 Hi, good morning, everyone. I'm Cynthia Hardy, and I have the opportunity and the pleasure today of moderating this important event, the City of Columbia Small Business Week Conference, Opportunities Out of Crisis. In the almost four years or so that Melissa Lundler is taking the helm at the City of Columbia's Office of Business Opportunities, the world has changed. No one could have anticipated the world that we're living through right now. And right now, these times will be written about and texts and read about over the next century, not a small task leading through these uncertain times isn't for the weak at heart. Melissa Lundler in the Office of Business Opportunities at the City of Columbia has taken the reins to lead in all business sectors during this period of time and we thank her and the City of Columbia for putting this on for small businesses today. This has been one of the most difficult times. So whether or not providing resources to all sectors, whether it's the corporate sector, private sector, nonprofit sector, public sector, manufacturing sector, even the gig economy, the Office of Business Opportunities has made sure that resources have been there. We're not sure where we're going in this pandemic and all of the variables that are prolonging its existence. So at this time, I'd like to introduce Melissa Lundler and the Office of Business Opportunities leader. Not only can we count on her in this environment of resilience for our businesses but also to sustain us during these uncertain times too. These resources have been invaluable. We welcome at this time, Melissa Lundler, the Director of the Office of Business Opportunities for the City of Columbia to open our conference. Welcome, Melissa Lundler. And again, thank you for this opportunity for on-point media to participate today. Thank you, Cynthia. And thank you for all that you do, not only for the City of Columbia but our small business community and our community as a whole. You mentioned a number of things and that's the resources and the opportunities that we've been able to provide to our small business community, especially over the past 18 months, has really helped a number of our businesses sustain during this time. But none of that would be possible without our Mayor, Steve Benjamin, his leadership, the leadership of City Council and the leadership of our city manager, Teresa Wilson. So I wanna make sure that everyone knows how many advocates you have here at the City of Columbia for our small business community and how much they realize that without you, we are not who we are and we're not the great city that we are. So I think that we all play a role in this and the Office of Business Opportunity is not just me, it's our staff, Ayesha Dreggers, our new Deputy Director, Kalinig Inyard, Latanya, Germany, Rat Whiting, Latanya Porter, DeBerry, Carla Eichelberger and Cendria Robinson. They're all there. We work hard, we work late for you. We know that you need resources and you need things done immediately. So we're here, we're here to support you. The Office of Business Opportunities, we provide trainings, technical assistance and this is one of those opportunities right today that we do every year. Unfortunately, last year because of COVID, we're not able to do it and we're not doing any in-person events right now because of the numbers that are sitting in our county. But again, we have a number of resources here. You'll hear from our resource partners and other city departments across the city. Procurement is a number of departments that work with us on a daily basis, Columbia Overwater to make sure that we provide equitable opportunities to our entire city and everyone has an opportunity to participate in programs and procurement, whatever it may be here at the city of Columbia. Recently, I do wanna share and it sheds light on the commitment of the city of Columbia to make sure we're creating an equitable playing field for our small business community, but also our community, our citizens as a whole. Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act has now, Title VI compliance is now part of the OVO office and that will be headed by Ayesha Driggers. And what Title VI is, it prohibits race discrimination on the basis of race, color, nationality for any programs or activities that receive federal funds and assistance. So by putting that in our possession, it allows us to do even more to make sure that we're looking and creating new opportunities to, remove any barriers that may exist when it comes to participation, not only for our small business community, but our citizens as a whole, as well as our staff here at the city of Columbia. So I wanna stop there and just tell you, thank you for all that you do. Thank you for being a part of our great city. And I now would like to introduce you to our leader, who we could not do what we do without him. He has been an advocate and a supporter of me in my position as well as our staff and the offices I've been here and he was an advocate before I started with Ms. Herbert, who is also very, very, very committed to our small business community as you know. So Steve, I'm sorry, Mayor Benjamin, I turn it over to you. And thank you for all that you do for us. Thank you, Melissa. Thank you for all that you do for us, amazing leadership at OBO with the team that you assembled over there. And I'm so thankful we have you in the position you are in for such a time is this. I wanna thank everyone for joining us today. So many of you have been around elected officials and politicians for a very, very long time. And we've always said that small businesses are like blood of our community and it's become a bit of a mantra for all of us. I do truly believe that over the last year and a half, everyone really realizes that is in fact the case, not just the numbers, but the spirit of community is embodied in the entrepreneurship of the men and women who try to perfect capitalism, provide for their families and support their communities. So thank you for joining us today as we try to recognize the achievements of the small business community and incredible resiliency that we've seen sometimes in many ways, unprecedented hardship we've seen as a result of the pandemic. And certainly so many of us have significant personal losses over this time as well. I think the fact that we're all here today shows exactly how resilient we are. Our belief in you and the vital role that you play and the economic vitality of our city did prompt the city last year, as Melissa mentioned, to provide emergency relief to well over 300 businesses through our small business stabilization for give a balloon program to the tune of about $1.4 million which is before PPP started flowing. It was critical as we all kind of work way through learning more and more about the coronavirus. This money helped keep a lot of businesses up and running. Our support did not stop there over the past 18 months through the Office of Business Opportunities. We've invested over $4.1 million into our small business community with commercial loans, grants, training and technical assistance as well. And as you continue to adapt and adjust and pivot down the path of recovery, we will continue to find ways to work with you to support you to continue to make your businesses stronger and to help them grow. We're so pleased to have Chris Higley and Chris and we're gonna get together eventually, okay? We've been working on this and thank you for your patience. Coffee is on me. If it's after five, it doesn't have to be coffee. Hold on to the story. But I'm looking forward to your amazing story as a co-founder of MapQuest and now the energy that you're bringing back to Columbia as one of the nation's leading new venture and startup experts. It's a downright exciting time and we're so fortunate to have you here. And we're also excited to welcome so many several successful local businesses have found opportunities again out of the crisis and the race to use of technology and e-commerce to continue to expand their reach and open up new opportunities for them. And last but certainly not least, we're gonna recognize a 2021 small business spotlight honoree, Kara Streeter. She's the owner of Extraordinary Head Hunters LLC. You're gonna hear a story in a moment when you do, then you'll remember we all have so much to be thankful for. If you look beyond the obvious, there are always amazing opportunities out of the crisis. Personal deep respect for Kara. She's always, she calls me nonstop trying to find out ways to help others. And I think that's a real mark of someone's character. So we're virtual now, eventually. We'll all be back in the same room. We'll have a chance to hug and fellowship and hopefully prosper together as a community prosperous. But we hope we leave this conference encouraged, motivated for continued success. Remember that we are resilient, Columbia because we do this together. Thank you. I bless you. Melissa, Cynthia, thank you for your leadership. We're gonna have a great day today. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Ms. Lila, do you have any comment before we proceed with the program? No, I would encourage everyone as we go into this discussion with Chris Habley. We are so excited about having him today. Please enter your questions in our chat box. And at the end of their conversation, the fireside chat, what we'll do is we'll actually, Cynthia, Ms. Harney will actually start asking some of those questions. And because of time, if we don't get through all of the questions, I want to reassure you that your questions will be heard or will be answered by Chris. He has said that he will answer those questions and get those back to us. And we'll circulate that back to you. I'm gonna turn it over to Aisha to see if she has any housekeeping before we get started. She has been the lead in this office pooling this together. She's done a great job. We were kind of nervous being virtual. Usually for a live conference, it takes us a week and none of us get any sleep, but it was almost as tense, but not as bad. What do you think, Aisha? Yeah. It's been great, but we have such a great team that we work so well together and wherever, where anyone's weak, the other strong, so we pull together and we get through it. So thank you, Melissa, for your leadership and the leadership of our mayor and our city manager as well. For housekeeping, I just want to remind everyone to please keep your mics on mute. We do have a good crowd here. So we appreciate you taking time out of your morning to join us. It is an investment in your business for you to be here today. So we appreciate your time and your effort as well. Also, I just want to remind everyone, if you registered and you are in attendance, we will have a drawing, a random drawing at the end for some prizes that were donated from some of our wonderful small businesses. So we're excited to offer those to you at the end of the conference. Again, if you have any questions, please put those in the chat and we will be happy to answer those for you. So at this time, I'll turn it back over to you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, Ms. Triggers. I also want to reiterate that we want our audience to keep their mics muted and put those questions in the chat. And I know we're gonna have a very lively conversation generated from our audience today. It's good to see so many participants on the line, guys, this is so good. And I'm so excited that so many people are joining us today. And we thank the mayor of course for being with us as well. We want people to also put their questions I mentioned in the chat and we're gonna, OBO is gonna share the program as you've heard in the chat. At the end of our conference, everybody who is registered in attendance are gonna be entered as you heard in that random drawing. So we're excited about that. The mayor talked about the theme and so did. Our director, Ms. Lindler, talked about the theme of resilience. And so when I think about extraordinary headhunters, that's exactly what describes them. The city of Columbia's office of business opportunities has recognized Ms. Kiara Streeter, president and CEO of Extraordinary Headhunters LLC as a 2021 small business spotlight honoree. And they did that at the council meeting in September on the 7th, this month on September 7th. The company is a full service staffing and marketing company and it's headquartered right here in Columbia. The three-year-old company recently opened four operations in Colorado Springs, Colorado, Denver, Colorado, Seattle, Washington, and it's Michigan. Now over the past 18 months during COVID, the company has provided more than 70,000 free tests in South Carolina, New York, New Jersey, Colorado, Springs, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Seattle, and Warlins. They were also able to get more than 10,000 people into jobs and donate almost a half a million dollars, $450,000 to those affected by the pandemic. Wow. Ms. Streeter has been recognized by the South Carolina women in business in 2021, the best and brightest under 35 and the better business bureau. She serves on the Forbes Business Council Committee, South Carolina Chamber of Commerce Business Committee, the Columbia Chamber of Commerce Business Council, and she's a member of the United Way of the Midlands Young Leaders Society, as well as women in philanthropy. Ms. Streeter is married to Julia Streeter. They have three children, Amani, Julius, and Kareem. She plays such an important role in our community. We have a video we'd like for you to see. Here it comes. 2018, I started our agency June 13, 2018, and I knew that I wanted to make a difference, and there is no other way to make a difference in the world other than providing employment or opportunities for people to win and succeed at life. And so we are a full-service staffing and marketing firm, so we fill any type of positions. Our core clients, it can be medical, it could be manufacturing companies, it could be anywhere from government agencies, federal agencies. We pride ourselves in filling positions in a 24- and 48-hour timeframe, and so we really go above and beyond for our clients. Where others see the impossible, I see opportunity. We're hiring right now. We have anywhere from 200 to 300 positions, hiring right here in the South Carolina area, and as we continue to grow our brand and company, we're always looking for opportunities to get back, to say, hey, how can we help you? We donated over $450,000 to individuals, businesses. We created high school scholarships, and when the pandemic hit, there were so many people losing employment, a lot of challenges, and so I met with my team who I depend on for everything. They're my Rob, you know, we all had a big meeting, and I was like, what can we do? And I said a prayer, and our client or our partner at RRT Ambulance, they contacted us, and they were like, hey, we're looking for a staff and agency to partner with, and we wanted to provide free COVID testing all over the state of South Carolina, and so we were like, yes, we can help you, and so we were very influential in helping them set up, getting sites and hiring the top experts and just creating job opportunities here, and so we've been really busy. And I'm just so grateful and looking for opportunities to continue to inspire and motivate young people all over the world to believe in yourself that you can do anything. And advice that I have for new entrepreneurs is quite simple, work hard, believe in yourself, and know your motive in life. Know exactly what you want to accomplish and work hard until you accomplish it. So thank you, thank you so much. I am so grateful to you guys for this beautiful award. I promise I won't let you down. I'm gonna continue to make you guys proud and just continue to take things to the next level and just look out. As they say, I am South Carolina's most tenacious superwoman. What an exceptional award recipient, Melissa Lindler. Unfortunately, Melissa, I understand Kiera can be here with us today. So her staff is here to accept the award on her behalf. That is correct. And we were actually fortunate enough to present her, the Council, the City Council and Mayor City Council presented her with the resolution, acclimation, the third, I think, book six, I'm sorry, the sixth of SE staff. I can't get the date right, but the council meeting before last. So we did present that to her. She's still out there. She's trying to connect not only with our business community but also with younger entrepreneurs as well and making sure they have access to different corporations. I think right now what she has been able to accomplish, she saw a need out of crisis, right? People were not only looking for employment, they were still looking for quality candidates to fill positions, even though a number of us were working remotely. Not only that, she was able to connect with them on a different level by providing the free vaccines, not only in South Carolina, but I think in two other states as well. She also expanded her business during this crisis. She was already doing a lot of things remotely, so she had already utilized technology to build her business and her brand. But understanding that her staff doesn't have to be located in an office every day, she had already incorporated those different types of working environments already into her business. So she expanded into three other areas, three other states, I'm sorry, two other states, but three different locations that she was able to actually start all during the pandemic. So I think that's something that we need to keep in mind. As the mayor said, don't always look at the obvious. Sometimes it requires you to look a little deeper and figure out where gaps are and understanding that those gaps you can capitalize on, but you can also business and grow your business. When you understand your business model, when you understand your target audience, you really, really have a true connection with your business and what you're trying to accomplish, you can do so much. You know, it's interesting, Melissa, I think about my own business as you talk about the resilience and how the movement, right as the pandemic began, On Point Media had an opportunity with a client that turned into an employment opportunity. And so James Hardy, the other partner in our business, took over the operations of On Point Media. We didn't know that that would occur 12 months ago, but before it actually happened, but we were so grateful that we were able to pivot during a time of such uncertainty, to be able to still remain whole and be solid. And I say that for all the other 52 businesses that are on with us right now and are growing, those numbers are growing, but I know that there are stories out there. We wanna hear those, go to that chat. Put that information in those chats so we'll have an opportunity to talk about what you all are doing too, because as we get ready to go into our fires and chat, that's one of the things I think our speaker will be interested in is the resilience level of what it is that we have done so he can advise us further about some of the additional things we need to do. Do you agree with that, Melissa? I totally agree, I totally agree. And one thing I will say is the role that technology has played in those businesses that were able to be successful and sustained during the pandemic it can't be understated. And I hope hopefully he will talk about that. And our other businesses that are on here that we're highlighting will also talk about that. So our last survey that we did in May of this year, 30% of our small business community has embraced technology in order to contend with the closures and the other regulations and rules that actually changed how they did business. So technology can't be understated. The role of technology, we have to be willing to embrace it. We can't run from it. You have to embrace it if you want to be around. Absolutely, and it certainly has required that we morph and move in different ways. And we again applaud Chiara Streeter, the founder and CEO of Extraordinary Head Hunters LLC is the business spotlight honoree and her staff that's joining us today and kudos for all that you all are doing for being a shining example to all of us of what it could be because you all have done so much, not just in terms of the operation of the business itself but realizing the service of the community is an intricate part of that as well. When we do for others, it comes back to us in so many different ways. Don't get me testifying Melissa because I know it to be true. That's right, all right. Well, it's time to go ahead and to introduce Chris Hively. You know, I saw your name, Chris, that you were with us and everything. I mean, we know about you. And I said, Melissa, that's a good guess. And she was like, yeah, yeah. And so we're really excited to have you because you're one of the nation's leading experts in how to turn startup, start ups into multi-million dollar companies talk about inspiration. For over 30 years, you worked at the highest levels of some of the world's most recognized brands including MatQuest, Rand McNally and Accenture. You know, you co-founded MatQuest with by itself is a huge, huge thing. But you're a