SPEAKER_05 1:45

Good morning. Good morning. Welcome to a special episode of the Hilltop Globe podcast. Specifically, one for our sponsors. One thing that we wanted to do this season is make sure that we put a spotlight on those who support us and make it possible for us to continue to bring you all exciting and informative content and talks with folks from around our community here in North Carolina, South Carolina, et cetera, surrounding areas. And one of the ways we do that are through local business members, owners, entrepreneurs, and et cetera, who think, hey man, what they're doing is fantastic. And I would want to make sure that financially they're able to continue to do that. And so we want to start bringing those people onto our platform outside of their normal non-defies of what they come talk onto our podcast about and just talk about their things that they do business-wise in the community and what it is that they're doing that allows for them to support us. And so today we are proud to have with us Miss Chantel Broughton. She's actually been one of our guests. And it's nice to have our guests also support us because man, what more can we ask for? You already came on the darn podcast. We asked you for money now, maybe feel bad.

SPEAKER_00 3:07

Same time, thank you, thank you.

SPEAKER_05 3:10

Because you must have seen something when you were on the pod or when you listen to the pod. You're like, you know what? There's value there. And so for you to put your hard work, energy into us with that is amazing. And so we want to make sure that we give you this time to give you your flowers, but also give you some time to discuss what it is that you do, specifically what you want to promote, and what you want to make sure you know what our audience could understand is behind the sponsorship that's coming from you. The floor is yours.

SPEAKER_03 3:39

Okay, so thank you for the introduction. Again, my name is Chantelle Brown. I'm located. It is.

SPEAKER_05 3:46

Go ahead.

SPEAKER_03 3:47

I'm located in North Charleston. And so my role at the Business Success Center, excuse me, is to serve as like a hub for entrepreneurs. So I serve the entire state, all 46 counties. And it is my job to be knowledgeable of all the resources and services available to entrepreneurs. Specifically for those entrepreneurs who just have an idea and haven't incorporated their business, don't know how to start their business, or those entrepreneurs who have been in business for a while and just aren't sure how to move the needle forward into growing or scaling their business. You can definitely come to me and I can help you identify capital sources. I can help you identify education and training, whether that's through accelerator programs, whether that's through one-on-one mentorship. And then I can also help you flesh out ideas for your business as well. So that can be in the form of writing a business plan, a logic model, any kind of document to help you organize your thoughts and organize the growth of your business. I can also assist with those things as well.

SPEAKER_01 4:49

Wow. There's a lot. So anybody in South Carolina that has a small business idea, either up and running or not up and running, you can help them figure out what the next step is and where to get funding for it. What is that, what does that cost? Do you have to be a member of something? Is it a government program? What's the deal with all that?

SPEAKER_03 5:14

So my services are free. Um I'm not the one providing these services. I'm more of a connector. So I connect people to the resources that are available to them. Sometimes those resources are at a cost, whether that's a nominal fee or membership. Most of the resources that I provide to people are free. So we use resources like SCORE, the SBA, different city and municipalities offer like business development sections or services or divisions. So we just try to get resources from every cranny, honestly.

SPEAKER_01 5:47

I see. And a lot of times these are resources that are not really highly contested because people don't know about them. Because that's that's kind of been our experience recently, is that a lot of people just don't know about them at all. Don't know. Wow.

SPEAKER_02 6:01

Yeah. Right. Correct. Do you guys have events where you promote our network with locals?

unknown 6:09

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 6:10

So we we host our own events. We actually have an event coming up on May 2 where we try to do like a small presentation to highlight services available to entrepreneurs, but also allow them to network with our resource partners and amongst themselves. Because there's power in an entrepreneur talking to another entrepreneur. There's opportunities for color often thinking about. There's opportunities for support. A lot of people just don't know about your business, so they can't support you. We're definitely very heavy with networking and bringing entrepreneurs together so that they can put their business in front of people.

SPEAKER_01 6:43

And that's something interesting too, because I know a lot of people, when you've got an idea that you're trying to flush out, it's very helpful to collaborate with other people. But yet there's also this other side of it that there's always a voice is somebody telling you that, like, hey, you can't tell anybody about this. You got to keep it top secret. You got to get all your paperwork in line, all your NVAs and stuff before you can talk. How do you feel about that versus you know, like like collaboration versus yeah, gatekeeping?

SPEAKER_03 7:13

What the hell? That's a really good question. So I strongly recommend those who are not like incorporated. You don't have an LLC, nonprofit, whatever it's a business. You don't have anything legally to protect somebody from stealing your information, right?

