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Our annual meeting in Sacramento was a great success and source of inspiration. From the stimulating discussion of our Rural Summit to the Legislative Advocacy Day, there was never a dull moment. About 65 people participated throughout the event. Thanks to the CAMEO members, award winners, friends and legislators who gathered to support micro-business in California.

Check our our photos on Facebook MicroBizCA – and like us while you’re there.

Rural Summit
Self-employment is THE Labor Market Trend
Faces of Entrepreneurship Awards
Legislative Advocacy Day

RURAL SUMMIT
The Rural Summit started with a guest star, albeit by video. Zappos founder Tony Hsieh presented his Themes from City As Start Up talk about his company’s plans to transform downtown Las Vegas into the “most community-focused large city in the world.” Start the video around 19:00 minutes where he starts discussing the following themes:

• Co-Learning and Co-Working
• Return on Community & Luck
• Innovation: Ideas from outside your industry
• Idea Generation: Strategic Interactions
• Accelerate Collisions
• Organic Process
• Edifice Complex
• Curated Content
• Create Density
• Make it Convenient
• Not all jobs are created equal, so focus on the creative class of entrepreneur

Then Susan Brown and our two guest speakers guided us through a facilitated discussion about what they are doing to help build community and local business in rural areas and how Hsieh’s concepts of ‘city as a start-up’ can be applied to rural development.

Nathan Johnston is a Builder/Maker/Doer and CEO of Pusher in Dusmuir, CA’ Gina Lujan is the Director of Hacker Lab in Sacramento and is working with Tuolome County to determine what the human capital resources are in that area. (Speaker Bios)

One of the big topics of conversation was where economic development resources should go. Suggestions included:
*Foster high level partnerships between fields and industry for cross pollination of ideas.
*Support Benefit Corporations.
*Ensure legal and tax structures are supportive and not obstructionist.
*Foster a start-uppy attitude; inspire curiousity and creativity.
*Research existing talent and resources – find out what’s happening in your backyard, even those hobbyists, an invisible business might emerge as the next big thing.
*Foster the ‘maker-culture’.
*Re-imagine leadership: include private industry; once you find your local leaders hand it over to them.
*Change the metrics of success, e.g. create sustainable employment for 40 year-old single mothers.
*To quote another famous shoe icon: Just Do It. Stop waiting for something to happen and rescue your town.

A big thanks to Glenda Humiston (bio), the California State Director at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Rural Development. Dr. Humiston stopped by to talk about the work she’s doing to uncover new models of economic development in rural areas or applying old ideas in new ways, such as vertical co-op arrangements. The example she gave is that the piece missing in the supply chain for organic meet is the slaughterhouse. Problem is that being in the slaughterhouse business is not particularly profitable in California, so the business is shipped elsewhere. Dr. Humiston is working with other pieces of the supply chain to ‘subsidize’ the slaughterhouse, so that the other pieces of the organic meat supply chain can thrive in California.

SELF-EMPLOYMENT IS THE LABOR MARKET TREND

Carolyn Ockels (see pic left) and Steve King (bios) presented their research on self-employment, State of Independence Report.   They have found a “conscious structural shift and recognition of a new model of work and engagement” and that is toward self-employment. The number of independent workers grew from 16 million in 2011 to 16.9 million in 2012 and it’s expected to grow by 35% over the next five years. Self-employment is a labor market trend.  A special thanks goes to Barbara Vohryzek, the deputy director of small business at the Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development, who participated in the session. We hope she brings these trends back to the governor!

Members discussed what these trends mean for our programs and how to improve the data collection and studies done on the sector. Read more by our data guru, Andrew Cole – “The Future of Micro-Biz Data.” Download their Independent Worker Presentation.

FACES OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP AWARDS

We were excited and proud to honor two assemblymembers who have championed systems change in the workforce by introducing two bills that increase self-employment within that system. We thank them for their leadership.

• Assemblywoman Mariko Yamada, (D-Davis) authored AB 152, Self-Employment Assistance program, a bill that would allow the unemployed to keep their benefits while starting their own businesses. Unfortunately, the bill is stuck in appropriations because the state says that the cost of the program exceeds the $5.3 million available from the federal government to run the program.
• Assemblywoman Cheryl Brown, (D – San Bernardino) is the author of AB 285, Micro Enterprise: Economic Development, a bill that encourages the California state Workforce Investment Board to set guidelines for local WIBs to incorporate entrepreneurship training.

