Today we’d like to introduce you to Sandra Wilson.
Sandra, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
My story is one of a single mother of four children who have witnessed our community being gun downed in the streets by the police. August 2016, Colin Kaepernick sat on the bench to protest what was happening to our community. I saw that he had just thrown his whole NFL career away for us. I jumped on board and started protesting as well. I knew I wanted to do something for our community, so I started protesting on social media through my pro-black Instagram page. A gentleman by the name of Mr. Dale Dowdie, the CEO of Black Facts, reached out to me and said he loved my passion for our community and wanted me to work on his social media pages. I started working for him in February 2018, managing his regular post of black facts. He saw how passionate I was about the black community, so he suggested I start my own business, influencing our community to support each other. Because of this, I decided to set up an Instagram page called Black Connections, which would support black businesses only. I wanted our community to have a platform just for us. The reason why I wanted us to have our platform is that I felt that we needed a place just for black people, business owners, organizations, and events so that we could come together and support one another. This platform was designed solely for the black community so that we can unite the community and support black-owned businesses to keep our money within our community. By building more black-owned businesses and investing in each other, we can turn our small businesses into major corporations, thus creating more employment opportunities for the people in our community.
When we support each other’s businesses, we are unstoppable; we can cut down on gun violence and poverty, and we can buy lower-income housing, renovate, and create affordable housing for our community. We are the change our community needs and it starts with the recycling of the black dollar with black-owned businesses. The time is now for us to support each other and level the playing field.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
It has been a rough road. Instagram does not like black activists on their platform. Both of my pro-black pages were deleted, and the other I was locked out of. Every time I would write about an incident with a police officer and an unarmed black person I would get reported. I was getting reported a lot by our own community. They kept telling me to stop rocking the boat. Some people in our community wanted me to stay silent and stop talking about what was going on and about our history. The more I got reported the more Instagram sent me warnings. They kept blocking my account for increasingly longer amounts of time. Then they finally just started deleting my pages. I’m on my Black Connections page now, and I’m shadow blocked along with several other black activists. Being a black activist on FB & IG is rough. They have been threatening to shut my page down for the past year. There is enough room at the table for all of us to eat. I want to see us all winning in our community.
Tell us more about the business.
Our company promotes black-owned businesses and the community as a whole. We have advertising services that we use to promote black-owned businesses on our platforms. Our services consist of single-day, week, or month promotion on our Instagram page of 80k followers. Also we offer one-hour live interviews of a black-owned business CEO. We also do social media growth where we post and work with you on growing your following organically. We attend different black businesses and take pictures and go live to promote businesses. We have built a global black business directory on our website. Our goal is to get every black-owned business globally in this directory. It is free for our community businesses to join our directory. We also have Black Connections apparel that we sell on our webpage. We have a Black Business Expo that we are currently doing twice a year. What sets Black Connections apart from others is my passion for our community. I am an activist first. I do not have problems having boots on the ground marching, protesting, or our supporting black-owned businesses. I’m not driven by fame, clout, or money. My ancestors are pushing me to continue things they started. Uplifting, educating, and supporting our community by any means necessary.
Has luck played a meaningful role in your life and business?
In the bluntest of terms, my life has been a series of bad luck, one after another. I grew up in an abusive household, was treated badly by several partners, including my ex-husband. The brightest thing in my life, and the thing that overall makes me the luckiest person are my children. They have been my rock since my oldest was born in 1992. It was also a huge stroke of good luck to gain the large following I have in such a short period of time. I was not expecting Black Connections to take off so quickly.
Pricing:
- $10.00 one permanent feature on IG, FB, & Twitter
- $25.00 one feature in IG story with link, one permanent feature on IG, FB, & Twitter
- $30.00 live interview discussion between the business owner and BC CEO 1 hr interviews are at 8pm or 9pm est
- $50.00 one week of promoting on IG, FB, & Twitter the 7th day post is permanent unless you give us 7 different posts to post.
- $125.00 30 day promotion of promoting on IG, FB, & Twitter the 30th day post is permanent unless you give us 30 different posts to post.
- $200.00 30 day social media growth service cross promotion on other social media outlets, advisement on how to grow social media platform,30 day promotion of promoting on IG, FB, & Twitter the 30th day post is permanent unless you give us 30 different posts to post.
- FREE Join our Black Business Directory add business name and location
- $15.00 Directory monthly add business, name, location, logo, pictures, date established, price range, hours, contact information, all social media platforms, detailed information about business & products
- $50.00 Directory yearly (save $75.00) add business, name, location, logo, pictures, date established, price range, hours, contact information, all social media platforms, detailed information about business & products.
Contact Info:
- Address: 10221 Krause Rd Suite 188
Chesterfield, Va. 23832-9998 - Website: https://blackconnectionsllc.com/
- Phone: 434-774-9882
- Email: info@blackconnectionsllc.com
Image Credit:
Photographer 1 Helen Baker
Photographer 2 Terrance Cooper
Photographer 3 John El Rips Media
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