"The thought of building a business that could provide freedom, financial security, and create generational wealth was exciting to me as a budding 19-year-old entrepreneur," writes Dondre Diggs in a New York Times op-ed, but he says that's exactly what happened to him.
Diggs, who is black, started his first business as a 19-year-old father of a 1-year-old son.
"No one else offered a similar service in Milwaukee, so my business quickly grew to six figures in the first year," he writes.
"Despite being a profitable business model, the business didn't align with my passion and where I wanted to go in life."
He sold the business 12 years into owning and running it, and since then, he's built a "multiple-six-figure education company" that he and his wife operate from all over the world.
He says he's taught his children "that you can't let your identity be tied to what others say or think about you," and that "the work we do to grow our business is our lottery ticket.
The internet, social media, and access to information are the great equalizers.
As Black entrepreneurs today, we have opportunities not previously available to us."
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Ganesh Natarajan is the Founder and Chairman of 5FWorld, a new platform for funding and developing start-ups, social enterprises and the skills eco-system in India. In the past two decades, he has built two of India’s high-growth software services companies – Aptech and Zensar – almost from scratch to global success.