As Andrea Harris introduced a guest panel of five businesspeople Saturday morning, most of the more than 50 people packed into a room at the Vance County Senior Center listened closely to what she had to say.
The five people she was introducing were exceptions.
Thomas Jefferson of Fit and Beyond Wellness Center, George Daye of Raemac Transportation, Deryl Von Williams of The Everything Store, Gene Allen of Capital Cleaning and motivational speaker/author Tanisha Bagley were too busy meeting one another and exchanging business cards to pay attention to Harris.
In the process, they demonstrated one of the key lessons of the three-hour Small Business Opportunities Forum: You build success on personal relationships and should never miss a chance to expand your network of associates.
It was far from the only bit of wisdom passed along to the dozens of Vance County residents who were drawn downtown on a Saturday morning by the dream of becoming entrepreneurs, of controlling their own destinies, of turning passion into profit.
Passion was one of the recurring themes of the seminar. Speakers who run their own businesses and those who work at organizations supporting small businesses emphasized that the only way to survive the long hours, the unsteady cash flow, and the doubts from friends and family and financiers is to pursue something you love.
“If you don’t have a passion, do something else,” said Diane Finch, who heads the Small Business Center at Vance-Granville Community College.
“If you’re going to go into any business, you’ve got to have a heart desire to do that,” Daye said.
“You have to have passion,” Allen said. “A lot of people don’t have passion. … You got to keep that drive.”
“Don’t expect to be happy in your business unless you’re working 60, 70 hours a week … because that’s what you have to do,” said Rick Seekins of the Kerr-Tar Regional Council of Governments. “At the end of the day, as tired as you are, you have to say, ‘I love this. I love this!’ ”
Von Williams said: “You’ve heard that theme from everyone. You’ve got to love what you do.”
“When you love it, it will love you back,” Allen said.
That’s the kind of payoff the forum’s sponsors are seeking from their passion for the creation and growth of small business in Vance County. The fall of a few big businesses such as Harriet & Henderson Yarns and J.P. Taylor Tobacco helped drive Vance County down to the point that it’s a state leader in unemployment, poverty, teen pregnancy, crime, tax burden and any number of other negative statistics; the rise of many small businesses could help revive the county.
That’s why Saturday’s forum and a series of other gatherings are being sponsored by the Vance County Coalition Against Violence, Greater Little Zion United Holy Church, Team Vance, the Henderson-Vance Chamber of Commerce, Gateway Community Development Corp., Vance-Granville Community College’s Small Business Center, and Harris’ Durham-based nonprofit organization, the North Carolina Institute of Minority Economic Development.
They drew a mix of small-business owners seeking ways to improve, people curious about the possibility of working for themselves for a change, and the unemployed, including some people thrown out of work at Custom Molders. They were men and women, white, black and Hispanic, united in the quest for economic improvement. They just need some help helping themselves, and they found a lot of it Saturday.
Finch, Seekins and Chamber of Commerce President Bill Edwards laid out the wealth of resources available in Vance County and urged people not to try to go it alone. Be smart enough to recognize what you don’t know and get the help you need. The Small Business Center, the COG and the Chamber are good starting points for free assistance and information.
Marolyn Rasheed said Team Vance, the three-year Duke Endowment-funded project she is leading, is planning ways to support existing businesses as well as new ones.
“There is tremendous expertise right here,” she said.
Edwards shared some of that expertise with information from the Institute of Minority Economic Development. Vance County is growing faster than projections and now has 44,500 people, but the white population is flat or declining slightly. That means there is a growing opportunity for businesses that appeal to blacks, Hispanics and other minority populations.
The county has $867 million in annual buying power, 35 percent of that in the hands of blacks, Edwards said. That percentage is about 2.5 times the average for North Carolina’s 100 counties.
He said local institutions need to build trust with the rapidly expanding Hispanic population to nurture Hispanic-owned and -targeted businesses.
Daye said race should not be an excuse for not trying in business. He said white people have helped Raemac Transportation whenever he has needed something.
Seekins, who said the COG’s purpose is to promote a better quality of life, said the reason minority businesspeople can get a fair shake is that bankers and other businessmen “have only one color in mind, and that’s green.”
Edwards advised that the Internet is a crucial place to pursue that green. It’s the place to reach people under age 40, even though Seekins said only 56 percent of people in Vance County have Internet access.
Seekins said online opportunities should grow as people take advantage of new public-access Internet sites, including a dramatic expansion of online computers when the new library opens.
Tips on reaching that online audience should come from two free seminars the Chamber is presenting in the next three months: marketing and technology in business.
Harris said the sponsors of Saturday’s session also will offer at least two more seminars in the next couple of months, one to learn about credit and one to hear from purchasing officers about what they look for in suppliers and contractors.
The second of those sessions will get back to the essence of Saturday’s seminar: networking.
Personal connections are crucial, several speakers said. Seekins said many of the loans the COG hands out originate with referrals from bankers who recognize great potential but aren’t free to invest in that potential. Harris noted that when she realized that Allen, the son of a friend from Henderson, was seeking the cleaning contract for her building in Durham, the deal was done.
Harris facilitated networking Saturday. She started and ended the three-hour meeting by letting audience members talk about their own businesses and passions. The introductions at the beginning set the groundwork for building relationships among the speakers and listeners.
At the end, Harris gave any existing businesspeople a chance to discuss what they do. She urged everyone to turn to fellow Vance County businesses for services and products. And she tried to create business ties, getting the trucking and grading firms to talk to a representative from construction giant Bovis who was in the room.
The conversations continued over a buffet after the meeting. If the sponsors and the participants have their way, there will be a lot more for small businesses to talk about.