longtime angel investor. You ran a corporate venture fund and two micro venture funds, totaling over $75 million. Man, and you still find time to hang out with us. Well, okay. So let's talk a little bit because I know that you write for income into blog. And a few years ago, you published your first book about startups called Build Before. Now, that's especially important right now, because as we are all looking at all this uncertainty that we have, Chris, to be able to talk to someone who's done it successfully is a real deal. And so right now, we want to welcome you and ask you for any opening comments before we start this fireside chat. And I start to read you some of the questions that we have from our eager audience. Chris. Thank you for that very nice introduction, Cynthia. What a great crew. I mean, I don't know about you. If you're harsh enough pumping at this point, then something's wrong with you. I mean, look at the energy from the video, right? I mean, clearly she's a force of nature, right? And you know, in this last year and a half of the pandemic and all the rules changing. And the one thing that no one can control is your energy, right? So maybe we'll kick it off there. What do we want to talk about today? I got so much to share. Yeah, I know. Well, let me start by just asking you a couple of questions. As co-founder of MacQuest and executive to several software companies, how do you measure your success? Because I got to tell you, Chris, right now, in this environment, it helps to have groups like OBO and others to continue to inspire small businesses because it got real dark real quick, you know, for a number of people, we didn't see it coming. And so having to figure out whether or not we are in the right lane, whether we need to switch lanes, wouldn't slow down, speed up, has been, you know, kind of, it's been on the minds of all of us, the small business owners, and the decisions that we make with those questions often determines how successful we have navigated ourselves. So, hey, oh, well, you know, God, there's so much to unpack there. I mean, how do we measure success? I think we each do it differently based on, you know, it goes back to like Maslow's hierarchy of needs or something like, what do we need? I think we all start companies for different reasons and it's different for all of us, right? I mean, some of it do it because it's their job. Some people do it because they want to make a lot of money. Some people want fame. Some people want respect, right? These are all kind of basic needs. And so I think it's a different across the board. Excuse me. The interesting thing is I think what the last year has done is tested our entrepreneurial kind of, you know, core, right? And I think, you know, I gotta be careful not to be insincere. Like I think if you're an entrepreneur, that ups and downs are always there, right? I mean, certainly the pandemic shined up bigger spotlight on it for small businesses not being able to operate, that's out of your control. I think for many of, you know, you had to figure out like what do I do? Do I go silent? Do I pivot to this thing? You know, I think it's tested our entrepreneurial reserve, right? And you know, hopefully maybe most of us will come out stronger for it. But... Well, you're right about that. And I think that that's probably one of the things people appreciate from you, the level of honesty that you bring to conversations like these and all the interviews that I've seen you do, that's been the most important part of it all because at the end of the day, if people blow smoke, it doesn't, you know, that doesn't transfer in the dollars and cents. Never does. No. And so people are interested in, here's a question, people are interested in, you know, we all know, for instance, with my business and everybody else's business that's on, we have to deal with our competition. You know, there are a lot of good marketing companies like mine, you know, that are out there. So one of the biggest things that I've seen you talk about is not seeing it as a competitive situation, but seeing it as an inclusive situation where the product is the main thing. And so if our product is good, it's probably needed by the masses. And so that means there's enough for everybody. So can you talk about that? So it's so funny that we got into this because the reason, so, by the way, it looked like both the mayor and I are in hotel rooms. I promise you, we're not in the same one. I'm on Hampton Street at the Marriott. So I'm from North Carolina. I've been coming down here for a few months to see what I could do to help the entire city and region figure out ways to build more entrepreneurs. Now my focus is more on kind of high-growth, high-tech entrepreneurs, but the lessons there are the same lessons that we could share today. So why am I here? Well, there's a scarcity mindset sometimes that we all take. And a scarcity mindset is it's a fixed pie and we're all fighting over our slice or even our crumbs. That's a competitive view of things. And not that I don't wanna stick my head in the sand and pretend that competitive things aren't real, but there's also the non-scarcity notion is that we can make the pie bigger, right? And then when we make the pie bigger, there's a lot of pie for a lot of people. And so back to your point, Cynthia, I mean, if you offer a quality product and you offer a quality service and you do it in a way that is frictionless to our customers and you find ways to find your customers, I believe that takes care of almost all of the business, right? And what invariably happens is people forget one or more of those things and sometimes focus on, I think the wrong things are the things that aren't as important, right? So let's all make the pie bigger feels a lot more fun than fighting over the crumbs of the pie. It's interesting because people see map question. We know how early you started in the game, but then we see all these other local finding kinds of directional apps, tools that people can use, but still you stand. And so I think it's important that people recognize that. And I think it's all in the attitude. As you mentioned, just make the pie bigger. We know the need is there. Sometimes we have to remind people of the need, but that's what distinguishes us in so many different ways. If not, we can all be robots working for the man in the big company. Sorry, did I say that out loud? Oh, I didn't mean to. You said it out loud, you did. Now listen, almost 40% of respondents have indicated they plan to increase the use of technology in the future as a result, based on a survey that the city of Columbia and the Office of Business Opportunity did. As someone who works in the software, our development area, can you kind of explain to us the importance of not only capitalizing on technology, but using it as a tool to survive in this technology-driven environment and never has it been truer than it is right here today, right now? I love this question right here right now because I know that most of the people in the audience are probably not super tech people and maybe not have applied. I mean, I'm sure there's a few exceptions here, but typically in small business technology, to the level that I've done all tech companies, right? I know that it hasn't been applied, but I'm going to tell you two things and there's two really important things that is a thread through our conversation today, not just mine, but what's already preceded before me. Excuse me. And that is two things. One is technology can be used on what I say both ends of your company, which means technology can be used to figure out how to acquire more customers and technology could be used in order to figure out how to reduce expenses. And both those things have positive impacts on your company. All right, so everyone should be going, yeah, I got it Chris. That's like the most obvious thing in the world. The scary part is what technology, how, when and as a business owner who's still running their business day to day, how do I layer in how to put this new thing in my business? And it comes down to one word and one word only, community, right, here's a community that's weighed, if we don't have it yet, let's figure out how to augment it and build it more, but here's a community out here ready to help without fees per se, right? And I know each one of us does that. I mean, your award recipient exemplified this, like how can I help others? And my old company, we called this Give First. How do we give without any expectation of getting anything returned? And I promise you, you'll get it back in ways you didn't even manage or imagine in spades. So the problem with Give First is actually not getting more people to give, it's having people ask for help. And I'm not saying that myself or anybody on here is going to give you 40 hours of free technical help. I'm not saying that. I'm saying, get out there and ask people, hey, I have this kind of business. I'm thinking about an email marketing or I'm thinking about this piece of software that helps my kitchen run better or whatever it is and ask others, what do you do? And that's not competitive. That's just being an authentic real entrepreneur to say, why do I have to figure everything out myself? How can I reach out to my community and lean on them for some help? And what I found in the four months that I've been kind of walking around and meeting Aisha and the team and everyone else in this city and this region is that there's a little bit of, I can't, there's a little bit of a culture of I don't, I can't ask for help because that'll show weakness. And I'm telling you, let's just blow that crap out of the water right now. Put your ego to the side and don't pretend that the face of entrepreneurship, you have to have all the answers. Be vulnerable, meet one-on-one, grab someone, ask for an introduction to someone and say, what do you think? And out of that, I think you can figure out how to apply more technology easier than the scary specter that it may be with you. Sorry for that long-winded answer. That's really good. In fact, I'm going to follow it up with the question to Melissa Lindler, I raised your triggers in their team because you mentioned the significance of knowing where the opportunities are in networking. You all have a few ways that you offer for us as businesses to network together and figure out ways to maximize those synergies and those relationships. So does anyone want to talk about what those ways are so people who are on with us who may not be familiar with our offerings will know what they are? I will actually ask for Collina to share with the audience our goal here at the city or citywide minority women, entrepreneurial, small minority women entrepreneurship utilization goal that we have at the city of 15%. But also to share with our audience also minority business directory that we implemented as a result of not having our in-person minority business opportunity conference. Collina, do you want to share with people how they can participate? Yes. That's awesome, guys. Thank you, Melissa. And thank you, Chris, for leading us. So thank you, Melissa. Thank you, everyone. Good morning. My name is Collina McGingard. I am the program coordinator here with the City of Columbia's Office of Business Opportunities. And we have, well, typically we do the minority business opportunities conference that we've had but unfortunately due to COVID, we weren't able to do this in person. So we decided to not have our conference virtually but we also added the minority business opportunities directory. And in that directory consists of listings from all of our City of Columbia departments including the Office of Business Opportunities and our community partners that do provide information on the goods and services that they are looking to purchase. And all of these departments and community partners are looking for so many different items and services to procure at some point that they would like to use. And in time with that, back in 2015, our city manager, Teresa Wilson, implemented the statewide utilization goal. And at the time of the implementation, 10% of every city department's budget, whether it's Office of Business Opportunities, Parks and Recreation, our IT team, everyone, 10% of their budget had to go to purchasing goods and services from minority, small minority of women owned businesses. And since that implementation, the goal has increased on an annual, on a yearly basis. Recently in fiscal year 2018, 2019, we were able to surpass the goal at 12% by the end of the fiscal year. So at the beginning of fiscal year 2019, city manager Wilson increased that goal from 10% to 15%. So now the goal is at 15%. And I'm happy to say that during fiscal year 2019, 2020, we were able to meet the goal even though the last three months of the fiscal year we were in COVID, we were still able to meet that goal. We are on the way of meeting the goal again for fiscal year 2020. And that was the first entire year that we were in COVID-19. So even though we didn't have a lot of in-person events, we were still purchasing face mask and all different types of supplies that the city departments needed to continue to serve and do work. And we are still on the way of meeting that goal and the fiscal year just started. And I encourage everyone who is on the call to please review our directory. We have it uploaded on our city website and I'll also put it in the chat for anyone who's interested. Thank you. Awesome. And one more thing, Ms. Skinyard, if you can give people the email address they want to email you all directly. Yes, you can email our office, it's obio.columbiasc.gov or if you would like to just talk to me, you can email me. My email address is colina.ginyard.columbiasc.gov and I'll put that information in the chat. And also if you wouldn't, Ms. Skinyard, Eddie Brewer is asking to everyone how do new vendors or businesses get their names on that list if you'll put that in the chat as well. We'll do. And we thank you for all that you do. Thank you so much. Chris, I'm going to ask you about your book, Bill the Fort. Now, before I do that, there are a few different people that are asking questions, right? And so I want to kind of highlight- It's not nearly enough. There's not nearly enough questions out there. Not nearly enough. So, okay. So Chris, one of the things people want to know could you talk about businesses that are consulting and consultant based. The writer says they're unicorn in their field and how can we as small businesses bring attention to what we do? And when we asked what your area, it came back, I think it's contract management, which is also a significant area that people can exist in and make a good living in as well. Yeah, so I'll try my hardest to keep this short because what you're basically asking for is like a three hour consult in one minute. But I mean, Cynthia, this is the world you live in, right? I mean, know who your target audience is. Know where they live. I mean, both physically and virtually and digitally. And then figure out a way to shout loudly and to speak in their language. What I find is way too many businesses cast too wide of a net in order to hope that they'll catch more fish with a wide net. And what happens is your messaging and your position and even the name of your company becomes so vanilla and watered down to try to meet everyone that you meet no one. And so narrower is actually better than wider. And in that narrower, if you get the target right, if you get the, I mean, there's a lot of ways how you validate that. But if you get your messaging narrow enough that when someone and get it in front of someone, then they go, hey, that's me. I need help in contract management. Let me see what you have to offer. And so without knowing anything about your business or how do you go to market, my guess is, and the answer is right, and not a narrow. That's interesting because it fits right into why you wrote your book. Because oftentimes we have great ideas, right? And we know what it is that we want to do. And we're good and we're smart. But when it comes to actually attracting the customers that we want and making a profit at the end of the year, we realize we might need a little bit more consultation, even though we have all those things going for us. So your book talks about those micro steps and starting our own business and key steps and getting new business off the ground, especially during a crisis in your ludic well, and you stated it about knowing where we're going and being narrow in focus. And I think sometimes you can take an issue like economics and there are a number of different things that you can do with that business, but it's so big that you have to be narrow for someone to know, oh, that's me. And that's the way you put that. And sometimes the marketing and the targeting is the last thing we decide to do after we open our doors. I mean, and you know, I'm an old guy, right? So I've done it both ways. The old way is you build something and then you decide how to sell and market it, right? And it's very linear and step-wise. And by build, I mean everything from writing copy, if you're a consultant or building your restaurant or whatever it is, right? But the world in the way that we do a startup and the way the world changed is that we have to bring the potential customer equation into the customer issues, into the equation sooner. And so I call this customer development and then product development. And instead of them linear, you have to do them at the same time. And so with that, I think there's a lot of confusion. The other thing that entrepreneurs have is we all have this vision of what the full business looks like that you're going to achieve three years from now, right? And that's what wakes us up in the morning and gets us excited. The problem is, how the heck do I get between now and three years from now or one year from now or 10 years from now? And so there's probably a thousand things we could do, but there's probably every day three to five that we should do. The question is, which three to five do we choose? And that's where there's been a lot of new thinking about how to do this smarter, how to get the customer involved in your product development earlier. And so what I tried to do, there's tons of business books that help you optimize your current company. I wanted to focus on, I have an idea, how the hell do I do something with that? And simplify things and show a hands, like I ask everyone, like how many people build a fort? And the answer is almost like all of us, whether it's the inside fort with the chair upside down on the couch and the blanket, right? Or it's the outdoor fort. And so I use that kind of parable, if you will. And I tell a fort building story in my book just to say, let's simplify this and figure out how to focus on the right things. And if we do that, I think we increase our chances of success earlier. Okay, and Chris, this is an interesting question that I've been in text. And it's, during the pandemic, some of the world shifted. And so some of the businesses that were relevant before are less relevant now. And so because that is the case, how do we know how to pivot or when to pivot? You know, some people, some of us, find out later than we need to that, I'm sorry, people aren't coming to this gate anymore. They're actually going over there to that gate. That's why everybody's inside and nobody's over here. And so we want to be able to make good decisions at the time that we need to make the decision so we can still be profitable. So it occurs to me in answering that question, we can't be fearful. We almost have to be bold in our decisions, which means being prepared. And I think there's not only that, Cynthia, but there's one other thing. I think we need a very healthy sense of self-awareness and look in the mirror and say, I'm watching my customers stop showing up. Again, it comes back to customer more than product. I've been offering a product to a set of customers and now my product doesn't seem to be as relevant as it used to be, right? Because they changed. Well, not shame on them. As entrepreneurs, it's our job to figure out how to deliver and serve their needs. So I think a healthy belt of self-awareness and honesty with yourself and maybe with your partners to say and making sure to your point, you're watching this and then recognize, hey, there's a shift happening. And if you wait too long with that, then I'm sorry, that's shame on you. If you're a good entrepreneur and you're running your business, you should be looking and watching your customers all the time, asking them, right? Even the city here put out a survey in May, right? That's because you're their customers. They're trying to make sure they keep their finger on the pulse of what you need and what you're doing. You have the same challenge. And so there's a lot of people who just go like, I'm going to keep doing the same thing and I'm going to muscle through and I'm going to show resilience. Well, it's resilience plus smarts and honesty and self-awareness, not just resilience. And that's one of the things that's been interesting for me to watch as a news person to watch the Office of Business Opportunities, the city's theme about being resilient was