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Your watching good day street talk
Joining me now is Alpha Demmellash
she's the chief executive officer of rising tide capital we also have jay savulich he's the
the director at the Community Business Academy
for rising tide capital and two entreprenuers beatrice Johnston and
Bernard hendrix welcome to all and you thank you
so much for joining us we're gonna start with you alpha
and the motivation behind the business and how many people you have coming into you now
now sure the most patient as I
I'm talked about alot recently is my mom my mom was an entreprenuer
she worked a full time job full time job during the day and when
saw at night and save and bring me to this country and
and offer me opportunities that I felt very strongly about
I'll giving back and and doing the same thing for other entreprenuers
and since we established our organization about six years ago
we've hired over 280 entreprenuers who've completed our program people like
beatrice and
bernard who have really taken their ideas and that propel them to that next level
so
it's been an exciting journey you know beatrice your story is great
tell me about your company what it does my company's brand excitement and
what we do is we help small businesses
usually at ten employees or less to actually develop the materials that will
help them to market
and stand out against their competitors so we come in we help them to
put together there sweet of materials that can be printed we help them to get an
online presence so that people can find them
and be able to help them to be profitable by spreading the word on what
their services and products offer
now we had just I just mentioned you know a lot of big companies you're working for
an industry Wall Street right
yes you have a background in marketing and brand development
advertising what what's the trigger to say I want to start my own business and
how did you find rising tide capital
well part of it was I have been doing this on a grand scale for
corporations for over 10 years
and I would have friends and referrals to come to me and say I'm starting a
business or i've been involved in business and i hear that you do this for a living
so part of it was being able to connect with people who really have that need but
there was no one to service them
because you know large corporations large
advertisers won't look at the small business and help them
to develop the materials that they need to be able to compete and just on a
general scale so they started coming to me and I
can fill that need but I didn't know how to make it profitable because when you
do your passion your almost want to it for free for anyone
that really has that need and appreciates it. so i needed rising tide
to actually take me through the practical steps climb
what to do for the businessman take it out at the book knowledge that you can
read and that you even getting business school
and make a very business oriented in very practical
this is what you need to do this is what you need to look and you really can get
your hands into the finances
in scale it down from you know several hundreds of thousands of dollars to
several thousand dollars for a small business or a entrepreneur
jay you clarifed this for me actually that unlike organizations that actually
provide the funding what you're doing is starting
much earlier in the process which is to say there are a lot of things you need
to know just as an entrepreneur but a lot of things that you need to do
to be able to qualify i mean we all heard lending is very tough these days getting
a loan is very tough so describe me
the business academy and what it is you do with them well its eleven weeks
and these guys came together on a Saturday morning nine o'clock on a
Saturday morning for 11 weeks last thing I
and we do bait business basics the goal is to teach people how to set up a
business that can be profitable
because if you gotta go out and get a bank to give you money the first thing
the bank is gonna wanna see is whether or not your business can generate money
to pay back the loan and so that's really important
that sounds important I mean profitability right it sounds like common sense but as
we've seen in the last couple years
even the biggest and brightest are not necessarily always going to be making
money
okay bernard you have your own cleaning company yes
okay and did you have experience in the field prior to going through rising tide
capital
um with the cleaning you know you don't need as much start up cost um you can start
from home
the job that i work at now on be at work and leaders who University College
and we do the floors and scrubbing and waxing the carpets
and I loved on it so I
went to rising tide capital to start um
trying to figure how to start the business up
part aside in our mission is to make sure that the people who come to us
are on the right track that its it takes tremendous risks
especially when you have when you don't have as many resources to devote to a
business
and we want to make sure that they are committing those resources
towards an Idea that works and there are a lot of people who come through
the program
who may have a dream or a vision that is you know different than what is
practical
on where in an industry that they have an experience in and we let them make
that decision on there own so when they go through
the experiences of taking the class and learning from someone like jay whose
owned six different businesses
who knows what failure looks like who knows what success looks like
and when he guides them through the process like that they come to a
decision on their own they say maybe I should be changing my idea
to make it more viable what are you looking for from the Applicants theres
lot of people right now who
you know we've we've read about this jobless benefits running out and some
people have been unemployed
for a year now I and are starting to realize there gonna have to call on their
own resources but what are you looking for from the Applicants
well these guys a good example it really helps if you have a skill or talent that
your bring to a business idea
in bernard's case he wanted to do a grocery store but it turned out he knew
how to do floor so that's a great place to start
and in the community business academy you don't have to know about business
it's really helpful to work from your strength the kinds of
talents that you already have okay thank you all very much
Alpha, Jay, Beatrice, Bernard good luck we look
forward to hearing good news from you and inspiring us
great work you guys alright next up the organization that showing young adults
how to be well suited for their corporate dream jobs
literally. more when good day street talk continues Stay tuned