The BOSS Network Blog

Niehla O. spent over 20 years in the fashion and beauty industry but decided to pivot into an industry that helps people look good on the inside. After a chance encounter with a tasty green hummus blend, a late-night craving led her to begin mixing unique hummus flavors of her own. Her goal is to continue to spread love and hummus throughout our community. As entrepreneurs, we spend a lot of time talking about business plans, marketing strategies, revenue goals, and networking. But one of the most powerful tools I’ve used in my entrepreneurial journey doesn’t cost a thing: My Words. The Law of Confession is the principle of intentionally speaking in agreement with what you believe and what you are trusting God to do, even when your current circumstances look completely different. And let me be clear : T his is something I CONSTANTLY have to remind myself of. There are days when business is slow, money is tight, an opportunity falls through, or I simply feel overwhelmed. In those momen...

Briantria Smocks is a devoted researcher, visionary strategist, producer, and gifted educator. She is Editor-in-Chief of Levi&Toonk and CEO of Smocks Media Group (SMG). Also a member of Delta Sigma Theta, Bri enjoys lounging with her family, reading a juicy book, and getting lost in music.  As a woman who wears mini hats, I am about three weeks removed from ending my first crowdfunding effort. Since March, my team and I have been working on raising funds to produce an animated series, named after the literacy enrichment company I own with my mom. We had put together a solid plan with our core group of supporters and had lined up multiple funders to give. We had even come up with creative marketing strategies to highlight the muse of our work, my precocious 8-year-old son Levi. And even after coming into contact with at least 50,000 people/direct emails during the entire campaign window, we were unable to reach our goal of $30,000. And the platform we used required us to raise ...

Alicia T. Bowens is an AI Execution Architect and founder of ATB Innovative Solutions. With 20+ years in enterprise project management, she helps businesses stop automating chaos and start building systems that actually scale. Learn more at atbinnovative.com . You are not short on leads. You are short on follow-through. Walk into most growing teams, and you find the same thing. Money spent on leads at the top. Money lost at the handoff. A lead comes in, one person responds in four minutes, and another responds in four days, and the deal quietly goes cold in the gap between them. That gap is not a marketing problem. It is an execution problem. And it is the most expensive one you are not measuring. Here is where it gets worse. When a team like that adds AI, the chaos does not disappear. It speeds up. AI sends the wrong follow-up faster. It scales an inconsistent process across every lead you have instead of botching them one at a time. You do not get a fixed system. You get a bigger ve...

Cassandra Hill is a Master Life Coach, Best-Selling Author, and Speaker. She is passionate about empowering Black women to live life on their terms by up-leveling their emotional, spiritual, and mental well-being. Cassandra is passionate about spreading self-love as one of the solutions to eradicate the domestic violence epidemic among Black women. The U.S. economy is facing a severe recession. Life is getting increasingly unaffordable. Your business may have been doing reasonably well, but with inflation things are different. Businesses that are unable to adjust for inflation collapse. Why? Inflation means prices go up. Costs of equipment, materials, and services go up. The general increase in prices means that companies need to increase wages. If you increase your employees' salaries when your profits are not growing or even when they are falling, your business will collapse. A company stuck between rising prices and falling profits will go out of business. How can your business...

Founder and CEO of Bold & Becoming and Boss Babes, Alana Matthews is an entrepreneur, commercial real estate professional, and J.D. candidate dedicated to empowering women through leadership, professional development, and wealth-building education. With a career spanning real estate, compliance, and legal services, she is committed to creating opportunities that inspire women to lead boldly, build generational wealth, and create lasting impact in their communities. At 23 years old, I am learning that purpose is not just about what you build; it is also about who you become in the process. Being recognized as an honoree at Regina Stevenson’s Raining Pearls Awards Night allowed me to reflect on that truth. The evening was not simply about celebrating 25 Black women entrepreneurs. It was about recognizing the woman behind the work. Regina reminded us that a pearl begins with an irritant, a wound that the oyster cannot remove. Instead, layer by layer, it transforms what caused pain in...

Alicia T. Bowens is an AI Execution Architect and founder of ATB Innovative Solutions. With 20+ years in enterprise project management, she helps businesses stop automating chaos and start building systems that actually scale. Learn more at atbinnovative.com. If you've ever thought “everyone else gets AI but me” — read this first. Here's the truth that many course sellers don't share: you're not behind. Most businesses are still dabbling. The people posting AI wins didn't post their 47 failed attempts first. But being early doesn't mean you should rush out and buy tools. Here's why. AI won't fix chaos. It amplifies it. Drop AI on top of a broken process, and you don't get a fixed process. You get a broken process running faster. Leads still fall through. Follow-up still fires late, or never. Your team still double-checks everything the AI does, until they quietly stop using it and go back to manual. That's not an AI problem. It's a process p...

