Video Transcript
[Moises Ramirez]:
All right, good morning, everyone. Out of respect for everybody's time, we're going to go ahead and get started. I know that we're still expecting a lot of attendees, so hopefully they'll trickle in as I'm going through this first introduction. But with that said, thank you all for joining us this morning for the 10th and final installment for this year of our Train Local Bro Global webinar series, where we share about more than 50-plus business services that Dallas College has to offer. In this case, I feel like we've saved the best for last. Thank you to all our presenters for joining us. But following up from our part one, we're going to keep the momentum going with this part two session of tactical resources for growing your small business.
[Moises Ramirez]:
Now, have an idea for a business? Ready to start exploring this thing called entrepreneurship? Being an entrepreneur's journey. Developing and growing your entrepreneurial mindset comes with the journey. Dallas College offers many ways for students and community members to explore entrepreneurship and start a business. Small businesses are the foundation of the economy. They're 99% of all US business and are responsible for creating 66% of all jobs over the last 25 years. Dallas College wants to see your small business grow by utilizing the tactical resources and programming available through the Dallas College Venture Club, Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses, and the North Texas Small Business Development Center. Our small business programs can assist you at every stage of operations to achieve growth critical to success, sustainability, and resilience of your small business.
[Moises Ramirez]:
Now, my name is Moses Ramirez, and I'm the Director of Business Engagement here at Dallas College. And today we have a Dallas College presenter with three guest presenters. First up, we have Nikka Hershberger. Nikka is currently serving as the Managing Director of Small Business Innovation Cultivation at Bill J. Priest for Dallas College. With a fervent dedication to fostering small business growth and entrepreneurship, Nikka has consistently delivered impactful results through her distinguished career, throughout her distinguished career, pardon me. In her role as business strategist for an investment group, Nikka demonstrated her strategic prowess by devising and implementing innovative business strategies that contribute to the financial success of the group. Subsequently, she assumed the position of Director of Operations at Republic Elite and Chief Business Officer of Elite Surface Innovations. During her tenure, Nikka played a pivotal role in the post manager integration and contributed to the organization's growth from 1 million to a remarkable 15 million in revenue.
[Moises Ramirez]:
Next, we have Joshua Johnson. Josh is a Director of Alumni and Fellows for the 10,000 Small Business Program. As a 10 plus year change management consultant and project manager, Josh utilized thorough application of problem-solving techniques with extreme enthusiasm towards continuous quality improvements. Josh has assisted over a hundred small to medium sized businesses from coast to coast across North America, including Mexico and Canada. He's developed a reputation across 46 states and 35 industries for identifying challenges with organizational processes and program gaps by researching and analyzing requirements, bottlenecks, user stories, et cetera, and initiating process improvements, implementing computer programs and integrating system controls and protocols. With 20 years of business ownership and management experience, Josh brings a wealth of sales and marketing, process and personnel management and financial literacy to the table.
[Moises Ramirez]:
Next, we have Cynthia Nevels. Cynthia is a Senior Business Advisor for Goldman Sachs 1 Million Black Women National Program. Founder of Start Pivot Grow Micro Business Accelerator Program, creator of the Pitch Texas Pitch competition and social impact thought leader who has helped public and private organizations grow by improving marketing strategies, technology integration, strategic growth plans, raising capital and operational processes. For 18 years, Cynthia has served as President of Integrality, LLC, a Dallas based business management consulting firm serving clients in major markets across the United States. She's an expert in finance, marketing, social entrepreneurship, Salesforce and fundraising. She's a Senior Project Manager with experience in analyzing problems and helping clients implement a measure effective solution.
[Moises Ramirez]:
And lastly, we have Holly Burrow. Holly is the founder of Equal Business Solutions. A serial entrepreneur today focuses on growing community engagement, guiding entrepreneurs to capital and business development to open the door for new startups to find success. Using her experience as a founder, she's committed to the growth of both entrepreneurs and their ventures. As a founder focused on serving founders, Holly is innovative and creative solution provider, is experienced as a small business growth strategist and has a commitment to agility and growth. Holly has advised over a thousand small business owners and has used that experience to build the best in-class tools for empowering businesses and businesses or business support organizations, economic development teams and nonprofits to improve the founder experience through access to resources and to those resources and connections.
[Moises Ramirez]:
Now, with that, obviously we have an impressive lineup for you guys today. One quick housekeeping item, please make sure to keep your mics and cameras off until the very end. We're hoping to have 10 minutes at the end for Q and A's, but if we happen to miss that window, we're going to go ahead and follow up with an email that has answers to your questions, a copy of the recording, as well as a copy of the presentation and all of the resources available from that.
[Moises Ramirez]:
So with that, Nikka, why don't you go ahead and take it away.
