Photo credit: Lindsay Stayton Photography
LaMarr Love runs Cookie Jar Baking Co., a Milwaukee bakery.
Wanting to improve the Milwaukee economy and help entrepreneurs succeed, Dan Steininger created BizStarts in 2008 in Milwaukee. While first searching for entrepreneurs that already had resources to develop their business, Steininger realized he was missing the people most in need of assistance. “I thought, who’s serving the ordinary businesses in inner-city Milwaukee who don’t have mothers and fathers who have been in business? Who is taking care of them?” he says.
BizStarts provides one-on-one coaching, mentoring and network connections to help entrepreneurs grow their business free of charge. According to the organization’s 2018 impact report, 61% of the entrepreneurs they helped were people of color, and 35% came from low-income neighborhoods. Patrick Snyder, executive director of BizStarts, also saw the need to provide services to underserved communities in Milwaukee.
“Why don’t we help people in the neighborhoods who really could use the opportunity and literally could do something special? The change [for BizStarts] went from scalable companies in venture capital to people who could just use a hand,” says Snyder. “It wasn’t the fact that they didn’t have the ability, it was the fact that they weren’t given the chance.”
People like LaMarr Love, who served 22 years in federal prison, became a skilled baker and wanted to start a business. He was an excellent baker, but the most difficult part of a business is selling your product or service. BizStarts connected Love with law firms who purchase cookies for client meetings, creating a now-profitable baking business. “He becomes a role model for, as he says, the brothers out on the streets where he came from,” says Steininger.
Creating jobs helps alleviate poverty in Milwaukee, and according to Steininger, most of those jobs come from startups. In 2009, Milwaukee was ranked the fourth-poorest city in the country by the U.S. Census Bureau. Today, Steininger wants to reduce poverty by helping people who have just an idea but no resources for a business. Anyone is welcome to apply. “There are people who come to us who just have an idea on a napkin,” says Snyder.
Succeeding as an Entrepreneur
“Part of what we do is tough love. We help them understand what it takes to start a business,” says Steininger. Poking holes in an entrepreneur’s idea is important to making a business plan “bullet proof,” according to Snyder.
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As the founder of Colorful Connections, Morgan Phelps wanted to increase diversity in the fields of public relations and creative agencies where she had previously worked. By going to BizStarts, Phelps heard feedback that harnessed her skills in a safe environment. “It’s important to meet with people who aren’t telling you what you want to hear when you’re putting together your business,” says Phelps. “Progress and success are very much learned to not happen on a straight line.”
Businesses can fail easily if they don’t have mentoring and resources or keep up with the market, according to Steininger. “Anyone in business knows you have to be able to reach out to smarter people than you are to help you along the way,” he says.
Because the markets are continually changing, and market changes are happening more quickly, entrepreneurs need market analyses for their products and services to succeed and continue to succeed and grow, but many can’t afford it. Steininger wants to provide the analysis and help entrepreneurs avoid having to take out loans, encouraging them to grow their businesses organically from the money they earn from their sales.
Emerald Mills, founder of Diverse Dining, says BizStarts helped her monetize her idea. After hearing statistics concerning Milwaukee’s segregation, Mills wanted to create conversations in neighborhoods, schools and organizations to help foster inclusion in the city. Mills also needed to know how to make an income from the business. “Initially, I actually had a different concept on providing marketing and driving customers, but it was very hard to figure out how to monetize it,” she says. That “was the honest feedback I got from BizStarts.”
To succeed, entrepreneurs need a proof of concept, or the proof that a customer will buy a product at a price where the entrepreneur can cover their costs and make a profit, according to Snyder. “There is a lot that goes into success, but it starts with knowing your customer, knowing your margins and your price point, and you got to put the frosting on the cake with the marketing. And then, you’ve got yourself a winner,” he says. Empowering new entrepreneurs with this information helps to build confidence to succeed, even if this means empowering the entrepreneur to move in another direction, according to Snyder.
Starting a business can be exciting and scary, according to founder of Jobs That Help, Ben Hastil. “BizStarts provides support where you otherwise could be alone and a coach who understands what you’re going through,” he says.
According to the impact report, entrepreneurs saw an 88% improvement in ability and confidence after seeking help from BizStarts.
With a background in education, Snyder has many connections within the academic community, which strengthens the feedback and mentoring seen at BizStarts. Professors at Marquette, UW-Milwaukee and UW-Madison all contribute to BizStarts’ learning system. Beyond the mentorship, Steininger is also able to connect entrepreneurs with individuals like the chief financial officer at Harley-Davidson and the head of operations at Baird. “I love the fact that we are able to stabilize whatever it is that they are doing as an organizational audit, pass them off to a mentor and also connections to resources,” says Snyder.
With this current structure, BizStarts provides mentoring, coaching and networking for entrepreneurs in the Milwaukee area for the life of someone’s business. But for those who don’t stay in touch, Snyder asks the question: How does BizStarts know an entrepreneur’s business is succeeding after they leave? Snyder wants BizStarts to be “a system of learning in Milwaukee that is best in the world.”
In developing a new system, Snyder wants to have professors look at the current program and poke holes in it. In the long term, Snyder sees BizStarts as the best training program in the country for underserved entrepreneurs, “and solve the problem of poverty as a result of that,” says Snyder.
Changes to BizStarts in the future could include an eight-week boot camp that provides proper coaching for starting a business, with coaching coming afterwards and expansion within the state. Currently, Steininger says there is a new partnership in Two Rivers and Manitowoc, and he would like to eventually expand the organization beyond the state of Wisconsin.
BizStarts is located at 1555 N. River Center Drive, Suite 210. For more information, call 414-973-2334 or visit bizstarts.com.
