There are conferences where you sit, take notes, collect a few business cards and head home inspired.
And then there are rooms that remind you just how powerful Black women become when access, information, capital, strategy and ambition all meet in the same place.
Black Women Sell Live® 2026 was the latter.
From September 25–27, more than 1,000 Black women entrepreneurs, executives, investors, attorneys, authors, speakers, consultants and business leaders descended on the Omni Atlanta Hotel at Centennial Park for a sold-out weekend centered on one thing: building bigger.
Created by attorney-turned-entrepreneur Ashley N. Kirkwood, founder and CEO of Speak Your Way To Cash®, Black Women Sell Live® has evolved into a major gathering for Black women who are serious about sales, ownership and wealth creation.
But perhaps the most powerful part of the weekend was knowing how the story started. Kirkwood’s first live event had just 10 attendees. This one had more than 1,000. That growth alone told a story before anyone ever touched the stage.
THIS WAS BIGGER THAN A CONFERENCE
The 2026 theme, “Fight Back,” wasn’t simply a catchy slogan printed across event materials. It became a call to action. Fight back against playing small. Fight back against businesses that look successful but aren’t profitable. Fight back against waiting for opportunities instead of learning how to create, pitch and close them.
And fight back against the idea that Black women should be satisfied simply owning businesses when they can build companies capable of creating jobs, wealth and legacy.
Over three days, attendees dug into lead generation, sales, marketing, capital, operations, positioning and business growth. But Black Women Sell Live® wasn’t designed to send women home with another notebook full of information they would revisit six months later.
The emphasis was execution.
Attendees worked through tangible sales, marketing and operational strategies, including a Q4 revenue challenge designed to turn what happened inside the conference into measurable action after everyone returned home.
The message throughout the weekend was simple: inspiration feels good, but implementation changes businesses.
DAY ONE: LEGACY WALKED INTO THE ROOM
Before looking ahead, Black Women Sell Live® made space to honor the women who built before us.
Day One created a powerful bridge between Black women’s entrepreneurial history and the businesses being built today with appearances from A’Lelia Bundles, award-winning journalist, author and great-great-granddaughter of Madam C.J. Walker, and Liza Mickens, great-great-granddaughter of pioneering banker Maggie Lena Walker.
Their presence carried a different kind of weight.
Long before social media marketing, venture capital conversations, digital products and corporate contracts became part of today’s entrepreneurial vocabulary, Madam C.J. Walker and Maggie Lena Walker were creating institutions, employing Black people and building economic opportunity during eras when Black women faced extraordinary barriers to both business and financial independence.
More than a century later, a room filled with over 1,000 Black women was discussing ownership, revenue and wealth.
That connection was impossible to miss.
The history wasn’t presented as something distant to admire. It served as evidence that Black women building extraordinary businesses isn’t a new phenomenon.
Today’s founders are simply writing the next chapters.
Day One continued with entrepreneurs, business leaders and sales experts breaking down how to generate demand, articulate value and turn expertise into revenue.
The room came ready to work.
DAY TWO: LET’S TALK MONEY
By Saturday, the conversation moved deeper into capital, scalability and what it actually takes to build a company capable of growing beyond its founder.
Adesuwa Okunbo Rhodes, founder and managing partner of Aruwa Capital Management, traveled from Lagos, Nigeria, bringing an investor’s perspective to the Black Women Sell Live® stage.
Her presence broadened the conversation beyond simply asking, “How can I make more money?” The bigger questions were about what makes a company scalable, sustainable and positioned for investment. Those are very different conversations.
Throughout the day, attendees explored the mechanics behind growth—from sales vehicles and revenue generation to positioning, marketing and operational infrastructure.
Because a successful business cannot survive on visibility alone.
A viral post isn’t an operating system. A packed calendar isn’t necessarily profitability. And revenue without infrastructure can quickly become another version of burnout.
Black Women Sell Live® pushed attendees to examine not only how much they wanted their companies to make, but what those companies needed to become in order to handle the growth they were asking for.
The goal wasn’t motivation.
It was movement.
DAY THREE: NOW WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO WITH IT?
By Sunday, there was nowhere left to hide behind another good idea.
It was time to execute.
The final day moved attendees from information to implementation, challenging women to take everything they had absorbed over the weekend and decide what would actually change once they got home.
Entrepreneur Dr. Trisha Bailey added another example of what expansive thinking can look like, sharing a journey shaped by building and growing businesses across industries.
Her story reinforced one of the weekend’s recurring themes: sometimes the biggest limitation placed on a business is the size of the vision attached to it.
Then, after three days of strategy, sales conversations, wealth building and planning, Black Women Sell Live® ended somewhere deeply familiar to many of the women in the room—faith.
BET Sunday Best winner Geoffrey Golden closed out the experience with a live gospel performance, turning the finale into part celebration, part worship and part release.
After spending a weekend talking about purpose, money, ownership and possibility, it felt like a fitting way to bring everything home.
ASHLEY KIRKWOOD BET ON HERSELF
At the center of the entire weekend was a story that could easily have been its own masterclass.
Before Speak Your Way To Cash®, before the Inc. 5000 recognition and before more than 1,000 women packed an Atlanta hotel for her conference, Ashley Kirkwood was an attorney on the partner track earning approximately $300,000 a year.
And she walked away.
Not because entrepreneurship offered certainty. It didn’t.