[Nikka Hershberger]:
All right, good morning, everyone. And thank you for being here. We are excited to present and to let you guys know what's happening on small business and entrepreneurship. And as you can tell, we've got a great panel and people that we have been working with over for years as resources. And we're ready to make sure everyone knows that they're here. So super excited. So just some quick little, we'll just, the agenda today, just so you know, we're big on journeys and maps and knowing where you are. So where we're going today, I'll talk to you a little bit about our department, the department that I'm managing director of, is Small Business and Innovation Center, sometimes known as the Innovation Cultivator. And the journey and the framework that we are implementing. The Dallas College Venture Club, we'll talk about that, what tools and resources we have available, our program offerings, talk about how all of that connects into the larger Dallas College ecosystem and the connections we're building there. And then our role in how Dallas College is actively participating in the bigger DFW ecosystem. We're gonna have some panel discussion questions and hopefully leave a lot of time for your questions. So let's get started. Now that that's out of the way, let's get started.
[Nikka Hershberger]:
So you're gonna hear me say this a lot through this presentation is our group and a lot of the people that I have worked with over the last five years are really dedicated to getting entrepreneurs and small business owners to the right resource at the right time. We know, and this panel knows that the starting a business can be equally as exciting as it is daunting. And there are times that you can get lost along the way in the journey, because it can get overwhelming. And part of what we wanna do is make sure, and today is that you're aware of the resources and tools available, that there are ongoing efforts at Dallas College and our collaboration with other organizations to continue to make it easier to navigate, to find these resources and supporting each other and getting you to the right resource for you at that time and to provide encouragement and an open invitation to access any of these tools at any time that we and all of us on this panel are here to help to be a guide for you. So this framework here is one that we have implemented here. So the SBIC, which you're gonna hear me say that, Small Business Innovation Center or Cultivator, because that's a mouthful, it's SBIC, let's go with that. This represents the area of our customer and what we offer in our programming. And this tool is designed to help you as an entrepreneur or small business owner figure out where you are in your growth journey and provide milestones and kind of key activities in each one of those steps that really are key in moving you forward to the next one and then giving you context on various tools and resources that really play in those steps and stages.
[Nikka Hershberger]:
So our area really moves from ideation and that's, hey, I have a business idea and I really wanna work on that and I'm ready to do that all the way through to what we call growing, which is where you're established in some way. And kind of our milestone marker is that you qualify or going through, excuse me, the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Business Program, because that requires you to have some consistent revenue, some processes, and you're really ready to grow and scale and go to the next step. And we are developing programs and connecting to programs because again, Dallas College isn't gonna do it all, but we wanna make sure we're connected to programs for each that really help focus on each step in the journey. And some will overlap, I mean, this isn't, there are squiggly lines, there are gray areas, depending on your business. And the other thing is this journey could probably take a business, it could take as quickly as a year to get that, to go from ideation to growing to two plus years. So we wanna make sure that you know that there are resources all along the way and just know that this is an ever evolving dynamic process that we are continuing to evolve this. Now the SBIC intention was to create a starting point for entrepreneurs and business owners to come to, figure out where they are. We are developing continuous touch points. So if you get into ideation and you're cruising along and all of a sudden you're kinda at launch and you're like, hey, I need some help. We have some resources, you can come back, tune in and get some resources for you to continue to grow. We wanna be a conduit for other programs and resources. So we are constantly collaborating and partnering and networking. And again, this framework is to provide kind of just a map and a guide post. Now you're like, well, great, I'm super excited. What do you have to offer, right? So we have a lot and probably one of the, well, a lot. We have some, we have some, I don't wanna oversell. But probably one of the key things that we have launched this year and is the Dallas College Venture Club or DCBC, which is the first co-working and collaborative space in Dallas College. And it's really focused in supporting entrepreneurs and small business owners in implementing their ideas and growing a business. It's a prototype here at the Bill J. Priest
[Nikka Hershberger]:
We're testing a lot of different things. And to give you more detail, I'm gonna turn it over to my colleague, Josh Johnson, who has been helping manage this project.
[Joshua Johnson]:
All right, good morning, good morning. Thank you, Nikka for sharing the stage with me. And as Nikka said, the DCVC, as we call it, because we are the cool kids, we call it the DCVC, the Dallas College Venture Club, is designed for those small business owners or aspiring small business owners to really get into a space, into a community, into a network where they can grow and feed off each other's energies. So the DCVC, first of all, it has, and I'm gonna take control, thank you for reminding me. This is so cool to know this. Anyway, so as Nikka said, it has collaborate, we foster collaboration, co-working space, and even has a really cool podcast studio. So just to show you with the collaboration, we have not only a wide open space for people to come in and have meetings, we also have conference rooms for you to come in and have your meetings with state-of-the-art touchscreen TVs, I might add, that you can cast your presentations or even use them interchangeably with the internet and all those wonderful things. What you'll also see is that wonderful couch over there, where we have more intimate or social gatherings where people come in all the time and have informal meetings or informal informationals.
