Entrepreneurship expo plants seeds for future small businesses in Southeast
The Juneau Economic Development Council opened the doors of Centennial Hall Tuesday to locals interested in starting or growing their businesses. This was the second year for the Entrepreneur Resource Expo, and those behind it feel it’s an important thing for a place like Juneau.
Multiple workshops and presenters went on throughout the day while various organizations in the business of helping other businesses grow offered their advice. These covered everything from business plans to marketing to human resource basics. Experts were on hand to explain how entrepreneurs can use the media or what types of loans to apply for. JEDC also set up free, one-on-one small business consultations.
“We’re looking for ways to help the entrepreneur community to be more successful,” said JEDC Program Officer Eva Bornstein, who coordinated the expo. She said it’s a “good use of their time to have a one-stop type place to answer a lot of their questions.”
She said the organizations and individuals from all over were interested in helping answer such questions for those just starting their own ventures or dreaming about it and doing the research. Bornstein said Juneau has shown a strong entrepreneurial spirit, and many can benefit from all the help they can get.
“I think Juneau is a town where lots of individuals have lots of their own businesses. There are lot of people here with really good ideas for starting small business, and we hope this kind of event is serving their needs and giving them that little push to start that small business,” Bornstein said.
She said surveys of the participants indicated about half of them have already started their own businesses while half are working toward it.
One of the expo’s new additions this year was a public question-and-answer forum by five local small business success stories. The panel included Ian Fisk of Primo Prawns, Jeremy Hansen of Hansen Gress, Barb Sheinberg of Sheinberg Associates, Travis Smith of the Rookery Café and Julie Thatcher of Southeast Waffle Co.
Hansen owns the information technology and networking business with his partner, Tyler Gress. He said the risk and transition of going from employee to running one’s own business — and being able to live off that — was a concern asked of the panel. He responded that a strong support system is really important at that juncture.
“It’s a pretty monumental change,” he said. “You’re not just changing jobs. You’re changing jobs and creating a whole new job for yourself.”
Smith said it was nice to hear other business owners’ perspectives and offer advice to those wanting to make it in their own ways. Smith said other concerns from the crowd included learning about startup capital and advertising. His own advice to anyone interested in starting something up is be ready to sacrifice a lot of time and money when seeing an idea through to completion, be prepared for your business plans to change on a moment’s notice and also to listen to suggestions, but at the same time, don’t let them cloud up what you want to do with your business.
Alaska Pacific Bank was a sponsor of the Entrepreneur Resource Expo. Vice president and loan officer Tom Sullivan agrees there are a lot of small and seasonal businesses locally, making Juneau an attractive location for first-time entrepreneurs, and such business persons should be aware of what tools and resources are necessary and available.
“Lots of entities here were brought together that may help those that haven’t thought of everything for the first time,” he said, citing operations like accounting systems, insurance needs and business checking accounts as things those starting out need to know about.
“We’re very interested in spurring economic development, and this is just one of the ways the bank gets out there to do just that,” he said.
Sullivan thinks the future of local entrepreneurship looks promising, saying people have begun to notice the worst parts of the economy are behind. He hopes that will inspire them to go forward with ideas.
The expo got started last year with help from Alaska SourceLink. Linda Ketchum from Entrepreneurship Initiatives at the University of Alaska Center for Economic Development said SourceLink had funds to stage events with local partnerships for developing ways to connect with businesses. She said SourceLink worked, with 27 workshops last year, but Juneau was the only place to do such an expo.
Ketchum said those at JEDC had developed the idea themselves, and it was inspiring this was continuing into a second year independent of SourceLink.
• Contact reporter Jonathan Grass at 523-2276 or jonathan.grass@juneauempire.com.