Ernest Strickland is the president and CEO of the Black Business Association of Memphis. Strickland has led a multitude of successful economic and workforce development projects throughout his career. Strickland comes to the BBA after a stellar 15-year career with the Greater Memphis Chamber. In his last role at the chamber, Ernest served as SVP of workforce. He launched Memphis’ community-wide workforce development initiative, Upskill 901, a program aimed at training 10,000 individuals over three years.
Strickland spoke with rolling out about BBA, and what they’re doing to amplify Black businesses in Memphis.
What is the mission of the Black Business Association of Memphis?
We [have a mission] to improve the economic well-being of the Memphis region by developing successful entrepreneurs through education, advocacy and business development. Creating and implementing innovative and strategic programs to propel minority-owned businesses toward economic opportunities for growth and prosperity is paramount.
What is your day-to-day role at the company?
Mission number one is to make sure we have revenue that can support and sustain programs. No money, no mission is what we tend to say. As president and CEO, my number one goal is to engage our board and to look at how can we diversify our revenue stream so that we can be sustainable. Oftentimes, Black organizations lack the financial wherewithal to really produce strong programming. In my interview, I told the board I view myself as the African prince that went to Europe to be educated and now I get to come back with those skills and education and rebuild the kingdom. There are a lot of organizations focused on how to support Black businesses. We don’t want to be one of those organizations that duplicated the efforts and activities of other organizations so we had to look at the landscape and see where our niche in the market is, what our competitive advantage is, and be disciplined in delivering programs.
What are you looking for in Black businesses when they come to you?
I had an opportunity to know intimately what some of the themes are when it comes to why Black businesses struggle, and access to capital is always top of the list but also having proper accounting services. Many of our companies struggle with keeping their books accurate, and that essentially can be a way for you to realign yourself. A bank is not going to do a forensic audit to understand if you’re making money or where your expenses are, and how much of a credit risk you are. You have to have a set of books in place for that bank or institution to be able to evaluate you so that you can access capital. Post-COVID, things have changed. The digital economy is robust. Marketing your business and services in a very crowded space becomes a challenge, so those are some of the barriers that we noticed.