[Joshua Johnson]:
One organization to begin with is One Million Cups, and they are a community incubator where they have meetings on every Wednesday from nine to 11-ish, and small business owners, they come, they perfect their pitches, they do presentations, and they network. And so we encourage that for all of our small business owners and small business communities and organizations. So what you're seeing here is kind of a full layout of the co-working space, and we have a number of things that we do. Number one, we have, to your left, you'll see those red rooms. Those are webinar booths, where you can get just a little bit of privacy. You can have one-on-one meetings, or you can do, again, webinars, have webinars in there, to where you won't necessarily disrupt all the other people that are using the space. It is semi-quiet, it's probably about 80% quiet, so you can yell and nobody will be affected, but we wanted to make sure you're able to hear a fire alarm or anything in case that were to happen. But it's a fantastic space just for you to have privacy, to have those one-on-one calls, one-on-one meetings, or webinars. In the middle, you'll see, middle and the right, you'll see those computer screens.
[Joshua Johnson]:
We do everything from having classes, where we utilize those computers, to, if you just need space to work by yourself in a co-working environment, we have those computer screens there. And again, as the co-worker, co-working space portion of this program, we offer, we offer scenarios where, again, one of the things that we talk about often is, those solopreneurs or those people that don't necessarily have an office space, what we normally do is say, hey, let's go meet at Starbucks, and everybody knows that Starbucks can be distracting. Well, we decided to have a co-working space where you can have that intimate, quiet setting to where you can really focus on your business, and again, be in the company of other people that are focusing on their businesses as well. And then last but definitely not least, man, you got to check out this podcast. For those that have used the podcast studio, they have loved it. On the left screen, we say this is the brass tacks, get down to it, panel discussion podcast. And on the right-hand side, it's, you know, it's where Oprah and Ayanna love to hang out, right? So again, you have the business side on the left, and then you have the more casual conversational piece on the right-hand side. To use the podcast studio, all you have to do is email our community manager and say, hey, when is the podcast studio available? And we coordinate times and schedule times with you and a technician. One of the things we love to talk about with the podcast studio is that you don't have to be a podcast master in order to use the podcast studio. We have a technician that will be onsite to guide you and support you along the way while you're using that podcast studio.
[Joshua Johnson]:
And then lastly, things that we use. So again, if you are in the ideation phase, you have a business idea, you have the passion to interview, you just don't have all the tools that you need to put it all together. We have two wonderful programs that we use. One is called Slingshot and the other is called Live Plan. Both of those tools are tools that you can use to develop your business plan, your marketing plan, and basically cultivate that idea and put it down on paper. One of the things that I tell people, they oftentimes ask me, what's the difference? The difference is really personal preference. So when you come into the DCVC and you say, hey, I wanna use one of these tools to use the business plan, then you and I and or our community manager will have a conversation and say, okay, this is how I wanna use the platform. These are the things that I wanna do with the platform. And I'll recommend one or two, one of those tools to use. Along with that, and again, you'll hear about that a little later on with Holly, is we have business advisors that help you along with that business plan tool. So I'm gonna pass it right on back to Nikka. Oh, you're on mute.
[Nikka Hershberger]:
I am muted. After three years of this, you'd think I'd get that, right? All right. So we have some coming soon tools that'll probably launch or planning to launch in the spring of 2024. And one of those is an entrepreneurial mindset profile. So you can come and get evaluated and find out what your mindset is around entrepreneurship. I'm excited. I'm the one actually that will be getting certified in December and I'll be practicing on the team over here. So that'll be super fun. I love stuff like that. So I think it's a great offering to, again, provide a resource and a roadmap because entrepreneurial journeys are as much about growing the business as they are about self-development. So I think that's gonna be an amazing tool. The other thing that we're adding, and these are actually, this is Verizon who has made kind of a national investment in helping small businesses get digital ready. They have an online tool with online webinars and courses that help navigate social media questions and website questions and all things digital. So we are working to get that up and running for access here and availability with them. And they also have just launched. I found this out at a conference I was attending. They were marketing this. It's called Skills Forward. And this is really more kind of on the workforce side to help upskill your skills in areas like AI, which we're all still learning, coding, cybersecurity, data analysis. So that's super exciting. That is new, but that can help your employees or your business. And so we're looking to make those available. So stay tuned for those tools.
