131 - Business Resources in Asheville (a Comprehensive Overview)

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Making It in Asheville podcast. This episode we're doing all things business resources here in Asheville. So stick around if you're interested in learning more about what things are available to business owners here in Asheville. But this is the making it in Asheville podcast. Each week we typically sit down with an Asheville based business owner, entrepreneur, community leader, ask them what they're making and how they are making it in Asheville. I'm your host. Tony upertachio. And again this week we're looking at all things business resources. So to take a step back, this is season eleven of the Making It in Asheville podcast, episode 131. This season we set out to ask for your participation. We wanted to know what you were thinking about and what thoughts you have. And so on our website, if you visit Makingitanashville.com, you can find season eleven or go to Makingitanashville.com season eleven, that's season eleven and you'll see the concept for this season. So we have a hotline that you can call into and let us know what you're thinking about. Or we have a questionnaire, a survey, a form where we ask you questions and you can ask us questions. And this episode is the result of one of those form fills. So we had someone reach out relatively new to Asheville, thinking about starting a business, wanted to know what resources are available, and we got a little, might have went a little overboard on this. And so the intention of this episode is to list several, if not a meaningful portion of some of the resources available to Asheville based business owners. And where possible, give some. Necessarily, I haven't used all of these resources, but I'm aware of them and they will all be linked on our website@makingitinasheville.com. One, three, one. You can also visit the website and search for resources. So let's get into it. The first area we're going to pay attention to is what I'll call like networking and connections. And so obvious place to start when moving to a new city is going to be a Chamber of Commerce. I think the Asheville Chamber of Commerce does an exceptional job. I want to say in the years since we've lived here, they might have won best Chamber in the country at least once. So asheville. Chamber of commerce is a no brainer venture. Asheville is based out of the Asheville Chamber. The two of them combined are a great place to start for pretty much everything in Asheville outside of Know, shout out to Making It in Asheville. We do our best to create opportunities for folks to get connected. And so each month we set out to have a Monday maker mixer. It's a great opportunity to connect with Asheville based businesses. I'm going to add, I haven't written it down yet, but I'm going to add the YPA Young Professional Association. If you're aged appropriately, the YPA is a good fit and then the AIGA, which has to do with art and design. One of our dear friends runs that group in Asheville. So lots of ways to get connected in Asheville if you're an outdoor based business made by Mountains is a great say it's an offshoot, but somehow it's connected to, I want to say, both Mountain BizWorks and the Asheville Chamber. Great initiative for outdoor based businesses. Similarly, you have another organization called let Me Thin This Pen Out if you're not following along on YouTube. I'm just taking some live notes as we talk this through. But there's also the Oba, which is the Outdoor Business Alliance, which is an organization entirely for outdoor based businesses and businesses that support outdoor based businesses. So, networking and connections, it's a really good place to start. And then when in doubt, you can always consider Meetup Meetup.com as a place to find connections. One of our friend of the podcast has AI based Asheville Meetup group. There are tons of different communities that you can join and participate in in Asheville. Once you arrive, or once you're ready to go harder on your business idea, the next area is going to be on places, resources available for folks who are looking to build skills, improve skills, grow skills. And what stands out to me is that there are a lot of universities and small colleges in the actual area. And it seems to me that probably not enough people are really leveraging those resources. And so I have a bunch here that I've scraped from the Internet. From AB Tech to Blue Ridge Community College to Western Carolina. I know that there are universities in Mars Hill and Marshall, so there are universities in Mars Hill that also have entrepreneurship organizations on campus. And so whether or not you end up learning from AB Tech and their Continuing Education Center, or the Small Business and Technology Development Center, that is a resource here in WNC, there are a lot of places to get support. The one that has come up the most on the podcast so far is without a doubt, Mountain BizWorks. So Mountain BizWorks has a number of courses. My wife has taken several of them, past guests have taken tons of them from business model writing, grant writing, all sorts of courses to help beginning and scaling entrepreneurs improve their business and improve their leadership. And so if there is one that I can say most people have talked about, it's Mountain BizWorks. The other thought is that with knowledge and skills, there's also slightly less traditional education. We've run workshops in the past that have helped businesses consider podcasting as a part of their sales and marketing strategy. There are a bunch of solutions like that. So when in doubt, if