actually exemplified in the way OVO started using their resources to undergird businesses, oftentimes non-traditional businesses, that without the guidance of some guidance to let them know what the trends were, where they fit into that and to help them actually think about it. Because think about it, a lot of us were in shock when the pandemic hit and people stopped showing up and the resources started drying up. And many of us were kind of spinning our wheels for the first 30, 60, 90 days, just trying to figure out what the heck has hit us. And then by the time we spin out and try to figure it out, it's sometimes, as you mentioned, later than it needs to be. So the kinds of resources that we're seeing from places like the city of Columbia, and the city was out there with the 1.4 before PPP even came into being, which was a true benefit to so many people. We have people asking, how do they make sure that they're headed in the right direction? They're reading as much as they can when they can, but these winds keep becoming more and more uncertain. I wish I had one great answer for you. And I liken it to a question that I've gotten all over the world, like how do I know when to quit? And I'm not saying that's your question, but it's in that same family, right? It's in that same context. And the answer is, I don't know only you know. And all I know is that, look for signals that aren't about you, right? And I know we have this passion and that's like the ante into the poker game. Like you have, that's not the only thing you have to have, but it has to be one of the pieces. But with that passion, sometimes it clouds us. And that's self-awareness and looking in the mirror part. I think the best piece of advice, the best way to answer that is to say, go out and talk to other people, see what's happening, see what your energy level is like, look at your data, whatever data you have, look for signals, take all that in, make sure you get as many pieces of information that aren't just about you and your heart. In other words, get data and look at the data and let the data influence your final decision. And I mean, I'm saying data in like the most generic vanilla way possible. Look for external signals, talk to your customers, see what's going on. With all honesty, I mean, in this pandemic, we didn't know whether this was going to last a month, three months, six months, a year or a year and a half. So that being said, no one can kind of figure that out. But outside of that, yeah. That's good, Chris. It leads into the next thing I want to ask you when we talked about so much of it. And so let me know if you have anything else to add on this question that our audience is asking about some of the other issues that small businesses have to continue with today that they didn't have to face before COVID and how to approach those issues. I think you've dealt with a lot of that, but there's anything else you want to add in that regard. Yeah, I'd like to pile on and double down on the whole networking thing. And what I really believe that entrepreneurship is a team sport, not a solo sport. I like to say, when you're the only one in the entrepreneurial room, then every decision is perfect, right? Because there's no one there to argue with you and say, what? So even if you are kind of a solo entrepreneur running a restaurant or a service and media company, whatever, there's a community out there. And the word networking has a negative connotation. And the reason it has a negative connotation is because most of us believe that networking is about a transaction. I'm trying to get someone from someone else, something from someone else. And it's not that, you know this, right? It's just about connecting on a human level. I spend, well, I can tell you without any exaggeration that I live in Raleigh Durham and in the last 10 years, I've met one-on-one with at least 4,000 people. And I continue to three to five a week. Most of those are now virtual than in person. My point of that is that when you get yourself out there and you make that part of the recipe of your business, you're gonna find, invariably find three to five people that you just connect with. And grabbing a cup of coffee, a lunch, an end of day frosty beverage, and just hearing what's going on, hearing what they're doing. That is so knowledge, like you get to get knowledge, inspiration, support, all the things you need. And I think we need to treat this job as not a, we're in our back room, kind of hunkered down, you know, weeping about where things going, like get out there, share what's going on. Don't be afraid to share, be vulnerable. And I think a lot of great things can happen out of that. So use the community. You know, Chris, groups like this have been a godsend during the pandemic, you know, because many of us have had the opportunity to still ourselves, take a close look at what we're doing and our bank accounts. You know, to determine if we're doing it the right way. You know, we've had mental health challenges in our community for a long time, but they've been heightened over the past year. And, you know, for entrepreneurs, you know, I want to say to entrepreneurs, helping to mitigate the damage caused by burnout is something that we just have to look at ourselves with. Mental or behavioral kinds of attention isn't necessarily something that happens over there. You know, it's oftentimes, you know, we look at our mental and think about, you know, what's our outlook, you know, toward what it is that we're doing and is our outlook helping. And I think that we have to be open and honest and clear when we're working through crises like we are right now and aren't sure what's going to happen on the other side. It can take a toll on a person. Without a doubt, and my former business partner, Brad Feld, a very well-known writer, author, and investor out of Boulder, Colorado, has openly talked about his mental health challenges. And this is someone who, by all accounts, is one of the most successful investors, startup persons in the world. And the first thing we're trying to do is bring awareness and be open about that this isn't something that's only for the select few. This is something that runs rampant in the entrepreneurial community. And some of it is we put on ourselves by thinking, I always say there's two faces that we put on as an entrepreneur. This is public face, we got it all. Everything's working great, you know, and you got to do that to your employees, maybe to your investors, to a board of directors, to your family, right? We got to put on like, it's all good straight ahead. And then let's be honest, we also know there's the other face, which is, I don't know what I'm doing, I don't know where we're going, I don't know how we're going to get through this. And the first thing is let's recognize that we all have both of those faces. And, you know, what I'm here to tell you is that there's someone here on this call in this Zoom room that would be willing to listen to you, right? And just have you just kind of express that. And that doesn't mean, and many times it can't be your family or your employees because you do have to have that other face to give them confidence and not let them worry. But you need an outlet to talk about that stuff. And I want everyone to hear that if you think you're the only one that's going through this, you're not. No matter who you are, no matter what the success is or not, we've all been through these challenges and dark moments. And so reach out. And if it gets nasty, please contact somebody. You're not alone. Chris, one of the comments we have there, people on with us that are just starting businesses and they want a little bit of encouragement about what they're getting themselves into. What do you tell them? Shit, like, let's do it. Like, all right. Let's do it. Let's do it. So I say there's five steps to build the fort. I'll run through them really quick. By the way, I put my email on the chat. I'm going to tell people that. Say that again. Yeah, my email is on the chat, chrisatbuildthefort.com. You can email me any question. If you ask me what the meaning of life is, I'm probably not going to answer that. But, and then I do have open office hours on my website's currently down. My son's updating it this week. But be patient, go to thehighvally.com. Contact me and you can sign up for 20 minutes and we can talk about whatever you want. And don't be surprised. I'm typically booked two to three weeks and ahead. But get your slot. We'll have some fun. But that being said, there's five steps to build the fort. If you do the first four, the fifth one is let's just do it. If you're waiting for more knowns than unknowns, this isn't probably the game for you. This is a game of managing the unknowns. It's a game of discovery to figure out how to make those unknowns knowns. And you can't really, there's only so much you can figure out on paper. The rest of it has to be diving in and trying it. The best way to learn to be an entrepreneur is experientially. And by the way, if you're not ready to do it on your own idea, go work with somebody on their idea and watch them and shadow them and learn from them. And then there's lots of different ways we can go from there. So. People are interested in your success. People want to know a little bit more about how you have been managed to have such a successful career and your greatest personal accomplishments as an entrepreneur. And we know that there are many, but we love the fact that you seem rooted and grounded with regular business people, just regular people. Almost as if you're saying, I'm regular people too. I am regular people too. I'm flawed, I've been lucky, I've done all these things. I mean, you know, I enjoyed, by the way, I came down here, a introverted college graduate. I came down from Philadelphia to a university of South Carolina in the January of 1983 to get a graduate degree in geography. I want to let you know that I can still remember to look at my dad's face when I told him I was going to be a geography major and then go on and get a master's degree and the darn geography stuff. Obviously the geography thing panned out pretty well. It did. Now, that being said, and I'm happy to tell that story and I know that's an interesting story, that feels like talking about being a high school quarterback, right? So I'm just a regular guy. I've had my, I've had successes, I've had failures, I've had dark moments, I've had positive moments. And the thing about me, I tell people I have career ADD. What that means is, I know in myself, I do think I love to take blank sheets of paper and get things started. And then if they start to, and some of them go places and some of them peter out and die. The ones that go places, I eventually hand them off to somebody else because I don't enjoy managing the business. I enjoy the chaos part. So I've had, I do things every three to five years, I do something different because that's what makes me happy and that's why I figured out I am. So the advice, and I can talk about successes and how do you do it? You know what? Be true to yourself, figure out who you are and create your life around that. And I happen to get lucky early. I do believe it's as much luck as it was positioning. Timing. Timing, very much timing. But that being said, I also figured out how to have no fear and knowing that like at the end of the day, what's the worst thing that happens? Well, I tried this thing, it didn't work onto the next one. Like, I always say what's the, I always say when I speak from the audience, raise your hand if you've started a company and the result is that you died. Well, obviously that's actually the worst case scenario. So moving up from there, just anyway, you got it. Well, yes, but we want to continue with that because our theme is opportunities out of crisis. And when you started to see all these other folks discover what you discovered in that it's further ground over here, did you panic when you first saw everybody else running in your direction in terms of your business model? No, that's the best feeling in the world. I mean, I've gone from doing it for myself to doing it for a handful of people through investing to saying, how do I build startup communities all around the world? How can I help the city, the state, the county, the university, these organizations, these individuals who are standing up, co-working spaces like Greg Hilton at SoCo, and how do I help all these people figure out a way to work better together so that we can make this pie bigger? And now I get to impact not one or a handful, maybe I get to impact a hundred entrepreneurs. And that feels good to me. That's been the lattice. I'm now in about year five of that blank sheet of paper. And so, you know, let me do a little better job of answering the question. Like maybe the question is, so how do I do it? I'm super curious. I'm just a guy. I'm not any smarter or dumber than anybody else. I talked to lots of people. I'm a person who socializes my ideas freely. I wanna get that feedback. I want people to go like, huh? Or go like, oh yeah, that's great. And out of that, I get energy and momentum and I eventually figure out hopefully what people need so that I can find a way to serve them. That's how I'm very curious and then willing to try things. I'm not a risk taker. By the time I make the decision, I've gathered a lot of data, so. You know, I wanna remind our audience that we are in our Q&A section right now. We've asked you all to list your questions in the chat and we'll continue to take those questions from the chat and we wanna remind you to go ahead and put them there. This is an awesome opportunity that we have to be able to chat with Chris and also just to be able to interface with each other about the successes that we've had, the values that of course we have been able to garner. There've been a lot of valuable lessons that we have learned over the pandemic and we've been able to share with others too and it's been really powerful to be able to have that sense of camaraderie within our group. So we remind you if you don't get your questions answered during today's forum that we will send you those. You know, we'll send those answers to questions for those of you all who are in attendance. I want you now, Chris, if you could talk to our group about the fact that you've been meeting with businesses in Columbia over the past few months with small business owners and you have a general consensus about what our needs are, strengths, weaknesses, needs, opportunities and so share anything that you would like to about that. Yeah and I was just looking through the chat real quick while you were talking Cynthia. Yes, I do realize my website's under construction and if we want it up we need to like tell my son to get his act together and actually finish the work that I asked him to do a few days ago. But I think by Friday, Saturday I'll have it back up and you'll see a whole bunch of articles and a whole bunch of resources and a way to reach out to me. But you can also send me an email and I'll send you a link to my calendar if you wanna take your 20 minutes. So to be clear, my focus for Columbia and the Midlands region is more on high growth, high tech companies and I realize this is not this audience per se. And I define a high growth, high tech business as someone who's using a decent amount of technology to help grow a business that kind of has no ceiling, right? With the idea that we wanna create a little bit more of an innovation economy here in the Midlands. Like many places I've gone to, we all know the phrase the hole is bigger than the sum of the parts. What I find here, hey guys, how about you mute? Cause now you're the speaker. Unless you guys wanna sell something, but anyway. Good to see you guys. So Cynthia, what I'm finding is that and this at Columbia and the Midlands is no different than any other place is that we're slightly less than the sum of our parts. So we're not even the hole, right? We're not even the sum of our parts for slightly less. We have fantastic assets. Obviously universities, not just USC, but Benedict and Allen and others, right? We have a very, very involved city and county who are through programs like this who are trying to encourage. But all of that is not coalesced to something that's bigger than those parts. And so it has to do, this is typical in cities that have kind of a state government, right? Where the government and the university are the largest employers, right? We just don't have that many people thinking that Columbia is a place that I can start a company or a business. And so the first thing I'm doing is finding ways to change the culture. And it's a long-term play. It's a generational change. It takes 20 years is what my partner Brad and I talk about. It's a 20-year journey that restarts every day. But I've done this in places as smaller than this, Fort Wayne, Indiana and in bigger places like Lima, Peru and Buffalo, New York and Louisville. And so we're just gonna try to change the culture and we're gonna smash some people together. We're going to encourage more connectivity, break down some barriers and just mix and match and create these collisions that out of that, hopefully some sparks will start to emerge. Chris, as we ask for your closing comments, I do want to acknowledge all of the businesses that are on with us today and applaud you for all that you've done to be able to survive during these very tough times. One of our businesses, a very successful marketing and communications business, Tom Sawyer Communications owned by Carolyn Sawyer reminds all of us of the significance, Chris, of the need to pivot to survive in these times that we're in. And your closing comments, as you get it back together and rejoin us and your closing comments using that theme along the lines of pivoting to survive. And of course, opportunities out of crisis is the same way that the city of Columbia has termed it, talk to us in your clothes about what you'd like to leave with us in terms of inspiration to go forward. You're muted. Thank you, I had to plug my computer in all of a sudden, oh shit, it's run out of power. That would be great and good night. Good day. Great, this is a great place to summarize because we've hit on a couple of great pieces. And so let me bring them together. As entrepreneurs, we're never done, right? We're always evaluating our business. We're always trying to think about how to move forward to maintain what we have and possibly even grow more to what we have. And to do that, obviously the pandemic has been a two by four to the back of the head, right? Let's recognize. So the question is how are we going to react to that? I told you that I love the blank sheet of paper, the zero to one part. Well, this is like restarting your business over again. That's okay, right? Don't be, we can be a victim of that or we can decide, hey, it's just a next chapter of my business, we have to reform it. Let's go talk to customers. Let's go talk to peers. Let's see what they're thinking. Let's use the community as a whole to learn from so that I can make better decisions about what modifications I should or shouldn't do where I should focus my energies. And to do that, all they're trying to do is increase your chances of success just a few more points. And just, I just beg you not to think that you're alone in this and you're the only one going through this. There's a community and a bunch of services and ask anybody on this group to connect you to somebody else and just socialize what's going on. And out of that, you should be able to make better decisions and understand what kind of pivots you need to make to either survive or to prosper. Well, Chris Higley, Matt Quest co-founder and author of Build a Port. We certainly have enjoyed you as our featured speaker today and we appreciate all that you bring. I will at this point yield to Melissa Lindler who is our director to see if there's anything she'd like to add before we move forward to the next segment of our program. I just want to thank Chris for all the great nuggets that you dropped here. You have articulated a lot of things that I had in my mind as we've gone through this pandemic with our small business community. And I think a lot of them can relate to everything that you said. So thank you so much. Thank you so much. And thank you for making yourself available to our small business community for that direct consultation. Please take advantage. He's a wealth of information and knowledge and he's so approachable and so relatable as you can tell. And Cynthia, thank you. The exchange between both of you was wonderful. I'm excited. Actually, I've been taking notes. That's why my head was down. