"Pray, slay and repeat." This is a quote made by the owner of Natural Trendsetters, Simone Hylton, one of South Florida's leading natural hair salons. She and a host of minority business owners shared their wealth of knowledge and resources with up and coming business owners at this weekend's Minority Business Expo at Artserve located in Fort Lauderdale, FL.

More than 20 black owned businesses were represented at this event including my own business, Lyfestory Entertainment Group, an event planning, and promotions business. (Sorry I needed to add that shameless plug). This event taught me more about marketing strategies and financial options than my business classes. They also stated that many of these resources are found for free to assist entrepreneurs. Several panelists were interviewed by audience members about how they achieved success. Most of the panelists agreed that success for them did not occur overnight and that they had to make costly mistakes in order to learn valuable lessons.

For example, Johanne Wilson, owner of Cool Creative, a graphic design and marketing company shared her experience with a client where she was tapped into creating an annual report for a Fortune 500 company. She was given a $10,000 budget to complete the project. Once she printed the reports, she found to her horror that most of the pages did not print. In the end she had to absorb the cost of this blunder with her own money. (That's why it always pays to proof client work). Other panelists such as Sandy Michael McDonald, Director of Broward County's Office of Economic and Small Business Development, Keon Williams, Assistant Director of Urban Philanthropies and Andy Jean, Founder of South Beach Funding, provided ways for business owners to get funding through loans and government grants.

The common thread in this discussion was credit. In other words, most banks will not issue loans to business owners especially if they have bad credit or if they have been in business for less than 4 or 5 years. They suggested tapping into alternative ways of funding by applying for loans at smaller institutions or private entities and also by using programs to clean up their personal credit.

Lastly, marketing techniques and best practices were discussed. Believe it or not, the best form of marketing was considered to be word of mouth marketing. Social media marketing was considered to be a supplement to this. As a marketing major, I took pleasure in participating in this discussion and learned to implement techniques such as Facebook marketing, testimonials, and target marketing analysis into my own business.

This event was a culmination of the National Urban League's National Day of Empowerment of which I am proud to be a member. I can't wait until next years' expo and I will always be inspired by Mrs. Hylton's quote to pray every day, slay every day and repeat.