Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to the City of Columbia Office of Business Opportunities. Introduction to Business Resources with translation from Moda Enterprises. Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Aisha representing the City of Columbia Office of Business Opportunities. Today we're here to bring a workshop about the services this office offers and which are going to be translated by Moda Enterprises. First, I'd like to introduce our director, Melissa Lindler, to welcome everyone this evening. Hello, this is Melissa Lindler. Aisha, thank you so much. And I want to thank each one of you that are joining us today. This is a very, very important webinar that we're having today. We want to make sure our Latino community is connected to all of the resources that the City of Columbia has to offer. So thank you for joining us. This is going to be a great session, and we look forward to more to come. Thank you, Aisha. Bye-bye. Buenas tardes. Mi nombre es Melissa Lindler. Soy la directora ejecutiva de la Oficina de Opportunidades Comerciales de la Ciudad de Columbia. El webinar de hoy es de suma importancia para la comunidad latina de negocios. Y estamos contentos de estar hoy aquí y, por supuesto, de continuar con más sesiones como esta. I'm going to get started now. If anyone has any questions during the presentation, please put those in the chat. Para aquellos los cuales tengan preguntas durante la presentación, por favor, ponganlos en la caja de mensajes. Areas del programa, préstamo comercial, diversidad de contratistas y proveedores, asistencia técnica, educación y defensa, y programa título seis. I'll first start with our program areas. We have our commercial lending, which is our loan program. And I'll go over each one of these in detail in our contractor and supplier diversity program areas, our technical assistance, education and advocacy, and our Title Six program. Yes. Repasando un poco el área de programas, como ya lo habíamos mencionado, tenemos lo que es préstamo comercial, diversidad de contratistas y proveedores, asistencia técnica, educación y defensa, y además un programa título seis. And first with our commercial lending program is for businesses that are located within the city of Colombia. And those funds are available to offer financial assistance to startup and existing businesses. Next is our contractor and supplier diversity programs. We offer training and support for city initiatives designed to increase local contractors capacity to compete for government contracts and other procurement opportunities. We're also responsible for the implementation of the city's disparity study goals and objectives. We have a 15% citywide goal for all departments within the city of Colombia where they must use their discretionary budget to for procurements that include minority and women owned businesses. We also have our annual minority business opportunities conference that's that was held virtually last year, and we're planning the new one for this year in the upcoming months. And we also have our city of Colombia minority business opportunities directory, and I have a link on the next slide and we'll put a link in the chat as well. And then we have our programs to support the growth and development of our small minority and women owned businesses in the water and sewer industry within our eight county CSA. And those program areas are our mentor protege program, our Columbia disadvantage business enterprise program, CDBE, and our local business local business enterprise policy preference. In the program there is diversity of contractors and providers, which focuses on the support capacity for city initiatives designed to increase the capacity of local contractors to compete for government contracts and other procurement opportunities. We're also responsible for the implementation of the goals and objectives of the city's disparity study. Within the percentage, the goal is 15% for the whole city. Also, within this program, the conference is not about commercial opportunities for minorities, which was held virtually in the year 2020. We also have the director of commercial opportunities for minorities of the city of Colombia. We can put the link in the next slide. We also have programs to support the growth and development of our small businesses, minorities, and women owned businesses in the water and sewer industry within our eight county CSA program. We also have the mentor protege program, in which the professional services for the professional companies and construction companies. In addition, commercial companies of the Columbia disadvantage, CDBE for their English and the local business enterprise or LBE for their English. If there are any contractors that are interested in these program areas, they can contact our office and we will be happy to discuss with them the application process to be involved in any of our program areas. To exist at any contractor interested in all of these programs, what you have to do is to contact the office of OVO number one so that they can guide them during the application process to be part of these programs. Next we have our minority business opportunities directory. It was issued during our first virtual minority business opportunities conference last year. And the purpose of this directory is to provide small business owners and new entrepreneurs information they would normally receive during our in person event. The directory also serves the purpose of having information available to our small business owners and entrepreneurs who are interested in doing business with the city of Colombia and are our community partners. And again, we can offer a link to the directory in the chat. Otro de los programas es el directorio de oportunidades comerciales para minorias. El directorio de oportunidades comerciales de las minorias se publicó durante la conferencia de oportunidades comerciales virtuales de minorias en noviembre del 2020. El propósito del directorio es proporcionar a los propietarios de pequeñas empresas y nuevos empresarios información que normalmente recibirán durante el evento en persona. El directorio también tiene el propósito de tener información disponible para propietarios de pequeñas empresas y empresarios que estén interesados en hacer negocios con la ciudad de Colombia y o nuestros socios comunitarios. Más adelante les proporcionaremos un enlace para los que estén interesados en este programa. Next we have our education advocacy areas we offer business development assistance and courses for startups and existing businesses that are looking to grow and expand. And we include topics such as marketing, the use of social media, business plan development, finances, legal issues and more. In addition to that, we also in-person and virtual events typically due to COVID we've done mostly virtual events over the past year and a half. So in collaboration with our community partners, most of them on the call today, SBA, the South Carolina Small Business Development Centers, Benedict College Women's Business Center, South Carolina Procurement Technical Assistance Center, also known as SCPTAC, Richland County Library and Midlands Technical College. We also offer an annual fast track and next level trainings that will start in January and each session lasts about 10 weeks. Dentro de los programas de educación y abogacía se encuentran los de desarrollo de negocios e asistencia en cursos para negocios emergentes, los cuales estén buscando el crecimiento y expandar