Larry D. Williams is the Community Liaison for the HUB (Historically Underutilized Business) of the Purchasing Department of Travis County. Travis County and its HUB department are award-winning organizations within the government purchasing arena. He received his BA from Arizona State in Mass Communications and Media Studies with a minor in Public Policy and Public Service. Larry prides himself in bringing professionalism, innovation, and equity to the forefront of every position he has been involved in. Larry has focused his entire career on expanding nonprofits’ and governmental agencies’ community-level work to enhance their effectiveness with their most important stakeholders. It is his passion for seeing professionals and community organizations break through their boundaries and expand their effectiveness in their given communities.
–Larry shares his experience as a volunteer with EGBI.
–Share a fun fact with us.
A fun fact about me is that I am new to Central Texas. I have an ever-growing list on my phone of great and unique places on my phone that I have experienced since I moved here.
“It became more desirable for me to be a small part of seeing that mission available to the community” – Larry D.Williams
-How did you first get involved with EGBI?
When I was hired as the Community Liaison for the Travis County Purchasing HUB program I went through the HUB Resource Guide and connected with external stakeholders listed there. EGBI was one of those organizations.
-Why do you volunteer for EGBI?
I was first impressed by the professionalism of the staff. As I became more aware of the mission and vision of EGBI it became more desirable for me to be a small part of seeing that mission available to the community.
-How has your involvement with EGBI helped you grow professionally and personally?
My time volunteering with EGBI introduced me to the entrepreneurial climate of Austin and Travis County. Being involved with EGBI also made me that much more excited to enhance this community by improving the access that Historically Underutilized Businesses have to the Purchasing process of Travis County.
– What was the most rewarding experience you had while volunteering for EGBI?
Being able to share the HUB process of not only Travis County but also the other governmental agencies in the area.
– Why do you think others should volunteer or support EGBI?
I believe others will find a passion for the entrepreneurial climate of the City of Austin and Travis County and its importance in our community.
EGBI provides training, coaching, and support to aspiring and existing business owners who face barriers to growing a successful business. If you would like to support our efforts, please visit our website https://egbi.org/donate/.
Meet Shelly, a 3rd generation Austinite. Shelly has firsthand experience of breaking the cycle of generational poverty as she lived in affordable housing projects as a child and became the first college graduate in her family. She attended Texas State University’s McCoy College of Business where she received her BBA in Economics. Shelly’s work experience has included a diverse mix of industries and roles. She has worked in nonprofit economic development, banking, and HUD affordable housing compliance. She has a passion for community engagement and is heavily involved in community service and volunteerism with local nonprofit organizations. She currently serves as the Engagement and Giving Coordinator with the Tito’s Handmade Vodka philanthropy team.
Shelly shares her experience as a volunteer with EGBI and how you can get involved too.
Hi Shelly! To get started, would you mind telling us a fun fact about yourself? A fave hobby of mine is exploring trails around Austin. Although I grew up here, I still have not explored every one. There’s so many! I have two children and this is a go-to weekend morning outing for us. Also, it is not uncommon for me to utilize a walk through a trail as a meeting option with friends and colleagues. I love theexperience of seeing, hearing, and feeling all that nature has to offer.
How have you volunteered for EGBI? I have been involved with EGBI over the years in various capacities. I have had the opportunity to volunteer my time with EGBI by serving on the Marketing Committee and also by assisting with the annual Celebrating Success fundraiser. In my previous role with the Housing Authority for the City of Austin, an organization that helped found EGBI, I was able to deepen my knowledge and relationship with the mission EGBI serves by working with residents who were able to start their entrepreneurial journey because of EGBI. It was amazing to witness these stories unfold and see residents thrive in ways they never thought was possible.
Why do you think it is important to volunteer? Community impact is driven by community members banding together and creating solutions. Volunteerism is the element that puts this concept into action. Every individual has overcome unique challenges and struggles and each of these perspectives brings value to create viable solutions that can benefit the overall good. I can speak firsthand to the benefits volunteerism can have as I was a child of poverty myself who oftentimes found myself on the receiving end of goodwill. I would not have been able to accomplish the goals I have had it not been for organizations and their volunteers who provided tools and resources needed to succeed. This is the power of community impact and exemplifies how volunteerism is essential to empowering individual successes and results in stronger communities.
“EGBI provides tools and resources for the most vulnerable entrepreneurs and supporting this organization provides the necessary assistance to widen the reach and capacity of the organization in order to provide greater economic development in our communities.” – Shelly Cruz
Why do you think it is important to volunteer at EGBI? EGBI provides support to the entrepreneurs that need it the most. Starting a business is one of the most vulnerable challenges an individual can take on and the need for resources to mitigate the barriers involved is essential. Volunteering with and supporting EGBI provides the necessary assistance to widen the reach and capacity of the organization in order to provide greater economic development.