[Nikka Hershberger]:
So the other thing that we do in our scheme here is we actually have programs, right? And we're super, we have tested and implemented various programs. And we are really selecting those that we want to offer that we think would be of benefit kind of, I'm calling them anchor offerings. So that we're providing glue and continuity throughout and connectivity to other programs and that touch point and guide post philosophy. Again, that right resource, right time. So the two that we've chosen right now are the two really make sure that we have are the one-on-one advising and our entrepreneurship speaker series, which we have our final series for the fall, I think November 28th. And it's on money. It's learning about how money really works. We just had one this week on Business Etiquette that we had like 87 people sign up. So we are continuing that in the spring, it'll be focused on the food industry. So we're super excited about that. The other thing that are key, some key programmings is our Start Pivot Grow program, which you'll hear about in a minute from Cynthia, the Cultivate Small Business Santander cohort, which is based for the food and beverage industry. And we're looking at some micro boot camps and developing some workshops around podcasting. So we've got our anchor offerings, our key offerings and stuff in development. And so we're excited. And again, we continue to partner and collaborate. So at this point, I'm gonna turn it over to Holly from Equall who has been working with our advising for the last two years and supporting that.
[Holly Burrow]:
Thank you, Nikka. I'm gonna try not to be on mute. I almost did the exact same thing. Well, it's lovely to be here with you all. And I just will take a little second to kind of introduce who I am, who my company is and who the team is that's supporting the entrepreneurs in our community. So we serve the entrepreneurship community in two different ways. We do exactly what we're doing with Dallas College. We provide advisory support kind of on demand when the business owners need it. And then we also help build programs that support the entrepreneurs. So we are very much all in on how do we build unique and specific things that the entrepreneurs like myself, because I don't know if you'll remember that he categorized me as a serial entrepreneur. I have spent my entire life doing this and built this business out of a ridiculous desire to change the experience that I have had over a lifetime. As I've gone through this journey personally, they were never the right resources at the right time. And so I would always learn about things way too late and I would be like, oh, that would have been fantastic had I known about it two years ago.
[Holly Burrow]:
So that's part of our initiative is to try to figure out how to short circuit that process, get the information in front of the entrepreneurs that we wanna help at the right time. So we do that by helping all kinds of entrepreneur industry agnostic. So you don't have to be a specific type of entrepreneur to work with us. And we have a team, I showcased six of our advisors on the slide, but we have a team of 11, I just hired another one yesterday, advisors that work with us. And these are all going to be people that have long running histories as either entrepreneurs or as support people within this industry. We can coach in Spanish, we do QuickBooks advising, we can help you build financial projections for your business. We can help you build a business plan. We can help you work on integrations for your business to help streamline what you're working on. We have people that have been in almost every industry. So it's really exciting that we're able to offer that. One of the things that I really love to point out the difference in is there's a lot of programs out there that offer mentorship. And mentorship is a beautiful, amazing thing, but it's distinctly different from having an advisor. And the reason I think it's important to understand the difference is that that mentor relationship should be kind of ongoing.
[Holly Burrow]:
This is somebody that over six months a year, five years, helps know your business, helps know you, helps make introductions. There's a lot of social collateral exchange in that space. There's a lot of wisdom sharing. Whereas an advisor, which is kind of what you're getting when you work with us is going to be someone who's much more focused on getting you from point A to point B, point B to point C. We're gonna kind of be in that journey with you to get you to that point you're trying to reach. So within our team, something that we do that's kind of unique is you may be able to switch in between advisors as you go, dependent on what you need. So you may begin with someone who's a generalist that's just gonna help you kind of get oriented, learn how to write a business plan, get all of your stuff documented. And then you may transition over and work with someone who's a specialist with accounting and get all of your books in order. So really there's a lot of diversity that we can offer and how we can support. And the reason that we did this is as I said, I wanted to build something that I always wanted.
[Holly Burrow]:
When I'm up at 3 a. because I'm panicking, because something isn't working right, or I need to place an order that I don't have the cash for, I need to figure something out, who can I talk to? Who can I reach out to, ask a question and try to get an answer when it's something that I'm fully aware I actually don't know the answer. I am 100% winging it because as entrepreneurs we do that. We see an opportunity, we chase it, we build a plan and then something goes left and we have to figure out how to deal with it. So that's kind of what we provide is that ability when you need it, you can book time on your schedule. All of our sessions are virtual. So it comes to you wherever you are. You don't have to walk away from your business to be able to get the support. You can go sit and trust me, we've hosted a lot of sessions with business owners in their storeroom closet. So you can actually stay onsite, take 30 minutes, ask some questions, get some answers and hop right back into running your business. So this was very much something that we built to be able to do that for the business owners like myself. So we wanted to be able to stop all of the gatekeeping and all of the things. We're very big on connections. So if we know somebody within the community that you should be working with, that you should get connected to, that's a huge piece of what we do is we do personalized introductions into the spaces that you need to know more about. My screen is too small, what's happening? I can't go to the next slide, there.