Cassandra Hill is a Master Life Coach, Best-Selling Author, and Speaker. Her passion is empowering Black women to live life on their terms by up-leveling their emotional, spiritual, and mental well-being. Cassandra is passionate about spreading self-love as one of the solutions to eradicate the domestic violence epidemic among Black women. Blogs are one of the most powerful marketing tools you can utilize in your business. They’re great at getting potential customers into your sales funnel, and they help your website to rank better on search engines like Google. Let’s break up the effectiveness of blogs into two separate categories, specifically SEO and content marketing. SEO SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. This means that your website is optimized to be found by users on search engines. This can be done through a variety of methods. Keywords and phrases can be incorporated into your website and blog copy. Typically, these keywords consist of words or phrases people on the ...

Alicia T. Bowens is an AI Execution Architect and founder of ATB Innovative Solutions. With 20+ years in enterprise project management, she helps businesses stop automating chaos and start building systems that actually scale. Learn more at atbinnovative.com. I've sat in a lot of war rooms. Rooms where a company just spent six figures on a new system: ERP, CRM, workflow automation, you name it, and six months later, nobody was using it. The help desk tickets were piling up. The consultants were gone. And leadership was quietly wondering if they'd been sold something that didn't work. The technology worked fine. That was never the problem. After two decades managing enterprise-level projects and Agile transformations, I can tell you the failure pattern is almost always the same: organizations invest in tools before they've fixed the processes those tools are supposed to support. Then they're surprised when the tool doesn't perform. AI is making this worse. Not b...

Briantria Smocks is a devoted researcher, visionary strategist, producer, and gifted educator. She is Editor-in-Chief of Levi&Toonk and CEO of Smocks Media Group (SMG). Also a member of Delta Sigma Theta, Bri enjoys lounging with her family, reading a juicy book, and getting lost in music. With all the learning courses and modules available for business professionals today, it can become overwhelming and daunting to sort through which options may be the best fit. I found it to be a tedious process once I became an entrepreneur in 2019. As it was not my first career choice, I sought out any and every space that offered complimentary sessions, prime networking, group feedback, sample coursework, you name it. About a year into my business, I had begun to realize how crucial it was (and still is) to seek out resources that were in alignment with either where I was at the time or where I was headed. Thankfully, that was around the same time that I'd heard of the Invest In Progress ...

Alana Iman Matthews is a real estate professional, visionary community founder, and future attorney redefining modern leadership. Through authenticity, consistency, and service, she is building a legacy of empowerment, proving that purpose-driven women don't choose one lane; they create their own.  People often ask how I've been able to navigate multiple career paths as a 23-year-old, from real estate to founding a thriving community, stepping into leadership roles, and now pursuing a legal career. They assume there must be a secret strategy behind it all. There is. First and foremost, God. But my dynamic duo is authenticity, paired with consistency. I've learned that opportunities don't come from trying to be the loudest person in the room. They come from becoming someone people trust. In real estate, clients aren't simply buying or selling property; they're placing some of the biggest financial decisions of their lives in your hands. That trust isn't buil...

Cassandra Hill is a Master Life Coach, Best-Selling Author, and Speaker. Her passion is empowering Black women to live life on their terms by up-leveling their emotional, spiritual, and mental well-being. Cassandra is passionate about spreading self-love as one of the solutions to eradicate the domestic violence epidemic among Black women. Hiring your first employee can be nerve-wracking. Many of us start our business as a team of one. If you’re one of these solo entrepreneurs, you probably have spent years as the only one working in your company. However, as your business begins to grow, you may notice that you can no longer handle everything alone. Hiring a staff member is an excellent way to reduce your workload and access new opportunities . However, it’s also pretty taxing. After all, what if you don’t end up being a good manager, or you choose the wrong person? Today, we’re going to look at some of the steps you can take to decide when and why it’s the right time to hire that fi...

Yara Banks , MBA, CHRMAP, is the CEO and Principal Consultant of BNX Business Advisors, with over 20 years of experience in HR, leadership, and organizational development. She is an expert in DEI, compliance, and talent management, known for building inclusive cultures, aligning HR strategies with business goals, and delivering impactful training programs that drive growth and performance. Yara also supports businesses in navigating government contracting, including DBE certification and RFP strategy, helping organizations position themselves to compete for and win contracts and build sustainable revenue streams. What if the most powerful thing you could do this month is give yourself permission to start over? Six months ago, many of us entered the year with vision boards, business plans, and ambitious goals. We promised ourselves this would be the year we launched the business, prioritized our health, increased our income, or finally pursued the dream that had been waiting patiently i...