June 2020

It doesn't necessarily feel right to talk about webinars and business counseling when our community is hurting right now and without acknowledging that.

We stand with the friends and family of George Floyd ,   Sean Reed ,  Breonna Taylor ,   Michael Brown ,   Philando Castile ,   Botham Jean ,   Alton Sterling ,   Sandra Bland ,   Atatiana Jefferson ,   Freddie Gray , Tamir Rice ,  Keith Childress ,  Stephon Clark ,  Aiyana Stanley-Jones ,  Walter Scott ,  Antwon Rose, Jr ,  Keith Scott ,  Jonathan Ferrell ,  Jordan Edwards ,  Amadou Diallo ,  Sean Bell ,  Terrence Crutcher , John Crawford ,  Oscar Grant ,   Corey Jones , and the untold stories of many more.

We stand with the downtown Raleigh businesses destroyed this weekend.

The Wake Tech Small Business Center exists to help people start and grow their business. We can't have a strong and vibrant business community without equity for all of our business owners. That's why we have the Black Business Momentum Series , the Hispanic Business Series, sessions focused on woman-owned businesses, and the pop-up shop, OPN on Martin is focused on women and minority business owners. Every session we offer is open to any small business owner or someone who wants to start a business.

The Wake Tech Small Business Center along with the Small Business Center Network of NC has recently received an allocation of funds for Disaster Related Counseling and this feels even more important as we move into NC Small Business Week, June 8-12.

So, as I asked myself, how do we, as the Wake Tech Small Business Center, support our small business community during a pandemic, economic uncertainty, and the opportunity to change the face of our local community? How do we respect the memory of George Floyd and the thousands of untold stories like his, to change the future for our children (future business owners), to uplift our small business community?

We are launching a Reboot, Recover, Rebuild (R3) Program inspired by Blue Ridge Community College SBC. We will be providing enhanced Disaster Relief Counseling to support our existing counseling with focuses on Finance, Branding, Business Starts & Growth, Human Resources, Web Presence, Email management, Loan generation, Public Relations, and much, much more. We will provide deep-dive, hands-on services to small businesses determined to make it work.

We will work to actively support all Wake County business owners. We will highlight the business owners with grit, we will celebrate NC Small Business Week by telling the stories of just of few of our amazing Black Business Owners on our Facebook Page. We will work together to build a stronger future small business community here in Wake County.

We encourage you to pledge 30% of your spending to support local small businesses. You can find small businesses on the Wake Tech Shop Small Guide , Black Dollar NC , Downtown Raleigh Alliance , and right on main street in your town. Sign the pledge with us on our Facebook page.

We kick off our June with continued webinar support of small business owners with a session this Friday at 10:30 AM on completing your PPP paperwork . Next week, we cover re-entry plans, a discussion with a CPA, and more. See our schedule below.

We believe in the strong future of our small business community.

With love,

Cherith