[Holly Burrow]:
All right, so that is all of the stuff that we work on. We work primarily with entrepreneurs as they go through that journey. And we know that having somebody to lean on as you go through that process is important because being an entrepreneur, I don't know if any of you have felt this way yet, but I feel it intermittently throughout my whole life is it's super lonely. So having somebody that you can reach out to that will jump right in with you, that will be in your business with you, wanna know what's going on, wanna understand how they can help, how they can support and how they can help get you through whatever moment you're in and into the next one. That's really what our primary goal is. And we want you to be able to build a sustainable plan that you can use to grow your business over time. We wanna, like I said, we wanna make those relationship connections. We wanna help share that information that we've learned over many, many years between our whole team to be able to understand what you need next, what are you missing? And we try to listen kind of in between the lines as we're going through sessions and listen for what we know about that you don't yet. And so that we're able to share that information. Like if you don't know enough about what economic development is, maybe we need to spend some time introducing you to people that can teach that.
[Holly Burrow]:
So there's a lot of things that we try to listen in between the lines and we've built systems to be able to help identify that stuff so that as you're talking and simply sharing your story, talking about your business, we can prepare you for things that you're gonna need. We love to work with founders to prepare for grant products and get ready to access capital for their businesses. All right, I'm gonna hand it back off to you, Nikka.
[Nikka Hershberger]:
I did it again. Thank you so much, Holly. Breath of experience there. And we're gonna go right into another wonderful woman entrepreneur, probably a serial entrepreneur by Dane to say that, who has a lot of experience working with Dallas College too, is Cynthia Nevels with Integrality. She is the founder of a program that's a key program right now. Accelerator programs for Start Pivot Grow. And she's been a key contributor in Dallas College's participation in the Community Navigator Pilot Program. So with that, I'm gonna turn that over to Cynthia to share about Start Pivot Grow.
[Cynthia Nevels]:
Thank you, Nikka. Good morning, everyone, and welcome. Thrilled to be here. I've been working with Dallas College. I just did the numbers 21 years in many different capacities, such a long, long time, and primarily helping and serving small to high growth businesses for 21 years. And I am excited about the opportunity to partner with Dallas College to bring to them the Start Pivot Grow Accelerator. This accelerator was actually designed by 19 and I with Dallas College during the pandemic when I recognized and realized that many small business owners did not have opportunities to access disaster relief capital, that they needed to sustain their businesses. And that was a tragedy. And I wanted to do something to ensure that small business owners who were working every day in their business had viable active businesses did not get left behind again. And so this accelerator was designed with four parts in mind. It was designed to ensure that small business owners were able to assess where they are in their business at the time, to figure out what is missing in their businesses and to obtain the assistance, direct, ongoing, hands-on experience to find out what's missing and to fix it with an expert. And then lastly, to access capital. That was one of the major barriers that small businesses had during the pandemic when things were shut down and closed, accessing capital became very difficult to sustain. And so we worked during that period to design an accelerator that was specifically designed to help small businesses overcome those hurdles and never ever have that experience again if anything were to happen in our country.
[Cynthia Nevels]:
As a partner of Dallas College, we help to equip whether you are new entrepreneurs or active entrepreneurs with years of experience with the tools, resources, business advising, as well as guidance to find your resources that you need, whether it is local within the local community or beyond our state barriers on a national level. We've had tremendous success in our accelerator that is broken down into four parts. The first part is the entrepreneur education component. We host workshops in our communities near the Dallas College or the DCVC location. We host workshops onsite that are in person. These are intense one-hour sessions that are designed to provide the insight and the guidance that in the worksheets and exercises that are needed to help small business owners understand what are they missing? What is it that they don't know? Because what we realize is that what you don't know is what you don't know. And what that means is that you don't know what to ask, you don't know what to research. You may not understand some of the tactical technical business jargon or principles or processes. And it's difficult to figure it out on your own without having someone there to guide you and teach you. And so that's what the entrepreneur education program was designed to do. To get you in a space that you feel safe and comfortable to work through as you're introduced to technical aspects of managing a business and then have a resource on hand in person in front of you who is actually teaching you and showing you everything that you didn't know.
[Cynthia Nevels]:
And so those workshops are in person and then we host mastermind workshops online virtually where we invite business leaders that are a part of the ecosystem in our network who have been there and done that real world experience, whether they are people who come from the banking or financial industry, from the manufacturing industry, the tech industry, the food industry. We bring all types of business leaders to you to present real world experience and share their story but then also teach you how to for yourself. So those masterminds, we host five to six of those each cohort and allow business owners to actually ask questions in real time of people who have been there, done that. Third component of Start Pivot Grow Accelerator is business advising. We also have an opportunity for those who are going through the program as well as outside entrepreneurs to book one-on-one sessions with myself and my team to be able to work on milestones. Once we've assessed your business to determine where you are, you are then able to identify three to four milestones or goals that you wanna set for yourself in the program. And then our job is to ensure that you actually achieve those milestones while you are in the program.