Last question, do you have a favorite experience about volunteering with EGBI? My favorite experiences with EGBI involve working with Monica Peña on the marketing committee and witnessing her passion and expertise. Her excitement for the mission of EGBI is contagious and makes our projects fun and exciting. I also love the annual ice cream socials because I am able to see various supporters and clients of EGBI come together and unite.
…..
In 2020, EGBI volunteers put in more than 130 hours to help EGBI support and serve over 400 small businesses. Volunteers like Shelly make this possible and continue to help EGBI pursue their mission of training, coaching, and supporting aspiring and existing business owners who face barriers to growing a successful business. Want to get involved too? Contact us to find out how you can get involved.
With communications nowadays happening a lot on the Internet, the importance of social media cannot be understated. Social media is a tool that allows businesses to increase their visibility, redirecting traffic toward them, and maintain strong connections in the online world. If businesses are strategic about their content, posting to social media can be a massive edge over the competition. Here are some reasons why it is crucial to get a Facebook Business page and an Instagram business account. I will first cover Facebook Business Pages and then cover Instagram business accounts. (Note that many of the advantages of Facebook Business pages are also advantages of Instagram Business accounts.)
Advantages of a Facebook Business Pages
Facebook Business pages can help your business by building your company’s online identity. A Facebook Business page helps viewers find out about your company and understand the products and services it offers. A well-designed page also shows the company’s culture and values. This kind of authenticity helps retain current customers and can appeal to potential customers. Well-run pages frequently post content and interact with or mention their audience, keeping members of their audience engaged and interacting with your business.
Another benefit of using a Facebook Business page is having access to specialized tools not included with a personal profile. An example of this is Insights. Insights collects data about your viewers, such as demographics, and their interactions with the page. This lets the business owner analyze trends among their viewers. If used effectively, this is a significant improvement over using a personal account.
Finally, Facebook Business pages can help spread awareness of your business and increase traffic to your business’s other pages. For example, you can post about important events your company is involved in organizing and post links to find out more. Then, viewers who click the link are redirected to learn more on another page, increasing viewership and also keeping users interactive.
Advantages of a Instagram Business Pages
Similar to the benefits of using a Facebook Business page over a personal account, there are benefits to using a Business Account on Instagram. One advantage is the ability to pre schedule posts, or write many posts ahead of time to be published at predetermined times. This is more efficient, since you can write many posts in a single sitting. Furthermore, pre scheduling posts is an effective way to increase viewership, by scheduling posts for when your company’s audience is the most active online.
Instagram as a platform also offers advantages that Facebook doesn’t. According to this article, Instagram has a younger user base, with most users being under 30. Using Instagram can therefore help your business cater to a wider demographic and attract more clients. Also, Facebook and Instagram are best suited for different types of posts. Facebook is best for posts with lots of text, while posts with lots of photos tend to do well on Instagram.
Using a Facebook and Instagram Business account will allow you to run targeted ads based on the user’s specific interest and habits. Overall, in today’s age, social media is an important investment for any company’s marketing strategy. Knowing different platforms and their features can help your business succeed in forming a larger, more connected network of clients.
“Why are American workers becoming harder to find?”, an article this week in The Economist found that total job vacancies nationwide are at the highest level for at least 2 decades. There are plenty of unfulfilled positions, causing a labor shortage, even though employers are offering higher pay.
The online zine, The Hill, noted that “as of March this year (2021) the U.S. was still 8.4 million jobs short of pre-pandemic levels, a year after the economy lost more than 21 million jobs amid the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The unemployment rate has since dropped to 6 percent, but it does not reflect millions of Americans who left the labor force because of the pandemic. While there are still millions of unemployed people still looking for work, restaurants, bars, fast food, retailers are having trouble hiring to meet the surging demand.”
The Economist article explored three reasons. First, over-generous stimulus checks and bonus unemployment; yet studies don’t back this one up during this pandemic. Stimulus checks were a huge help when there really weren’t jobs available during the height of the pandemic.
The second reason was the fear factor, the fear of Covid, to work in jobs that are public facing. Hopefully, vaccines should be bringing this reason to a close over the next few months.
Lastly, the extraordinary reallocation of resources accelerated by the pandemic, meaning the huge shift in where the jobs are both in locations and sectors. McKinsey & Company published a report on Feb 18, 2021 on the future of work after Covid 19 that started with a startling quote: The pandemic accelerated existing trends in remote work, e-commerce, and automation, with up to 25 percent more workers than previously estimated potentially needing to switch occupations.
McKinsey & Company also studied the effect of Covid on women in the workforce, particularly women with children under 10 years old. In an article published March 8, 2021, a study last year found nearly 23 percent of women workers were considering leaving the workforce in 2020. Many women left the workforce to help their children through the school year will likely/hopefully be ready to get back to work in the fall assuming vaccines put the pandemic behind us.