SPEAKER_01 7:29

And you don't have the influence.

SPEAKER_03 7:30

But I do think that there's power and there is power in bouncing off ideas from someone who's either ahead of you or someone who's in the same space as you. Two minds are always better than one. But I think we got um I wouldn't recommend going to maybe like an independent consultant starting off. Maybe I would go to an organization like SCORE or the SBA or the SBDC, where these are business consultants who have some kind of ethical motto behind their business frameworks who are confidential and won't tell your business to somebody else. That's just me.

SPEAKER_05 8:06

Yeah, that's great about it. So you can get your ideas to mature, bounce them off people without having to worry about it getting draped.

SPEAKER_03 8:16

Correct.

SPEAKER_05 8:17

Mm-hmm. Yeah, no one's feeling. That's good. That's very good information. You may have to cut, you should come come to our to our create the mall virtually and tell people that. Because I think that's something that, seriously, that's something that most people don't think about because you're so excited, especially when you start a new venture, you're just, I mean, you're over the wall. Hey, I can do this, I have this new thing. I want everybody to know about it, I want you to be able to help, and et cetera. And then when someone takes it, uh, because you don't have any protection intellectually over what you created, it does hurt. And to not know how to properly set yourself up for that success, it can be a bit daunting. I mean, and and then at the same time, it stops people who have those good ideas from even moving forward because if it happens to you once, maybe twice, then you may give up altogether on trying to even move forward.

SPEAKER_03 9:06

Not to be too churchy on here, you know, it's still Saturday, but I do feel like if God gives you the idea, He will see you through if you stay related to what the idea is that He gave you. I definitely believe it's okay for somebody else to have a sending a business model. You know, God He's gonna allow you to see your vision through data core.

SPEAKER_01 9:26

Well, a lot of times it's putting in the work, and and you mentioned business development and getting training. And I feel like that's something that you know, like a lot of times I help nonprofits and I help small businesses. I've tried to do them before, but there's always elements of this model that you don't have. And you know, it's great to find people, but at the same time, you got to educate yourself on all of this stuff somewhere along the way. If no other reason to just to find it, you know.

SPEAKER_02 9:57

So what kind of I don't think we'll learn about how to scale a business.

SPEAKER_05 10:01

Yeah, yeah. So in on that same vein, like what kind of educational resources are offered by that business center to help people learn those types of business education? So, for instance, how like what do you all offer to teach? Like, are they classes? Are they just resources? Do you all offer outside of the networking that you that that is provided?

SPEAKER_03 10:24

Sure. So we provide lunch and learn to our members and the general public every other Wednesday. So I think the next one will be April 17th, and then every other Wednesday. One of the things that we really try to focus in on is business financial literacy. Because we deal with a lot of minority entrepreneurs, and just as a people, that's something that we kind of we need some work in because we weren't taught those fundamental business financial literacy skills. We weren't taught those fundamental personal financial literacy skills. So we really teach people like cash flow management is the next um session that we have. So we want people to understand like how revenue flows into your business. How do you use your revenue flow to project your business for the next three years? Because when you're getting a loan, they want to know that you can project the growth of your business for the next three years. How do you do that? So we're gonna break down those steps to be able to manage the flow of revenue within your business, manage the flow of expenses so that you can move on to the next step, which would be to project your business for two, three years. And so when it's time for you to get a loan, you can check off all those boxes and you're not staggering that process because you already know those fundamental.

SPEAKER_05 11:41

That's good for shark painting. Yeah, seriously.

SPEAKER_01 11:44

Because I watch people go on shark eaten alive, you know, even trying to get sponsors or trying to get donors or trying to get grants. You have the true that you have a sound model in place and that you're not just gonna just away the money.

SPEAKER_05 12:01

Yeah, that's true, man. People dropping the bang. What does the demographic makeup of the participants look like?

SPEAKER_03 12:10

I would say off the top of my head, it's probably it. 75 and 25. No, the that is not equal a hundred. Y'all know what I mean.

SPEAKER_00 12:30

I was like, all right, we're almost there. We got two and a half, one point two, and two.

SPEAKER_03 12:37

It's probably majority of black business owned.

unknown 12:40

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 12:41

Okay. And then the remaining would be like Hispanic. That's what I wanted to do.

