Owning your own business is incredibly rewarding, I know this as a fact. I take great pride in running SunShine REIT, working to help build generational wealth for everyday people through property investment. Additionally, we've seen more and more Black women start their entrepreneurial journey in recent years. Yet, business ownership is only part of the way to close the wealth gap.

We have to learn to not only own the business, but also own the land and the building on which it resides. My motto is: own the business, own the property, own the block. It does us no good to simply own a brick-and-mortar business if we’re paying rent outside of the community. Sadly, businesses come and go, but owning property doesn’t go away so easily. With this in mind, our objective needs to be about turning the concept of a closed circle, mentioned above, into reality by circulating capital within the community so capital continues to build and flourish.

Now that we have a community of educated and well-employed people of color that are now positioned to be homeowners and business entrepreneurs, financial literacy comes back into the fold. We have to teach future homeowners and business owners about the importance of leveraging their credit and the importance of protecting it. For too long, credit has been the gatekeeper to Black America’s access to capital. For more information, please see sunshinereit.com.

Finally, together as a community we can achieve the aforementioned actions. Our goal doesn’t need to be stopping the rates at which wealth increases for white America. It will keep growing. Simultaneously, we don’t need to accelerate the increase of their wealth with the power of our dollars. Instead, we must realize the power we hold and increase our wealth at greater rates. Then, and only then, will we begin to shrink the wealth gap.

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Anthony Woods has been an entrepreneur and investor since 2015. He leads Sunshine Real Estate Investment Trust LLC as the CEO and Founder. His company owns multi-family properties in Buffalo, New York, Niagara Falls, New York, and Chicago, Illinois. See more of his work at sunshinereit.com.

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