For a city known as a magnet to Blacks, gays, and serial entrepreneurs, Atlanta has a surprisingly short list of people who check off all three boxes.

Mychel “Snoop” Dillard is a high-profile exception. At 36, the Detroit transplant who u-turned from hard-scrabble youth to Vanderbilt University alumni heads a string of successful restaurants and salon spaces across Atlanta.

Now she’s setting her sights on lifting others as she climbs. Dillard recently launched a series of business courses and a four-week mentorship program she hopes can provide tips and tricks for people starting a small business or just trying to keep one afloat.

The serial entrepreneur and out gay Atlantan aims to fill in the blanks that so many Black business owners lack when it comes to finding long-term success, while in the process, helping sow Atlanta’s next crop of business moguls.

“We need to see more people like myself doing it and it will give others hope,” Dillard said recently, of her growing business empire. “There’s not a lot of people leading the way.”

Among gay Atlanta’s small circle of heavy-hitting entrepreneurs, Dillard holds a unique position of success. She employs a staff of 300 across five restaurants—a handful in partnership with Grammy-winning rapper 2 Chainz—and Remedy Salon Suites, a string of salon rental spaces with three Atlanta locations.

“It’s not magic,” the tall mogul with the Tennessee drawl and big smile explains. “It’s simply learning your market and refusing to give up.” 

Pushing Against Headwinds

Business success is no small feat in a city known as much for grand openings as for grand closings.

About 1.1 million of the nation’s 30 million small businesses were located in Georgia in 2020, according to the U.S. Small Business Administration. Roughly half of those are expected to fail after five years, according to the SBA, with causes ranging from poor marketing to low customer demand. Among black business owners, who often operate on much smaller margins than their white peers, success can be even more fragile and prone to collapse during crises like the coronavirus pandemic. From February to April 2020, for instance, Black-owned businesses declined by 41 percent versus 17 percent among White-owned businesses, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Insiders say minority businesses often lack the generational wealth or strong credit lines required to start a business or maintain one through lean times. But funding is just a small part of the problem, Dillard said.

“A lot of times people think because I have the money, I can open up a lounge,” she said. “It’s more to it than just having the money.”

For starters, Dillard said having the money to start a business doesn’t mean having the acumen to be successful. She pointed to her own experience as a wide-eyed 24-year-old who sank more than $30,000 into a Nashville nightclub only to lose every dime within months.

”It was an epic fail,” Dillard said. “I didn’t know anything at all—I did it with the wrong people, didn’t have the proper licenses, and didn’t really know anything about the industry.”

A few years later, Dillard said she experienced modest success with a digital newspaper, only to have the business effectively stolen from under her after she left the big decisions to her staff.

The lack of research and becoming complacent are common pitfalls for entrepreneurs, she said.

“No. 1, they don’t know their numbers and they don’t know their business well enough and 2, they hire inexperienced people to lead their companies and don’t keep up with what’s going on,” she said. “It’s just a lack of knowledge.”

Would-be business owners need to build connections—it was a realtor who linked her with 2 Chainz, launching a turnkey marketing engine for her businesses—and cementing the importance of developing relationships with people with a track record of proven success.

“It’s very important to get a mentor and do some research and really make sure that you know what you’re doing,” she said. “A lot of people learn on their own and it ends up being very costly.”

It took a few years after the major loss of her first venture for Dillard to take another chance. In 2012, after a move to Atlanta, Dillard tried her luck starting Party Bus Kings, specializing in mobile entertainment and courier services. The business was a hit, expanding to a second fleet within six months.

And just like that, Dillard was on her way.

Diversify, Diversify, Diversify

After more than a decade in Atlanta, Dillard has owned a wide variety of businesses – from a party bus company to The Hookah Hideaway, an Edgewood hookah lounge she ran for five years. It may look like failure to some, but Dillard said getting out while you’re on top is just another important part of a successful entrepreneur’s strategy.

“Not all businesses are meant for you to hold on to forever,” said Dillard, who called overstaying a business yet another common mistake among early entrepreneurs. “Sometimes you have to realize when you’ve made all you can make and when it’s time to sell or give it up.”

Dillard has special advice for LGBTQ+ business owners: Don’t shoehorn yourself into serving one community.

“You’re limiting yourself any time you do something that’s just for one market or one select group of people,” said Dillard, who instead relies on non-discriminatory job practices and creating an inclusive environment to support the LGBTQ+ community.

When she’s not relaxing in her 7,000 sq. ft. mansion with her new fiancée Sidney Jackson, or overseeing inspections at her properties, Dillard shares gems on everything from how to build the right staff to how to boost your credit score on her popular YouTube channel.

Apparently, her secret sauce works.

A recent Saturday afternoon found the block outside Crave, Dillard’s trendy Little Five Points venture, bustling. Stylish patrons hustled in and out, while tasty smells and smooth music wafted onto the street. Above it all, a banner featuring Snoop’s smiling face looked down on the hard-won fruits of her labor.

“If you give up, you already know where you’re going to end up being, which is nowhere,” she said. “You might as well try.”