SPEAKER_05 12:46

Because I live there. Yes, Spanish-speaking businesses. And I was wondering, because especially with like, I mean, like brother said, like, so we have family in Connecticut, and everybody has family up north. What they realize is that the African American or the black community and the Hispanic Latino community, business-wise, we deal with some of the same hurdle. And I was wondering, especially down there in Charles, because I lived down there for a while. One thing I realized is that there are a lot of Latino business owners, etc., in certain corridors. I was like, so where do they get their business education? Where do they get their sponsorship, their help to promotion and getting them off the ground? Because they're doing it. And so I'm saying, how are they doing it? Where are they getting these loans? How are they putting this together? And I didn't know if there was something that there was a resource that we were both using. And so since you were speaking about this today, I had to ask just to know what the participation is. Absolutely. I think we should participate more with each other business-wise, just because of the growing demographic, but also the similar history that dealing with business here in the U.S., it would make sense. I just know I I went the hand in hand. I've been in North Charleston. I know where the business is at. I went and got me some mole. I know where to get me a cell phone for cheap and some international phone cards. I know. So that's why I was like, all right, so that's cool. I'm happy about that because you know they always talk about the divide between black and brown. I'm like, but that's why I was like, why would we why would we have that? I don't think that should be an issue. And some really good friends down there. They actually own a Venezuelan Insterian. He actually worked with a contracting company and they remodel houses and flip them. And they've been doing really well. And he's been telling me about how they've been working with some business tables and stuff like that just to get their education up so that they can be a better business. His name is Chetty Man. Chetty man, I hope they still been out there doing well because for a while it was a little rough during the pandemic, but they are doing well now. So just wanted to put that little note in there just to see how you all were doing. Outside of that, are there any other groups that participate outside of Latino white or black groups that participate in you all organizations?

SPEAKER_03 14:57

We have other demographics like veterans. We also have some business owners who have various abilities. I don't like to say disabilities. I say various abilities. Um I guess when you're in that group where you're privileged, you kind of don't realize the struggles that a lot of business owners that are different from you. But even business owners who have various abilities, it's hard for them, no matter what ethnic background they belong to, to get help too, which is very interesting. So we work with a little bit of everybody.

SPEAKER_01 15:42

But if you have a vision accessibility issue and you're trying to register accounts online, and all of these things have methods to make sure you're not a robot that usually comes with like take which one of these pictures is a motorcycle, and you can't see that motorcycle, guess what? That's a huge pair of the industry to make it all of these little we need to run you. Yeah. That's on us, you know, and you know, talking from people that build the web to notice that that's a problem and and and you know what.

SPEAKER_05 16:19

Yeah, work around it. Oh, they don't even think about it, yeah, that's difficult. Um, because you don't want to have barriers, because I know that's one thing, Chantel, that you all are dealing with is working through barriers. And I'm happy that you bought that up just so that our audience could see that that's something, doesn't matter what you're doing, even if you're trying to assist people, good lord, you're gonna even have barriers there. I know not to make this go too long, but I do just want to ask the question. What is your I'm gonna have to ask this? That's you're a sponsor of our show. We appreciate you for being that. Could you tell the audience a little bit of why you're happy to be a sponsor for our show and if you have any favorite episodes or highlight things that you've seen from our show or things that you like that our show does so that they can understand why you wanted to be involved with the Hilltop Glove podcast?

SPEAKER_03 17:08

My mission is to provide education so that people can imply implicate that into whatever they're doing and to just be better. And I think y'all do a really good job. Basic questions and responses. Like you're teaching people how to do X, Y, and Z. Like when I tap in, no matter what episode I'm watching, I learn something. And so that's something I just need to late to because that's who I want to be as a person, as a professional, as a helper in my community. I learned something from every single episode that I watched. Like, there's have not been an um episode where I have not learned something new. So I don't think I have a favorite. Appreciate what y'all we black folk don't have a community where we can come to and get support and educated and really show up as our true and authentic selves. So I appreciate the work that y'all are doing.

SPEAKER_05 18:02

Excellent, excellent. I appreciate hearing that, man. I know as these two already know, and Pip in the background knows like the reason for this, it is a digital Rolodex. Roll you go in there, you look at it, and you're like, who what's their name? How does that read through it, see what the information is, get all your Googles done, contact them if you need assistance. How did you find me? They'll talk glove podcast. Oh, okay, so you must be okay. Um, it's almost like a vet, seriously, it's like a vetting, it's a vetting ground. And at the same time, it is a it's its own uh library or I'm gonna call it it's better than telephone book. Um, because we typical personality already. You need to really know what's going on and with the person or who the person is before you even want to reach out. I think if we had this type of resource growing up in our early 20s, I think it would have been so amazing. Because like here's the cool thing we've had mentors, we've had friends and family members to assist us with things, but outside of our familiar uh network, it'd be nice to have this at that age. So this is something that we're like, yo, let's supply this to people so that they can use it. Because there's so many people out there doing great things intending to change people's lives, but if you aren't in their realm or in their sphere of influence, you can miss out. So it's a great way to get in people's bubbles without having to stretch yourself too thin.