And drumroll for the winners of the third annual CAMEO Face of Entrepreneurship Awards – Don Polvoron from Hayward and iResult from Monterey, two small businesses that created jobs in a less than ideal economic climate and represent the spectrum of entrepreneurship. (See pic right of Jorge and Oscar Flores of Don Polvoron.)

“CAMEO initiated the Faces award to celebrate the true job creators, – the small businesses that build sustainable communities,” said Claudia Viek, C.E.O. of CAMEO. “These micro-businesses will be the growth engine of the 21st century economy.”

LEGISLATIVE ADVOCACY DAY

We had a busy Thursday morning before we went off to see our legislators.

We started the day with a visit from Eric Mandell, the Acting Chief of the Acquisitions Branch for the Department of General Services… i.e. the guy who’s in charged with buying stuff for the state of California. And yes the state buys from micro-businesses – 25% of $8 billion in procurement are from a certified California Small Business. Recently the number of small business selling to the state has gone from 10,300 to 22,000. The certification process used to be a 28-page application, now its an online application that takes about an hour to fill out. Learn more about how to do business with California. Even though he didn’t give a powerpoint, you can download Eric’s slide deck about How to do Business with California.

Ann Sullivan (bio), the President of Madison Services Group, Inc. gave us a low down on CAMEO’s 2013 federal legislative priorities: SBA, USDA and Treasury funding, Workforce and the Self-employment Assistance Program. The news on the federal front is as it is everywhere – budget cuts. We will fight for our programs, but it’s difficult when the SBA doesn’t have a champion for micro.

Casey Elliot and Ashley Setoudeh from Townsend Public Affairs explained the current political climate in Sacramento, which is much better than it’s been in years. For the first time in a while, the word ‘showdown’ is no where to be found. Legislators and the governor have came to terms with the state’s fiscal situation and in all likelihood will pass a budget before the June 30, 2013 deadline. Casey told members that legislators were thinking about economic development.

So do we have a good one for them… self-employment is an economic development tool – that creates at least one job for the owner and in three years an additional two jobs. We took that message as well as support for AB 285, AB 172 and AB1 173 (procurement bills) to the legislature. Download the talking points we used for the meetings and tips from Ashley on how to make an Effective Position Presentation.

Data was a central theme of discussion at this year’s annual member meeting in Sacramento. How are we collecting data? What exactly are we measuring? How can data be used to support our clients and organizations more effectively? Several key points were raised:

• Funding and policies are driven by data;
• Much of this data quantifies success in a very limited way;
• Most MDOs and government programs create jobs in a short term way under the current model;
• Therefore, developing new metrics for measuring outcomes and impact is vital to developing a truly successful micro field.

The criticisms of the current measures fell into two broad categories:

• Metrics do not track or account for long-term sustainability.
• Metrics do not consider how clients define ‘success,’ instead rely on the number of jobs created or amount of profit generated in a single year.

Success and the Single Operator

Not every micro-business or entrepreneur is growth-oriented. As Emergent Research reported, many entrepreneurs are happy with the current size of their business and have no plans to grow. Adding more employees, or shifting from part-time to full-time employees, can sometimes move business owners away from the reasons they started their own businesses in the first place — the larger the business grows, the less flexibility the entrepreneur has with their schedule, and the less time they can spend doing the hands-on work they love. Success for these companies can’t be measured by the number of employees hired or an increase in business, but instead by the ability to sustain the owner’s lifestyle across ten, fifteen or twenty years.

Many data collections efforts don’t do a very good job at capturing this type of “social data” – most members know how many clients they see in a year, and how many loans they’ve made or classes they’ve run, but they don’t always know how many business they worked with five years ago are still operating, and how many business owners are happy with the state of their company. This is one of the reasons CAMEO has partnered with the FIELD at the Aspen Institute — microTracker and microTest are both excellent tools for collecting and analyzing this kind of long-term data.

It’s not just capturing data, either — members discussed ways in which new measures could be chosen and measured, and how to convince lawmakers and funders that these new measures are preferable to the old. In the coming months, CAMEO will continue this discussion, looking to identify key players among our members, their funders and regulators, and their clients to help change the way the industry collects and understands its data.

Nathan Johnston is the founder of Pusher, a creative design agency, uses strategy, design and technology to push important stories forward. From music composition to wood-working, experimental ethnographic film to developing connections between people through exchange, Nathan’s work lies at the intersection of technology, culture, education, and art. Nathan traveled extensively and ultimately returned to rural Siskiyou County to continue his education in how to best ignite and inspire creativity and curiosity. He has a Bachelor of Science degree from Stanford University and a Master of Education degree from Harvard University

Gina Lujan, is founder, CEO, and director of Hacker Lab, a community, a work space, an organization and a movement of innovators, creators and entrepreneurs. Gina is a Social Entrepreneur and Social Engineer. She focuses on community development and government relations as well as working on community cultivation in outlying rural cities. She was Sacramento Business Journal‘s 25 Business Leaders of 2012 and received International Women’s Day and 2013′s Women Who Mean Business awards. Gina is passionate about serving her community and currently volunteers as a member of JSPAC, a special populations educational group.