la cobertura de temas, incluyendo mercadeo, el uso de redes sociales, un plan de negocio, desarrollo de plan de negocio, finanzas, problemas legales y más. En persona o eventos virtuales debido al COVID en colaboración con otras organizaciones como los SBA, Small Business Development Center, Benedict College Women's Business Center, en departamento de compras y asistencia en el centro y los cuales todos se encuentran aquí con nosotros como la biblioteca de Richland y por supuesto Midlands Technical College. Anualmente también ofrecemos lo que es el programa Fast Track y Next Level, los cuales constan de sesiones de 10 semanas el próximo es a comenzar en enero. To offer information about upcoming webinars or any type of information that may be of interest to our small business community, we offer a weekly newsletter. It is sent out to a contact list of about 2200 individuals and it includes events, funding opportunities and helpful articles. También contamos con un boletín semanal en lo que es la oficina de oportunidades de negocio o obvio por socials en inglés. Dentro de este correo electrónico semanal el cual es enviado es enviado una lista de contactos de más de 2200. Esto incluye eventos oportunidades de financiación y artículos útiles para tu negocio. If anyone is interested in receiving our weekly newsletter you can email us at obio at colombiasc.gov and we will add you to that newsletter list. Cualquiera que esté interesado en recibir la boletín semanal por favor contacte la página de internet de obvio para poder formar parte de esta lista y recibir esta información semanal. Outcoming webinars of course today we have our introduction to business resources for the Latino small business community. In November, we are partnering with SBA to offer an economic injury disaster loan workshop on November 3. Then on November 9, we have scheduled a tax preparedness and financial documents for small business with Sheila Tutwiler Dawkins. In November 11, we are offering entrepreneurship for creatives with Casey Weitner. And on November 16, we are working with SBA again, along with our OBO loan officer Brett Whiting to discuss the financial documents that are required for anyone interested in applying for loans. Among the next events or seminars in the network, for example, today we are bringing to an end what is the introduction to commercial resources for the Latino community of small businesses. In November, on November 11, we will have a loan workshop for economic losses for two years, and ITL for its English. On November 9, we will have financial documents for small businesses with Sheila Tutwiler Dawkins. On November 11, we will have an entrepreneurship workshop for creatives with Casey Weitner. On November 16, we will have a webinar about financial documents for SBA with Brett Whiting. This is about official loans for an OBO program. If anyone is interested in registering for our webinars, we always promote those on our social media. We can be found on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram at Columbia OBO. Next, we have our Title 6 program. That's a new program to our area, but it's always been a requirement of the federal government that anyone receiving federal funds must make sure that they prohibit discrimination on the basis of race, color or national origin. In any program, our activity that receives federal funds are other federal financial assistance, which includes coordinating with the City of Columbia departments to ensure compliance and reviewing procedures and policies for any potential discrimination. I do want to point out this also includes making sure that we have a limited English proficiency program to make sure that we are reaching all of our populations in the City of Columbia through our Title 6 program. Next, we have our Title 6 program, which focuses on prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race, color or national origin in any program or activity that receives federal funds or other federal financial assistance. This includes coordinating with the City of Columbia departments to ensure compliance and reviewing procedures and policies to detect any possible discrimination. I also wanted to introduce the launch of our new OBO website. It can be found at obo.columbiasc.gov. We have a fresh new look that we're very excited about. So if anyone is interested, please check out the new website. Again, that website address is obo.columbiasc.gov. Con gusto presentamos el día de nuestro nuevo modelo de sitio web, el cual es obvio.columbiasc.gov, al cual ustedes pueden accesar y formar parte de todos los programas que anteriormente se han mencionado. All of our upcoming events, as soon as the registration is ready, can be found at the events link on this webpage as well. Cualquiera de los eventos que llevemos a cabo posteriormente serán encontrados en nuestra página web y por consiguiente la liga o enlace para poder suscribirse a ellos. Here is our contact information. We are located at 1401 Main Street on the fourth floor in downtown Columbia. Our phone number is<PHONE_NUMBER>. And our email address, again, is obio.columbiasc.gov. Although our building is physically closed, we'll be happy to set up a virtual appointment with anyone who has any questions. Or we'd just like to talk about their business, expanding their business or growing their business or what resources are available to them. We are happy to schedule a meeting to discuss those issues. A continuación presentamos nuestra información de contacto. Somos la oficina de oportunidades de negocio de la ciudad de Columbia. Estamos localizados en el 1401 Main Street en el cuarto piso en Columbia, Carolina del Sur, 29201. Nuestro teléfono es<PHONE_NUMBER>. Nuestro correo electrónico es obio, arroba, Columbia, SCC.gov. Para cualquier asunto relacionado con tu negocio, podemos agendar una cita correspondiente para cualquier consulta o introducción a los programas que ofrecemos. At this time, I can take any questions that you may have about the Office of Business Opportunities. En este momento podemos tomar preguntas para cualquier comentario, preguntas que tengan acerca de la oficina de oportunidades de la ciudad de Columbia. Hello, my name is Sandra, and my question is, is all of this only offered to businesses within the city of Columbia, city limits, or is it anywhere in Columbia? Thank you for your question, Sandra, to answer that. The only program area that is limited to city of Columbia businesses is our commercial lending programs. But anything else, any of our technical assistance that we can offer you, any training, also all of our supplier diversity programs, those apply to any business. There you go. The question is, if this is only extended to the program, the programs are only extended to the limits within the city of Columbia. The answer was that, well, the priority is the businesses that are in the city of Columbia. However, they also make a effort to reach and, above all, the purchase department can reach a little further in other counties. But trying to do business with the city of Columbia requires a process, like selling gold for the city of Columbia. This requires documentation, which can also be found in your website. And I would just like to add that, even if you're not located in the city, we may have a resource or connection that we can partner you with, whether it be lending institution or some of our partners, even some other ones on the call today. So I encourage anyone if you have any questions to please contact our office and we'll make sure to connect you with the right person. Inclusive, si no hay el tipo de conexión necesaria dentro de nuestra oficina podemos orientarlos y encaminarlos hacia nuestros partners hacia nuestras sociedades que tenemos con otras instituciones para que estos puedan asistir. All right. At this time, I would like to turn it over to Cheryl Sally with Benedict College Women's Business Center. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much, Aisha, and thank you all so much for putting this on and allowing us to participate. My name is Cheryl Sally, and I serve as director bringing you greetings from Benedict College Women's Business Center. My name is Cheryl Sally, I'm the director general of the Women's Business Center in Benedict College. Next slide. First, kind of summarize our purpose, our mission and our vision. Primarily we're here to create a gateway out of poverty for our socially and economically disadvantaged entrepreneurs by providing them with the training, the information and education that they need to start and or grow their business. And overall we want to help them to create a legacy, a legacy not only for their families, but in this community. So we want to do everything we can to provide the tools that they need to do that. Summarizing a little bit the objective, the mission and the vision of the business center located in Benedict College. Well, the objective is to provide equal opportunities for women entrepreneurs belonging to minorities, stimulating growth and development, overcoming disparities and equaling the field of play in all sectors. The mission is to support the economic prosperity of women and strengthen communities through services, business education and financial aid that believe and develop jobs and sustainable businesses throughout South Carolina. Next slide, please. So who we are, who do we serve? Primarily we help businesses all across South Carolina, small businesses, those are startups or existing businesses. For profit organizations. Our focus is on women, particularly women of color that historically experienced more social and economic disparities than their counterparts. So we are primarily funded by the small business administration and we are a year old one year old agency as of September 2nd. While we're new, we have an excellent staff of experts at the WBC where collectively we have over 50 years of experience. So who do we serve? Along with the state, we serve logically to startups and existing businesses, organizations with benefits of profit, women, particularly women belonging to minorities, and perhaps of color that historically experienced more social and economic disparities than their counterparts. All segments of the business industry and small businesses throughout South Carolina. A pesar de que en septiembre 2, cumplimos un año de existencia, colectivamente en el centro de negocios para mujeres de Benedict College, contamos colectivamente con un staff que nos respalda con más de 50 años de experiencia. Next slide, please. Let's talk about some of the services and Ulysses will go down the list of services, but our, we have core services and services as a result of the pandemic those covert services, where we help across the board, individuals learn business planning, how to pivot resiliency and recover from disaster, financial management, financial projections, so on and so forth. We want to make sure that our entrepreneurs and our small businesses really know business systems, they know infrastructure and to, you know, to to be able to navigate government contracting systems and certification. And we can't do this by ourselves, we depend on our big network of resource partners to help us make this happen so we collaborate a lot. Bueno, dentro de la siguiente diapositiva, los servicios básicos y programas que se ofrecen en el women business center in Benedict College y esto a partir de lo que fue COVID bueno pues ha sido la planificación y desarrollo empresarial y esto ha sido como como lo que mencionas. Como después de la pandemia. La aplicación de resiliencia y recuperación. Ante, ante desastres gestión financiera, acceso capital, herramientas y recursos, operaciones y sistemas HR resources, contrataciones y certificaciones gubernamentales, redes y colaboraciones, estrategias e implementación de marketing, planificación estratégica, estrategias de ventas y crecimiento, consultoría personalizada y gratuita. Next slide. This just gives a snapshot of our performance to date. For the year that we've been here what we've done things that we've done pretty, pretty good, but there's so much more to do and so many more people to reach but we have connected with over 1200 contacts and served over 600 and contacts and our clients throughout one on one counseling and the training workshops that we provided. En la siguiente de positiva podemos ver una mejor panorámica sobre el rendimiento de los servicios que hemos prestado, los cuales han sido nos hemos aproximado a 1200 prospectos, pero directamente de los cuales en cientos han sido instruidos en consultas de formación de sesiones, mujeres servidas, minorías servidas, sobre todo incluyendo minorías como los hispanos, nuevos contactos servidos, clientes de puesta en marcha en empresas atendidos, podemos ver la tabla que son 138, negocios servidos en áreas rurales 42, cojos en host businesses, los entrenamientos o sesiones informacionales han sido más de 30, contactos entrenados han sido más de 1252, financiamiento comercial adquirido, podemos ver la cantidad, nuevos empleos creados 98, trabajos admitidos 331, ingresos totales por ventas generados podemos ver la cantidad, cierre de negocios ninguno y clientes únicos atendidos 219, y consideramos que hay más por hacer, pero esta tabla nos acerca a la panorámica del rendimiento que el women business center at the college ha tenido a lo largo de este año de estar operando. All right, that next slide. This is some of the upcoming workshops that we're looking to host or cohost with our partners such as the city of Columbia community work so on and so forth. We partnered with next improvement law firm that provides legal services to our clients at no cost. We're looking to do some finance and back banking workshops all about building those bankable relationships also with Sheila top while docking docking bringing some tax accounting and bookkeeping co partnering with the city of Columbia. Last year we did a quick books four part series and we're looking to do that again this year at least two of those sections. Also with the small business administration doing the six part series on government contracting and certification and beyond that as well as business licensing you know what do you need to do to make sure that your business you're doing business legally in the city or the the county or the state of South Carolina. Dentro de los talleres y entrenamientos próximos a una tentativa bueno nos hemos dado la tarea de elaborar y colaboraciones estratégicas con business development corporation of South Carolina obras comunitarias trusty bank para lo cual bueno estaremos impartiendo talleres en derecho laboral propiedad de intelectual marketing derecho corporativo y bienes raíces lo que es la parte financiera y lo que es banking por ejemplo la señora Sheila va a estar dando talleres acerca de impuestos y comptabilidad y la teneduría de libros quick books en cuatro sesiones lo que es el licenciamiento de negocios algo regional en el aponte en el área de PD en un upstate con a