In just seven weeks, Brandon Dimmer went from the sale of items made from scratches at pop-up event to start a full hotel business called Bee did it-all because of the Black Business Center.
Dimmer was one of the five entrepreneurs who graduated from the Greater Madison Urban Business Business Business Accelerator, GBETA, on February 6. The program is a course of seven-week clashes in entrepreneurship, open to new and created business owners. The participants took lessons, attended the mentoring sessions, and set out on the network with leaders throughout the Dane county.
“The amount of information we learned in that short period of time was foolish,” he says. He entered Gbeta with plans to expand his existing product sales; He left with a hotel company, a website and a three-year plan that ends up in a food truck.
The Black Business Center, located at 2222 S. Park St., opened its doors to the public last August. Dimmer is just one of the success stories since then. The center, which is also the home of the Black Chamber of Commerce, the Womencin Women’s Business Initiative (WWBIC) and Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation, aims to eliminate barriers to entrepreneurs seeking to start or grow their small business. In addition to housing these economic resources, the center also offers office, cubic and a community cuisine for entrepreneurs such as Dimmer, who are looking for low -cost ways to bring their product to the market.
“The goal is to create an applicable destination for businesses that would not be able to grow due to financial entrepreneurship and other barriers,” says Shakkiah Curtis, a Center consultant. Curtis is also the owner of Tailer Nicole Wine & Cupcakes, a luxury wine and treatment bar to open in the center in late April.
The center is mainly a center for black and other color entrepreneurs to track the beginnings and expand their existing businesses surrounded by a strong support network. In 2017, only 40 small black -owned businesses in Madison employed more than one employee, according to the HUB website.
“We want to see a hundred in two years, and then two hundred, three hundred, and change those statistics,” says Maguugu Davis, the director of the Black Business Center.
Davis says most of the center office spaces are already in use-there are only three remaining office spaces available between third and fourth floors-and open cooperation spaces are often crowded, as well.
Essential for the Hub Business Hub model is the idea of networking, separation and synergy. Flowering entrepreneurs can also rely on dedicated business mentoring organizations such as WWBIC and Black Chamber of Commerce. They can also turn to other businesses in the center for mentoring or resources.
“If a person wants to make a podcast, we send them to the second floor. You want to make your nails? We send you to the bathroom, ”says Davis. “We know where to send you, whatever you want to have.”
Tailer Nicole, for example, will serve cupcakes made by a company operating outside the cuisine of the center community.
HUB also elevates Madison’s Black Business Community through regular educational events. In addition to programming such as GBETA, HUB expects small business pop-up, specific industry training and network nights. Last October, she held a speedy night, where entrepreneurs could talk to tax lawyers, bank spokesmen and successful business owners. For new owners of small businesses, these opportunities provide a life life, navigating them through complex processes.
“Coming from Corporate America and entering the enterprise for the first time … Urban connection has been really useful in building my confidence to push forward and start my business.” Says Gregory Taylor, a GBETA participant.
His company, see my ears, is committed to empowering individuals with hearing impairments to seek help and improve the quality of their lives. Taylor hopes to open my ears this July. He is currently looking for space on the first floor of the center, but he says the center is supporting him for his search for real estate elsewhere.
While the Black Business Center hopes that the young entrepreneurs will find a space within its walls, after all it is a catalyst for growing black entrepreneurs throughout the great Madison area.
“We don’t expect people to stay forever,” Davis says. When entrepreneurs have found their base and want to move to a larger space, the center will support them. “We allow another group of people with the next generation to come and start from there and grow and move out.
By providing a pop-up pipeline to the start of the full brick and mortar-and many training along the way, Black Business Hub hopes to create a strong, well-connected network of entrepreneurs.
And for the entrepreneurs themselves – like Dimmer, who is starting his catering company from the Hub community kitchen – the black business center can turn the fantasy into reality.
“It feels like I’m living a dream,” says Dimmer. “I am living my dream by realizing something that was deep inside my brain and bringing it out to see it realize.”
Gabby Shell is an editorial internship in Madison Magazine.
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