[Cynthia Nevels]:
Moving the needle is essentially what we're trying to do. Remove the barriers, walk you through it and give you the guidance and get it done. And we've had tremendous success with the scholars who have gone through the accelerator and I'll talk about that in a moment. But the business advising is purely designed to help you accomplish the goals that you set for yourself in the beginning of the accelerator once you start. And then lastly, another area that we've had tremendous success is access to capital. Connecting the entrepreneurs and small business owners to real resources where they have acquired the dollars that they needed, whether it is a financial commercial loan or grants or angel investment, crowdfunding. We help you access the funds that you need to apply to your business to help fuel growth. And that has been a tremendous success for us and I'll show the numbers in just a moment. And then lastly, the component of that really matters to the entrepreneurs that are going through the accelerator is defining their business model. Many entrepreneurs have not necessarily figured out what their business model is and we walk you through the lean canvas. We teach you how to do that and that becomes an aha moment for many of the entrepreneurs who matriculate through the accelerator, each cohort. And they're able to then, once they graduate, execute on that strategy that they've developed but also really have a clear vision of what their business is. And that's what the accelerator start pivot grow was designed to do.
[Cynthia Nevels]:
And so I will also show you our results. We have been hosting these, I think for two and a half years now with Dallas College. We have helped 89 micro businesses throughout this program over the two and a half years. We are always full. Our program is always full because there are so many businesses that do not have access to resources that we discovered or actively in business who needed help. And so I'm proud of the fact that we've helped 89 micro businesses. We have helped the small businesses that have executed their strategies and plans to acquire almost half a million dollars in capital, which is phenomenal in my opinion, especially in this economic times that we are facing. $485,000 of capital raised for small businesses. Many have been, much of the funding has been used for purchasing equipment, accessing facilities and buildings, hiring new employees, investing in their marketing to help increase their revenue. And that is a tremendous result. Lastly, 21 new jobs have been created, 12 new business starts, whereas we have helped walk them through the process of setting up their businesses, setting up their legal structure, setting up their accounting, setting up their CRM systems, whatever they needed to ensure that they were getting started on the right foot, as well as their business plans, their growth strategies and action plans. And then lastly, this is the other, the additional value add. We partner with financial institutions like Capital One and Wells Fargo Foundation to provide $10,000 grants, awards through our Pitch It Texas pitch competition. So those businesses that go through the accelerator are able to apply and submit their application to pitch in the competition at the end of the cohort for a $10,000 grant award. And that we hope will continue on into 2024. Actually, we don't hope because we have the funding and we are going to have additional $10,000 grant pitch competitions. And so that is another way that small businesses are able to access capital by participating in the Start Pivot Grow Accelerator in partnership with Dallas College. And Nikka, I will turn it back over to you.
[Nikka Hershberger]:
Great, thank you so much. I remember to unmute myself. All right, so that is a lot of the work that we're doing kind of just within our department. And we are not alone. We are working very much to connect to the Dallas College ecosystem. And there's a lot of work being done because there's a lot of great things happening. And one of the things, so this is bringing back the, I call it the bubble diagram, but the Small Business Innovation Center, right? We're in this, this is our area. We're in this, in between these lines in this box here. But we don't, there are people that, and we learned this through our participation with the grant called DSED, for short, the Dallas Collaborative for Equitable Development. But some people, there's a, that might not really be ready for full-on ideation. And we need a way to get them to that starting line. And so we are building, continuing to build bridges and open doors and connect with our career-connected learning adult education side that has transition courses in entrepreneurship and digital readiness, and can also provide some wraparound services for those people who may need transportation or food barriers. So one of the themes that you may have heard through this, it's not just getting the right resource to you at the right time. It's getting, I mean, this is a part of that, but it's really meeting you where you are in your journey and helping you get from that point to the next point to grow your business or make your life better in whichever way you are envisioning that. And then all the way down at the other end over here and growing, there opens up a whole level of possibilities because now you're established. You've gone through the Goldman Sachs program and now you're like, what's next?
[Nikka Hershberger]:
Well, we have a lot of connections with our North Texas SBDC centers that can help you with loan packaging and loan readiness and equipment. They can do other things too. That's just one perspective. Becoming a supplier at Dallas College, there's apprenticeships, there's a whole lot of things that you can connect into once you're established and you're on the other side of this journey. So know that there are efforts being made to continuously and seamlessly create connectivity and connect with all of that. And just a little more specifically, the Dallas College resources, we do on the academic side have an entrepreneurship certification. There's customized skills trainings for employees and for yourself, apprenticeships and internships, basically to help support your workforce development. Our North Texas SBDCs provide a lot of services. Our 10,000 small business program and more. I don't like to read bullet points, but that's there for you to look at. And it doesn't stop there. And as Josh would say, there's more, there's more. There is a whole Dallas Fort Worth small business entrepreneurship ecosystem. And that's actually where I met Holly. We were working actually on building this graphic and that was a wonderful six month process, just like starting your own business in the first six months. But what this was designed to do, and I wanna reiterate there is a continued effort between organizations out there that support small business owners and entrepreneurs to make it easier for you to access them, know what's available, get to the right resource.
