Table SALT Group

Your next favorite find—or useful connection—could be right here in Missouri City.

Make lunch an outing at the Community Marketplace & Networking Event, hosted by Ardenna Hardy and Yolanda Shanks! Across two Saturdays, discover local businesses, browse gifts and publications, and meet the people behind them.

Looking for a distinctive accessory? A story that inspires you? Someone who can help you explore a business or home-service question?

Come curious. Bring a friend. There’s plenty to start a conversation.

Our October lineup includes:

🛍️ Style, beauty and gifts
• The RetieCollection / Yolanda & Ardenna
• The The Retta collection / Dee Williams
• Paparazzi / Deforis Dolford
• Mary Kay / Valerie Peterson Kelly
• California Connection / Marie Johnson
• Nanna’s Faith Shop / Yolanda Shanks

📚 Stories, faith and service
• The Faith Trio / Ardenna Hardy
• Veterans Faith Initiative / Reginald Parker

💬 Resources and useful conversations
• Konnect MD partnered with The Diamond Factory / Penny Pouncy-Taylor
• LifeWave X39 / Katy Ross
• Dreams & Comfort HVAC Services / Eugene Ndi
• Doris Barnes-Williams, Financial Services Professional
• Table SALT Group

Vendor participation varies by date. Check each Saturday’s flyer to see who will be there.

📅 October 10 & 17, 2026
🕧 12:30–3:30 p.m. Central
📍 Spring Creek Barbeque
4895 State Highway 6, Missouri City, TX 77459

Meet TSG on October 10! Try our free 5-Minute Business Growth Snapshot, explore our books and bring a question about your business.

TSG’s vendor pilot includes participants from both Saturdays. We’ll be there in person October 10.

At TSG, we believe strong communities grow through the knowledge we share and the connections we keep. This October, as *Black to the Future* marks two years, we’re inviting you into that conversation.

**What would you come to discover: a gift, a useful answer or a new connection?** Tell us below—and invite someone to join you!

Community Wealth Building: The People a Prosperity Story Leaves Out

Community wealth building asks us to look beyond what an economy produces and consider who owns it, who shapes it and who benefits....

https://tablesaltgroup.com/2026/10/06/community-wealth-building/

Community Wealth Building: The People a Prosperity Story Leaves Out Explore how community wealth building connects small business growth, local ownership and shared legacy—and the people prosperity stories leave out.

A folding table at a vendor showcase can hold more than products. It can give a business owner a place to be seen—and a neighbor a reason to stop, ask a question, and discover something useful.

At September’s Community Marketplace and Networking event in Missouri City, TX, we listened to owners talk about their customers and the connections they wanted to continue. Those conversations brought us back to the community at the heart of Black to the Future.

This month marks two years since we released the book. At Table SALT Group, we’re carrying its questions into our work on Houston’s Black economic history, the Marketplace vendor pilot, and developing education for families navigating heirs’ property.

Read our last blog: The Future Needs a Place to Stand
https://tablesaltgroup.com/2026/10/04/building-community-legacy-the-future-needs-a-place-to-stand/

Throughout October, we’ll explore these connections through LEGACY and invite you into the conversation.

What is one thing your community needs to remember, build, or keep—and why?

Today at the Community Marketplace and Networking event in Missouri City, TX, we did something simple and powerful: we listened.

Table SALT Group met local business owners, introduced our free 5-Minute Business Growth Snapshot, and started conversations about the next steps that would be most useful to them. We also connected with neighbors and partners who want to see these businesses thrive.

What did we learn? Every business is at a different stage. Some owners are looking for more customers. Others are working out how to strengthen the business behind the table. The best support starts with understanding what each person needs.

That is how a marketplace becomes more than a place to shop. When we learn each other’s names, share resources, recommend a vendor, and come back to support them again, we help build a stronger community.

Thank you to Ardenna Hardy, Yolanda Shanks, every vendor, and everyone who stopped to talk with us today. These conversations will help shape our upcoming vendor pilot in October, and we’re excited to keep building together.

🧡 TOMORROW. Come meet the businesses.

The Community Marketplace & Networking Event, hosted by Ardenna Hardy and Yolanda Shanks is happening tomorrow in Missouri City!

Come spend some time discovering local entrepreneurs, shopping small, making connections and seeing what our community is building.

🛍️ SHOP local businesses
🤝 CONNECT with entrepreneurs and professionals
📣 SHARE referrals and opportunities
🌱 DISCOVER resources and new relationships

And make sure you stop by the Table SALT Group table!

⏱️ Take the FREE 5-Minute Business Growth Snapshot™
📖 Explore Black to the Future
💬 Tell us about your business and what you're working toward

You don't need an agenda.

Just come curious—and come ready to connect.