municipalidades y los condados y ventas al por menor por parte del departamento de ingresos de Carolina del Sur IRS incorporaciones por parte de la secretaría de estado y también hemos creado una alianza con el SBA or small business administration lo cual hemos puesto en marcha un programa sobre contratación y certificaciones gubernamentales una serie que ha sido dividida en seis partes equitativamente. Next slide. Thank you. This is just a flyers to showcase what we've done over the past year and looking to do more of and that is showcase the businesses that some of our clients and this is the retail retail pop ups that we did back in March and April and those actual a few of those pop ups are now permanent tenants in our retail incubator and that's Benedict College retail marketplace. So you know one of the things that clients are challenged with is exposure so we're here to help them market and showcase their great products and services. Un ejemplo por medio de estos posters acerca de los eventos que los cuales llevamos a cabo de clientes que han solicitado nuestros servicios y los cuales bueno permanentemente pues ahora están teniendo una una operación a un nivel mayor y nuevamente pues igual los invita a lo que es hacer un login en la página de a woman business center de Benedict College para tener un mejor acercamiento a los programas y todos los eventos que ellos realizan. Next slide. And the next couple of slides will talk about a new grant that we were awarded by the small business administration and that's our resiliency and recovery grant. We were awarded the 171,000 but we also got an additional 30,000 and this grant is to pretty much be mobile to allow the WBC to be mobile and to Excuse me to reach our creative entrepreneurs in some targeted areas in South Carolina and those targeted areas the rural communities of South Carolina nor Charleston, Allendale, Dillon, Malboro, Lee, Bambur and Clareton. The next slide. The next slide. Well, we are going to introduce a grant or a new grant for women's business and women's business. The 171,000 that we received were awarded with additional $31,000 and we had a launch in September 2021 and this grant allowed us to develop a program in which this is mobile. And we focused on working with areas, especially in the areas that are rural, and the goal is to make sure that the Benedict College Women Business Center Mobile and Creative Entrepreneur Demonstration for MCED for its English. Expand the services to creative women and business owners belonging to minorities. As we already said in the rural communities, for example, in the city of Charleston and the Allendale, Dillon, Malboro, Lee, Bambur and Clareton respectively. Next slide. So this and we can summarize this, but it's two pieces main pieces to the mobile and creative entrepreneur demonstration. And one is going to focus on our creative entrepreneurs. Oftentimes they have a passion, but they get lost in the passion and never take time to learn how to package their gift or their passion into a business. So we want to make sure that they have the tools and understand and learn business management as well as making sure those individuals and entrepreneurs in rural South Carolina have the same access to the resources that some of our local entrepreneurs and business owners have. Continuando con la demostración de los emperredores creativos móviles, el MCED consistirán en lo siguiente, la iniciativa móvil rural del Women Business Center de Benedict College y la iniciativa de emperredor creativo del Women Business Center de Benedict College. Iniciativa móvil rural del Women Business Center de Benedict College, la iniciativa móvil rural del Women Business Center de Benedict College cultivará, apoyará y guiará a las empresas de mujeres pertenecientes a minorías para que se conviertan en motores económicos sostenibles para Carolina del Sur y la nación. La iniciativa de emperredores creativos por parte del Women Business Center de Benedict College también es para aprovechar los nuevos programas ofrecidos por este mismo en las áreas de la industria musical y espíritu empresarial. Un componente del MCED es la iniciativa para empresarios creativos del Women Business Center de Benedict College. Next slide. And this is just really saying the same thing. So you can go to the next slide. And this is a mobile unit that's not the one that we're going to use but this is just an example. Next slide. And that's the inside. This is an example of the interior of the mobile unit. Ese es el ejemplo vivo del interior de la unidad móvil. Next slide. So thank you so, so very much. Please register at our website on our website at www.wbc.org or send us an email or give us a phone call. To connect with us and make sure you at least getting information and announcements about upcoming opportunities. Thank you all so much. Muchísimas gracias por favor. Registrar en nuestro sitio web el cual está en pantalla para formar parte de nuestros boletines eventos y talleres próximos a darse. Any questions from anybody. Preguntas. Thank you Cheryl. Thank you. Now we have Susan from the Small Business Administration. Good evening. My name is Susan Chavis and from the Small Business Administration, South Carolina District Office. Buenas tardes. Mi nombre es Susan y representó al U.S. Small Business Administration o la administración de pequeñas empresas de Estados Unidos. If you read the slide I will make pointers. Okay, perfect. I was at the Riesgo para los Pestan-Mistas. Those fáciles facilita el acceso a capital. Esta facilita que las pequeñas empresas obtengan préstamos. Contratación del gobierno federal. La SBA trabaja con agencias federales para otlar al menos el 23 por ciento de todos los dólares de contratación del gobierno principal. Pequeñas Empresas que están certificadas por los programas de contratación de la SBA. Los programas incluyen el 8A, que es el Desarrollo Empresarial, Programa de Zonas Comerciales Históricamente Infrautilizadas, o Hobson, Programa de Pequeñas Empresas, Propiedad de Mujeres, o WUSB por sus siglas en inglés, Programas de Propiedad de Veteranos Descapacitados en el Servicio. Acesoramientos empresarial gratuito. Obtenga la confianza para, puedes obtener la confianza para poder avanzar con la ayuda de red de socios de la SBA, Centros de Desarrollo de Pequeñas Empresas, Centros de Empresas para Mujeres, o Score por sus siglas en inglés. Ya sea que necesites crear un plan de negocios exitoso, obtener asesoramiento de expertos para expandir tu negocio, los socios de recursos de la SBA están aquí para apoyarte. Prestamos por desastre para el hogar y tu empresa. Cada año la SBA proporciona miles de millones de dólares en préstamos por desastre a largo plazo, abajo interés para ayudar a las pequeñas empresas, propietarios de viviendas e inquilinos a recuperarse de desastres declarados. Los préstamos pueden cubrir daños económicos, bienes inmuebles, bienes muebles, inventario, y máquinas, además de equipos. Thank you. Again, our core areas, lending. Lenders want to know that they're making a smart choice by giving you a loan. Our local resource partners, which are on the call today, can help you prepare. They can help you with your business plan and loan packaging. Under our federal contracting, just want to point out that government contracting, is it for you? It's not for everyone. You can take a readiness assessment survey on our website, SBA.gov. Before you start, you need to make sure you identify your NAICS code and slide standard for your industry. Register