[Nikka Hershberger]:
There's a lot of cooperation and collaboration that's happening out there. And this is just one of the tools that was created to help do that. The organizations that are represented on there are, there are more, clearly we only had a small, we only have eight and a half by 11 sheet of paper to put things on. So these were organizations that were active in Dallas Builds and the ecosystem and that we knew were also of the right, of the same mindset on getting the right resource to the right time and collaborating. Let's see, have anything else? So let's see, moving on. And then these are just some of the ecosystem connection and collaborative partners that we work with, have worked with. And this, if I missed you, I apologize. This is just a sampling of those that we work with from the city of Dallas to CDFIs, which are community development financial institutions to the DEC network. So, and we are, Dallas College is one of those anchor institutions that wants to provide and be a part of that, or that continues to be an active participant in helping a continued ecosystem collaboration. So with that, that was a lot of information. We're gonna move into our panel, which I'm super excited cause that's, you know, learning from this panel is the best. And then if you have any questions, feel free to put them in the chat. Moises, is that correct?
[Moises Ramirez]:
Yes, please. So I'm gonna go ahead and I'm gonna open up, I'm gonna open it up for everybody to have access to their mics and cameras. I wanna invite people to go ahead and turn those on if you have a question and participate for our panelists. And there we go.
[Nikka Hershberger]:
All right. So I'm gonna kick this off with Holly to start us off and then Josh and Cynthia, chime in. How does like programming and the efforts that all of us are contributing and doing and other organizations really help small business owners?
[Holly Burrow]:
I'm just gonna kind of circle back to kind of what I mentioned previously was that like as a business owner, it's super hard to figure out what you need next. We all obsess about what we're gonna build before we do it. We think a lot about it. We have a lot of answers inside of our brains that we don't necessarily know how to get on the outside. A lot of what we end up doing and when we're hosting conversations with business owners is simply teasing out what's already inside of you, what you already know about your business. And so all of these different programs do that in different capacities and entrepreneurs are super unique individuals. We think differently, we function differently. So having this diverse group of types of programs available means that there's gonna be something that fits how you function, how you learn and what works with your life.
[Nikka Hershberger]:
Cynthia, Josh, wanna chime in or do you want me to move on to the next question?
[Joshua Johnson]:
Well, I know Cynthia has some knowledge, good knowledge, so I'm gonna pass it to Cynthia.
[Cynthia Nevels]:
Okay, thank you. So accessing the different resources based on where you are, your business, how long you've been in business, how much revenue you've generated, number of employees. The wonderful thing about Dallas College is that they've designed a journey map to help you figure out what the best resources are for where you are in your journey. And so communicating, asking, connecting to find out who should you talk to is the best step. Similar to what Holly mentioned before, sometimes you just don't know where to turn. And after being in this industry for so long, that is the number one frustration for a lot of business owners and entrepreneurs who feel like they are alone, they are uncertain, they know what they're doing in their business, but they may not know how to grow, how to expand, how to scale, where to find access to capital. It's the small details that no one ever taught you that kind of will hold you up and prohibit you from growing. And sometimes you may feel like you don't feel comfortable asking for help. This is the place that you come to ask for help because all of us are committed and dedicated to ensuring that you get the help that you need in order to grow your business. So start here and tell 10 other business owners that you know there is a place that you can contact to get help and find out how to navigate all of the resources that are available in this ecosystem in North Texas. It's huge. And that's the surprising part about the revelation of all that's available, that somehow that many business owners never knew or never know about all of the resources that are available. And so kudos to Dallas College, NICA, and the team for pulling this all together and becoming a centralized hub to make this information available.
[Nikka Hershberger]:
Okay, I think we'll just move on, Josh. I think we covered that. And Cynthia, I was gonna ask this question to you, but you already answered it, which are some of the obstacles for business owners in participating. And a lot of times we don't A, don't know that it's there, or B, we're afraid to ask for help. And again, I think we're trying to prove that you don't need to know everything and we're here to support filling in those gaps for you.
[Joshua Johnson]:
One part that I wanna add to that, because that's a great segue is, one of the things I tell people is, I want you to come see us because we get to remind you how awesome you are as entrepreneurs. A lot of times you have this passion, you have this drive that is what made you start the business, and then life starts to beat you down. Customers, vendors, bankers, all these things start to beat you down. And you start to question whether or not this is the right path for you. You start to question whether or not you're doing the right things. And then that's part of what keeps us from asking those questions. And we label it imposter syndrome, but there's so much more to it than that. And then when they come into this environment at Dallas College, we get to remind them that what they do is unique, even if it's an eyelash place or a restaurant or all of those types of things, we get to listen to their story and go, wow. And you just hearing that wow reminds you of the passion that brought you to start this business in the first place. So I just wanted to make sure I added that, thank you.