Economists believe that this hiring issue will work itself out in the next several months. In the meantime, a caution to employers to about offering higher salaries if they can’t sustain that salary into the future. To offer a high salary now just to reduce it later will bring big morale and productivity problems later.
It might mean, too, that business might start looking at new ways to staff their operations. McKinsey concludes that businesses can start with a granular analysis of what work can be done remotely by focusing on the tasks involved rather than whole jobs. For businesses with jobs with high physical proximity, these are likely to experience the most disruption post-covid.
By Leonardo Pozzobon, Program Coordinator with EGBI
A business plan is NOT the be-all-end-all magic solution to your business problems; that will lie only in your adequate execution. A business plan is, however, a guide to show the path to profitability, listing your challenges and needs to get there. You may eventually reach roadblocks that you hadn’t anticipated, you may consider things initially that you then discard, and you shouldn’t let this discourage you; remember “Plans are useless, but Planning is everything”. You may eventually find a better opportunity or a better market that makes you change your mind on something, but you will know where you stand initially and where to go.
That being said, let’s think about what goes into a Business Plan. But first, a Business is only a business if you have identified a Problem or Needthat you want to solve or address, if you can provide the right Solutionfor it, and find the right Customerwho will have this problem, as long as he or she is willing and able to Pay you in exchange for your solution. The way to find and solve any given problem is unique to that industry, as are the regulations you need to navigate; finding the ideal customer and ideal price is just part of the Marketing and Financial plans. Thus, logically these should be addressed on your “road to success”, or Business Plan:
Problem / Solution (what you’ll do and how)
Marketing Plan (who’s your client and how will you find them)
Finance Plan (how are you making money)
Operations (how are you making more of your solution)
I want to look at the example of a Childcare Business, which provides a near priceless service to working families: Caring safely for the young while parents work to bring food to the table. What 200 years ago might’ve been a role for the extended family, in this industrialized world young adults move far from home and family. Now in the post pandemic move to more affordable places, it’s even more important to understand the parts of a good business plan to take advantage of new opportunities.
Start by looking at the needs and wants of your customer. Parents will most often want to drop off their children when going to and from work, so your best bet is to be close to home or work, and to find how to best connect with these customer segments. Connecting with your ideal customer is the next step on your marketing strategy, and you should not neglect investing in the most basic items of a standard strategy: maintaining a clean and safe image, being visible and easy to find from the street, and having an updated online presence. When directly doing outreach to parent groups, remember these form spontaneously around whatever platform or system that gets traction, and these vary from town to town. A neighborhood can communicate using Facebook, six blocks away another neighborhood can use Nextdoor, and yet a third one can just use an old school bulletin board. It’s okay to bootstrap your marketing strategy, just as well as it is to have money to spend, just make sure that you spend your money wisely, and research before.
Moving on to the money topic, remember that a business doesn’t go bankrupt if it’s losing more money than what it makes, it goes bankrupt when it runs out of Cash. What does this mean? It means you want to build a war chest large enough to cover your first week, or month, or year, however long it takes you to start making a profit and paying yourself. What does that mean, again? Do a budget, find out what your spending categories are, find out everything you need to spend to open, to stay open, and to serve your customers. Or in CPA lingo: your Start-up Costs, your Fixed Costs, and your Cost Of Goods Sold (COGS). Everything, as usual, will depend on both your investment decisions and the resources available to you; there’s a huge difference in initial investment and monthly costs between purchasing real estate and leasing a place, and your available funding caps one side of what you can and cannot do (your Total Addressable Market caps the other side). So first decide what you have available to invest, what your grand vision of a childcare center looks like for you, and then research all the costs and investments needed to reach your vision with your available resources. That will then become the starting point of your Financial plan.
So up until now, all I’ve talked about is spending, spending, spending, let’s get to making money. Providing the solution to a problem, be it selling a physical product or selling your time and knowledge, will always bring certain costs associated with each unit of product or service that you sell; that is what we call Cost Of Goods Sold. These will define, first, the lowest amount you can charge, and give you some guidance on what price to set for your services. Finally, the # of clients you serve will determine your income, subtract your COGS and you’ll have your estimated Gross Profit. This is what you’ll use to cover your fixed expenses, loan payments, payroll and your final income. So you see how important it is to do a good, realistic estimation on all your expenses, fixed and variable. Overestimate the # of children you can serve, and you won’t cover your costs; underestimate your rent, utilities, or payroll expenses, and you may not have any money left to pay yourself. One underestimation may mean your business is no longer sustainable.
This is a very short description of everything you need to consider when making your Business Plan for a childcare business. If you would like to go deeper on any of these topics, feel free to reach out to Economic Growth Business Incubator (EGBI) for a coaching session.
