be to succeed as an entrepreneur. Networking often seems an overused and outdated term. But make no mistake—it's still how business gets done.
Of course, true networking is about far more than meeting in hotel conference rooms to push business cards on each other, or even connecting on your favorite social media platform. It's about forming authentic relationships based on a mutual desire to help each other and a genuine willingness to contribute and bring value to the table. Simply expressed in order for black businesses to become full participants in the global economy, we have to be able to count on each other as customers, investors, and partners in joint ventures and strategic alliances.

Adapted from Black Enterprise