Goldman Sachs is providing $20 million to the Jackson, Miss.-based Hope Enterprise Corp. to support rural entrepreneurs in Arkansas and across the South.
The move comes as the investment bank and financial services company’s first Arkansas cohort of 20 small businesses are participating in its national “10,000 Small Businesses” business education and training program through the University of Arkansas Pulaski Technical College.
“One of the great strengths of Goldman Sachs is we have the incredible ability to bring people together from all walks of life, and it’s in that free exchange of ideas and experiences that new relationships are formed and new opportunities are created,” said CEO David Solomon on Friday in Little Rock, announcing the investment as part of the $100 million Investment in Rural Communities initiative.
Hope Enterprise Corp. is a community development financial institution (CDFI), which are associated with the U.S. Treasury Department to provide investments, services and technical assistance to underserved populations and communities. Seventy-five million dollars of the Investment in Rural Communities is going to other CDFIs, with the rest going to programming like that at Pulaski Tech.
Since 1994, Hope Enterprise Corp. has generated more than $3.6 billion in financing and related services to homeowners, entrepreneurs and nonprofits in Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee.
“There are no harder-working, more entrepreneurial people than you see in the Delta, in the Alabama Black Belt, in Appalachia, in rural communities across the country who live more with less than anyone that I can imagine,” said CEO Bill Bynum. “But they are also places where vital resources like capital, business advisory services and networks are often in short supply.
“We’ve seen over and over that it doesn’t matter where someone lives, their race, their gender or who their parents were. When they have access to the proper tools, they can do anything. That’s what 10,000 Small Businesses does. That’s what Goldman Sachs is going to do,” he said.
The 10,000 Small Businesses program reached that number of entrepreneurs in 2020 after launching in 2010.
It does some training remotely and some in person at Pulaski Tech, where a different instructor with expertise in issues like leadership styles, business growth or organizing financial data teaches a seminar a week for 12 weeks. Anna Wellde with the Goldman Sachs Office of Corporate Engagement said it is unclear when the next Arkansas cohort will go through the 10,000 Small Businesses program, as it is rotating among 20 different nationwide locations.
April Hearne, who chairs Pulaski Tech’s business and information technology program and teaches entrepreneurship, is among those 10,000 Small Businesses instructors, focusing on helping participants draft their growth plans.
“We kind of narrow down what we would call ‘mission and vision,'” she said. “We help them focus on the next step; they’ve already built a business, so where does that go from here?”
Hearne said entrepreneurs can deal with tunnel vision about their businesses sometimes, missing possibilities that could affect them.
“Sometimes you can’t think about the next steps because you’re so busy building a business,” she said. “Maybe the next step needs to be where your next step of growth is. Big picture, that’s one of the main efforts that Goldman is trying to teach.”
Kayla Norris, who owns Marketing Main Street, a marketing agency in Rogers that focuses on other small businesses, named this perspective as the key thing she’s gotten out of the program so far.
“When you’re running a business, you’re running one million miles per hour. So it’s really hard to see what’s ahead of you,” she said. “Now that I have this monster that has to be fed all the time, I said, ‘You know what? We’ve got to pause and figure out what the future looks like.’ This program came along at the right time, and now I get to think about my business and what it’s going to look like two, five, 10 years from now.
“They gave me everything that I needed to actually put together a plan,” she said, saying there is a gap in marketing services for small businesses in Northwest Arkansas.
Tricia Francis, another participant, moved back to her native Mena three years ago, seeking a more rural place to live with a lower cost of living during the pandemic. She brought her boutique web development firm, WP-Goodness, which does work with web content management system WordPress, with her from suburban Denver. She heard about 10,000 Small Businesses through Fayetteville-based rural development nonprofit Communities Unlimited, which helped WP-Goodness get a Paycheck Protection Program loan.
Rural small businesses’ online strategies tend to start with Facebook, she said, but they need to do more, especially if they cater to tourists. Like Norris, Francis said 10,000 Small Businesses has prepared WP-Goodness for growth. She plans a sister brand, Ouachita Digital, to focus on tourism initiatives and help local businesses attract that market.
“Arkansas tourism is a huge industry,” she said. “We’re in the heart of the Ouachita Mountains, just a beautiful area. So it’s a great place to go back to, and it’s a great place to promote.”
Arkansas’ U.S. senators, John Boozman and Tom Cotton, participated in a Q&A organized by Washington news publication Punchbowl News held alongside the announcement at the Clinton Presidential Library and Museum.
Source: arkansasonline.com
