B.E.T.A. program helps lift up local entrepreneurs – NowKalamazoo

Four years ago, as the COVID pandemic began impacting everyone, many early-stage businesses struggled to access the government or grant assistance programs being offered to the area’s larger business community.

It was at this time that five women joined forces to advocate for the Kalamazoo community’s Black entrepreneurs. Undaunted, Nicole Triplett and the Parker sisters – Alisa, Tiffany, Teleshia, and Nicole – began to develop a plan to help Black businesses get the resources they needed to survive.

Through surveys and feedback from both the businesses and the funders, they discovered what Nicole Parker called two “problems that could be addressed”: those entrepreneurs needed support in finding and completing requisite paperwork, and the profile of the early stage Black businesses needed to be raised in front of the government agencies and funders.

To bridge this gap, the women aligned the efforts of their two organizations – Black Wall Street Kalamazoo and Sisters in Business – to establish the Black Entrepreneurs Training Academy (B.E.T.A), a year-long program providing participants with the skills, resources, and support necessary to put down strong roots, grow and thrive in today’s competitive marketplace.

Earlier this month, 12 entrepreneurs graduated as the fourth cohort of the B.E.T.A. program. Their businesses include a broad cross section of goods and services ranging from food and agricultural products to health and wellness services, and from clothing and furniture to non-emergency, medical transport and community housing investment. To date, B.E.T.A has graduated 49 business owners from 17 to 70 years old.

“Black entrepreneurship is an opportunity to take your own destiny, your own future and the future of your family, and the love of building into your own hands,” Triplett, the founder of Black Wall Street Kalamazoo and the owner of Twine Urban Winery, said during the Nov. 6 graduation ceremony and dinner celebration held at Advia Credit Union on West Main Street in Oshtemo. “And that, in itself, is an amazing, amazing task.”

B.E.T.A.’s model focuses on collaboration, partnerships, accountability, mentoring, coaching, and access to capital, as well as additional support and distribution channels, Nicole Parker said. The core training program is offered virtually and consists of six modules: Mindset, Business Structure and Development, Business Finance, Business Plan, Marketing, and Pitching. Each module is taught by a successful Black business expert and delivered through pre-recorded videos and live virtual sessions.

Daja Johnson spent two years serving as the B.E.T.A. event photographer. Following the third cohort’s graduation ceremony, she told Triplett that she wanted to apply to the program.

Johnson said her 5-year-old, Kalamazoo-based company, Excel Media and Entertainment, offers “multimedia services, including cinematic productions and luxury portrait photography.”

The B.E.T.A. program helped her recognize that consistency is one of the most important assets of successful entrepreneurs. “It’s almost like a baby,” Johnson said. “You have to continuously nourish it and feed it in order for it to grow. So, to overcome the challenge of, you know, not being as consistent as I wanted to, I had to have accountability. The office hours helped me with accountability, along with my peer accountability group.”

Johnson also hopes to leverage what she learned in the B.E.T.A. training to “write and produce my very first film, like maybe a drama or a comedy.” 

For Souleymane Saddy, the program has been a “free business school bootcamp that only requires that you put in the effort.”

Saddy is a design engineer who has worked for Herman Miller and Landscape Forms but wanted to create furniture that was less expensive for the average person. Utilizing the carpentry and wood-working skills he learned while growing up in Cote d’Ivoire, Africa, Saddy began custom designing and building affordable wood furniture for his family and friends. In his home garage, Saddy has amassed all the tools for working with hard and soft woods. He said he likes to use red pine because it is readily available, adaptable to Michigan’s climate, and reasonably priced.

“It was my wife Janelle who suggested that I turn it into a business,” Saddy said. “I applied to the B.E.T.A. program and formed Nahala Designs this year thanks to the program’s emphasis on the importance of making one’s business a legal entity.”

He said the program also provided him with the fundamentals of business, gave him access to experts and provided information that he described as both accessible and comprehensive. He said it made him “feel more confident in my entrepreneurship journey. Also having a group of people that went through the program be available and willing to help us was invaluable. We could reach out at any time and help was always an email or a phone call away.”

Jackie Yates is the owner of JY Voiceover, a two-year-old voice-over services company in Berrien Springs. She’s challenged herself to expand her vision of her business from being “a little side hustle” to an established company whose achievements include voice-over work for Nike, Minecraft, Spotify, PNC Bank, and Pfizer.

Yates said learning how to give a business pitch was the most challenging aspect for her to learn. She was able to develop that skill, she said, by learning “to trust what my mentors and others were telling me about my successes” and “borrowing” their faith in her ability.

Carrie Dennie is a naturopath and acupuncturist, who opened Vibrant Wellness in Grand Rapids in September of 2023. “When I started my own practice, it was a little bit murky,” she said. Business or entrepreneurship education were not a part of her medical training.

The B.E.T.A. program “helped clarify many things for me and helped me understand what I needed to do in order to run a successful business,” Dennie said, adding that she’s focused on implementing new marketing ideas developed in the program.

Jeff O’Connor launched Jeff’s TV Mounting and Home Repair Service seven years ago, after learning how to mount televisions by watching YouTube videos. He first mounted his own television and then started getting requests from family and friends. Today, he has one employee and more than 150 five-star Google reviews.

“One of the main benefits for me as an entrepreneur and a cohort member is getting the exposure, mingling with different people and meeting, networking and making new friends,” he said. While in the training program, O’Connor reconnected with a high school friend who runs a subcontracting business, which led to a job installing nearly 500 televisions throughout a local military base.

O’Connor’s post-graduation plans include securing larger contracts, hiring an additional employee, and adding another company van, which he believes will better prepare his company for future growth and expanded service.

