Jasmine “Jazzy Mac” McCall is one of the thousands of ambitious and skilled African American female entrepreneurs stepping up to the proverbial plate to deliver her version of Black excellence.
A finance expert, mompreneur, and YouTuber, “Jazzy” creates content showing millennials and Gen-Zers how to build credit, pay off student loans, and create passive income.
Taking her own sound advice, Jazzy is the creator of the Digital Credit Recipe, an online academy that walks users through credit building and shortcuts to boost their credit scores. For daily credit and finance resources, you can connect with her on Instagram & TikTok.
Her mission to educate the community on the importance of repairing and building a credit rating comes from the heart and experience. In one of Jazzy’s videos , available on YouTube, she spills the “t” on ways to avoid common mistakes that hinder credit building with many habits thought to help that actually do the reverse. At one point, she admits that her credit rating was in the 400s and now is in the 800s.
African American women, particularly those who live in the U.S., have to deal with both the racial wealth gap and the gender wealth gap. Facts – for every $1 that the average White man in America earns, the average African American woman earns just 69 cents, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau.
So it’s no surprise that debt continues to be an issue for many people of color trying to build a business and attempting to build generational wealth. But, our community is no stranger to obstacles. We are in fact, a force to be reckoned with and it’s not surprising that Black business ownership is now up by almost 30% (pre-pandemic levels) with women of color being the fastest-growing group of female entrepreneurs.
Here’s what successful credit coach, entrepreneur, and YouTube sensation Jasmine “Jazzy Mac” McCall had to share about building a successful business.
Los Angeles Sentinel: What are your biggest challenges in business?
Jazzy Mac: Balancing business meetings and content creation while raising a newborn full-time. As I continue to scale my brand, I often have to meet with business partners or interview employees to help with marketing, branding, and sales operations. That can be a cumbersome task when you have to conduct such meetings with a newborn in your arms.
Childcare is still hard to come by and many daycare programs have a long waitlist, so I have chosen to simply allow my baby to stay home with me and work with him around. My son is often on my lap when I have a meeting or sometimes I rock him to sleep during team meetings.
It can be tough to balance at times, but the amount of bonding time I get with my son is invaluable. Knowing that he is safe in my arms during a global pandemic is extremely reassuring for me and my husband.
LAS: In building your business, what barriers have you encountered?
JM: When you are an entrepreneur, there is no Better Business Bureau or easy-to-find directory of reliable resources for new business owners that want to scale their brands and marketing efforts.
There are a lot of “coaches” that charge thousands of dollars for training courses for new entrepreneurs and it’s sad that most of their students leave the course with more questions than answers. It took me months to build a reliable marketing team and it was not cheap.
While platforms like Facebook offer “free” marketing calls for Facebook Ads, it is very high level and doesn’t offer a very customized approach. For instance, they walk you through how to set up your ads, from a configuration POV, but they don’t offer training on email sequencing, conversion methods, re-targeting, copywriting, or platform integration information.
So, one could end up spending thousands of dollars on ads that ultimately do not convert to sales or reach their target audience, and the marketing “expert” can’t (or won’t) tell them why.
LAS: What has driven the rise of Black business ownership is now up by almost 30%?
JM: Layoffs, burnout, childcare flexibility, low corporate pay, and most of all — having unlimited free time to sit at home and focus on a business venture. All of these things have become the perfect recipe for the motivation to build one’s business and was why I started my digital product business.
I have also noticed a wave of Black creators offering free mentoring to one another and doing collaborations to raise brand exposure. This sort of camaraderie would not have been possible if everyone were working a 9-5 job and spending all of their free time away from home.
The pandemic has shifted our focus and priorities and for many of us, that has been the catalyst we needed to start a successful business.
