Graduates of the 2018 SBA New York District Office’s Emerging Leaders course. (Photo courtesy of the Small Business Administration)
Justin Latorre considered getting his MBA so that he could bring new expertise to leading La Flor Products Co., a Hauppauge-based importer and packager of spices and seasoning products that has been owned by his family for three generations.
“But instead of racking up tuition and student loans, I came across a free program offered by the SBA,” he said, referring to the U.S. Small Business Administration’s Emerging Leaders course.
Each year, the SBA offers the seven-month, MBA-style course at locations around the country, including New York. Topics covered range from accessing capital and government contracting to social media marketing and hiring and firing. Participants end the course with a three-year growth plan and an expanded network of business leaders.
The SBA’s New York District Office is seeking 15 to 25 business leaders for this year’s class, which begins May 7 in Manhattan. The application deadline is March 15. The New York District Office is also recruiting students for a similar course to be held in Yonkers.
Applicants must be a decision maker in a small business with at least $250,000 in annual revenue. The company must have been in business for a minimum of three years and must employ at least one person in addition to the owner. Participants must agree to commit 100 hours in the classroom and meet in small groups with other classmates outside the classroom.
The class meets every other week, and break-out groups meet on the alternate week, according to John Mallano, deputy director of the SBA New York District Office.
“Course participants strategize and work on their growth plans together,” Mallano said. “It’s a big time commitment, but the end result of this executive education is that it prepares business leaders to move to the next level.”
The SBA launched the program nationally in 2008 with the goal of helping small businesses expand and create jobs.
“Those who have gone through the program have shown growth in their businesses and added employees,” Mallano said. More than 5,000 small business leaders nationwide have completed the Emerging Leaders course, creating more than 6,500 jobs and generating more than $300 million in financing, according to the SBA.
Latorre took the course in 2015, the first year it was offered in New York.
“Right off the bat, we jumped into what they call an elevator pitch or a rocket pitch,” he said. “You learn to hone in on what your company is and what it could do for a potential customer. It sounds like a simple concept, but if you can learn to be confident and comfortable speaking about what you do – whether to a room of two people or 100 people – it can be so impactful for your business.”
As the course went on, Latorre created a five-year growth plan for his company.
“To this day, I’m still following the growth plan,” he said. “It’s a map, a guide that we can go back to if we feel we are straying away from the plan.”
La Flor Products has grown each year since he completed the class, with head count swelling from about 45 employees to 72 in that span, according to Latorre. As part of its growth strategy, the firm expanded into institutional sales as well as through the co-packaging of its products with other entities. The latter refers to private-label partnerships with food retailers, restaurants and others looking to put their name on spices or seasoning products.
Nike Akindahunsi completed the Emerging Leaders course last year. Her Huntington Station-based company, FMKgroup, has been in business since 1993, providing advertising, digital and social media, strategic communications, marketing and other services. About 90 percent of FMKgroup’s business comes through federal government contracts.
“I had gotten to a stage in my business where it just wasn’t growing,” Akindahunsi said. “I have been involved in SBA programs in the past, but I hadn’t been involved in any for the last five or six years, so I decided to reconnect and see what resources are out there.”
Like many business leaders, Akindahunsi had gotten very comfortable “doing the same thing over and over.”
“I needed to get out of my comfort zone and learn ways to grow from seeing what other company owners are going through,” she said. “The class forced me to go outside my box and create a growth plan and follow through with it. In the classes, we discussed our problems, and other CEOs would weigh in. We also presented our plan, and the others critiqued it.”
Further, she said, the course brought together diverse resources, including multiple experts on categories such as accounting, financing solutions and the GSA, which provides centralized procurement for the federal government.
“It was a one-stop shop,” she said. “To have looked for all of these resources on my own would have taken too much time.”
Akindahunsi credits the course in helping FMKgroup land 14 more contracts than it did during the previous year.
One of the biggest benefits Latorre derived from the Emerging Leaders program was that it expanded his network.
“Similar to college, the network you build from the program is very important,” he said. “Keeping in touch with the network is key to growth.” Just last week, Latorre said, “a friend from the course put me in touch with one of his customers that could become my customer.”
Read again Course of business - Long Island Business News : https://ift.tt/2NIz4DjBagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Course of business - Long Island Business News"
Post a Comment