there's a skill that you're looking to learn specifically, you can reach out, and I'd be glad to help. Kind of facilitate that connection or point you to folks who have taught something like it in the past. But lots and lots and lots of places where you can continue education and or learn in support of growing your business. Similarly, there are lots and lots of resources available for money. And so for fundraising and outbreak money, this is section three. Today I'll break money into three main areas. One is going to be debt, two will be equity. And then three is grants. So in the debt space, which is loans, interest bearing loans, there's a lot of solutions here in Asheville and then nationally as well. But the two that really kind of have stood out to me and show up the most in conversation is going to be who, you know, we just talked about. But Mountain BizWorks does a lot of debt funding for small businesses here in Asheville and around WNC and then also Eagle Market Streets, which it's my intention to get a lot smarter on all of the services they provide to the community, but does an incredible job of creating opportunity and funding specifically for underresources sourced businesses and communities here in Asheville. So Eagle Market streets are fantastic. I keep seeing them everywhere, and I will figure out how to get them on the podcast as soon as possible. And then outside of that, slightly more traditional investment opportunities or funding opportunities that look like businesses that do SBA loans. Mountain BizWorks is one of them, period. There's a bunch of SBA type, small business loan advisory loans type organizations locally, and that fits in section one, which would be debt type. And I'll have links to the ones that I don't say specifically out loud, all on the website makinginasheville.com 131. When it comes to equity financing, there is some growing equity financing available in Asheville. What I'll say is that there has been this venture, South Carolina Angel Network that has shown up a couple times in the past. There's Asheville angels, which I think is a part of the Carolina angels network. And then recently a new venture organization has shown up in Asheville called Impact. WNC actually helped them launch their website and think through their marketing. Brand new to the ecosystem here, but it promises to be a really great place for high growth, small business, early stage businesses to get venture funding. So equity funding, that means they give you the money for a percentage of the business versus debt funding, which gives you money for a return by way of interest payments. Equity is a growing investment modality here in Asheville, outside of just friends and family or individual accredited investors. So equity is a growing industry here in Asheville. Third, opportunity for funding is going to be grant based funding. We mentioned venture Asheville, they have a micro grant, I want to say they call it that's, I want to say 1000 or up to $5,000. But the number one kind of grant based organization that I've seen in our time here is going to be this NCIDA in season ten, we had several guests who have gotten NCIDA grants. They have two tiers of grants. One is a Micro grant up to $5,000 to help validate business ideas. And then they have an NCI Idea Seed Stage Grant, which is up to $50,000. So from $10,000, NCI idea offers grants. And grants is a third category of investment because while there are certain hurdles and you have to write grant requests and apply through rigorous processes, you also have to validate that the money is going and being used the way that you said it would be. But grant based funding is money that doesn't necessarily come with strings attached. So there's no debt payments that you have to make and you're not necessarily giving up equity or a part of the ownership of your business for the money. And so those are the three ways that money is available in Asheville at a high level. I'm glad to get more specific. If you have a specific need for money like bridge loans or something, there are other solutions available. But to keep things moving with some level of speed, the next area that we're looking at is going to be space. So like, where might your startup or where might your small business work from? And so there's a section I'll just call loosely, commercial Real estate. And I don't necessarily talk about that here, but in the past we've worked with South Slope Pilates and the commercial real estate business behind South Slope Pilates is Shack Properties. There are lots of commercial real estate holdings. Companies, some of the older guards, so to speak, have a lot of real estate locally. And so you can work with a commercial realtor to try and find spaces that suit what you need. Otherwise we can look at co working type spaces and that's probably where most people will start. A level below that would be all the cafes. And I'm not necessarily going to go into the cafes today, but what I will call out is Different World has a shared creator maker space with rentable tools and technology. And Different World is really fantastic in the arts and creative space here in Asheville. So I'll flag that as like a can get coffees, can work out of not necessarily explicitly a co working space, but a co creativity space. Shout out to different world. When it comes to more traditional coworking, several locations stand out and I don't believe that this is all of the co working spaces, but a meaningful portion and perhaps the biggest players. So first up would be center for Craft, right in downtown. Similarly, Focal Point and Mojo coworking are like, I want to say, three