‘If you have what it takes’: Rock Hill plan builds minority-owned business downtown.
Julisa and Harold White plan to use shirts. Erica Hogan wants to use the program teaching dance students to cook and change tires. Cathy Stewart has dinner theater and weddings, Morris Gordon a music production company.
All of them want to see a more diverse Rock Hill get down to business.
In June there were 70 applicants for the Black Economic Leadership League XPrize. JM Cope Construction put up $100,000 and a challenge. Potential minority business owners or existing owners looking to expand would sign up for a boot camp in entrepreneurship. On Friday morning judges will question the dozen remaining participants one last time. Judges will announce winners at a Dec. 12 dinner at Winthrop University.
Yet the larger prize is bigger than simply picking winners.
“We’re excited to bring it to a close and really help to launch some businesses,” said Andrew Cope, president of JM Cope.
Project leaders describe a thriving African-American business district in Rock Hill prior to 1960. Many of those businesses and storefronts were taken down in the decades to follow, making way for urban renewal. Downtown Rock Hill hasn’t had a resurgence, project leaders say, of new minority-owned businesses.
Dawn Johnson, herself an African-American business owner and board member with the Rock Hill Economic Development Corporation, served as a judge for the XPrize.
“It was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life,” she said. “If you can imagine having 40 people who are just dreaming about owning their own business coming into a room.”
Of the 70 applicants, 40 people agreed to meet four hours each Tuesday night for five months. About 40 business community members came as mentors and coaches, sharing good and bad business ideas from their own experience.
“It was about determining if you have what it takes, or if you think you have what it takes to start and run a business,” Johnson said.
There were 26 people who continued with business plans and workshops. Of them, 20 submitted a final business plan. The dozen chosen as potential thriving businesses made seven-minute pitches to judges.
“New starter businesses in the area, new businesses hopefully that will be thriving downtown, or taking their businesses to the next level in the downtown area,” Johnson said.
Business plans
Several XPrize participants — some finalists, some not — pitched themselves Tuesday in front of the RHEDC board. Kimberly Mood started her occupational therapy for kids business in 2017, but wasn’t sure about expansion.
“I found myself wishing that I’d taken a business class or two, or 10, when I was in school,” she said. “BELL has provided that crash course of all the things that I needed in planning to grow and expand my business.”
Mike Devore is a college career specialist. He wants to run an education software business to help college students change majors. That decision can be scary, but also one of the most important ones someone can make, he said. Changing majors also can cost students who have time limits on financial aid.
“Many students, when they change their major too much, they run into this issue,” Devore said.
His software could help students nationwide avoid taking on more student loans or dropping out, he said. Or, he joked, it could help parents of indecisive students.
“You don’t want your students coming back home, and laying on the couch,” Devore said.
The Whites also have an eye on college. They started the XPrize with dreams of opening a Greek and custom apparel store. Already they’ve started taking orders.
“There were no Greek apparel stores in the Rock Hill or tri-county area,” said Julisa White, initiated into Alpha Kappa Alpha at Winthrop in 2010. “Still to this day there are no Greek apparel stores in this area. We believe that this is a gap and a need that needs to be filled, and we are here to do so.”
While some may argue Greek apparel has a small client base in undergrad students, she notes historically black fraternities and sororities like hers and others in the Divine Nine see Greek life differently.
“In the African-American community,” Julisa White said, “the Divine Nine is a lifelong commitment.”
Still, plans are to reach beyond Greek life.
“We will also be targeting the community as doing custom t-shirts for established teams, organizations, because every established team wears custom t-shirts,” Harold White said. “So whether you’re Greek, a group, or just a business.”
Phaedra Jones works in massage and holistic wellness. She has 20 years as a business owner, and business as one of two majors in college.
“BELL is like a crash course in business,” she said. “That’s what college should be about. You want to do business? Well here’s business. They broke it down for you so when you left you knew everything to do.”
For Stewart, the XPrize program renewed her confidence after three layoffs from line and management manufacturing. At a point she thought something was wrong with her, but came to realize it was time to take a new step.
“BELL gave me my voice back,” Stewart said.
Her production company and theater will be similar in setup to NarroWay Productions in Fort Mill.
“We’ve also incorporated the concept of theater is therapy,” Stewart said.
She also plans to use her more than 20 years experience directing weddings with the business, along with stage plays and dinner theaters.