in SAM and create a SAM profile and obtain a DUNS number. Under our counseling, we have the Women's Business Center. We have three in the state. Columbia, Benedict, Women's Business Center. Charleston, Iowa. And in Greenville, we have Community Works, Women's Business Center. For disaster lines, three programs that we have available at the moment are Economic Injury Disaster Line, the IDOL. We also have Targeted IDOL, ADVANCE, Submental Targeted ADVANCE. And under those, you may be eligible to receive up to 15,000 that does not need to be repaid, but to receive the advance as you must first apply for the COVID-19 IDOL. Next slide. Okay. A menudo bueno pues la SBA se encarga de crear un enlace entre lo que es los lenders o los prestamistas locales o partners estratégicos en el área y los cuales te pueden llevar a preparar o te pueden colaborar con la preparación de lo que es un paquete de préstamo, sobre todo en el área de federal contracting. Inclusive bueno esto puede que aplique para ti o no puede ser para todos. Inclusive bueno pues para accesar a más información puedes accesar al sitio web de SBA.gov. Y de entrada nos piden que tengamos listo lo siguiente por ejemplo to next code, lo que es crear un SAM profile, un profile que se llama SAM que tengamos listos nuestros don's numbers también y que al igual lo que es en el área de Midlands en uno de los partners estratégicos con los que cuenta la SBA es el Women's Business Center de Benedict College en el área de Charleston también tienen otro líder estratégico que el igual les colabora y en el área Greenville tiene el Community Works que es un centro el cual los apuya también con todos estos procesos. Our COVID-19 the loan program we are going to have training on November the 2nd it starts at 8.30 in the morning and lasts till 4.30 every hour the region will be putting on the COVID-19 EIDL training and at 4.30 we're going to have it in Spanish and you can find that information on our website and you can ask anything you like on the program. Next slide. El siguiente 2 de noviembre tendremos un taller en referente a estragos del COVID y los préstamos en el cual pueden encontrar el enlace o registrarse nuestro sitio web en punto de las 2 de la tarde y posteriormente a las 4.30 tendremos uno totalmente en español en el cual pueden accesar a preguntas las cuales tengan en relación con este tema pero lo que son los próximos eventos para pequeñas por parte del SBA es octubre el día 27 Eva por título pregunte a la oficina del distrito de Carolina del sur el día 28 contratación federal 101 el día 29 programa de preparación para la contratación federal o FCRP por sus siglas en inglés durante el mes de noviembre el día 2 preguntas y respuestas o el programa COVID préstamos que es el que estamos mencionando desastres para años económicos posteriormente el día 2 el serie de business smart la parte número 3 pregunte a la oficina del distrito de Carolina del sur contratación federal parte son likes and downs son los talleres que próximamente tiene la oficina o la administración de pequeños negocios de Estados Unidos o SBA These are just a few of our upcoming events you can find our events on our SBA website South Carolina district office page and our calendar event she can also sign up to get notifications on any upcoming events that we are putting a or our partners or combination of these are just a few examples of the tallers or webinars that we are offering however you can access our website to register and learn more about our office in South Carolina of all the events we will be having and this is our contact point which is www.sba.gov South Carolina district office south North shore south Carolina Yes, visit our website at www.sba.gov for information on all of our programs and services. And you can reach out to us at the district office or one of our alternative work sites. Thank you very much. ¿Preguntas alguien que tenga alguna pregunta para la oficina del SBA? Okay, gracias. All right, I'm going to stop share for a minute and pull up from SBDC's presentation and then turn it over to Alan Brown. En este momento vamos a comenzar con la oficina del SBDC y conozcamos al señor Alan Brown, quien es el coordinador del área de Midlands y Consultor Comercial del Centro de Aria de Colombia y es el consultor principal. Y bueno, pues estamos viendo el slide y preguntenos en que podemos ayudar. Go ahead, Alan. I think it is a pleasure to be with you guys today. I love the Spanish language. I took six years total in high school and college and I only remember the basics. So I'm going to practice some of my basics, I think, if I have enough courage today. So as said, Minambre is Alan Brown and I am the lead business consultant for the local office of the Small Business Development Center and our motto is ask us, we can help. Next slide, please. So over the past five years, there are a number of benchmarks that we've hit or helped areas that we've helped clients. And those primarily are the number of entrepreneurs we've helped across South Carolina, just over 21,000. We've helped create 6,000 jobs, helped start over 870 new ventures and help those entrepreneurs acquire over $261 million in capital. I'm going to start growing, growing, expanding and recovering. Alan mentioned that during the last five years in the state of South Carolina by part of the SBDC, the Small Business Development Center has helped more than 21,500 entrepreneurs in South Carolina to create or retain more or more than 6,000 jobs. Next slide, please. And as part of that, 3.4 billion dollar government contracts, one of the primary ways that we do that is by helping small businesses get what's called an 8A Business Development Certification with the federal government. I'm happy to say that one of my clients was recently awarded his 8A certification. That is a very stringent certification to get. I suggest that you all check to see if you're eligible for that. If you can qualify for that certification, it's a major way, a major tool, a means of which you can grow your business. Next slide. Within the 3.4 billion dollars, doing a little bit of work, well, we have found that we can do it by helping small businesses through a certification program called AAD, which is so rare that companies can actually get it. As a testimony, recently one of our clients was awarded this certification. What is it? What is a water part? And is it a starting point in making contracts at a federal level? Now, I still hear people say that they've never heard of us, that they didn't know we existed and wanted to know how we can help. We've been around South Carolina for over 42 years, and we serve all 46 counties with what we call centers, and there are 21 centers or locations across the state of South Carolina. We operate through four regions, the USC region, the South Carolina state region, the Winthrop and Clemson region. I operate out of the University of South Carolina region, which is in my opinion the best region there is. And one of the things I want to point out about the SBDC on this particular slide is that we are one of the longest running SBDCs in the country. We were one of the SBDCs that started out or started the pilot program when it was created. And when you think about the services that we provide and the impact that we have across the state, you know, in 2020, like most everyone else, we had to pivot the way that we offered our services. And one of the ways that we did that is we started offering webinars, you know, sometimes what we call