Ayrika Craig on Empowering Entrepreneurs & Economic Development

Yes, hello everyone. My name is Ayrika . I am an economic -enthused individual and just passionate about changing the economic landscape for entrepreneurs overall, starting with our financial foundation.

Wow. Okay. So my journey concerning just economics and thinking about the financial world was, it started with my understanding. So I’ll even take a bigger step back. So I used to be in an architecture world for about like eight years. And with being in that industry, the question that I always ask myself was why is everyone so broke?

Why? What is happening? Why does this group of people hold this amount of wealth and this group of people have this much and just really trying to understand access and accessibility and when I was in my Master’s program studying economic development I stumbled upon like some tax classes and I was like wait, okay we have to start here and start at the bottom to understand just like the entire landscape of wealth disparities because we need to know how is the money moving because at the bottom line, small business owners and entrepreneurs are responsible for I think over like 50 % of the economy. And my thought process was or still currently is how can we stabilise those business owners? And so I started out in the tax world and teaching entrepreneurs how to just do the basics, right? Because if you can’t do the basics and understand the basic flow of your money, how can you be successful?

Yeah, so right now I am working at a nonprofit as head of development and my goal is just to change our economic landscape and to raise funds as an organisation so we can stay stable. The other thing is I have a small startup called Barter-E, which is a small community of entrepreneurs to barter their services.

And then I also do a little bit, I’m like pulling myself out of the tax world a little bit because I’m noticing I need a full team of people. And it takes, man, it takes so much more time than I anticipated. So a little bit of taxes every now and then to like my special clients that I like hold near and dear to my heart.

so I’ll start with the e -commerce brand. So with Barter-E, my target audience are entrepreneurs who are within like that first to three year phase of being a startup or just getting their business off of the ground. Because typically within like that first, I want to say typically within the first 18 months, over 80 % of black owned businesses fail just because they don’t have cash flow.

And so much money is lost because of just mistakes being made, right? But my theory is if we can help each other barter our services, which is something that we naturally do, and formalise that process from there, we can save on our startup costs to get our business going.

Wow, that is a really, really, really, really good question. I think for me, I can just remember, think back, being a little girl and being even in elementary school. And every decision that has drove me started with a passion of what makes the world go and to also understand what are those disparities and why different groups of people cannot operate or cannot function with the quality of life that they deserve. So for me, it all starts with something that I’m passionate about and changing just the landscape of economic development. Even in,I have like big goals to like change tax policy, right? Because, but that’s gonna take a little bit. But for me, I would say my passion and my drive is less about is becoming this well -known person, but I actually want to move the needle in terms of the startup landscape for business owners. And it starts with becoming well -rounded in the financial world.

Wow, the future plan for myself. Okay, so when I see myself down the line 10 years, right, I see myself with at least two more degrees and more than likely in the policy world to create good policy for small business owners. And I think like in terms of being a business owner, there are so many things that impacts us, whether if it’s our financial costs, the tax policy, even to what you can get like special credits on, like all of that starts to get into the world of policy. So eventually down the line, I wanna deal more with policy. And if I be honest, you know, there’s those days where I’m like, I don’t wanna work. So if I can build a good cushion for myself to where my rhythm in which how I work is more so decided by me and my time is more so decided in my hands where I have more control over it. But you know, 10 years in line, let’s be laid up on the beach, relaxing.

Wow, when I think about the work that I’ve done with over, I’ve worked with over like 500 small business owners. And in terms of money and, God, I guess I’m thinking about so many different things, but in terms of just like managing money well, right? Like it’s less about the skill of knowing about what is a profit and loss statement, right? It’s more so about people have so many different emotional ties to money and just different traumatic experiences to where they can’t even get to the basis of, okay, let me organise my money correctly. it’s so, there were times and moments where I was playing therapist more than actually being like,

a tax strategist or a financial planner because there’s so much that comes with like, for some people, they’re even afraid to open their bank account to look at what’s in there, right? So with so many different fears and different emotions that has to be like broken through before we can even get to like the basics of business 101 concerning your finances.

And I even think that with Barter-E, Some of the biggest hurdles that I run into, right? Because the goal is to trade skills so people can ultimately eliminate startup services. So within the process of how it works, people have to submit like what do they need? People don’t know what they need. You know, people are like, I need a logo. And I’m like, no, you need a brand guideline. trying to get to the root of to help business owners understand what they need and to how to clarify that process is a, it’s a journey. It’s a journey. It has been a bump in a road, but it’s a journey. So those I would say are my two biggest challenges. It’s like with business owners, I think it means more of a therapist, business like coach. I don’t like the term business coach, but more so like a therapist, someone to work through their emotions before they can actually get to the root of what they need help with.

that’s looking to start a brand this year. I think it’s so simple to say like, just do it. Because that’s not, that may not be like super practical. But the best advice that I would give is just like to start small. It’s literally just one step at a time. It’s literally like just putting one foot in front of the other. And don’t worry about who else is out there, you know? And make informed decisions. I know there are so many people where they’ll just pull a price point out of thin air. And it’s like, where did you even, where did you get that from? Did you even do any research to see what is the competitive landscape? Do you know how much, like for people that may be working within the beauty industry,

Like, did you even research how, what was the cost of labour to do this and what was the cost of all the products and everything that went into this? So those would be my biggest things, just one step at a time and to make an informed decision. Like don’t make a decision out of anywhere. If anything, just look it up on Google before you say yay to anything.

Well, thank you so much. Thank you so much. This is good.