In 2012, the Greenville Chamber of Commerce debuted the Minority Business Accelerator (MBA) program designed to identify and strengthen high-potential minority business enterprises (MBEs) and to expand the regional minority entrepreneurial community. The MBA program is a yearlong, intensive process that offers both a business-minded curriculum and mentoring services from experienced CEOs and financial advisors.
Nika White, the Chamber’s Senior Advisor on Diversity & Inclusion, helped spearhead the program.
“Since inception, the program has realized roughly $26 million in new contracts and revenue opportunities that are directly attributable to some kind of activity in the program,” she says. “It has also garnered 250 new job opportunities.”
The curriculum
The program uses a curriculum from Interwise, a nonprofit committed to helping underserved small businesses. It’s called “StreetWise,” and it covers financial management, marketing and sales, human resources tactics, business strategy development, and access to capital and new contracts.
“I really thought that it would be super-technical,” says Tammy Johnson, who graduated from the program in 2017. “But it was very applicable, and the content is easy to understand and very well-thought-out and very intentional.”
Johnson says the program helped her company, High Spirits Hospitality, thrive. High Spirits is a parent company to four different brand companies, Liquid Catering, The Old Cigar Warehouse, Bravo1 Protection, and High Spirits Events.
“There were different lessons in the curriculum,” she says, “everything from sales to HR, and basically at the end of it all you have a strategic action plan that you put together for your business, which was what you were going to do for your business over the next three years.”
Mentoring
“Everyone who is accepted into this program is assigned someone who serves as a coach throughout the year,” says Beth Veach, an entrepreneur and coach who serves as Chair of the MBA’s Advisory Council. “And then they also are assigned a financial expert, someone who is going to help them very specifically with understanding the finances of their business, and the financial health of their company.”
Veach’s primary role is recruiting volunteers to serve as coaches and advisors and she says she’s been encouraged by the response she’s received.
“One thing I’ve learned about the Greenville business community is that we are a group of helpers,” she says. “There really is a very deep sincere effort and desire to see other people succeed. And I think only twice in all my years of recruiting have people said no. People are very receptive to the idea and it’s interesting because it is a big time commitment, but people are willing to make it.”