[Nikka Hershberger]:
Thank you. I think that's one thing we very focused on right resource, right time, but the component, one of the underlying things and one of the main reasons why we have these, the advising is so important and the connectivity is so important is that you have a place to go so that you're not alone and you get that affirmation. And you start to, DCVC, a place to connect, a place to collaborate and be with other like-minded people and mental, being mentally, managing your mental state as an entrepreneur is equally as important as knowing your QuickBooks. All right, so what advice would you give to someone starting on this journey? Josh, would you like to lead us off with that one?
[Joshua Johnson]:
Starting off on the journey, I always tell people, listen, start with the ideas. Don't cut the ideas down, right? So when you're in ideation phase, when you are starting your business and all those things, don't worry about the what ifs, the what should'ves and all the things that could possibly go wrong. You go ahead and jot down what you wanna do, where you wanna be and then start to put the end in mind. Okay, what does this thing look like when it's five, six, 10 years down the road? How much money, how much revenue do I wanna make? How much do I wanna make in profits? How many people do I wanna have employed in this business? How many locations do I wanna have? And don't stop yourself with the how can I get there, right? Start with the ideas, put those down on paper and then seek advice in how to develop that. So again, we talk about where I want to be, where I am now and what are the steps that I need to get to, what are the steps I need to take in order to get to that from point A to point Z? The next part is get myself an advisory team and it just so happens that at Dallas College, we have a whole bunch of advisory teams. You just met Holly, you just met Cynthia, you just met Nikka, you just met me, you just met Moises, you just met Danielle. We have a whole bunch of people and let me tell you, we love to connect people. So what we do is we go ahead and get you those resources and put all of those people, all those feathers in your cap. And I'll definitely, there's other things, but I wanna make sure everybody else tells them to because I just, we could talk about this for days. Go ahead.
[Holly Burrow]:
Well, I feel like one of the things that nobody tells you is that the people that are like the pro level business starters that grew up in families that own businesses and they have a lot of knowledge of how to do that versus those of us that are winging it and figuring it out as we go, is that like that advisory piece, that the people that know how to grow businesses know one of the first line items that you add to your business plan is the people that know how to do some of the things that you don't know how to do. Shockingly, you actually don't have to know how to do everything. What you do have to know how to do is to reach into your community and pull on the resources that you have available and arm yourself with the experts to do the things you don't know how to do. It's okay to not know. In fact, none of us really know all the things. That's not possible. But to know that you have people that kind of have your back that are supporting what you're doing and can give you that knowledge openly that you don't have, that's the magic.
[Cynthia Nevels]:
So I look at things from a tactical standpoint and there are three things that I tell people. One is you need to write the business plan. Trust me, I know that it takes a lot of time and sometimes the barrier is you don't know where to start or how or what to say. That is where you call on us to get help. Then next, you want to create your financial projections. That is an area that is a weakness for many business owners is working with the financials. You need to know before you pour any of your retirement funds, any of your personal credit into a venture, you need to know how much money are you going to make from this? Is it feasible? How much is it going to cost you? Get help from us to work through that before you start. And if you've already started, dedicate the time to come and get help. Trust me, as a single mom, I already know that time is limited. I already know that when you're working in your business, it's hard to stand up and work on it. But going into 2024, I need you to find 10 hours a week to work on your business so that you position yourself for growth. And that is what you need to do before you can ever experience the true success that you are looking for, that you feel that you have the ability to have as an entrepreneur.
[Nikka Hershberger]:
Awesome. And we've got a minute left, so I'm not going to ask another question because we can talk for, all of us can talk. We love talking and sharing our knowledge. Are there any questions out there, like burning questions, voices that we should address? Or I'm going to turn it back over to Moises and he can wrap us up.
[Moises Ramirez]:
Well, thank you for that. No, I don't think there's any pending questions. I will add that if you're anything like me, you've probably been scribbling down notes, trying to refer back. But I'm going to make it easy on everybody after this presentation. I'm going to share an email to everybody that attended. That's going to include all the contact information that you see on your screen. It's going to include the presentation itself, hyperlinks, a copy of the recording. And I encourage you to please reach out to any of the presenters, any one of us, and we are here for you as a community. I think that that's the overall message. We want to see you be successful. So with that said, thank you all for attending. Thank you to all the presenters. And until next time.
[Nikka Hershberger]:
Thank you, everyone. And have a great and happy Thanksgiving and safe Thanksgiving. So thank you to our panel. Love working with you guys. Thank you all. Thank you. Thank you.