SPEAKER_02 19:25

So, how can people actually get in contact with the Business Success Center and become a member or find you guys on social media?

SPEAKER_03 19:35

So we have a phone number, but I strongly discourage people from calling me because I'm one person and I travel throughout the state. Your number would be the email. Your number. Like just email me and I'll get back to you. But it's my first name, C-H A N C E L L E. Gacid S-C A C E D dot org. And then we also have a website, the opportunity center.org. Say that email again. The email is my name, Chantel, C-H-A-N-C-E-L-L-E at S Gid, S-C-A-C-E-D.org.

SPEAKER_00 20:18

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 20:19

And the website for the Business Success Center is the opportunity. No, I think it's just opportunity s t.org. I'll have to get it back to y'all. I don't know. Well, you don't need I don't use it for myself, but it has our application and after it has all that information on it, but I'll send it to you.

SPEAKER_05 20:37

Is there you said there's no cost, it is free, correct?

SPEAKER_03 20:41

The trainings are free. We do have a membership for those who are in the area and want to use spaces like co-worker slash incubator space. Oh, yeah. There's a hundred dollars a month fee for that that we provide are free. Dollars a month, you get the business address, you get access to all of our trainings. Um, you get the office supplies, you get the office space, you get a receptionist, you get all of those amenities for your for a hundred dollars.

SPEAKER_01 21:06

I mean, I can't even run out of my house for a hundred dollars a month.

SPEAKER_05 21:11

I'm about to say that is great. You gotta let people know about that. Okay. All right, so you're gonna make us make sure to send us that that website so we can confirm it, and then we'll make sure to put this information on it because I think this is something, especially folks in that region need to be aware of. That's something that they can take advantage and tap into. And you all serve now. Here's the thing you serve the entire state. Say somebody up in uh place in Spartanburg. Say they want to come now. How does that work? How do they utilize so they would pay getting the membership? Would they have to come down to Charleston to use the space?

SPEAKER_03 21:51

If they wanted to use the space or if they just want to use it as a business address. Oh, because I don't recommend my address. Don't use your mama address, and then you gotta disgruntle customer.

SPEAKER_00 22:01

Like that little cat.

SPEAKER_03 22:03

Use the business address.

SPEAKER_05 22:04

Yeah, you don't want to pay. Mm-mm. Mm-mm. Okay. I understand. That makes sense. Perfect. Well, before we get off, is there anything that you all would like to add? Any other questions you offer Chantel?

SPEAKER_03 22:17

Just tap in, all business owners. I know sometimes it can be a little daunting to start a business, or if you stuck in this space where you can't grow, there's people out there to help you. I don't know why we don't know about these resources, but I get paid to know about the resources, and I'm gonna share it with you. So definitely tap in with me, um, and I'll make sure that you have the right connections that you need.

SPEAKER_04 22:41

Excellent. Well so much. Anything from the home. Thanks for supporting us. Good to my good.

SPEAKER_02 22:45

I've known you like all my life, and you've all been always supportive. Always business related. She don't hear nothing else but business stuff. So I like about you. And I'll be sending a lot of people your way. Thank you.

SPEAKER_03 22:58

And likewise, a couple people from TL2, actually.

SPEAKER_05 23:02

Please do, please do. Just to wrap up, Hilltop Glove Podcast. We got our sponsor on Chantel Broughton. It's her first year sponsoring our podcast. We greatly appreciate it. Blessings to your sister. Keep doing what you're doing, affecting change positively in the world around you and in our state. Make sure that we will promote and get folks over to you over there at the Business Success Center. If you have any questions or concerns about this, we will have the information post it so that you all will be able to see it. Connect with her, get a membership for all the resources that they give for businesses. And if you're there locally, use the space, etc. Make sure that you are pushing your entrepreneurship to the max. Outside of that, after the Hill Top Club podcast, this is DJ Ann What? Mike Tamaya. And of course our sponsor, Chantel Broughton. We gotta skip in the background, and like giving the background hide it. But until the next time, in the meantime, tell somebody next to him that you love them, that you appreciate them, spread love wherever you go. Let's be positive out here in this world and think good change. Other than that, peace.