A partnership between LISC and Ally Financial has helped a Jacksonville, FL business incubator rev up its coaching and other support services for fledgling entrepreneurs. The approach is paving the way for owners of small businesses to pull capital into historically under-invested communities and build the strong networks that any business needs to succeed.
Ashlee Marie McNair launched her life-coaching business in Jacksonville, Florida a few years ago while working a 9-to-5 corporate job and raising two children. She quickly realized that she needed some outside guidance and expertise to get her fledgling business off the ground. McNair explored the entrepreneurial programs available in Jacksonville, but was frustrated by the impersonal, out-of-date resources many of them offered. Just as she began to lose hope, she found Beaver Street Enterprise Center (BSEC) and its new coaching program supported by LISC and Ally Financial.
“I finally connected with an organization and coaches who truly care about the whole entrepreneur – personally, financially, and business-wise,” says McNair.
Founded in 2003, BSEC is the premier business incubator in Northeast Florida, primarily serving entrepreneurs of color. Its two buildings are fully leased, with 48 tenants occupying a range of office sizes and sharing conference and event space. The majority of tenants are small businesses and entrepreneurial nonprofits that pay below-market rent, but there are some more established businesses that pay full-market rent to help support BSEC’s mission to nurture entrepreneurial talent. While these buildings have always hummed with trainings and networking events, there was something important missing.
“We had no in-house coaching programs,” says executive director Theresa Johnson, who took the helm at BSEC six years ago. “We would host other organizations to do workshops for our clients, and we would refer people to other organizations to get coaching, but we did not have the money or the capability to enlist our own coaches to help us.”
That all changed when LISC approached Johnson about a funding opportunity with Ally Financial, a digital financial services company committed to helping underserved communities with access to tools and programs that provide economic mobility. The new opportunity would enable Johnson to launch a coaching program that gives entrepreneurs the personalized, ongoing support that they need to grow and thrive.
LISC helped Johnson design the coaching program, which includes monthly one-on-one financial coaching and business coaching sessions as mandatory components, plus technology coaching for those who want it. (With the pandemic forcing many to pivot their businesses to a virtual environment, this optional component quickly became a popular offering.)
“LISC gave us the resources and the support, but also the openness to lead our own way and let our entrepreneurs guide us to where they needed to go,” says Dr. Valecia Dunbar, who runs the coaching program at BSEC.
The program – which has served nearly 140 entrepreneurs since launching in the fall of 2019, with 43 percent of current clients in business for three years or less – is open to businesses whether they have space at Beaver Street or not, helping to expand the organization’s reach in Duval County.
Lee Livingston, a former BSEC tenant who recently opened Rehoboth Soul Food & Catering in Atlantic Beach just north of Jacksonville, is among the first entrepreneurs to join the coaching program. A few years ago, Livingston was poised to move his business out of BSEC’s building and into his own bricks-and-mortar location but the pandemic killed that plan. “I was crushed and got into a rut and sort of gave up.”
Livingston’s coaches at BSEC gave him the motivation to find creative ways to drum up revenue and stretch his budget. During the first year of the pandemic, he kept his business afloat by providing lunches to a private school and doing catering jobs for small gatherings.
“I went through this program to get to where I am now,” says Livingston, a self-taught chef who got his passion for food from his grandmother. “I want to give a huge thank you and appreciation to Beaver Street for this journey. Beaver Street pushed me.”
Seventy percent of participants in the coaching program are “solopreneurs” including life coach McNair, whose consulting business helps working mothers exit Corporate America to start business ventures that can support their families and build generational wealth. McNair quit her own corporate job a few months before the pandemic to focus on her business full time, and BSEC has been a lifeline during a time of transition and uncertainty.
“I wanted to stay in business amidst the terrors of the pandemic,” says McNair. “I need guidance step-by-step to avoid sheer humiliation and wasting thousands of dollars.”
McNair’s coaches at BSEC have provided that guidance, starting with her finances. “Working with [financial coach] Michelle has tremendously increased my awareness as a newer business owner to monitor, track, and measure my personal finances daily, weekly, and monthly,” says McNair, who also got help from the technology coach to set up an online payment system for her clients. “This is an essential task that now trickles over into the business finances as well!”
McNair is now working with her financial coach to strengthen her personal credit, which is critical to accessing capital for her business. According to Dunbar, credit is an issue for a number of clients, and BSEC has made it part of the financial coaching practice to do soft credit pulls on clients three times a year to gauge progress toward improving credit scores.
While one-on-one coaching is the hallmark of the BSEC program, the weekly group conference calls convened by Dunbar nurture a peer network among participants. Juantez Tooley, who owns a local InXpress shipping franchise, is part of a core group of women who participate regularly.
“Weekly conference calls give me a chance to shout out my business, share my experience, listen to the experience of others, and ask topic questions,” says Tooley, who credits the program for helping her increase sales revenue by 400% in one year.
To sustain this kind of growth, Tooley needs to find the right staff but it has been daunting. And she’s not alone.
“Many of our participants are in a place to scale their business and grow it, but the staffing, getting people that they trust, is a challenge,” says Dunbar. There is no easy answer to the staffing challenge, especially at a time when every industry has a shortage of workers. Dunbar encourages clients to tap the peer network as a potential resource, especially solopreneurs, who can explore forming partnerships with each other to find creative solutions to staffing issues. The technology coach is also available to help people figure out what online platforms might be able to provide some of the administrative help they need in lieu of hiring staff.
Another challenge to business growth is finding sources of affordable capital now that private and government relief programs for entrepreneurs have dried up. LISC Jacksonville’s new small business equity fund, launched with funding from the City of Jacksonville, is proving to be a valuable new resource.
“One of the number one issues when you look at the data with entrepreneurs of color is access to capital,” says Anikka King, program officer from LISC Jacksonville, whose fund offers grants of $10,000 to $50,000 to help businesses implement growth plans. “Beaver Street businesses are good candidates for the fund because we know that they have the foundation to make a real impact with this money.”
Building an equitable small business ecosystem in Jacksonville is one of LISC’s strategic priorities, and the partnership with BSEC is an important building block.
Says King, “when you take the business incubator and combine that with the coaching program and access to capital, Beaver Street has a blueprint that other organizations can follow and find success.”