Tanisha Lynn Pyron-Clay made an entrepreneurial pivot during the program. Her initial plan was to establish a beauty business targeting Black women and offering services for natural hair and soft blend makeup. But the classically trained actress (at Western Michigan University and University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign) is now about to launch Black Genius/Black Famous, after a coaching session with B.E.T.A. co-founders Nicole Triplett and Nicole Parker. BG/BF, as it’s also called, will parlay Pyron-Clay’s creative arts background to support youth literacy.

“I was a teen mother, and I fell through a lot of educational cracks,” Pyron-Clay said. “I’ve been a homeless mom. I’ve dealt with depression. I lost a brother to gun violence on the southside of Chicago, and I’ve had to battle back through all of that. And I know I wasn’t the only one. Along the way, as a teaching artist, I’ve found ‘other Tanishas’ – other people that the arts unlocked doors to higher education, the arts unlocked levels of emotional and mental wellness.”

Partnering with her musician/sound design husband, George Clay IV – who is also known as DJ Young G – Pyron-Clay, who is also a performing poet, sees their work focusing on “Black and brown learners, BIPOC learners, who are falling behind when it comes to reading and math academic markers.”

Michigan Ambulatory is based in Kalamazoo and serves people with disabilities who need non-emergency transportation to medical appointments. The service was established by Lyonel LaGrone Jr. in 2023 and provides transportation to people residing in Kalamazoo, Kent, Calhoun, and Berrien counties.

“A cohort is not just the learning and the lectures,” he said. “It’s also the camaraderie with the other classmates, because you’re also going through a journey. … They have the same challenges. You’re with all these people so we can, like, brainstorm together.”

LaGrone also said he appreciated that B.E.T.A. pushed its participants to confront their “pain points; the fear that has stopped you in the past. In the end, when it’s all over, it turns out that it’s not that scary because you receive the information, guidance, and help you need to just lean into the challenge standing between you and your goal.”

There are tremendous expectations for the B.E.T.A. cohort, he said. To succeed, participants had to fulfill several requirements including attending the weekly, virtual class sessions, completing homework assignments, and participating in both peer accountability groups and one-to-one coaching sessions. LaGrone found that working with the program’s instructors, who were all experienced Black entrepreneurs, insightful.

“They speak our language,” he said. “They understand our challenges.”

Currently, LaGrone is navigating the changing Medicaid reimbursement landscape that could impact his business. In the interim, he said, the B.E.T.A. program has equipped him with the mindset “to really expect and anticipate shifts and to be able to pivot when necessary.”

B.E.T.A. graduates have access to advisors, networking events, workshops, business expositions, pitching competitions, and other training sessions even after they complete the program. They also are eligible to receive up to $5,000 in grants.

The training program is free thanks to grants and donations secured from key funders such as Chase Bank, Southwest Michigan First, United Way of South Central Michigan, the City of Kalamazoo, Kalamazoo Community Foundation, and Northern Initiatives. B.E.T.A. also has partnerships with entrepreneurial support services, such as Can-Do Kitchen and Startup Zoo.

“B.E.T.A. stands as a conduit of economic justice by working with entrepreneurs and giving them the resources and tools to start and grow businesses,” said Tshepo Mathekga, a community impact officer at the Kalamazoo Community Foundation. “Part of our mission is to support organizations and programs that are advancing that type of work, to see increased ownership of businesses, especially in Black communities, for Black entrepreneurs to have resources made available to them and tools made available to them, right in Kalamazoo.”

Danitra Johnson-Powell graduated from the program two years ago. An aesthetician who moved from Colorado to Kalamazoo to help care for her husband’s older relatives during the pandemic, she initially worked in Portage for a medical spa but left to launch her own business when she realized that there were limited skincare services for Black women in Kalamazoo.

She opened DJ Skin Studio in 2021 and applied to the second cohort. Since completing the program, Johnson-Powell said her business has been growing through word of mouth, support from the B.E.T.A. community, and marketing through channels such as Facebook and Groupon. Consequently, she has a diverse client base, which also includes men, for her advanced skincare, facial, brow, lash, and waxing services.

She has moved her business to a larger space and has been able to bring in another aesthetician to work in her studio. Johnson-Powell is also sharing what she learned through B.E.T.A. by helping her employee develop entrepreneurial business skills. The mother of five children, including two sets of identical twins, Johnson-Powell works part-time and said she treats her business as if it is another child. “My business also must be sustainable for my family. And this is my only job so I put everything into it.”

Initially established for Kalamazoo-based entrepreneurs, B.E.T.A. swiftly expanded to include businesses throughout Michigan, even attracting international participants, said B.E.T.A. co-founder Triplett. Admission to the fifth B.E.T.A cohort will be more competitive due to the high demand and the in-depth work necessary to support each entrepreneur. The application process opens in February 2025 and the new cohort will begin in April 2025.

“Over the past four years, B.E.T.A. has helped entrepreneurs refine their businesses, rebrand, win pitch competitions, secure retail placements, and even open brick-and-mortar spaces,” Triplett said.

B.E.T.A. also is making plans to open an innovation center in Kalamazoo, named Truth and Parks after abolitionist, civil and women’s rights activist Sojourner Truth, and civil rights activist Rosa Parks.

“I envision Truth and Parks becoming a hub for business development, where individuals not only gain business skills but also feel encouraged to share their personal stories, challenges, and triumphs,” Triplett said in response to an emailed question. “By offering access to resources, mentorship, and a platform for their voices, we hope to build a community of entrepreneurs who feel confident and equipped to scale their businesses, break barriers, and create sustainable success.

“Our ultimate goal is to contribute to the economic growth of the community at-large by helping entrepreneurs achieve financial independence, create jobs, and reinvest in their communities.”