entrepreneurial training. In doing so, we served over 10,000 small business owners in 2020 with training. Last year we also helped to acquire over $77 million of capital for those small businesses, serving over 39,000, excuse me, 3900 of those clients and started 143 businesses. So we do a lot across the state as relates to entrepreneurial training. And so when I hear, you know, I've never heard of you guys, somewhat taken aback, but then I'm also excited because it means there's some untapped opportunities that we can take advantage of. And I would just like to add one of the biggest concerns is that you're still listening to part of your office, comments like we've never heard of you, we didn't know that they existed. However, the SBDC has existed for over 42 years, which has been operating in the 46 condados en el estado de Carolina del Sur a través de 21 centros como los cuales sirven como como colaboradores estratégicos durante el 2020 como cualquier otro negocio como cualquier otro pequeño negocio o empresa, la SBDC tuvo que reinventarse durante la pandemia, lo cual los orilló a llevar sus servicios por parte o a través de lo que son webinars por los dichos webinars les permitió servir a más de 10,000 dueños de pequeños negocios, lo cual generó un un este una portación sólida de más de 77 millones de dólares y a su vez 143 negocios fueron abiertos a través de las enseñanzas por medio de los webinars que la SBDC proporcionó durante la pandemia.  And that's primarily through three aspects or three components or three areas of service. That's our no fee, private cost, financial concentration, a high quality education or training, and then our connection to outside resources. La siguiente positiva, bueno, vamos a hablar de cómo lo hacemos en la oficina de SBDC avanzamos en Carolina del Sur el desarrollo económico, generalmente proporcionando empresarios en todo el estado consultorías en cargo y asequible acceso a la educación y recursos que necesitan para expandirse o crear una pequeña mediana próspera de tamaño de lo que es la empresa y esto se logra a través de tres pasos simples, lo que es una consultoría confidencial sin cargo, una conexión a recursos y una calidad alta en la educación. Now, we typically serve small to medium sized enterprises and they typically come to us, you know, in three categories, you know, what I call an entrepreneur that has an idea without a blueprint, a young business that's stuck in startup, and then a third type of business that's looking to break through a breakout or break over one million, two million or three million dollars in revenue. And that has a small team but is looking to grow and expanded services across the region. So please. Will you read the area in blue first? Yes, sir. Okay.  At the bottom, we have the type of service to your left, which is the second category is the business market or business life cycle. And then to your right, we have the area or depth of knowledge or expertise that we offer our services in as business consultants. Here in this device, we have the scheme in which the SVDC is performed. In the lower part of the device, you can see what the startup business service is, the assistance for starting businesses, what is the financing for the assistance in financing, the development of technology, the assistance for development of technology. On the left side of the device, we can find the related to what marketing, assistance in the business management or business management, assistance in the strategic plan, assistance in what federal contracts are made, assistance in exports, market sales and growth assistance. On the right side of the device, we can see what the area of expertise is, what the growth plan is, the financial and fiscal analysis, what is the assistance for disaster and recovery, and what is the assistance for what we have commented on the foundation of a business when they are starting a business. So, the bigger the circle, the more of a concentration in that area we offer our services. Also, if you look on each side of the graphic, the higher the circle is on the graphic, the more of that level of business we serve, or the more in depth, that particular level of expertise we provide to the client. Looking at the device and following with the explanation, we take into account the circles of its size and its location. This means that the bigger the circle, the higher the demand in that specific area for the businesses that we come to consult. Alright, so although we're probably most known for working with startups, if you take a look at the graphic, you'll see that the circles are higher on the chart from the perspective, and that provides a perspective that a lot of the work that we do, we really do with, or we really perform with growth and established companies. In the largest area of services that we provide to those small businesses is around marketing, sales, and growth assistance, sometimes what you might hear in the marketplace as related to a scaling. Some of the other circles you see in that area are also related to the benchmarks that I mentioned earlier, like access to capital and financial analysis and fiscal growth plan. When they consult, they are not known to consult businesses that are in the process of beginning. However, they also serve a good amount of businesses that are already established in search of growth and as the graph or the diagram shows it, the areas of greater solicitation for part of these companies already established to the SVDC are in the marketing area to be able to scale even further, also what is in the area of financing respectively. So, if you fit into one of the three categories that I mentioned earlier, you have an idea without a blueprint or sort of a blueprint, but it's not completed.  You haven't really figured out where your target market is and you haven't been able to get what we call problems solution fit yet. Or you're a business that's, you know, stabilized and you're generating revenue is just not at the scale or amount that you'd like, you know, what you can do is you can reach out to us, you know, a motto is ask us we can help by going to www.scsbdc.com. You know, I have to say it real slow, right, because I started getting the letters mixed up is www.scsbdc.com. And when you get to that website, you'll see a blue button in the right on the right hand side of the website that says to request counseling or consulting you just press that button. It takes about five minutes to sign up and then we'll be notified that you requested counseling and one of the consultants in our office will give you a call. To finalize, if you want to be able to see that your business is located within the three categories that we previously mentioned, it is located within the states of which we previously mentioned, which are three. If your business is, for example, if you don't have a blueprint for your business, if your business is young or if your business is stuck in startup, or maybe your business is already stable and you're looking to scale up, please contact us at www.scsbdc.com and also the phones that were previously sent to be able to request a free consultation and help you with the development of your business. Next slide, please. So here are the consultants in our office. As I stated myself, Alan Brown, and then we have five other consultants in our office with various specialties. As mentioned, government contracting and export. We had an export webinar that the city sponsored, I believe last week that was a great webinar. If you think you could qualify to start exporting your wares or products or services, that's an area that we'll be willing to help you explore. And then we are also doing some COVID consulting.  