By chesley.oxendine@gmail.com (Chez Oxendine)

Welcome to Breaking the Blueprint — a blog series that dives into the unique business challenges and opportunities of underrepresented business owners and entrepreneurs. Learn how they’ve grown or scaled their businesses, explored entrepreneurial ventures within their companies, or created side hustles, and how their stories can inspire and inform your own success.

Native entrepreneurship often occupies two worlds. Aspiring Indigenous business owners navigate historic barriers to traditional financing and growth — while building culturally informed, sustainable ventures.

This challenging climate hasn’t stopped these entrepreneurs from entering nearly every industry imaginable to make an Indigenous imprint on the world while supporting themselves and their communities.

Some Native business owners build on cultural touchstones like tribal art and stories to launch design studios and art shops. Others address long-time systemic hurdles to credit by stepping into the financial sector, bringing an Indigenous perspective to the issue that often proves crucial in addressing it. Still, others make waves in industries where Native participation registers just a fraction of a percentage point, such as in engineering and architectural design.

Inspiring Indigenous and Native Entrepreneurs to Know

By examining the stories and advice of these powerful voices in Indian Country business, we can light a path for even more Indigenous entrepreneurs to follow after — and continue an ever-improving cycle of breaking free of poverty and systemic discrimination. Let’s dive into these incredible leaders’ stories.

Chad Johnson (Cherokee,) The Akana Group

Agriculture is a staple business for many Native Americans, whose families have farmed reservation lands for generations. However, equipment typically proves a major hurdle even when working private lands, especially when Native farmers struggle to secure startup or business capital, according to a U.S. Treasury’s Community Development Financial Institutions Fund report.

Enter Chad Johnson’s Akana Group, which partners with equipment dealers like John Deere to foster relationships with tribal producers. Akana often secures discounts, delivery, and maintenance for Indigenous purchasers to help producers fully use their land.

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“It’s empowering for Native farmers to have more opportunities around their land usage,” Johnson says. “It’s about providing them what they need for a long-term growth strategy.”

While the Akana Group has since gone national, Johnson’s aspirations don’t stop at U.S. borders. His background drives him to establish partnerships with other Indigenous people across the globe.

“As Native businesses, with these new opportunities in front of us, we have to really consider: What are we looking to do? How are we looking to grow?” Johnson says. “We have to have the more complicated conversations of how we can really work together.”

Johnson recently served as a delegate for the First Nations Trade Mission, which saw a group of Native business figures visit Australia to discuss trade, partnerships, and education with Indigenous communities there.

The First Nations Trade Mission builds on the Native tradition of bartering and partnering to achieve better things for all parties involved, Johnson says.

“Trade is in our blood. …read more

Source:: HubSpot Blog

Author: Aaron