Tony Hsieh, is the CEO of Zappos. Acquired in 2009 by Amazon for $1.2 billion, Zappos has over $1 billion in sales and is regularly named on of Fortune Magazine’s “Best Companies to Work For.”

Glenda Humiston,

Dr. Glenda Humiston was appointed by President Obama on August 23, 2009 to serve as the California State Director at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Rural Development. Humiston brings over 25 years of experience working on public policy development and program implementation supporting rural development and sustainable communities to the Agency.

Humiston previously served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Tunisia, as Executive Director of a nonprofit advocating farmland preservation and value-added agriculture development, and has taken on many difficult challenges throughout the western states as a consultant on environmental and agricultural issues. In that capacity she developed a Rangeland Water Quality Management plan for the state of California that has become a model in many western states. More recently, she managed the “Sustainable Development Institute” at the 2002 World Summit for Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa, and the 4th World Water Forum in Mexico City, Mexico in 2006. Humiston served from 1998-2001 as Deputy Under Secretary for Natural Resources and the Environment at USDA. While there she received national honor awards from USDA and EPA as well as two “Hammer” Awards from Vice President Gore for outstanding government programs.

Humiston completed her Ph.D. at the University of California at Berkeley in 2009; her dissertation was titled: “Sustainable Agriculture as U.S. Farm Policy: Opportunities and Threats to Reform.” She received her Master’s degree in International Agricultural Development from the University of California at Davis and her Bachelor’s degree in Animal Science from Colorado State University. She has also completed Professional Certification in Environmental and Land Use Planning and a two-year fellowship with the California Agricultural Leadership program.

CAMEO is proud to honor iResult, LLC, one of the winners of this year’s Faces of Entrepreneurship award. An awards ceremony and reception will be held in Sacramento as part of this year’s Annual Meeting.

iResult, LLC – Monterey Bay

Nominated by the California State University at Monterey Bay Small Business Development Center

In 2009, the Monterey Peninsula Unified School District was working to turn the district around, but found themselves hampered by the lack of real-time data. Enter Dawn Verdick and iResult. The company developed software to gauge the impact of district policies and an efficiency model to help fully utilize existing community supports. iResult tracks student engagement, academic progress and college readiness for each student in the district, and connects those results to the community services the student receives, allowing the district to determine which programs and services are most effective.

During its two-year pilot program, iResult helped the MPUSD secure $16 million of much-needed additional funding for Seaside’s Turnaround Schools as part of a School Improvement Grant. The number of high school students applying to college doubled in a single year, and 28% more students passed required high school exit exams.

iResult transitioned to a for-profit Limited Liability Company in 2011, but operates as one of the few for-profit Social Enterprises in the United States, with 50% of their shareholder base made up of local and family foundations. They currently serve over 35 schools and more than 25,000 students, and employ four workers and seven independent contractors. As the company grows, they plan to reduce the number of contractors by hiring directly. iResult launches nationwide in the spring of 2013.

CAMEO is proud to honor Don Polvoron Panaderia y Pasteleria, one of the winners of this year’s Faces of Entrepreneurship award. An awards ceremony and reception will be held in Sacramento as part of this year’s Annual Meeting.

Don Polvoron – Hayward

Nominated by the Renaissance Entrepreneurship Center

Jorge and Oscar Flores started Don Polvoron in 2006, specializing in traditional Latin American dishes and baked goods. The brothers were committed to their business; Jorge sold his house in order to raise capital to get the business off the ground.  With their clientele expanding and orders pouring in almost faster than they could process them, they realized they needed some extra guidance and support to ensure their continued success. Thanks to training they received from Renaissance Entrepreneurship Center, they developed a business strategy that enabled them to extend their hours and broaden their range of products.

In addition to running their business, the Flores brothers are also strong community advocates. Twice a week, the bakery hosts a free cake testing for the community, gaining new clients and adapting their cake recipes to the dietary restrictions of surrounding communities. They also conduct cake-making workshops with kindergartners from local schools, teaching students how make dough, shape and decorate cookies. For more information, visit their website at www.donpolvoronpanaderia.com

Listen to learn more about the CAMEO-Kiva Collaborative.