Thank you. Thank you, Alan. Bueno para finalizar, aquí está una lista de los consultores en los cuales yo me incluyo. Los cuales servimos a la comunidad de negocio, por ejemplo, hemos realizado detalles o webinars durante COVID. O si, por ejemplo, tienen un producto o servicio el cual pueda comercializarse de manera internacional cuando hemos tenido detalles de esa índole. Y aquí nos proporcionan la lista de todos los consultores, por ejemplo, Alan Brown, que es el consultor de empresas o negocios. Monique Freister, que es la consultora comercial, Bob Jones, consultor comercial, John Gators, consultor comercial de COVID. Scott es el especialista en contrataciones gubernamentales. Y Beth Smith es especialista en exportaciones. Gracias. If you have any questions, I'll take questions. Preguntas para Alan, the SBDC, chat, nobody. Muchísimas gracias. Aisha, would you like to take over? Yes, thank you so much for all of our presenters. That was some great information. And for everyone on the call, we will have a recording that I will send to everyone who has registered. If you did not register, please send us an email at obio at colombiasc.gov. So I will have your email address and I can send you a copy of the link. Muchísimas gracias a todos y quisiera reiterarles que estaremos enviando una copia, una grabación, una copia de la grabación, a los que se registraron a este webinar para pues por medio de email. Se les va a mandar por medio de email a finalizar lo que es este webinar, se les hará llegar un enlace con la copia de todo lo que se dijo en este webinar el día de hoy. And we will also send a copy of the slides in a survey that we ask if you have some time, please respond to the survey so we can make sure we continue to provide webinars that are helpful to you and your business. And I want to thank all of our presenters, Cheryl Sally with the Benedict College on this business center, Susan Shavis and Angela Brewer with Small Business Administration, and Alan Brown with the Columbia of the South Carolina Small Business Development Center. Also our city staff that's on the call Karina and Carla we appreciate you assisting us. Justin thank you so much for representing the public city of Columbia public relations department as well. And thank you, Ulysses from Moto Enterprises for providing translation services for us we really appreciate you and our partnership that we have with you. And everyone that attended thank you so much you could have been doing anything with your evening, but you decided to join us today so we really appreciate and we hope that you will look to us as a resource to assist your business if you have any questions. Well, Justin, on behalf of Moto Across Lincoln Business Academy and our director Vanessa Mota I want to thank you each I want to take chair Sally, Alan Brown, great mentors thank you for taking the initiative of bringing these resources to the Latino community. And we have worked with you guys in the past great partnerships but I really want to thank you guys for for thinking in the minorities for taking the time and the consideration to put something together, and making us a part of it we're more than happy to serve as partners as well and we look forward to collaborate with each one of you in the future. I was my Spanish Ulysses. Get it great. That's that Carolina education. I used to start recording. Alan, you was not good at Spanish because I know nothing you said. Thank you so much for everyone attending you all stay safe.  And again, let us know if there's anything we can do for you all. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.


All right, so I kind of have a love-hate relationship with digital marketing courses. Right, so first of all, there is a huge range of costs for digital marketing courses. You've got courses that are like five bucks on Udemy, all the way up to courses that are over $15,000 if you try to attend some kind of bootcamp. And my business partner, Seth, and I have been helping people to get jobs in a lot of different careers. And of course, digital marketing is one of the best careers you can get into without a college degree and without any experience. So I've talked quite a bit about digital marketing on this channel. I think it's a phenomenal career. But with that being said, there's a lot of courses out there. Most of them are really bad. A few of them are good. And we're gonna be talking about some of the ones that are really bad in this video. And sometimes there's a course that's good if you know what you're getting yourself into. But if you go into it with the wrong expectations, it's gonna be bad. First one on the list I'm gonna talk about is going to be Udemy courses. Now I have a love-hate relationship with Udemy. On one hand, I really like their courses. I've taken a lot of the courses myself. On the other hand, when it comes to the career-related courses, I think they are way too detailed. So this is a big mistake that so many course creators out there make. And if there's somebody out there that is watching this, who is a course creator, you need to pay attention to this. So if your goal is to get somebody a job, the worst thing you can do for them is to try to teach them everything you know.  The worst thing you can possibly do is try to teach them everything you know. Now you might be thinking, Shane, what are you talking about? Like, isn't that the whole point of making a course is teaching them everything I know? If you try to teach people everything, they're going to learn nothing. And this is why most courses out there do not get people results. Because the truth is if you are a digital marketer with five, 10 years of experience, think back on that experience and how you actually gain those skills. Did you gain most of those skills by taking some course online or by studying on YouTube? No, you gained most of those skills by doing projects and actually applying the knowledge that you were learning along the way. So you had reference experience and it took you a long amount of time in order to gain those skills. And it's so much easier to learn how to do something when you're actually practicing it. Think about learning a new language or doing math. The way that you get really good at it is to actually practice it, is to actually implement. You just tried to memorize stuff all day long and you never tried to implement it, you wouldn't learn anything. It's the same thing for learning skills with just about any job out there. In almost any job out there, you're going to learn 80% of what you need to know on the job itself by doing projects. As a course creator, if the goal of your course is to get somebody a job, you need to focus on teaching them the 20% that they need to know in order to land that job and ignore everything else. Teach them exactly what they need to know to land the entry-level job and completely ignore all of the other stuff. They'll learn all of that stuff later on while they're working in the job. And if you don't do this, you're just gonna overwhelm them. Even if they do get interviews, they're not gonna know what they're talking about because they tried to learn everything instead of just learning the key things that are important. So this is kind of my big problem with Udemy courses is a lot of them, and this is not such a bad thing as long as you go into it with the right expectation, is a lot of them just teach you information. And you can find information for free on YouTube. You can take free classes all over the internet.  