“If you’ve been to a wedding in the last couple of years, they are quite the production,” Stewart said.
Hogan has a performing arts center on Oakland Avenue. She has 27 years of dance training, 15 years as a teacher. The center offers programs for children who move differently from others, and also a leadership program that goes beyond dance.
“Our dancers get interview skills, budgeting and financials,” Hogan said. “They learn how to change a tire. They learn how to cook. We learn about gratitude and humility. We believe in training the entire child through our dance program.”
Gordon is a Christian hip hop artist who coaches and manages for independent artists. His plan involves a multimedia production studio.
“We will specialize in production, marketing, management and artist development for independent artists,” Gordon said.
In his 25 years of experience, Gordon hasn’t found the type of support for independent artists he plans to provide, a starting point for success in the music industry.
“There’s no starting point for independent artists,” he said. “Business owners have places like the technology incubator or even the small business development center at Winthrop, but there’s no starting point for independent artists. So we are literally starving artists.”
Tonya Hinson wants to make sure no one is starving. Her plan involves food service, farm-to-table meals made quickly.
“My goal is to bring our families back to the dinner table,” Hinson said.
She wants to help families avoid fast food or processed food. She intends to work with local farmers. The XPrize program put her on a path toward making her business dream happen.
“They gave me so much information and gave me educational tools that will help me strive and have successful business for our Rock Hill community,” Hinson said.
Participants raved about the boot camp process.
For Hogan, it was an opportunity to explain to students why a woman who already finished college would leave rehearsals every Tuesday night to go to some class.
“I was able to talk to them, to tell them that learning does not stop,” she said. “It goes beyond each part of the classroom, that you should never stop reaching for your goals and your dreams.”
For Gordon, the program meant learning he wasn’t the only one wanting others to succeed.
“The Bell XPrize has let me know that I’m not the only one that cares about helping people live their dreams,” he said. “It’s inspiring to me to know that I’m not the only one fighting for dreamers. Because I truly do believe that by faith, dreams come true.”
‘Community and people around us’
Not everyone who presented Tuesday will win the prize.
However, many could get a pretty sweet parting gift.
“There are no losers,” said David Warner, director of the city’s technology incubator. “We have all learned a ton, including those of us who were instructors and coaches. I’m not sure this community understands what a unique thing this Bell XPrize was.”
Warner already has work ongoing for state grants toward coaching and tech assistance for new businesses that may emerge. He could hear back as soon as January or February.
“Everybody’s winning, but some will win some money,” Warner said. “A lot of these companies, I think they’re all going to go forward and we want to make sure nobody drops the ball.”
Cope put up money on behalf of his 120-employee company, but as a judge he sees opportunity for others wanting to grow great business ideas.
“There are opportunities for investment,” Cope said. “Each of these businesses, win or lose, do need capital, do need partners.”
Cope reflected Tuesday on his father starting the family business years ago in Rock Hill by renting an office, hiring an assistant and waiting for the phone to ring.
“Everybody knows, that’s not how to start a business,” Cope said.
Support from an old boss got the company on a bid list, and soon the construction business was off and running.
“Our story really is a story of this community and people around us believing in us,” Cope said.
Promoting diversity at the management level in construction can be difficult, he said, due to the availability of candidates. One of his business mentors taught Cope the only way to make his company more diverse is to make the priority and effort.
“This community, we’re right at that point,” Cope said. “Are we going to sit back and are we going to say it’s going to happen by itself, we’re just naturally going to become more diverse? Or are we going to do something about it?”
The larger vision with the XPrize is at some point $1 million to promote either the types of businesses on display Tuesday or relocation of minority-owned business. Rick Norwood, director of industrial recruitment for RHEDC, believes efforts like the XPrize boot camp reflect extremely well on the city, in more ways than most people think.
“When you’re selling the community to prospects that are coming in, that don’t know anything about Rock Hill, what we talked about this morning is what makes us great and unique,” Norwood said. “And we sell that even in the industrial parks.”
Mayor John Gettys said proactive efforts toward a more diverse business community downtown are the type of work that made Rock Hill an All-America City earlier this year. The XPrize campaign will benefit city residents from entrepreneurs who start new businesses to others who may never step into them, alike.
“We get to see the benefit of a lot of hard work,” Gettys said, “but more importantly a vision of what we want our community to be.”