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We always learn, we always grow. I think one thing that I can take from this is the point about being willing to adjust and not being in fear. It's okay, change is okay. Sometimes change is forced. Sometimes it's voluntary. I think right now it's both. So thank you, Chris. Thank you very much. And thank you, Cynthia. Great job. George. Guys, thanks for having me. I know that this is the time that we're resisting to our panel discussion. Thanks, Chris. All right, Chris. Stick around if you can. We got some good stuff coming up. This panel discussion is coming up now. I understand we've got a video that we're going to take a look at. That's gonna include some of the introductions for our panel. We're looking forward to having our conversation. We see Kola Kicks has joined us. Welcome, guys. We see you guys in the studio and everything ready to get going. And so at this time, I'm going to turn it over to Carla so she can give us our video presentation. Then we'll be back with you. Out of Health Solutions has been a dream for myself as well as my business partner, Dr. Sandra Randolph. Well, one of the things we felt was really important when we started looking for a location for our practice is to go into an area in which we would be able to make a big impact, decreasing some of the health disparities. This community has welcomed us with open arms because there's a great need. We do know that African-American communities as well as minority communities have a decreased access to medical care. And we want to help bridge that gap. We see a variety of patients from five years to, I think our oldest patient is 98 years old. We're here to treat that whole patient, mind, body, and soul. Business, summarized artists in Bath & Body and we make all natural Bath & Body products right here in-house. I can't say enough about a bathroom. The only thing I'll say is that once you use one of our bath bombs, you're not gonna ever wanna take a regular bath without one again. It's just amazing, you know, that I've literally taken something that I thought was a hobby and turned it into a business and I'm just so thankful for it. I just know I'm proof that nothing is stronger than your mind. When you're doing something that you love, you keep doing it and the right people will begin to recognize your hard work and all your hard work eventually begins to pay off. I'm always gonna be indebted to the city of Columbia because they recognize that. I'm the owner of Uptown Gifts on Maine. One of the things that I love about being right downtown here in Columbia is the constant traffic flow walking by the store, glancing in the windows, deciding to stop in. We get everything from the people that work down here to tourists to college students and everything in between and we really love just seeing all the different faces coming through the door. We have a big array of different items. We have women's accessories. We carry name brands like Bog Bag and Consuela Bag. We also have tabletop lines such as Nora Fleming and Happy Everything. We're always getting new items in and we also work with several local people and carry their line as well. What we've found work for us, I think you have to be creative. You've got to expand what you offer. You need to have a big variety of item and I think you just have to follow it through with good customer service and anything you can do to email market or be out on Instagram, Facebook just to keep your name fresh in front of people. Come shop here. We're Rhino Medical Supply located in Columbia, South Carolina. We're a fully integrated healthcare distribution company and we distribute healthcare products all over the country, all 50 states. When we first started our business, it was really challenging because like everyone else, a supply chain was decimated. Everything was coming from one part of the world, mainly China. So you had to worry about lead times. You had to worry about trade wars, tariffs, customs, whether or not it was authentic. And we had to find alternative sources for the type of products that our customers were looking for. So we did that by leveraging our relationships and networks with inside of the business and then ultimately developing a domestic supply chain. So my advice to entrepreneurs who are starting out their business in the second part of the pandemic is to always continue to network. You have to build credibility. You have to build trust. And once you build your trust and credibility with your customers, they're going to continue to support you even beyond a moment of crisis. Kola Kix is a Basel Tray sneaker and clothing store. We have three locations, one being here in Columbia, South Carolina, Charleston, South Carolina, and Augusta, Georgia. Yeah, we pretty much give people cash on the spot for a lot of their items, shoes that have sold out in stores, vintage items, whether that's clothing or memorabilia, streetwear, a little bit of everything here. The beginning of the pandemic, when we were told we had to shut our doors here, we resulted online. Often we were able to get that through our website and we were shipping orders out daily and just kind of did what we could for during that time. If I was talking to an entrepreneur that was about to start a business or had ideas of something they would want to do, I would tell them, just take the risk. Otherwise, the rest of your life, you're going to be worried about what could have been and all that stuff. Do it wholeheartedly, work as hard as you can and just treat people the right way. And if you do that, it's probably going to work out. Check us out at KolaKix.com. Instagram, Facebook, everything at Kola Kix. We want to go ahead and get started with the introduction of each of our businesses today. And that was, the video was very good and we were very appreciative for that video this morning. I do want to start with you, Dr. Sheila Belton, game and co-owner of Ivy's Health Solutions. Tell us just a little bit about what brings you here with us today. Good morning, everyone. I'm Sheila Belton, nurse practitioner, co-owner of Ivy Health Solutions. We are a nurse practitioner primary care office. And when I say nurse practitioner, it's very rare in Columbia to own a practice as nurse practitioners. But thanks to OBO, we are open. We are located at 4100 North Main Street here in the 2903 zip code. Our office phone number is 803-814-2112. And we are accepting new patients from the age five, all the way up to the geriatric population. We provide primary care, acute care, DOT physicals, pretty much anything that patients need. Thank you very much, Dr. Sheila Belton, game and for that introduction. And we look forward to talking to you more in the conversation for the panel discussion today. And congratulations on the success and location of your business in the 2903 because there was really kind of a void. Not kind of, it was actually a void in terms of being able to get the kind of service that you provide. And it has added such tremendous benefit to that community. Uptown Gifts on Main, thank you very much, Ms. Cormier for being with us. Ms. Michelle Cormier, owner of Uptown Gifts on Main, it's not easy to operate a business on Main Street and to be able to afford and navigate through a number of difficulties, especially during uncertain times. Michelle, are you with us? So unfortunately, Cynthia, Michelle is short staff today which is an issue entrepreneurs have. I'm sure everyone's familiar. So she sends her address that she was not able to join us, but she did contribute to our prizes and we're excited to have her as part in our local economy at Uptown Gifts on Main which she is not here today. Okay. All right, Lance Brown. Lance Brown and those guys from Rhino Medical. Now a number of people have been reading a lot about them and their success. And I know you guys are very proud of the success of these businesses. Aren't you guys, Ms. Triggers? Hey guys, I'm Lance. Lance Brown, CEO, President of Rhino Medical Supply located right here in Columbia, South Carolina and LA at Introduce Himself. Hello everyone, I'm the Chief Operating Officer here at Rhino Medical Supply. I'm glad to be here with you guys. We're glad to have you guys with us too and look forward to hearing from you. Is Ms. Brown available to give us a couple of words before we get going? Good morning. Hey Ms. Brown. Good morning everybody. I am probably the worst person with technology but I'm learning. Yes, I'm Tizema Brown and the creator and owner of Sunrise Artisan Bath & Body located at 710 Saluta Avenue in five points, shout out five points. And yeah, we make everything on site, all Bath & Body products, anything that you can pretty much imagine that you would be putting on the body we make right here. And it's all made locally. And so I'm honored to be here as well. So thank you for the invite. Absolutely, and we look forward to hearing from you. Okay fellas, you guys from Cola Kicks LLC. Mr. Patrick, Mr. Agilmore introduce yourselves and we'll get on into the conversation. Yeah, what's going on guys? I'm Adam Patrick. I'm Josh Kilgore. Oh yeah, we're the owners of Cola Kicks located in five points as well. Shout out five points. Yeah. Yes, we've been in business about three years, four years going smooth, three locations now and we're excited to be here. Well, awesome, let's move into our conversation. And some of the things that people wanna know from all of you panelists is being resilient during this particular time and how you've been able to do it. I do wanna start with Rhino Medical. Can you talk to us about the ways that you all were able to capitalize on the current environment that we find ourselves in and then meeting the need of a public that wasn't quite sure what they needed but was scared at the time. You guys have made tremendous headway in that area. Sure, thanks for the question too and thanks for having us. Our business was started during and because of COVID. So there's one of those unique opportunities that prior to COVID we had zero experience in this particular industry. So we were, you hear the term like building this the plane as you fly it, it's kind of how we were doing it, learning something completely new every day from logistics to the actual industry, medical products, devices. But we recognize the need and it was really based on longstanding relationships. One of our partners, Tripp Robinson had 20 plus years of medical sales. We had another business with Swight Fast and we still have it's credit card processing. I had 13 plus years at the bank with Wells Fargo. Elliot will speak. He had manufacturing experience, HR. So it was like a perfect collision course with past experiences, with opportunity based on relationships that we've had longstanding and they gave us a foot in the door and the industry typically has a higher barrier to entry. I'm asking how, I'm sorry about that guys. How have our customers responded across the country to the product that you're offering and why do you think that, why do you think the success was so great so quickly? Elliot, did you want to take that or? No, I, no, I'll absolutely take it. I, first I think especially in our industry and during this time of crisis, transparency, uncertainty goes a long way. Our customers wanted to know that we had their best interests at heart and we didn't know everything again when we didn't pretend to know everything and when they felt like we were a true business partner and it wasn't transactional, they felt like we were a part of their team and so I think for us that went a long way to securing those relationships and initially, we didn't serve the everyday consumer. We were really focused on those institutions and once we built our supply chain where we thought it was ready, we were actually featured in the New York Times and we were not set up to help individuals in the community and I think we got 50,000, over 50,000, over 50,000. Immediately after that publication. And we had no way to distribute to the public and so we worked really quickly to develop a online e-commerce solution or we could bring in orders and so some of the stories that we've heard was heartbreaking and for us that's kind of always been our purpose is to support underserved communities and so that kind of aligned with that and so just having a business of purpose was really important for us. Okay fellas, one last question. Your ability to respond very quickly to the need that emerged right after that New York Times article was kind of make or break. Can you talk to us about the significance of being able to respond quickly to the need that you actually created with the exposure generated by the market? I think the biggest thing is that we had been developing a robust supply chain of domestic manufacturers and a lot of our competition and competitors or peers were still relying on manufacturing outside of our country. So because we had a domestic supply chain Lee Tom's word, it didn't exist. So we didn't have to worry about months for prior to get here. So we were able to respond fairly quickly because we had a pretty solid supply chain domestically. And I'll continue with the line of help. We're gonna put it now to Dr. Sheila Belt and Gaiman as we talk about, as Rhino talks about the need to respond quickly to emerging needs as they emerge that seemingly looks like what you guys have been able to do with IV health solutions, particularly choosing an area where there wasn't a lot of foot traffic already and answering a demand that many people were unaware of was there, but you knew. Yes. That's about Gaiman. Yes, we are in the 29203 area, which we know is an underserved zip code. So part of our commitment is to be able to provide access to quality health care among those that have a decreased access to care among those that we know have suffered with health disparities. So we decided to open in the 29203 area to bring quality care to be able to reach out to community that looks like us so that we can develop those relationships and that trust that's needed. We do know that a patient that trusts us will be more adherent to treatment plans. And with treatment plans, we know that we will, they will receive better health outcomes. We also know that they will engage in preventative care, which will most of the time decrease those chronic diseases or to decrease the effects of the chronic disease. So serving our community, serving the 29203 area as well as the surrounding areas, we're looking to really increase the access and improve health outcomes. Dr. Arbelton Gaiman, I know your challenges, I know their challenge is to do what it is that you do. And I know that you've become an expert in overcoming those challenges and addressing them before they become big enough to be problematic. Can you talk to our businesses about that and the valuable lessons you've learned along the way? Yes, when we first started, we opened in January. So we opened during a time where the pandemic was just really on us. We opened up with grand ideas, but we have had a decrease, unfortunately, in patient flow. And we know that's related to patients not wanting to come into the office. And unfortunately, a lot of the minority population, they just don't have access to technology. So the virtual visits is not something that they can connect with. So we've been out there trying to let people know that we are here, we are open, we are adhering to the COVID guidelines, keeping the office clean, hand sanitizers wearing the mask so that the patient can feel comfortable coming to the office. And we know that with decreased patient flow comes decreased cash flow. So we've been very careful to be mindful of how we're spending the funds that we did receive from the loan that we received through OBO. We know that we still have to be committed and we are committed to continue to serve. We've had some difficulties, of course, with connecting with manufacturing companies or potential clients, because we know that we need to establish trust and establishing trust is done better when it's face to face versus on the phone. Sometimes when you call on the phone, you just miss connecting with the person that you need to connect with to establish a relationship. So it has been a challenge. I am a very transparent person. I am looking to continue to push forward though because we're gonna be a success and we are going to increase access and the healthcare for the community. Wow, wow. Thank you very much for responding to that. I'm pivoting now to Cola Kicks LLC, the place with the most foot traffic in town. Get it? Anyway guys, anyway, we're so delighted to have you here. You know, when word got out that you guys were there with the kind of business that you have, I think it immediately got the attention of a number of people in the market. Talk to us about the significance of having classic collectibles the way that you do and who does your business appeal to? Yes. So our business, well, thanks for having us here first, but our business appeals to a good bit of people. Predominantly males, I'd say ages from 15 to 50 years old and it's been going well. We've got a lot of relationships, just a lot of friendships. The sneaker community is like a whole different world if you're not familiar with it. Like people, you know, I know you see the lines probably out in five points on Saturdays and we do our Saturdays. Still we have about a hundred people lined up some days and it's just people are obsessed with these shoes and their collectible items. And it's just a, it's a way to, it brings whether you're white, black, Hispanic, no matter where you're from, all ethnicity, ages, people come together. And it's just really cool that we've kind of brought that to the city. And yes, we're really loving it and enjoying it, but. Okay, so who's Adam and who's Josh? I'm Adam, Josh. So, okay, Josh, when you hear people like Chris Hightley from early and talk about being a student at USC in 1984 and having a big idea like map questions, you guys are in 2021 having a big idea and starting a business right out of the school. You see synergy there and are you encouraged by it? Yeah, absolutely. When we started the store, I was a senior, Adam was a junior and we started it. I don't want to necessarily stay on a whim because we took it serious, but we were like, well, worst case scenario, we might, it might look good on a job resume when we graduate. And then back that year kind of went quick. We gave up our last couple of years and years in college, but at this point it was worth it. Decided to both go full time after we graduated and really we have a significant hold in our specific niche market and we want to roll with it because it's just going to grow up. So in terms of your location, talk to us about how you chose your location. And do you think that was strategic in terms of your business success so far? Yeah, absolutely. So we started on Rosewood in 2017 and honestly at that point, two kids in college, we didn't have a lot going for us. So not any financials to show or anything like that. So we took what we could get there, but then within a year, we moved to five points and we were honestly eating Chick-fil-A and looked up across the street and our landlord was putting up the available sign and we were like, we need to move. This is perfect. He had already gotten a bunch of calls, but at that time and we were there Monday morning before he said we could get there. And so like we were waiting, we knew it was perfect. It was a huge space that we had no intention of going to at the time. We couldn't fill it up at all, but we took a chance on it and now it's perfect. We couldn't have it any ask for anymore. Okay, we got a couple of questions from the audience for both Adam and Josh. Two things, the most expensive collectible that you sell and also your success with Instagram and your large Instagram presence. We would like for you all to talk about that, the most expensive collectible that you sell and your success on Instagram and how that fits into your business model. Gotcha. I'd say the most expensive shoe that we have is a Jordan 5. It's the Oregon Duck. Jordan 5 is only like a handful of them ever made and it's signed by Tinker Hatfield. He's designed basically all the Jordans that Michael played in and everything. So it's brand new and signed by him. We're, Paris have sold like that without a signature for about $20,000, but with the signature from him, it's estimated to be valued at around $30,000, $35,000 for that one shoe. So that's pretty cool. We also have a couple other like shoes, not necessarily that high, but a good bit in the 10 to $15,000 range per shoe. So that's pretty cool. But Instagram has been, I mean, it's been huge for our business. We, I think we have around 40,000 followers on the Columbia page and then Charleston's getting up there and saying with Augusta as well. So it's huge. People are very, you know, they're interacted with our Instagram and it pushes our website sales a lot and we do, you know, like story sales and just post videos and yada, yada, yada about our business and people are just really engaged in it and it's been a huge success in our business. And that's what carried us specifically through COVID because without it, when we had to close our doors and we weren't getting that physical foot traffic, it was a way for us to still get our product out there and make little one minute skit videos that people could share around and everything and appeal to our online audience that way. So that definitely, I don't wanna say it saved us, but it saved us through the pandemic for sure. Okay, Zima, I'm coming to you in a minute, but before I can't help but see Elliot nodding his head in agreement as these guys are talking about cola kicks and I wanna pivot to him