A movement, and what it taught us
A woman comes to the Forum. She has run her business alone for six years. She hears something that lifts her and drives home carrying it. Then Tuesday comes and she is standing in front of the same wall she was standing in front of on Friday.
We built the room first. Then we spent two years finding out what that wall is actually made of. It is not what we assumed, and we changed the organization because of it.
The wall is trust, not money
Capital exists. Programs exist. Whole institutions exist to serve these businesses. What does not exist is a reason to believe any of them, or a way to know which one applies to you on the particular Tuesday you need it. Someone has to know your business well enough to point, and be trusted enough that you walk through the door.
Owners did not want more courses
We asked members to rank eleven kinds of help. Online courses came last. So we stopped building a library and started building something that carries a specific owner to the specific resource that fits, then follows up to find out what happened.
Revenue was the wrong measure
A million dollars in revenue can be one person working themselves to exhaustion. It says nothing about whether a community got stronger. The line that matters is the first hire: a family gains a job, and the owner stops selling their own hours.
The window is open, and it is narrowing
For six straight years the number of Black-owned employer businesses climbed, passing two hundred thousand for the first time in 2023. Between 2017 and 2023 that count grew by 62 percent, against 3.3 percent for American employer businesses overall.
Then the rate collapsed. Growth ran near 21 percent in a single recent year and fell to roughly 3 percent the next. The businesses that cross the employer threshold are the ones that build wealth and anchor a neighborhood, and the pace at which owners are crossing it has slowed sharply.
What has actually been built
Three years, from a founding investment to a national community. We publish what we can verify, and we are rebuilding how we count the rest.
The institution is founded and the community opens
Good Soil Economic Development Corporation is established as a 501(c)(3) with founding support from Stand Together. Good Soil HQ goes live in May.
The Sessions tour opens and the first research lands
The first Session is hosted at Stand Together's headquarters in Arlington and is oversubscribed. A member baseline survey finds that 93 percent of respondents have fewer than six employees, which becomes the case for everything that follows.
The Forum reaches national scale and the first cohort graduates
2,082 people in the room in Dallas, presented by Wells Fargo, with a fireside between Oprah Winfrey and Chairman T.D. Jakes. Seed Capital applications more than double. The first Business Strategy Cohort completes and graduates.
The strategy is rebuilt around the employer threshold
The revenue goal is retired. HQ is rebuilt as a routing instrument, Dallas-Fort Worth becomes the first market tested end to end, and independent measurement is stood up. The Forum returns October 8 to 10.