If you’re a female entrepreneur, ActOne Group CEO Janice Bryant Howroyd has some advice on how to succeed for you.

“Be where you say you’re going to be when you’re going to be, but most importantly how you’re going to be,” she said on Wednesday during an interview with FOX Business’ Maria Bartiromo.

Howroyd, whose company operates within 22 countries and employs more than 2,600 people worldwide, urged women — and male entrepreneurs, too — to use their own natural energy to connect with people in an age of technology and artificial intelligence.

“Don’t see it as competing for your workforce, see it as being cooperative with it,” she said.

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BLACK ENTERPRISE celebrates the 45th anniversary of its roster of the nation’s most successful black businesses—The BE 100s. To commemorate the significance of this collective’s widespread impact on black business and economic development as well as American industry over four decades, we have presented 45 milestone moments. As part of this tribute, we continue our yearlong countdown.  

2000: Robert Johnson, sells BET for $3 billion to media giant Viacom, making him the nation’s first black billionaire.

In clinching a deal that made him America’s first black billionaire, entrepreneur Robert Johnson led the sale of the nation’s largest black-owned cable channel to media conglomerate Viacom Inc. The transaction came with Viacom’s purchase of BET Holdings II Inc., the owner of Black Entertainment Television. The deal was announced in 2000 and closed a year later, valued at around $3 billion.

The pact made BET Founder Robert Johnson the nation’s richest black man and a household name. An astute executive, entrepreneur, and wealth builder, Bob Johnson made business history in 1991 by taking BET public. It became the first company ever traded on the New York Stock Exchange with majority ownership controlled by African Americans.

Not pleased with BET’s stock market performance, Johnson teamed with Liberty Media Group in 1998 to buy private ownership of the company and reorganized it as BET Holdings II Inc. When Viacom acquired BET Holdings II, it resulted into $2.4 billion in Viacom stock options for Johnson, who accepted a five-year contract with Viacom to continue leading BET. A former cable-industry lobbyist, Johnson and his wife at the time, Sheila, founded BET in 1980, with $500,000 in funding and a $15,000 bank loan.

Read more @ Black Enterprise

An investment made by Kobe Bryant has yielded more than 30 times its money in fewer than four-and-a-half years.

On Tuesday, Coca-Cola announced it purchased a minority stake in sports drink BodyArmor.

Bryant made his first investment in the brand, for roughly 10 percent of the company, in March 2014, putting in a total of roughly $6 million over time. Based on the valuation of the Coca-Cola deal, his stake is now worth approximately $200 million, sources told ESPN.

Bryant is now the fourth largest investor in the brand, marketed as a healthier competitor to Gatorade, behind the brand’s co-founder Mike Repole, Coca-Cola and Keurig Dr Pepper. When he invested in BodyArmor, the brand had just come off a year of $10 million in sales. BodyArmor is projected to top $400 million in sales in 2018.

Read more @ ESPN