and to Lance to see if they wanna say anything about this business, why it's their business and why it's important. And also Rhino Medical also has a tremendous online presence that has also been helpful in your business success. So anything you guys wanna add? Well, first, I think it was probably me that was nodding because I love cola kicks. I spend money there. I have to sneak in there without my wife knowing it, Tom's and add the, I call them caskets. So I had the shoebox to the collection. I got so many now that she don't know what I had a new one. So now their business model is awesome for them to be so young and already have figured it out. It's amazing in itself. And it takes some people a lifetime to kind of get to where they are from a business standpoint, but they have awesome business not supportive. So that's why I was nodding, I agree. Thank you guys. Thank you guys. Okay, so I wanted Rhino to talk a little bit before I go to Zima, talk a little bit about their online presence again and why that's been important. So I think it's inspirational to a lot of people. Yeah, so Elliot, he hit on it earlier. The online presence wasn't even part of our plan because we sell the institutions like hospitals, healthcare systems and schools of all shapes and sizes are core business. And then when the New York Times article hit, we had 50,000 hits that same day. And crazy as it sounds, the best thing that happened to us is that we didn't have a way to receive those orders. And we got over a thousand inquiries from our website with people from every state. One lady, she had stage four cancer and she just wanted a protective mask to wear in and out between her treatments. And because of the access to medical grade masks and not fives were not readily available, we offered medical grade masks to the general public. So it gives consumers like you and I the ability to buy a thinnet mask that our healthcare heroes rely on. And so he just created a market and it took off. And we went from 35 states, like 50 states in like two weeks. And now it's a piece of our business that's just there, nothing like Amazon, but every day we have our guidance over logistics in our warehouse. We get Shopify orders and it just deans through today. And then we pick them and we pack them and we ship them all over the country. And then I would just also say having a way, especially the online presence, having a way to connect to the customer because in our particular field, medical supplies are foreign to everyday consumers. So how do we educate them? How do we build trust with them for them to know that they're getting something that's gonna protect them? So having the ability just to communicate and stay connected to them, we found that is really important. And then obviously the customer service piece of that is paramount because... The last one, I wanna add one thing when you finish, I'm sorry. No, go ahead, Lance. No, so another thing too, just so when you think about like the way that the COVID cases were surging and if someone in your household got COVID, it was another, typically another family member that was caring for that sick member in your house and they didn't have the proper protection to care for their loved one. So if you had a loved one, whether it be your wife or your husband or your kid, they had COVID, you were walking around caring for them without the proper masks, gloves, the needed PPE to actually protect themselves from COVID. So being able to get those type of goods into the homes of everyday people actually helps protect them while they're caring for their loved one. So that was another big piece and why it's so important to be able to get to the general public like we can. Tosema, I'm pivoting to you now and Sunrise Artisan Bath and Body now. It's been, entrepreneurship has been flowing through your veins for a long time. So congratulations on your success. Thank you. To the extent that you have used online efforts in addition to the walk up traffic and the loyal customers that you've had over the years, what would you like to say about that? Well, I'm listening to everyone talk about having to pivot particularly during COVID. And for us, the first thing that happened for me was a lot of businesses and five points had to shut down because they weren't considered essential. And obviously we make soap. And when I say we, I mean me, but making soap, so I could have stayed open but there was something that just made me feel like I didn't want to keep my brick and mortar open when everyone else down here had to close and nobody knew what was going to happen. So we closed. And I don't know if that just created good karma if people were shocked that I closed when I didn't have to close. But what it did was it created the opportunity for people to shop with us online. And as a result of people shopping with us online, which the original online store was just created as a marker for the brick and mortar. So it was just a pointer. It looked like something my five year old granddaughter could put together. And of course with the support of the city with that funding, we were able to create a viable online business. And more and more people started telling people, hey, you know, summarize artisans support local business but what happened was that spread it out and the online business continued to grow and continued to grow to my amazement. And as you can tell earlier, I'm really not that good with technology. So, you know, I had to spend a lot of time learning things and surrounding myself with people who understood technology a whole lot more than I do. And it just grew and expanded from there to my surprise to the point where as you mentioned earlier, we shipped to 48 states out of 50. And when I say ship, I don't mean just one. I'm just saying overall we've shipped to 48 states and 14 countries and still counting. You know, I love the audience that we have for today's OVO's event because there's a mixture of old heads like us, Tizema, and a number of newcomers. And so being able to, in a way, the way that you are, being able to pivot and meet the demand based on the new avenues for being able to do that, how have you come to that? Have you been, you know, you mentioned you're not great in technology, but it sounds like you found a way to get it done anyway. You know, I'm a big believer that you can learn most anything and right now and in this age, it's even easier, it's a whole lot easier to learn the things that maybe perhaps 10 years ago, you'd never have access to. So, you know, for me, because I have that mindset that I can learn anything, that helps a lot, but I'm also aware of where my weaknesses are. And I think that's really important too. And so I tell people, if you can't afford to hire out your weaknesses, then you need to make friends with people who are good at your weaknesses. Because by default, you'll start picking things up. So, I really am not that great with technology, but I have a whole crew of young people, like the young guys at Kola Kicks that work here. And so they pretty much keep me up on the importance of social media. Like I never thought about Instagram. I never thought about TikTok. I just got comfortable with Facebook. But they're the ones who really pretty much are now moving more in that direction and kind of, I don't want to say dragging me along. Let's just say you're headed in that direction with them. Yeah. Right, you know, because Tzema, it's important that we, and Chris highly mentioned this earlier today. We have to pay attention to the environment that we're in and I know a number of the businesses that are online with us. I see you shaking your heads up and down. You know, we have to pay attention to the environment that we're in and see how we can continue to be relevant in those environments and also create new ideas and push them forward. And because those are the things that keep entrepreneurship alive. You know, people aren't just going to come to us because they like us. They're going to come to us because we're offering a service or a product that they need or subscribe to at that particular time. And so it's important that as entrepreneurs that we are clear eyed and un-ecotistical about that in terms of what we do in terms of servicing and delivering the product to make sure that the client or the customer has everything that they need to be able to excel in that space. So this is your minute to say something about the wonderful fragrances that you have and why it's important that we find you. So let me just say this really quick first because I think what you said, I don't want to overlook that. It is important to offer something of quality. One of the things that we say here, it's all about integrity, resilience, and you have to be willing to step outside of the box, but for us customers, everything. So summarized artisan isn't just about me as the creator and the owner. Summarized artisan literally for me in my mind is about community. It's about the community. So when I'm creating, if I decide to create something new, the first thing that I do is I include the customers, the community by asking them, what do you think about this? Give me your feedback, try this for me. Let me know if you think it's something good because I am a big believer that no one alone is successful, that it takes literally an entire village. So how do we get people to find out about us and coming to the store shop with us online? Honestly, I think because we have a reputation of how we treat our customers and new customers and people know if you're authentic, it's more word of mouth. You know, that old, old saying that word of mouth is the best advertising, I can attest to that. It truly is, it's other people because most people don't know this about me, but I am truly an introvert. So I'm not the one that goes out and waving the flag and hey, I'm here. I love being behind the scenes. But I also understand the importance of being social. And I think that people know that my vision for sunrise is authentic. The money happened to follow. You do the work, eventually people recognize it. And thank goodness, I mean, the best, probably the best decision I ever made with sunrise was opening up in not only the city of Columbia but five points in particular because it fit what I'm doing if that makes sense. And the fragrances are amazing in here just to go back to that. Well, location's important, you know, as we've heard from all of our guests, location's important. Sometimes location is online. Sometimes location's important that we have a brick and mortar. In the case of Dr. Sheila and Dr. Sheila Belt and Gaiman over at Ivy Health Solutions, I know you probably do some telehealth, but I would imagine to serve the customer that you were serving, it's important that you be right there in a reliable space with a reliable time that they can visit you. And I think it's important that people also know that you accept everything. You got Blue Cross Blue Shield, Blue Choice, UnitedHealthCare, TriCare, Alina, Edna, Medicare, Medicaid, CachePang, and your services include acute care, chronic disease management and all this is just a blessing to that community because it's like having an urgent care, you know, right there in your own community in the North Columbia community and it's a community that needs that. And so need an opportunity meeting to me, that's the true formula for great entrepreneurship. Yes, yes it is. We are just so happy to be here. We are gonna remain committed throughout the pandemic and beyond to be of service to this community. Provide the healthcare that's needed. Now it also says that you do weight loss management. So tell us about that. Well, we have a weight loss management program. Not everyone wants medication. So we also do counseling. We meet with you once a month and give you all the nutritional information, dietary information, exercise information and provide some motivational interviewing with you to see if we can get a few pounds off. And with COVID-19, we've all put on some pounds. So we're here to help you redish your weight a little bit. Sure. Now you say that you're accepting new patients. This is a good opportunity to also have all of our businesses that are on with us. And we thank all of you guys for being on with us today. It's truly an impressive turnout today. So thank you all very much on behalf of OVO but you're accepting new patients. So talk to us about what your model patient looks like. Well, as you heard on the video, we do see patients from age five up until the geriatric population. So our model patient will be anyone between the age of five and the geriatric population. We are looking for those that are wanting care where we look at the entire patient. We do holistic here where we not only look at the patient but we also look at the socioeconomic issues surrounding the patient, psychiatric issues surrounding the patient and anything that can increase health risks. We know that the physicians sometimes tend to look only at that particular issue when you come into the office. But as a nurse practitioner, we look at the whole patient as well as the family. We want to be able to determine what those risk factors are and to be able to deal with those risk factors to decrease your total risk and to make your healthcare better. We also believe in developing and establishing strong trusting relationships because we know that those relationships will increase adherence and adherence will decrease negative outcomes. So I'm a very passionate person. I believe in teaching. I believe in connecting with patients and we are here to meet the healthcare needs. So we are accepting new patients. And we ask that- Okay, guys. We ask that- Okay, guys. ... others to know. Thank you, Dr. Sheila Belton Gamer. Now this is the time that we're going to have closing comments from each of our guests today. We're going to start with Dr. Sheila Belton Gamer who's a Gamer who's the co-owner at Ivy Health Solutions and we're going to hear closing comments. And these are just 60 seconds long you guys from Tezema Brown owner of Sunrise, Artists in Bath and Body. Same thing, a minute, not each but total for each business. And we'll hear from Lance Brown and Elliot Haney. And then we will close out with Kola Kicks and we'll hear from Adam and Josh. And so again, thank you very much. On behalf of OVO, Dr. Belton Gamer for your success and you're being willing to share on our panel today. Your clothes, please. Yes, I just want to thank you, especially thanks to OVO for allowing us to open our doors in the 2-9-2-0-3 area. Again, we are accepting new patients. If you would like to join our practice, we would definitely appreciate that. If you know others who are looking for a primary care provider, we ask that you send them our way and we will be happy to take care of them and to increase their healthcare and their health outcomes. Thank you. A follow-up question to you, Dr. Belton Gamer, your co-owner, who is your counterpart? My counterpart is Dr. Sandra Randall. We have been nurse practitioners and best buds for over 26 years. So we do have that experience that patients are looking for. Okay, and thank you so very much for Ivy Health Solutions and all that you do. Your close to Zima Brown at Sunrise Artisan Bath and Body. Yes, thank you. So I do, I want to say thank you to everyone who participated as well as a big thank you to OVO for recognizing that I even exist. And just a little piece of advice to anyone out there who has a small business or you've been considering opening up a small business, nothing is stronger than your mind. And even when you, and you will hit the proverbial brick wall, we all do, that's a temporary thing. You know, you have to have enough resilience to move through it. And every level of success you hit, you get new brick walls, you have to figure out how to move through. So love what you do, have that resilience, listen to your customers, and just remember that nothing is stronger than your mind. If you're determined to do it, you will do it, you can do it, you will succeed at it. And thank you so much. Thank you so much, Zima Brown, Sunrise Artisan Bath and Body, and congratulations on your continued success as well. Mr. Lance Brown, Mr. Elliot Haney at Rhino Medical. Give us your pose, please. And guys, appreciate you guys being with us today. And again, much, much, much, congratulations on your success as well. Thank you. I'll go real quick, Elliot. So I real quick, celebrate your wins, small and big, be different, don't be afraid to make mistakes, collaborate, and from a community standpoint, give back when you can, what you can when you can. I think that's important too. So we really appreciate the opportunity. Yes, sir, congratulations again, Elliot. And two things, first, I would like to say I know we talked a lot about PPP, but PPE, but Rhino Medical is a fully integrated healthcare product distribution company. We have customers, including healthcare and hospital systems and surgery centers, acute care, non-acute care physician offices. We have over 50 practices that we serve just in the South Carolina area. So it doesn't matter if you're a large hospital system or you're an individual practice, we're able to offer competitive products and prices. And then just from a overall suggestion, I would say for us, we are a customer-facing business. And so when we think about COVID and how we've been impacted, we don't have those face-to-face touch points. So really, it's about building meaningful relationships in one of the ways we were able to do that this year was reaching out to our professional associations, our professional organizations and other programs like the City of Columbia Office of Business Opportunities that actually help connect us to other businesses in the area. And that allows us to build credibility because it's one thing to solicit someone by sending emails, it's another thing to be introduced. So really networking and using those relationships to help get your foot or a meeting setup with those businesses. So that's all I wanted to say. Thank you, Mr. Haney, and thank you, Mr. Brown. Again, folks over at Kola Keeks, congratulations again on your success as well. We've had four absolutely great businesses that we've heard from on our panel today, Mr. Adam Patrick, co-owner over at Kola Keeks along with Josh Kilmore. You all's closing comments today based on your participation, anything you would like to leave with our audience, gentlemen. Obviously COVID been tough and it's been affected our world terribly. But I'm a firm believer in everything happens for a reason. And we all lost people, but we all got stronger. We all learned from mistakes and learned what to do going forward. Somebody has happened again. So I think we're all stronger and better for it, but just keep your heads high and push through. But we're very, very thankful to be in this position where we're at, especially in Five Points to help build our community up and help build offering a product and service that is unique to the area and very thankful to form those relationships just like everybody else in this group, other business owners to talk about. You know, you have those face-to-face interactions, those online interactions, and if you generally care about what the person is saying and building that relationship, if they offer you in return their money for your product or service, that's just the icing on top. That's just what comes with it. So very thankful for that. And check out KolaKeeks.com, don't use your shoes. You know, you guys have found a niche and you're really working that niche. I think that's indicative of each of the four of you all on our panel today, Rhino Medical, as well as we didn't hear from Uptown Gears, so we want to shout them out as well. We also want to shout out Sunrise Artisan Bath and Beauty and also Ivy Health Solutions. You guys have wonderful examples to represent our small business community and we thank you on behalf of all of the small businesses that you're representing today for being a good example and for being willing to share your time and your commitment to our business economy. So we thank you all for that. You guys, we're going to now transition into the next portion of today's conference. It's really important portion of today's conference. It's a question, a reoccurring question that we continue to get and that we've had a lot today. And it has to do with being able to diversify our revenue streams so that we can continue to be able to provide good quality services to our clients. We're going to ask if we can get the Office of Business Opportunities to start for the slideshow for us. And then each presenter will have about 10 minutes, including questions we've got here today from the City of Columbia's procurement and contracts division, along with Richland County procurement and South Carolina Procurement Technical Assistance Center. At the end, the slides are up. I'm not sure, is your screen still black or can you see it now? We can't see them. Okay, perfect. Thank you. So these are the individuals that we have with us today and our Deputy Director from Procurements and the City of Columbia Procurement and Contracts is with us along with our junior buyer. Richland County