But with that being said, most Udemy courses are not going to get you a job. Next one on the list, this is gonna be the first boot camp and that is gonna be Nucleo School. So this is a $5,900 boot camp that takes six months. Now this is a boot camp that's based in Spain, so it's European and it doesn't have the greatest rating. So for instance on careerkarma.com it has 3.9 out of five. So for an almost $6,000 boot camp that takes six months, you would expect better ratings than that. And also a lot of the times people in Europe have other alternatives for getting educated like apprenticeships and then a better college experience that doesn't cost like $80,000 like it does here in the US. So yeah, you know that one's six months for a boot camp. I just don't see how that's worth it. Typically boot camps like this, especially for digital marketing should be maybe three months max. The next one is going to be General Assembly and specifically their boot camp that's around $9,800. They have two different boot camps. One of them is kind of like an online course. The other one is a $9,800 one. That's the one I'm talking about. $9,800, you need to have an abundance of evidence to show that it actually works if you charge that much. And I've talked about this before on my channel but a huge red flag that I see is, you look at their sales page and it has one review and it's from Kiki Tolentino. And she says, getting exposure and time with our instructor and classmates meant we could get to know other industries and how they approach marketing problems. This course gave me the confidence in my decision to move into marketing. So her review doesn't even say that she got a job. It just says, oh, the course gave her confidence and stuff like that. Plus there's no context to the review. So this is a huge red flag in my opinion.  And if you are selling a $9,800 bootcamp, the whole reason people go to bootcamps is to land a job. That is the reason people go. So you need to have proof that your bootcamp actually gets people those results. And that's something, unfortunately, with a lot of these digital marketing bootcamps, and I guess kind of bootcamps in general, you just don't see it very often. And same thing kind of goes with the next one on the list, which is BrainStation, their $15,000 bootcamp. Again, they have like multiple different online courses and bootcamps. I'm talking about the $15,000 one. $15,000, that is a ton of money for a bootcamp that's like three months. If you're gonna charge $15,000, that's what colleges charge for a year sometime. So you need to have a ton of proof that your bootcamp actually gets people results. Now with BrainStation, they do have more proof. So it's a lot better than General Assembly. They have these, what our graduates are saying, and you can read their testimonials, you can read the full testimonials. But still it looks like there's only three total testimonials here. And what you wanna see with a really good testimonial is actually just a video interview. That's the best one you could possibly have because it gives you context. It shows what the person's background was, what their strengths were, what their weaknesses were, where they came from, how long it took. You go over all of those important details, typically in an interview, because it's very easy to fake reviews. And this is how a lot of companies do this. I'm not saying that they did it, but it's very common that companies do this where they'll essentially just ask somebody in an exit survey what they thought about the bootcamp. So for instance, they'll say, what was your favorite part about this bootcamp? What was your least favorite part about this bootcamp? And then they'll take the part where you say, what was your favorite part? And they'll put that as a review. So that, in my opinion, is a little bit of a sketchy way of collecting reviews. Now just to give you an example of an online digital marketing course that does things the right way, there's the Digital Career Blueprint where they have a ton of reviews on their Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and LinkedIn. And I mean, they have like hundreds, if not thousands of different interviews, reviews, and testimonials. And these are legit full length interviews a lot of the time. There's like hundreds of videos like that. And if they're not like that, at least they have the person's LinkedIn. You can just go look it up. You can even ask them questions if you want to. So that's obviously just much better, right? There's no smoke and mirrors. They're not getting lost in context or anything like that. And if you want to check out the Digital Career Blueprint, I will put a free masterclass down in the description as well as the pinned comment below. Or if you just want to see what all the reviews and testimonials look like, go ahead and click that. And then the other one that I'm seeing, and God, this is a trend that I just despise. I absolutely cannot stand this. And that is universities starting boot camps. Now, some of the universities use their own name with the boot camp. And then some of them are a little tricky about it. They actually use like a well-established boot camp or a name that just sounds like a boot camp and not like a university, but it's actually owned by a university. So this is a trend that I just, I am not liking this trend at all because universities are kind of the ones who sort of caused this problem in the first place in the United States at least. So for instance, universities do a terrible job of teaching digital marketing. If you look up a marketing curriculum, a lot of the time you're only gonna see like two to three classes that have anything to do with digital marketing, even though it's by far the most valuable skill in marketing these days. So the fact that, you know, I'm kind of singling them out, but there's a lot of universities doing this. You know, KSU has a digital marketing boot camp. It's $14,500. And it's called the KSU digital skills boot camp on career department has a ranking of three out of five stars, not surprised by that. And there is 400 hours of material apparently. So this is kind of what I was talking about before where, you know, somebody will just teach somebody everything they possibly could think of instead of just teaching them what they need to know in order to get the job. So yeah, anytime you find out that a boot camp is like owned by a university or something like that, that tends to be a red flag. I mean, maybe it'll change in the future, but universities did not do a good job with a lot of these college degrees when it comes to these skills that change all the time like digital marketing. It's different now than it was five years ago. Universities are terrible with keeping up with those sorts of things. They're basically like an old dinosaur just stuck in the mud when it comes to things that change rapidly like digital marketing. If you are interested in getting into digital marketing, check out some interviews I did. I'll put the interview with a 16 year old who is able to land a job right here and go ahead, gently tap that like button, hit the subscribe button, ring the notification bell, comment down below any thoughts, comments, criticism, et cetera that you have on the video. Can't talk, it's late at night and I will see you next time.