streets apart from each other, all in the center of downtown. They have slightly different ideal customer types, but all similar enough. I'll loop in with them Hatch, which really has, in my opinion, become close to the center of the universe for things like small business and specifically startup type small businesses. Hatch is relatively tightly connected to Venture Asheville which is part of the Asheville based chamber. They have a ton of programming at Hatch but so do all of these really all of these slightly more traditional coworking spaces. There are three kind of call outs in the traditional co working space. But also a little adjacent is this actual maker space which is slightly more focused on physical goods creation, the Collider which is slightly more focused on sustainability and impact focused business. And then last is Ernest co warehousing and co working. Ernest was a sponsor of the podcast last season. Ernest is focused not just on co working which is a portion of their physical space, but also in providing warehousing space, modular warehousing space for their clients. And so in the space world in Asheville there's a lot going on. Some of our guests have found locations out in Candler and out in Black Mountain that support their commercial needs and real estate needs. So there's a lot of solutions from cafes to commercial real estate and proper leases. If you need help finding a place that makes sense, feel free to reach out. This is a high level. From there we're going to get into an area that I haven't probably spent the least amount of time on so far here in Asheville and that's in finding talent. And so I mentioned earlier, know you have the ability to potentially find interns at these colleges and universities nearby and I think it's a great place to start. For talent. You have Western Carolina University not far from here. You have UNCA not far from, you know, smack dab in town technically. You have Black Mountain, all these other bordering towns that have college students. Finding internships seems like a great place to find some forms of talent. Above that you have employer services at UNCA. You have venture know the asheville chamber Again showing up with a job board. And then what seems really interesting and something that I've intend to get a little smarter on is NC Works career center in Asheville. So it has recruitment and training. And so outside of these opportunities, whether it's internships, the chamber's, job board or this career center in Asheville, there's going to be all of the usual suspects from temp job service providers and businesses to Craigslist and Facebook. But depending on the talent, depending on the need, there are a lot of ways to help fill gaps in your business. If you let me know specifically what you're thinking about or in need of, I can help be more specific. But when it comes to talent, there are a number of solutions available, resources available to actual based businesses and the last is going to be on support services. And so lots of lawyers, lots of accountants, lots of these supporting services here in Asheville without speaking to any of them directly or specifically. A couple of resources that showed up as I did some homework on this was this NC Free Legal Answers, which is an online platform offering free legal advice in over 20 civil legal categories and they connect individuals with volunteer lawyers. So that's interesting. That's a resource that I didn't actually know about until I looked it up. A ton of lawyers here in Asheville. And then the other resource that I found in doing the homework here is Startup NC Law Clinic, which provides free legal guidance on business related issues to entrepreneurs, helping them navigate legal complexities. And so when it comes to what resources are available here in Asheville, I hope that the takeaway, if there is one, from this overall kind of soliloquy here, is that Making It In Asheville aims to be a very real resource, a very active resource in your life. We want to create relationships that help us facilitate connection here in Asheville and answer the questions that you are most in need of having answers to. And so if we circle back to network and connections, making It in Asheville is going to do monthly Monday Maker Mixer events. One of our targets for the future is leaning into Masterminds, where we'll have the ability to make small groups for accountability, for increased effectiveness in starting businesses, growing businesses, being active participants in our community. And then something that we haven't touched yet, but are very excited about, are going to be thematic based salons. And so we have done these free networking events in the past, and there's a future where we get specific and we get very detailed and we have community leaders participate in conversations and or teach in areas that the community has requested that we double click on. And so there are again, tons of resources here, from networking, to knowledge and skill development, to funding and money to space talent and support. The goal with this episode was not to be 100% extensive. As I did research, I was actually surprised and impressed by just how many resources are available to the community. I wanted to start the conversation and then if you have more specific requests, reach out. You can find me at tony@makingitinasheville.com. If you have any questions you want, you have ideas for the topics that we could talk about, please visit Makingitinasheville.com Season Eleven. Hop on the hotline or fill out the survey and I will intend to answer your question or use your sound bite in an upcoming episode. Thank you.