procurement is with us as well today and so at this time, we're going to hear from the City of Columbia. We're talking about understanding the procurement process. Shannon, help me with the pronunciation of your last name and then we have Ms. Jewel Buck. Absolutely. Well, good morning everyone. So grateful to be a part of this amazing conference today. I have thoroughly enjoyed listening in and hearing all the innovative businesses that are right all around us. How cool is that? It is. Very, very. So my name is Shannon Lizeski. I am the Deputy Director with the Department of Procurement and Contracts for the City of Columbia. I would like to give a shout out to our Director who's also with us this morning, Sandra Middleton. If you wanna say hi. Good morning everyone. All right. Good morning. And we also have Jewel Buck who is also with us today. She's gonna be speaking a little bit and telling you a little bit about some of the, how to become a registered vendor. So our department, and I guess you will also be hearing from Richland County and some others on the procurement process. We are a support group essentially, a support internal service to so many amazing departments for the city. We have several of those departments that have all of their own specific needs. You know, I've been hearing this morning about COVID, PPE, information technology. We have a lot of those same types of needs, parks and rec. We have police and fire services. We treat our water. So we have a full gamut of all kinds of needs and we love serving them. And so as part of that, they have needs for goods and services, the products and the services could be consulting services, grounds maintenance services, you name it. So our charge in helping them is to make sure that we have a very fair and competitive process when we are looking for those vendors that can meet those needs, evaluating how they propose back to us. We have a number of ways of advertising our opportunities and some of those are traditional that you probably have seen with the state newspaper or South Carolina business opportunities. But we also want to engage and use technology as much as possible. We do have an e-procurement system that we use. It's called, we call it EBIT or it's short for EBIT Columbia SC, which is an opportunity for us to load the things that all of our in-using departments have. So if those are large situations, large dollar value, it could be large dollar value, but it could also be smaller dollar value types of needs to load that. So we will see that in the form of invitation for bids, requests for proposals, requests for qualifications. From time to time, we'll also see requests for information that will come into this site. Before you go into this slide, the slide that's right before it, this has a snapshot of all of our contact information. It also has our website here on how you can get to the e-procurement site listed right there in the middle there. So wanting to make sure that we can alert you, there's two main ways, definitely going through this website. You can always go directly there. You don't have to be a registered vendor to do that. However, we really would encourage that you do because if you go in and set yourself up, create a profile, you have the opportunity to identify the different types of commodities of who you are and what you do well and how you can help us. And so in turn, when we have these types of needs that are being solicited, we actually will issue them under certain commodity codes. And if you are already registered under that type of commodity code, then you get to be alerted firsthand through an email process. So I'm going to not steal Jill's thunder. I'm going to turn that over to her so she can walk you through just how to do that. All right, Jill. All right, good morning, everyone. I'm the junior buyer here in procurement and contracts for the city. One of the main things that I do is try to get our vendors registered. It's very important for vendors to get registered because if we don't know that you are out there, we can't utilize you. And I think that Tazima Brown hit the nail on the head when she said that earlier about thanking OBO for recognizing that she even is in there. So this is a great way for you guys to let us know that you are out there so we can use you guys. So we highly encourage everyone to go out there and get registered if you haven't already. There's a couple of different ways that you can get to our online bidding system. As you can see here in this particular slide, we've made it really easy for you guys. You can go directly to this site. It's columbiasc.ionwave.net. You can put that in yourself or you can access this site also through our website columbiasc.gov. So once you get here, you're gonna click on vendor or supplier registration. You click that plus mark there. It's gonna walk you through step by step exactly the information that you need to plug in to become a registered vendor. You're gonna enter your company name, your phone number and contact information and make sure you accept our terms and conditions. The next slide that you see here, this is where you're gonna fill in your contact information. It's very important that you supply us with your tax ID information. You're gonna enter some user information and create a password, all that type of stuff. Normal registration type processes that you're gonna see when you register for pretty much anything. Make sure you enter a good email address. That is one of the things that is very common. We get questions about I didn't receive a notification that I've been, that my access has been granted. It's very important to enter a good email address, proofread it, just make sure you put at whatever.com that you didn't leave the M off of the end of it. Just slow down, take a second and look at it and just make sure that we're getting the information that you're putting in. Commodity codes, Shannon hit on that a little earlier. Make sure you put in all the commodity codes that apply to you. When we send out notifications through our email process that we're getting ready to put a solicitation out on the street for our vendors to take a look at, you are gonna get notified based on the commodity codes that you select. You can always go in and change those, modify those anytime after you're registered. You can update those as needed, but you're gonna get notified for the solicitations that we put out there based on these commodity codes that you selected. So if you're a catering company, I probably would not choose a commodity code that had to do with transportation. So you're going to get a confirmation as long as you enter that email address correctly with the.com or the.net or whatever it is at the end of it. You should receive an email confirmation from us from our department saying that you are fully registered and ready to be able to go out there and put in bids. So again, we're gonna let you guys know when we have a solicitation available for you to go out there and have the opportunity to bid on. So our process is really easy. Again, eBid pretty much walks you through step by step exactly what you need to do to be able to submit a bid for any solicitation that we put on the street. And again, Shannon and Jewel, where should we be looking at for those solicitations so that when they do, when they are posted, we know how to respond? So again, you're going to part of the registration process is to put in a valid email address. And according to the commodity codes that you select when you register, we're going to send out email notifications to all of those vendors that fall under those categories of those commodity codes to let them know, hey, we're fixing to have a party or whatever. We need some caterers or something to respond to these bid opportunities. So we'll send it to your email. And then finally, I've been to some conferences where your department is prominently, where your department has prominently participated so that you could give examples to a number of our small businesses about the kinds of contracts that are let by the city of Columbia. Where can we go just to browse around and get information? Shannon, do you want to answer that about the contract? Sure. So on our city website, so columbiasd.gov, if you go to our departments page, so there's a dropdown under departments and you can navigate over to procurement and contracts. It does start, again, taking you right back to this Ion Wave, EBIT, Columbia SCE procurement system. And there is award information there that you can look up to see who was awarded maybe the COVID PPE supply contract that was put out maybe earlier this spring or maybe last year. So you can go in and look for those intents to award, those statements of award. It will notify you or tell you there who actually received it. It's also a great place to go for shortlisting information. For example, if we have a request for qualifications that has been put out on the street and we're calling in for all of those companies that have qualifications in whatever type of need is that is going on there, maybe it's wastewater collection services. So that information comes in and sometimes we'll have a long list of people that will want to be considered for that. And there are times where we need to shortlist. And so you'll see shortlisting opportunities or shortlisting information rather, also in that same area. And then we'll send our awards. We want to thank you both for being with us. This is invaluable information for our small businesses to be able to know how to do business with the city of Columbia. And just watching your department and the opposite business opportunities work hand in hand to maximize those opportunities for small businesses has been a very rewarding and encouraging experience for me because I actually get to see it up close and personal. And you guys are looking for us. And so we appreciate that. Anything else you'd all like to add before we hear from Richland County procurement? Just say thank you again for the opportunity to hear it firsthand. I love hearing from the community and we love knowing like Joel had mentioned who's out there because we want to really diversify our list of vendors and making sure we're spreading the wealth wherever possible and creating just opportunities of lots of competition. That's very healthy and good for our community and we love that. So thank you very much for letting us be a part of it. All right, thank you Ms. Lizuski and both for being with us today. Thank you. We're going to move now to the Richland County procurement department. Jennifer Lillishkin is with us today and she's the procurement manager at Richland County. Ms. Lillishkin, hopefully I didn't murder it too bad. How you doing today? I'm doing really well and that's actually probably one of the best pronunciations anyone's ever done. So kudos to you because it's- I was practicing. Thank you, I was practicing. So talk to us about opportunities over at Richland County. You guys have a lot of them too just like the city of Columbia and we appreciate you being here to be a resource to all of our small businesses today. Some of our small businesses as they are indicating in the chat are already doing business with Richland County and many of them would love to know how. So take it away. Yes, first of all, I want to thank the city of Columbia. I've been to a lot of small business and minority business workshops and presentations and this is one of the most dynamic and exciting ones I think I've been to. So fantastic job with that. I also agree with Shannon. I have learned about some really interesting businesses and I've discovered that it's obvious I need to personally do more shopping in Columbia. So yeah, some of these shops sound fantastic. Richland County does have a lot of opportunities coming up particularly. There's a lot of federal funding. I'm sure the city has received a lot of funding as well and so we'll be looking at infrastructure projects and construction projects. Transportation is always a significant portion of our spend, professional services. So we do have a lot of opportunities and as the city mentioned, I would encourage everyone to register through our online portal. We just went to the system last year right at the beginning of COVID so the timing was impeccable. No more paper, it's all electronic now and I encourage everyone to sign up if you have any questions or you have any difficulties, let me know. If you need any assistance, if technology or access to technology, we do have an Office of Small Business Opportunities as well and they would be happy to give you assistance there. The portal is called Bonfire and so you can go to the link that's indicated on this slideshow and I'll also be sharing a pamphlet in the chat that everyone can download that will have this information and our contact information. Much the same as the city, you click to register as a new vendor. There is some required information that you'll need to include and that would include your W-9, that's your taxpayer identification form from the IRS. We also ask that you include a current certificate of insurance. We do have a requirement that all of our vendors have a workers' compensation coverage that's a requirement of our management and insurance so you will need to make sure that you have that on your insurance. If you are required to have a Richland County business license then you are welcome to go ahead and upload that as well. I say if you are required because if you are doing business in unincorporated Richland County that's when you need one. So obviously if you would be doing business in Richland County, but in the city of Columbia then you would need to have the city of Columbia business license. So I'm no expert on that though. So if you have any questions we do have a survey form and you can download that from our website and fill it out and submit that to our business service center and they can let you know if you need to have a business license and not. There's also a vendor declaration and all that declaration is is a yes or no and it just says that you are who you say you are and you represent who you say you represent and that you are allowed to make offers on behalf of your firm. Just basic information there. And thank you. Again, the entry point is just some basic information. Once you fill out this basic information you'll receive an email that you have successfully registered and that email will send you a link which will allow you to create a password which may be the next slide. Once you create your password again you'll have to put in that information that I mentioned which would include the W-9 certificate of insurance business license. You have any other certifications if you have any other small business or minority certifications you're welcome to upload those. You can also upload a contractor's licenses if you have any hazardous material certifications information from the secretary of state. Basically any information you wanna go ahead and upload that will assist us in the future for awarding projects. I do have a little asterisk next to required documents. These are quote unquote required documents however if you do not upload those you are still able to submit a bid. So don't worry that if you are a small business and maybe you're an independent contractor and you don't have workers compensation on yourself for your own company don't worry that you aren't able to submit a bid. You can still submit to the solicitation. You would just be required to have that insurance before we would be able to award. But at least you would know you were getting the award before you had to spend the money to get that required coverage. So even though it does say required you can submit through the bid process without having those documents attached. And then as I mentioned for the business license they're required in unincorporated Richland County and business service center we'll be happy to assist you with any questions you have regarding business licenses. And I believe there's some helpful links. Again, I will drop a PDF into the chat. I think I can. If I can't I will send it to the folks at the city so they can do that for me and that will have a contact information and phone numbers and fax numbers and all that sort of thing. And I think that's it. So Jennifer, thank you very much. Are there any relative dates or anything like that or parameters or anything that we need to be mindful of? There's certain times of the year you look for the list more than other times just so people have an idea. We want a light of fire under people but I don't want to swarm you with potential participants but it can't be stressed enough how significant our procurement departments are to us being able to secure contracts that can be very lucrative and very foundational for a number of our businesses. So if there's any relative dates or anything like that you want to mention to our audience? Well, our fiscal year ends on June 30th and so just prior to that probably about four months before that we tend to have a lot of work going on. People are trying to spend up the rest of their budget and get all of those last minute projects out. And then of course when the beginning of the fiscal year starts we tend to see some activity then as people have their new money. So those tend to be the busiest times of the year. I would definitely, I can't stress enough for everyone to go ahead and register in bonfire. We are adding some capabilities and visibility to the system. One of the options that you'll have as you register is if you see a project and maybe you can do a portion of the project or maybe you could be a subcontractor or a sub consultant or something like that you can actually express interest in that project. And what that does is provide the list to all of the plan holders for that project to say that here is someone who is interested in being a subcontractor. So we're adding that and we're also trying to improve some visibility for small businesses and minority businesses so that everyone can see who is available, who's interested, who wants to get some of that work and we can get somewhere that participation. Thank you so very much. We certainly appreciate all that Richland County continues to do in our community and continues to do to support small businesses. Over at the South Carolina Procurament Technical Assistance Center, Mr. Ron Connor is the state manager over there and he has a word for us this morning. Good morning. Good morning, Cynthia. How are you? I guess I could take the mute off. That's okay, Roy. We're so delighted that you're here with us. Tell us about all the resources that we need to know about as small businesses that we can take advantage of rather within the technical system. Well, first off to tell you a little about myself. I've worked in state procurement for 14, approximately 14 or 15 years and it was a common theme with some of the businesses that we work with. They did not understand how to do business with government. State government, local government, federal government. So when I saw the opportunity to PTECH, I thought it was ideal because it's to assist businesses in the acquisition process. PTECH, Community Technical Assistance Center. Next slide, please. The purpose of the PTECH is, and I don't commonly read from slides but I think it's important, it was established through the Department of Defense and administered through the Defense Legislative Agency in the effort to increase government contract opportunities for small and large businesses. Shockingly enough, the PTECH has been in place since 1985 and the purpose is as that just stated, to assist small and large businesses, primarily small businesses in acquiring government contracting opportunities. Many may not know the federal government is the largest acquisition body in the entire world. And the DOD awards cooperative agreements to the PTECHs through DOA. DOA, once again, is the Defense Legislative Agency and they're the administrators of the program. Next slide, please, on the PTECH. We're here and believe it or not, we've been here before. The PTECH used to be on the SBDC, we stand for Small Business Developmental Center and their house under the Dallamore School of Business. Once that contract expired, the School of Engineering and Computing picked it up and under the School of Engineering and Computing under the Office of Economic Engagement, we had the PTECH here and we were here as of April 1st and the purpose, once again, is to assist businesses. And our three plus, six plus months being here, we're assisting businesses and understanding how to contract with governmental bodies. So, I see all that the preface is by saying that in my previous role in procurement, many small businesses were not afforded opportunity to be awarded contracts for government because they did not have the resources, did not understand what the solicitation was, did not understand the pricing and the smallest thing they did made them ineligible for award. That's why we're here. I see. We're here to assist you. You may, some of you may have received solicitations from other third parties saying we could assist you in the process for a fee. The PTECH, our services are completely