Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Jeff Osuji. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Jeff, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

Femi Masha and I co-founded Eventnoire in 2018 to connect Black culture enthusiasts to spaces and places that embrace its essence and people. We knew there was a need for Black people to be able to create a sense of community and find events that were culturally relevant to them. For 15 years, we’ve hosted events catered to thousands of underserved Black event attendees. We’ve met with the City of Chicago to discuss the unique experience that Black professionals and creatives have in building a sense of community when the communities they come from are often under-resourced.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I got my start in the event industry at the University of Illinois, where I started the event company Pyramid Solutions & Marketing with Femi Masha in 2005. It was our response to the lack of entertainment options for Black college students. We identified a need for a relevant and personalized event discovery experience for and by the black diaspora. One that eliminated the clutter of oversaturated platforms and rewarded event curators and creatives for pushing the culture forward led us to create Eventnoire in 2018.

Eventnoire is uniquely addressing this problem by providing an event marketplace for culturally relevant events and partnering with community organizations, event organizers, and corporate partners to offer online event ticketing support for events that celebrate and embrace Black culture. We have worked with over 800 event partners who we’ve helped reach their target audience more seamlessly while helping to increase event revenue by more than 20% for many of our partners.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

“Never Stop. Never Settle” are true words to live by and to me means that we are to live this life with no limits and with a relentless pursuit of purpose and vision. Your attitude determines your latitude and in order to have the most impact on this world we must step up to the challenges that life throws our way and give everyday and everything our all. This is the approach I take in business stepping up to the challenge of being a Black entrepreneur. The normal rules of society say that it will be harder to fundraise, harder to build a product, and even harder to scale. But I challenge myself everyday to look at obstacles as opportunities for conquest. After 8 years of a successful career in marketing and advertising I decided in 2019 to focus full time on entrepreneurship because settling was no longer an option. The time is now and I refuse to stop working my way towards a successful business building brick by brick with tenacity and vigor as a “Never Stop. Never Settle” lifestyle requires.

Have you ever had to pivot?

The pandemic heavily impacted our business since events were no longer being held in person. The biggest thing that year has taught me is when faced with trying circumstances, the best businesses are able to be versatile, resourceful, innovative, and continuously add value to their consumers. We pivoted to hosting online events and educational discussions for our ecosystem of event organizers to empower them with information that will help them be smarter and more profitable when events return. It’s also great to have multiple streams of income, and this is why we plan to launch three additional streams by January 2022.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://info.eventnoire.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/eventnoirehq/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EventNoire/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffreyosuji/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/eventnoire
• Youtube: https://youtu.be/x4GZ8Ubw4yc