Saturday, September 26
12:30–3:30 PM
Spring Creek BBQ
4895 State Highway 6 | Missouri City, TX 77459

Bring a friend. Support an entrepreneur. Make a connection.

We'll see you at the Marketplace! 🧡

Revenue can make you feel successful. Profit tells you whether the business actually is.

One of the most expensive mistakes a small business can make happens **before the work ever begins.**

The price gets set.

A client asks, *“How much will this cost?”*

And too often, the answer is based on:

What competitors charge.
What sounds reasonable.
What we think the client will pay.
Or what we charged last time.

But here's the problem:

**Your price has to pay for more than the thing you're selling.**

Before you name your price, account for what it actually takes to deliver.

💰 **Direct costs** — materials, supplies, travel, subcontractors

⏱️ **Labor** — including your own time

🖥️ **Operating costs** — software, insurance, equipment, administrative support

📋 **Delivery costs** — preparation, meetings, reporting, revisions and follow-up

💳 **Cash-flow costs** — what you may have to finance while waiting 30, 60 or even 90 days to be paid

And then there's something businesses sometimes forget entirely:

**Profit.**

Profit isn't what happens if there's money left over.

It should be considered when the price is built.

This is the **Measure** part of the Business Quad Squad™:

**Know your numbers so you can make better decisions.**

Because a $25,000 contract that costs you $24,500 to deliver isn't necessarily a $25,000 opportunity.

And a growing revenue number attached to shrinking margins isn't the kind of growth we're after.

Before your next proposal, quote or contract, try this:

**Write down every cost required to deliver the work—including your time—before you decide what to charge.**

You may look at that opportunity very differently.

And that's the point.

**Good pricing doesn't begin with the customer. It begins with understanding your business.**

A contact knows your name.
A relationship knows your work.
An ecosystem creates access.

We use the word "networking" a lot in business.

We attend events. Exchange information. Connect on social media. Follow up over coffee.

All of that has value.

But a network and an **economic ecosystem** aren't quite the same thing.

An ecosystem begins to form when relationships start moving something:

Information.
Referrals.
Resources.
Capital.
Expertise.
Opportunity.

And, importantly, that movement shouldn't always travel in one direction.

That's where **Group Economics** and **Equity of Access** begin to work together.

One asks:

**How do we strengthen economic activity within our community?**

The other asks:

**Who has access—and who is still standing outside the door?**

Those questions are part of what *Black to the Future* asks us to reconsider about communities like Black Wall Street.

Their strength wasn't simply that people knew one another.

Businesses, professionals, institutions and residents existed within a system where relationships could help resources circulate.

That's a very different definition of networking.

And it's one reason I'm looking forward to the **Community Marketplace & Networking Event, hosted by Ardenna Hardy and Yolanda Shanks on September 26 in Missouri City.**

Yes, there will be businesses to discover.

Yes, there will be people to meet.

But I'm more interested in what happens **after the introduction.**

Who discovers a resource they didn't know existed?

Who meets someone with expertise they need?

Who makes a referral?

Who identifies a potential collaborator?

Who opens a door?

Because the measure of a strong network isn't how many people are in the room.

**It's what becomes possible because they were in the room together.**

As you think about your own network, ask yourself:

**What actually moves through it?**

And then one more question:

**What do you contribute to the ecosystem—not just what do you receive from it?**

That's where networking starts becoming **Group Economics in practice.**

What happens when a community is denied access to existing systems?

Sometimes, it builds its own.

After emancipation, formerly enslaved men and women established communities across Houston. One of the most significant became Freedmen’s Town, in what we now know as Fourth Ward.

They didn’t simply build homes.

They built churches, schools, businesses, civic organizations and community institutions—the infrastructure necessary for a community to function and move forward.

That distinction matters.

When we talk about Black Wall Street in Black to the Future, it can be tempting to focus on the businesses that made Greenwood extraordinary.

But businesses don’t grow in isolation.

They need customers.
Information.
Capital.
Relationships.
Institutions.
And pathways to opportunity.

Houston’s Freedmen’s Town reminds us of the same principle much closer to home:

Access isn’t only about getting through someone else’s door. Sometimes it’s about building a door where one didn’t exist.

That’s Equity of Access—the E in Table SALT Group LEGACY framework.

And the lesson is just as relevant for entrepreneurs today.

Think about the business ecosystem around you.

Where are people still struggling to gain access—to capital, contracts, information, technology, expertise or relationships?

Then ask a more powerful question:

What could we build together that makes that access easier?

A referral network.
A shared resource.
An introduction.
A collaborative program.
A marketplace.

History gives us plenty of examples of communities that didn’t wait for perfect conditions before they started building infrastructure for one another.

The question is what we’re willing to build now.

This week’s LEGACY action: Identify one resource you have access to that someone else in your business community may not—and open a door.

That’s how access becomes an ecosystem.