free. One of our services, if you see on the screen, we will review your solicitation documents with you so you can understand the requirements, make sure you can meet the requirements, submit your proposal and or bid. And that's going to assist with the procurement folks. You heard from the city of Columbia, you heard from Lexington, County. There have been instances where they received business proposals from vendors that they could tell did not meet the requirements or did not understand the solicitation. That's why we are here. You can contact our office and we will review it with you so you can understand when the best mission date is available or deadline is stated. You can understand what the requirements are. You can make sure that you submit the proper information. You can make sure you adhere to the qualifications requirements. Some may add for certifications, some may add for educational requirements. We're here to make sure that you can meet the requirements because performance is vastly important. Our services also include understanding the laws that may be applicable to opportunities. It could be cities, it could be state laws, it could be standards, it could be even contractual requirements. Make sure you understand those requirements are still treated with any contracting opportunity. There are certifications opportunities that some of you may not know exist. SBA stands for Small Business Administration. They are certifications for veteran owned businesses. There are certifications for hub zone businesses. There are certifications for women owned businesses where we assist you with understanding the eligibility of those certifications and even applying for those certifications. We have a CRM system whereas once you are registered with us, based upon the code, the federal government use NAIS code, NEIS codes and PSC codes, where they're established through the industry, the industry related terms or codes consistent to what state use and the city had used as commodity codes. Based upon those codes and key words, our system would do a search of every government database. If those words or codes come up, they will send you an email notification. They do the work for you. You don't have to go online to see what opportunity exists. When you're a part of our system, our system will do it for you. As I mentioned, there's certifications for small disadvantaged businesses, women owned businesses, hubs owned businesses, where there are set asides and sole sources that the federal government have, whereas they have goals they must meet, annual goals to do business with small business owners. And if you do meet the requirements and you are eligible and the government could seek your company directly and hopefully award you a contract. And we don't just limit the federal government, we also include state and local government. Part of our process is making sure our businesses understand that there are opportunities, the rewarding opportunities for you that also are available to states and local businesses. Some think because of Hurricane Ida, let me just do work with FEMA. No, the counties, the cities, and even local businesses may be a need of your services. But the call we had lately was FEMA, FEMA, FEMA. So the goal is to educate our businesses on all opportunities that are available. Our goal is also to assist you in marketing your business to federal, state, and local agencies. So that's the premise of the PTAC. This opportunity has been great for me because in my previous capacities and procurement, oftentimes there are requests for debriefing. And one of the conversations, the conversations normally include the fact that you didn't do a very good job of highlighting your skill set or your abilities. We're gonna assist you in that regard, making sure that you showcase what makes you different from every other company to the government. And also we are going to create a website whereas it's gonna be a one-stop shop. So government has small purchasing procedures. So if they're trying to, they're seeking quotes, they could kill two birds with one stone, but that better way of saying it, whereas they could acquire a contract opportunity with a business that also could meet their needs, they could meet their needs, but also be a small business. So they could meet both of those requirements. That's our plans. And even though we are a new startup, we are in position to the next six months to a year. We have objectives and we have goals and we are confident we will meet them. So ptechsc.org, www.ptechsc.org has a lot of information to the services we provide. That also has a resource page in terms of if you need assistance with sound registration or anything else, we have a lot of information there. And this is the first page of the website, we are gonna enhance it to make it more robust. Contact us if you are in need of any type of assistance in terms of you doing business with any level of government, local, state or federal, we could assist you. I wanna thank you so very much, Ron. We understand that procurement, it really is the key to us getting large state contracts and understanding of procurement and knowing what to do and when to do it is highly important and it's really reassuring to know that your office exists to help us double check our work to make sure that we're in line and ready to do what we need to do. We wanna thank Ron and the South Carolina Procurement Technical Assistance Center for being with us today. We also wanna thank the folks from the city, Shannon and Jewel from the city of Columbia's Procurement and Contracts Office. Thank you for the valuable information you share and from Richland County Procurement, Jennifer, thank you for all that you do as well and thank you for being willing to share with our audiences today because oftentimes when we're talking about getting business, it's important that we realize there's an older space where we can get business and we should know about doing business with the government, so thank you all very, very much. It is now time to be transitioned to our next topic. Before we do that, I wanna pause and see if there's anything that Melissa wants to add before we move forward. Yeah, I think Kalina had something to add regarding the city of Columbia and commodity that we procure. Kalina, would you state that briefly for us? Thank you, Ayesha. Just to kind of clarify what we all know, in the Minority Business Opportunity Directory, we do have a listing of all commodities that all of our city departments, including procurement and contracts and our community partners are listed to purchase. And I'm gonna stop the directory again in the chat, but if you miss it or you'd like to just have questions about it, my contact information is on the cover page of the chat. If you have any questions regarding the directory. Thank you. Thank you very much, Ms. Gignard. That's very, very helpful. Besides using examples of the businesses that are doing so well, we are very appreciative for the resources that you're bringing to the table and helping us to understand how to access them and then walking us through the processes to make sure that we have a good chance of getting access to those resources. And I gotta tell you, that's why you guys are meeting and exceeding your DBE goals consistently because of all the efforts that you're doing to make sure we know about these opportunities. So thank you so very, very much. And thank you to all the resources that you are bringing to us today in the procurement offices in Richland County, City of Columbia, and also the assistance that is offered on the state level. As we transition now to talk about our small business resource partners, I'm delighted to be able to introduce these powerhouses. Benedict College's Women's Business Center, Mrs. Cheryl Sallie, director is with us today. Richland Library, Ms. Diane Lucy, the business and careers manager, Mrs. Andrina King, workforce development specialist is with us, Mrs. Angela Brewer, business opportunity specialist with the U.S. Small Business Administration. We thank you each for being with us today and we'll start with you, Ms. Shat, Ms. Sallie. Thank you, thank you, thank you so much, Ms. Hardy. And thank you to the City of Columbia and all the leaders, Ms. Lindler, the staff. This has been really, really, really great greetings on behalf of Benedict College and the Women's Business Center. I've taken so, so many notes. I've covered up the notes that I had to speak from because it's so, so wonderful. Next slide, Aisha. But thank you so much. It's a delight and a pleasure for us to be here. Cheryl Sallie, I serve as the director at the Women's Business Center here at Benedict College. And we, like so many small businesses, we launched in the middle of the pandemic, we're a year old as of our official launch, September 2nd of last year. And we had to do like our small businesses. Our proposal, grant proposal was the initial plan. We took it, we had to immediately implement it, hit the ground running, develop the infrastructure, market, engage and market to the clients, serve the clients and so on and so forth. We have to wait, we're all the hats. We have to do what we have to do, but we're happy to be here and happy to serve. We are one of three HBCUs in the country that operate at WBC. We are an economic development organization serving our small minority women-owned businesses and a part of a network of nationwide community business and economic development programs. And I'll talk about our professional and well-trained business advisors. Next slide. And to summarize, this is a lot of narrative here, but just to summarize our purpose, our mission, our vision, in alignment with Benedict College's mission as a catalyst for economic development, the WBC serves as the first gender-focused statewide entrepreneurial initiative for socially and economically disadvantaged small and minority-owned businesses throughout the state of South Carolina. Our vision here is to be a gateway out of poverty for our women-owned, particularly our women of color entrepreneurs. And to help them to start their businesses, grow their businesses, take that leap of faith into and on this business journey. So we want to make sure that we do everything we can to provide the tools, the information, and the education, the training that they need. Next slide, Aisha. And a part of that is to, at the end of the day, leave a legacy for their families. Leave a legacy in this community. So we're here to serve and have impact. This is just an overview of our staff. We have a great staff and collectively, it's probably 60 years of experience. We are, as Chris mentioned, early on, probably serial entrepreneurs. We haven't been afraid to start businesses. So we share all of our knowledge, all of our experience and our skills. So we're just happy to have the staff. We're looking for two more full-time positions to a full-time business manager and another business resiliency advisor for our newly awarded grant. And I'll talk about that a little later. Next slide. Who we serve, start-up businesses as well as existing businesses, for-profit organizations, women, women of color. But while we do focus on women, we serve everybody. We don't discriminate based on race or gender. So we welcome you to come on. We serve all business industries, business segments throughout the state of South Carolina. Next slide. These are some of the services we provide, everything from business planning, so you have the idea. All right, so let's put that idea on paper. Let's put it on paper, let's plan. Let's see where you are now, where you wanna go, three months, six months, six years, 60 years and what are the steps that you need to take to get there? You know, resiliency, we talked about, that Chris talked about, we talked about in this whole pandemic, pivoting, you know. So how do you assess where you are? What do you need to do? And don't be afraid to make that adjustment. So we provide those services, resiliency, recovery, financial management. I am a stickler for making sure that you understand business systems and infrastructure. I always say, if you leave your business seven days, 14 days, 30 days, if your business miss a beat, you have a high-end hobby because businesses continue to run. So how do you duplicate yourself and make that transition to work on your business versus working in your business? But we provide the services, government contracting, networking, show up. Show up, learn every day is an opportunity, but you have to stay engaged in the community and network and collaborate. Don't be afraid to collaborate. Strategic planning, that's where we are now at the end of a year, taking a look at the previous year and that's what every business has to do. What do we do well? What did we do not so good? What are the weaknesses? And what do we need to do to strengthen those weaknesses? What do we need to pivot on? What do we need to embrace? And so we're doing what we advise businesses to do and how do we measure the outcomes and the results? And everything we do is at no cost. All the 101 consulting and all of the webinars and trainings that we've provided over the past year has been at no cost. So it's just a wealth of information and knowledge that you have access to at no cost. And I'm gonna tell you about some more of the services as well that comes through our partners. Next slide. And yeah, I know you can't read this, but this is just a snapshot of performance since we kind of hit the ground running probably over the last six months. We've touched at least 1,200, over 1,200 contacts and businesses through training, serving about over 200 clients and 14 entities, I think we have helped them to invest over $700,000 in their business, which may not be a lot on the big scheme of things, but it's a lot for a business that's trying to launch and grow. So we're very proud of that and to be able to say we haven't seen any of the businesses close. So that is really, really good. Over 300 jobs supported through our efforts. So we're really happy about that. Next slide. This is a sample of some of the workshops and training and tentative workshops that we are going to look to launch over the next several months. We have a partnership with Nexon Pruitt Law Firm and it's just a great partnership and opportunity. They provide legal services to our OWBC clients at no cost, no charge to them. So we're happy about that and we're gonna be doing some programming on business law, contract law, intellectual property, marketing, and so on and so forth, social media law. There are things that you're not supposed to be doing on social media and we want you to know. So we're happy about that partnership as well as the other partnerships, finance and banking, how do you build a bankable relationship? Business and everything we do is all about relationships but your financial system, financial planning and banking. We want to do some workshops and programming on that. This is our upcoming mobile unit. We're gonna take the Business Development Center, Women's Business Center on the road so that we can make sure we're reaching our entrepreneurs in the rural areas and we thank Boeing for sponsoring our business unit that will be ready to launch in January. Next slide. And the other things that we couldn't do it without our partners in South Carolina, the city of Columbia, as well as all the other partners that we collaborate with and we network with to make sure that we are serving and engaging with the clients. We are looking to also launch a mentorship program. I think Miss Goodwin is on the line, Roslyn Goodwin and we're so happy about that mentorship program. We want to connect our seasoned women business owners with our businesses who are ready to scale their business. So we're looking at women in business, women in different industries, women in media, Ms. Hardy, women in government contracting, women in medicine. So we want to really have a huge collaboration and community of women who can reach back and help our women business owners. So thank you so much for this opportunity. We'll have our, this is our contact information. Please connect with us. We're here to serve you. Thank you so much. Well, thank you very much, Ms. Cheryl Salas. Cheryl has just a long distinguished career in assisting small businesses to reach their full potential. And we want to let Cheryl know how much we appreciate her sharing the resources today. Give our regards to Dr. Roslyn Clark, artist, Kim Hunter, our very good friend, communications over there and all the other good folks over at Benedict College and the Benedict College Women's Business Center. So thank you very much. Our friends at Richland Library are waiting in the cut to give us their presentation. I want you to know, Angela Brewer, I'm coming to you too. Richland Library, you guys, our library doesn't operate like a typical library. They're truly a community service and a community resource, a community gym. Diane Lucy and Andrina King are here to talk to us about the library today over the next six minutes. Ladies. Thank you, Cynthia. First of all, I'd like to begin by thanking the city of Columbia for the invitation today. And I'd also like to congratulate Cheryl Sally on that mobile unit. What a fantastic resource for our community. So congratulations on that new service that's coming soon. I also wanted to tell you that we do have a special guest that we're gonna be introducing during our presentation. So stay tuned for that. So next slide, please. We're going to very briefly touch on four areas of free small business resources available through Richland Library. Our goal is always to help remove barriers for access to these resources. One of them is the Entrepreneur-in-Residence Program. The other is our Library of Things. Third is Small Business Programming. And the fourth area is Other Library Small Business Resources. So, which brings me to our special guest, Richland Library's newest Entrepreneur-in-Residence, Verschanda Pratt. Ro will be with us. Her residency started yesterday, so she's been our resident for all of one day. It'll run through January 15th of 2022. Ro, I know you're on the call, so I'd like everyone to join me in giving Ro a huge welcome. And I think she's gonna share a little bit about how she sees her role as her newest Entrepreneur-in-Residence for Richland Library. Okay, Ro. Hi, everyone. I am really excited to be here. And I think this is a fascinating opportunity. I often joke with the folks at the library that I am their biggest fan. It's one of my favorite places in the Midlands. So I am so honored to be the new Entrepreneur-in-Residence following behind some pretty dynamic people. I'm excited to bring my television news experience. I'm a former television news producer of 20 years. I decided to bet on myself and left television news to become a full-time entrepreneur. And my zone of genius is focusing on everything from visibility, because your visibility is power, storytelling, taking your idea to market, and everything it takes to help you become a successful small business and entrepreneur. So I'm very excited. As Diane said, my calendar is now officially open. This is my first speaking opportunity as my new title enrolls. So I'm very excited, but my calendar is open. And so I would love an opportunity to hop on. There's the information right there on your screen on how you can book some time on my calendar so we can help you be successful this year, even in the midst of a pandemic. I'm rooting for you. I'm excited. Thank you, Diane. Thank you, Ro. Yeah, we are just thrilled to have Ro with us. And just to let you know, her one-on-one small business coaching appointments will begin on the week of September 20th, which is next week. She'll be meeting with five individuals virtually each week. And she'll also be doing some exciting programming. So stay tuned for that as well. So let's talk for just a minute about the Library of Things Aboriginal Library. So originally our studio services department started out with four kits that customers could check out. And these were entrepreneurial items, such as a light kit, might be a podcasting kit, might be a camera kit. And this service just quickly took off. And we realized that because of the pandemic, we needed to add many, many other items that you may not think of as an entrepreneur. This could be something like a power washer, a lawn mower, even games for your children, because we realized that lots of folks had their hours cut back, some people lost their jobs. So what we did is we created this resource, removing a barrier of access. So to look at the collection, you would go to richelinlibrary.com forward slash library of things. The guidelines are pretty straightforward. You can check out an item for up to one week with one renewal. And the card holder is responsible for all the materials they check out from library of things. If the item is lost or not returned, those charges go to your library card and we can actually reserve the right to cancel if you don't pick up the item within 24 hours of your reservation because we have in some instances, many people waiting in line to check out these items. Next slide, please. So, okay, if you're 18 or older, you are able to check out equipment. You have to have a Richelin Library card in good standing which means you're less than $10 in fines. And if you have a computer card or a courtesy card, those particular types of cards do not have borrowing privileges for library of things. You would sign a waiver and all you need is your government issued ID to check out this equipment. Next slide, please. The other thing I wanted to quickly mention is that Richelin Library facilitates a monthly community partners meeting which is held on Zoom. We started this service back in March of 2020 and we were meeting weekly because as we all know, the pandemic really threw us a curve ball and I know Cheryl referred to pivoting. So this was one way that we could still get together and support one another, talk about status updates, upcoming programming resources that we provided for the small business community. Now we meet monthly and our next meeting is on Monday, October 4th at 2 p.m. So if you are a small business agency helping small business owners in our community and are not currently participating, please send me an email to request the Zoom link. We'd love to have you. So now, next slide, please. I'm gonna turn things over to Andrina King, our workforce development specialist who's gonna share information about the library's small business programming. Thank you, Andrina. You have three minutes. Thank you. Richelin Library's small business programming includes various collaborations with community partners that cover topics on marketing, 10 steps of starting a small business and financing to name a few. In addition to our artists and our entrepreneur and residents, our three previous EIRs from the library's field business branch were Karen Ari Jenkins, Kevin Williams and Shanice Cleckley. You may have also heard of One Million Cups, Columbia, which was formerly held here at Richelin Library. Due to the pandemic, the location has been moved to Noma Warehouse every Wednesday at 9 a.m. Next slide. We're excited to have an entrepreneur and small business Facebook group. The Richelin Library, entrepreneur and small business Facebook group was created last year when the pandemic first started. We wanted to create a space where businesses could bounce ideas off of each other, ask questions and find the tools and resources they needed to keep their businesses running during these uncertain times. We're excited to see that the group currently has over 2,000 members. Next slide. Richelin Library's small business databases. Richelin Library has several small business databases that are great resources for research and learning new skills. LinkedIn Learning is a popular database that provides over 16,000 web-based video courses, step-by-step tutorials covering creative techniques, technical skills, business strategies, and more. And what's unique about the database is a certificate of completion is awarded after successfully completing each course. Next slide. For Entrepreneurs, is a dedicated page on our website that provides resources to support emergent businesses at every stage of their development. Richelin Library is committed to offering a risk-free entrepreneur hub to support Midlands area dreamers, doers, and makers. Our library residencies. The library's button residency program connects the community with local working artists, entrepreneurs, and writers. It provides educational opportunities to the community that supports cultural and artistic exchange. In addition to building an ecosystem that sustains the development and growth of future entrepreneurs in our region. Does anybody have any questions? I don't know if y'all are taking questions at this time or not, but thank you so much for the time. Thank you so very, very much. We appreciate all of the resources that the library brings to our community. And you just seem to get better and better every year in terms of meeting the needs of the community. We appreciate what you guys do in the small business space. And certainly congratulations to Rishanda Pratt for being the artist in residence or the business in residence for this month. So thank you guys very, very much for being here today. We're going to hear from Ms. Angela Brewer with the U.S. Small Business Administration. She's a business opportunity specialist and you're our last speaker for today. Angela Brewer, thank you so very much for all that you've done in the small business space. And thank you for being with us today. Thank you so much, Ms. Hardy. It is a welcoming pleasure of mine to be here to tell some of you small businesses, those who have not heard about the EIDL program, the SBA has gone on. It's one of the last or it is the last program that SBA has right now. We've gone through the PPP that has expired. We've gone through the restaurant revitalization that has expired. So the only thing left now is the EIDL that expires on December 31st of this year. Next slide. There has been some changes. Well, let me talk a little bit about the EIDL. The EIDL is a 3.75% interest on a 30-year loan, a two-year deferment. That means if you are applicable and get the loan this year is deferred for two years, you don't have to make a payment for two years. If you have had a loan that got the loan last year, it's still on a two-year deferment. But those of you who have not applied or have gotten denied for some reason, there is still a chance. There has been a few changes that has gone on. We have the target EIDL and we have the supplemental EIDL. They're not on my slide presentation, but they are still available in order to get the target EIDL. You must be in a low-income, socially-economic area in order to apply. You must, I mean, in order to get that grant. It is a grant, it's not a loan. Your business must be in existence as of January of 2020. You have to have had a 35% decrease from 2019. It doesn't matter which quarter or which month, but you have to have a decrease. And for the supplemental, which is $5,000, you have to have had a 50% decrease. And we got, I'm the one that manage our general mailbox. And those are the questions coming in to us that I answered and I sent back to them that you have to have a decrease. If you did not, I got denied for the EIDL or the target EIDL, the supplement. That could be one of the reasons you did not have a decrease in your business income over that timeframe. Next slide. These are some policies, some changes that just took place September the 8th. I'm not gonna read over them. Aisha's gonna send out a PDF file to everyone who registered on the new changes for that happened over the year, I mean, September the 8th, but this is a list of the changes that just happened. Next slide. We always get the questions of how long it's gonna take. You know, what's the timeframe? If you are, if you're trying to get between one to $25,000, you don't have to put down a collateral. If you over 25 from $25,000 to $500,000, you have to put something up for collateral. And if they just increased it from $500,000 to $2 million, so depending on your revenue that you generated, your small business could be eligible for a $2 million loan at a 3.75% for business and a 2.75% non-profit. And as you see, you have to have at least a minimum of a 570 credit score for up to $500,000. You have to have a 625 credit score in order to be approved for those loans. Next slide. Here are the changes. I'm not gonna read over all this cause I know we're pressed for time, we've gone over time, but here are some of the changes that just happened, like I said on September the 8th, there has been a few changes that was made. Next slide. These are the NAICS code that the changes that was affected by the new changes. So just take a look, Aisha's gonna send this out to you. So when you get a chance, you can narrow it down to see if your business industry fought in the NAICS code change. Next slide. Next slide, I'm trying to get to one particular slide. Here we are. A lot of applicants call or they wanna know I applied for my loan, I applied for the loan, I have not heard back. If you're applying for a loan and it's been more than three weeks and you're eligible for less than $500,000, it should only take three weeks. If it's more than $5,000, it takes six weeks. But if you're applying for the $2 million, it's gonna take three weeks plus the six week, which is nine weeks. And as you know, we're now in the middle of September. So if you think that your business is eligible for the $2 million, you need to get on it right now because the deadline is fastly approaching. And if you don't get it done and don't get in the system and get looked at by a loan officer, it will not be approved because, and then money is slowly running out also, so we're fastly running out. So make sure if you're gonna apply, this the only thing the SBA has right now for the disaster, the pandemic. So make sure you get your application in now. If you need the application and go to COVID, the number 19relief.sba.gov, and that's how you apply. Make sure you track your application number. Here at the district office level, we don't have access to the system to approve any loans, but we can look in the system and find out what's going on, figure out. If you can't figure out, you can't get documents, we can upload documents, we can look in there and see what happened, what stayed your application and just call our office or send us an email and someone can look into it for you. I've been getting a lot of emails about unverifiable information. One thing that you all who don't know, the 4506T is the tax document that the IRS, that the SBA sent to the IRS, and they want to see what you submitted on your taxes. So they say there's unverifiable information because we get that a lot. That means that what you put on the application and what the IRS have from your 4506T, there's a request for your tax transcript does not match. So if you're getting that error message or getting denied for that reason, that is the reason. So make sure you don't make a mistake or you get a correct copy of your taxes and submit that because that's one of the main reason why a lot of people are getting denied for the EID alone. Last slide. This is my contact, you can go to the last slide. This is my contact information. My name is Angela Brewer. I am in business opportunity business. I'm working mostly with a small business trying to expand into the federal contract arena. I give classes on how to get certified. I go over the SAM woman on ADA and all the different programs, but I can't answer questions about the financial side or the EIDL. If you call our office or you email me or call me and have questions and I will get back with you. Thank you so much for having me. We just want to thank Angela Brewer for all that she has meant in our community over the years and thank you so much for the information that you're providing on the SBA and opportunities that are there. The wealth of information at the Office of Business Opportunities this year today is more than impressive. Thank you Sheryl Sally, Diane Lucy, Andrina King, Roschanda Pratt, Angela Brewer for headlining our segment today on meeting small business resource, meet our small business resource partners. You guys are invaluable partners and it's been a wonderful experience for me today. I know we've gone over a little bit. I'm going to turn it back over now to the officials at the Office of Business Opportunities. You'll be now hearing from Aisha Driggers and then of course, Melissa Linda Aisha. Thank you, Cynthia. This has been wonderful. You've done a great job of keeping us moving and it's a great conversation that we've had with all of our presenters and our panelists that we appreciate everyone for taking the time to join us today. We know for you to be here means you're not doing something else so we really appreciate your common effort. There are so many thank yous that we have, our OBO staff, Ms. Hardy. Thank you so much. It's always, it's such an honor to work with you so we appreciate that. Our keynote presenter, Chris Hively. He gave us a wealth of information. I like Sheryl have a page full of notes from that conversation so we appreciate it. Our small businesses, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you also for providing some of our door prizes. We really appreciate that and we'll be getting to that in just a moment. Also our procurement representatives from the city, Richland County and procurement technical assistant center. Thank you so much for joining us today. As always, we appreciate our business partner, Richland Library, Benedict College Women's Business Center and SBA. We work on a daily basis together to figure out how we can meet the needs of our small businesses. So we appreciate you taking the time today. Thank you, Rick Fitz with Fitz Production for our video. We really appreciate that. We are gonna get that out to everyone that attended today so you can watch that as well as a YouTube link for today's event. Also have the slides provided to you as well. In a survey, we wanted you to tell us how, how you think things went today and what can we can do to improve as we continue to provide these webinars to our communities. We wanna meet the needs of the community so it's important that we get the feedback from you. Also the City of Columbia Public Relations staff always helps us to make sure that we can live stream these events on our Facebook page and on the city YouTube. So we appreciate that as well. So as Melissa's gonna do some closing remarks and I am doing a number generator for our door prizes, it's an actual app that I'm using to generate numbers based on attendance. So you have to be in attendance to win. So I'm gonna just check all of these and see this here while Melissa does the closing remarks. Thank you, Aisha. Really just ditto. Cynthia, prior Hardy on Point Media. Jim Hardy, you all have done a fantastic job with this. Thank you for all of your help and your partnership to get information out into our community and to make sure that our resources are shared and people know about the free resources that we have right here in Columbia. Again, thank all of our partners. Thank our departments that have joined us today. For curing it, we do work very closely with Ms. Wright, Sandra Wright, Middleton, Shannon, Lizzynski. Also, I think I did pretty good with that, right? I did okay. I was the color Shannon, but we have a great team here at the city of Columbia and we're always willing and open to work with you. If you need any resources or direction, we've got some information or we've got some questions about business licensing. I will say this, if you're doing business within the city of Columbia, you do this in business license. You definitely need a Richland County license, but please make sure you go through Richland County to get that information. Great resource. Again, the county's always there willing to help. I do want to acknowledge Erica, I think she's still on. Erica Wei, yes, she is still on, she's needed, but I wanted to acknowledge her. She's with the Richland County Office of Small Business Opportunity. And again, they're a great resource partner as well. Pam Green is also part of her team. She's on the call as well. And I don't want to leave out our Columbia Chamber. And she actually put some information in the chat box regarding Accelerator Program, Small Business Minority Business Accelerator Program, and with a link to that information and also some upcoming network opportunities for you. She's on the call as well. I don't want to leave anybody out, but again, thank you to everybody for your partnership. Thank you to our small business community for your partnership. Because we know that as a city, we can't do what we do if it was not for you, your employer, your provider, your supplier. We really do appreciate you. And thank you for everything. And I'll turn it back over to Aisha for our great prizes. Now, I want to say our prizes from our small business community, they didn't have to, because we were willing to pay for it. But I don't mind spending money, but Tanya does mind spending money in our office. I love putting money into the community, right, Tanya? But they actually donated these prizes. And the size of the prizes are, I was just like, what? But she'll share that with you. And again, thank you all for everything, Andrina, Diane, oh gosh, thank you. Just our resource partners. I'm so appreciative of everyone and our small businesses that we highlighted. Thank you so much for your innovation. Thank you so much for your willingness to share strategies and tips that you're utilizing. And thank you so much for filling those gaps and finding opportunities out of crisis. Thank you so much, Aisha. All right. So our first prize is a one-on-one consultation with Chris Hively, the MapQuest co-founder, which I think will be a great wealth of information where you can talk to him one-on-one. And the winner of that one is Brie Maxwell. And I just look like Brie is still going here. Congratulations, Brie. We will reach out to you to get you that information to partner with Chris. Next we have our Sunrise Artisan Bath & Body gift box. Alyssa, I think you said that might be worth over $100 worth of products in there. And that has been really helpful. Yeah, I was going to say, I was trying to sneak some products out of there, just full disclosure. Ms. Brown, because he might not let me, so I just bought my own. Oh. Yeah, it's full. It's full. It's a full box, full box. So the winner of that is Carolyn Sawyer. So congratulations on that. I'm sure you'll enjoy those. I don't. Next we have a $25 gift certificate for Uptown 1 Main Street. They have lots of different products. And the winner of that is Lizzie Clemon. Make sure she's still on. Yes, Lizzie Clemon is still on here. So we'll make sure to get you that. And then next, Uptown also donated a $50 gift certificate. And that will go to Shamika Huff. Shamika's still on here. Good job. Congratulations, Shamika. Next we have Bang Back Pinball. And so that is a pinball kind of arcade over in the five points area. And that will go to Rodana Scott, so $25 gift card to Bang Back. Congratulations, Rodana. You're still here. Yes. And then they also donate another $25 gift card. And that will go to Linda Harvey. Linda's still here. Congratulations, Linda. Ron might want to share that with you. So congratulations on that. Next we have Kola Kicks. They provided a $100 store credit there. But I don't know. They talked about those $30,000 sneakers, but I'm sure they'll have something that'll cover this amount. And that will go to James Travis. Yeah, I'm here. Oh, good job, James. We'll be in contact with you. And congratulations on that. All right. Well, thank you so much. I'm excited. The deal. Okay, next, Moda Enterprises has provided Spanish lessons. So she said that's worth over $500. And the first, we have two of those. The first one will go to Roslyn Goodwin. Roslyn Goodwin? Yes, you are. Good job. So we'll get that over to you, Roslyn. And then we have another one. Angela. What? Carnita Wilson. You still here? I think I see her name on here. Angela. We'll be in touch with you for that Moda Enterprises. Yes, good job. Thank you for responding in the chat. And lastly, we have a $100 gift card from Hotel Trundle. And that is going to go to Ms. Tiffany Floyd. Congratulations. Hotel Trundle is a great boutique hotel in downtown Columbia. And I wanna go stay there at some point and have a staycation because it looks like a flood place to go visit. Congratulations, Tiffany, on that. Everyone, you'll receive an email from us so that we can coordinate getting those items delivered to you. Thank you again for joining us. We know we ran over a little bit, but we got some free prizes out of it. So that's great. We appreciate your time and your effort. If there's anything off of the business opportunity can do for you, we are here. We are a resource. If we don't know the answer, we will connect you with someone who has the right answer. Melissa just made a comment against Cynthia, you've done an amazing job. Thank you so much for making sure we flowed well today. It was a great conversation and we appreciate it. Do you have any final words, Cynthia? Just that this has been tremendous. I've learned a lot myself. It's always really great to join our colleagues in small business for these empowering kinds of events. And thank you for giving Unpoint Media an opportunity to participate. All right, everyone you'll receive. If you registered, you will receive an email with the survey, the presentation and all this great information that we've shared. So I hope everyone has a great rest of your day. Please stay safe and take care of each other. I do want Cynthia to stick her tagline for us. Okay. But I think it's very, very critical here. And I think everything we talked about, the information that is shared, it means a lot for Unpoint Media. Thank you. We just appreciate it. We know how important information is for empowering ourselves, our families, our communities because without the information, we're just not as sure-footed in our efforts. So we thank you for the opportunity to inform and empower. Thank you, Cynthia. All right, have a great day and thank you again. Thank you guys. Thank you. Bye-bye.