Failure is usually a taboo subject in business, especially among small-business owners in today’s economy. Yet failure was an important element in Irene LoRe’s concluding talk at the Park Slope Civic Council’s most recent community forum.
“It’s not a stigma to fail,” said LoRe, executive director of the Park Slope Fifth Avenue Business Improvement District and owner of Aunt Suzie’s Restaurant on Fifth Avenue — and one-time owner of the unsuccessful Luna Park Café. “Business is hard. You have to dream, and have some talent. … There is often a fine line between failure and genius.”
LoRe’s talk wrapped up this year’s forum, “Growing a Business in Park Slope: Connecting, Supporting, and Inspiring Our Local Entrepreneurs.” More than 130 people packed the Montauk Club on March 3 to hear 17 business leaders discuss social media, real estate, the nuts and bolts of starting a business, and entrepreneurial topics. The event was co-sponsored by the Park Slope Fifth Avenue BID, the Park Slope Chamber of Commerce, and Warren Lewis Realty.
“I think the forum was a great success,” said Melinda Morris, a Civic Council trustee and one of the forum’s main organizers. “Clearly we hit on a hot topic that people want to talk about. I think we also succeeded in starting to strengthen the community of small-business owners in Park Slope.”
Building on this forum, the goal will be “to keep this community going with additional discussions — passing on networking and educational opportunities, and continuing to have more events,” said Morris, who also owns Lion in the Sun on Seventh Avenue. “Connecting our entrepreneurs and small-business people in the neighborhood serves to strengthen the overall local economy and makes us all stronger.”
The Civic Council has already taken the first step in that ongoing conversation by setting up a discussion group on the business-centric social network site LinkedIn. Anyone can sign up for the group, and we encourage members to participate with ideas, questions, and events. (If you’re not yet a member of LinkedIn, registering is free and easy; head to www.linkedin.com for details.)
Randy Peers, the host of the Brooklyn Independent Television show Sector B: The Business of Brooklyn and executive director of Opportunities for a Better Tomorrow, served as moderator of the forum. He encouraged everyone to network as much as possible with everyone at the event — panelists, table discussion leaders, and fellow attendees. He introduced the four panelists for some introductory remarks about their respective topics.
Dylan Goelz, manager of public outreach for the parking and mass-transit networking site Roadify, focused on his topic, “Turning Passion into Profit.” “Actually,” he noted, “we know more about passion right now than profit.” The site was initiated by entrepreneur and Slope resident Nick Nyhan. “We started the company in a basement on 13th Street,” Goelz said, “where Nick brought us in to find a solution for local parking.” Now, the company has been making successful inroads for its technology with auto manufacturers, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, and others.
Roadify took a unique approach to the important business mantra of “living your brand,” especially for a tech company. They put their “boots on the ground” — walking the streets, talking with people (who are also potential customers), shoveling out cars from snow, riding buses — so people would recognize their faces and thus their brand.
Social media has been another key to the company’s growth. Goelz led a demonstration to show how Twitter, Facebook, and other social sites should work for small business. He asked everyone to shout out his or her company’s name at once. That cacophony was loud, scary, and ineffective, and that’s how many people view social media as functioning. Goelz then had attendees turn to their right and calmly say the company name to the next person. That neighbor is more likely to remember the name — “you’re getting a follower by directly engaging a person,” which is how both social media and customer service should work.
Mark Caserta also addressed social media as a panelist. He developed his passion for the subject as a small-business owner of 3r Living, which had been a bricks-and-mortar store on Fifth Avenue and is now available online. “I had to learn how to fix my own website, my own computer, and I was learning all the time.” After reading a Wired article about Twitter when it was still in its infancy, Caserta realized how effective it could be for small businesses on the web.
Caserta is now president of M2C Consulting, which works with nonprofits, and Main Street Complete, which helps small businesses and merchant groups find affordable, effective solutions to reach customers online. Social media, he remarked, can be an effective tool for small business, even though it does require a commitment of time. Success “is about having conversations online with customers and starting your own networks.”
“Nuts and Bolts of Business” panelist Nancy Carin also looked at the importance of “living your brand” by communicating with customers. “Be consistent with your brand,” emphasized the executive director of the Business Outreach Center (BOC) Network and BOC Capital Corp. “Whether that customer service is online or in person, you need to provide a consistent experience. Inconsistency is the enemy of good customer service.”
BOC provides technical assistance for community-based business development, both existing enterprises and start-ups; BOC Capital is a micro-loan fund that provides financial help to low-income and underrepresented communities. Financing in the current economic downturn is a concern for small business everywhere. “The money’s there, banks are creeping back,” Carin said, “but banks have reduced lending to businesses by about 60%. There are still a variety of opportunities for financing, through BOC and other lenders.”
Carin recommended that businesses monitor costs and improve efficiency to improve lending success. “Protect your credit, which determines how high your interest rate is.”
She also advised that a business should know where its profits come from, which will help guide it toward success. “For example, there was a local juice bar that was selling day-old muffins. They were cheaper, and sold better than fresh ones.” The store, however, was not making any money on this arrangement, because “it was actually costing the juice bar more [to sell the old muffins] than just throwing them away.”
Another panelist, Naomi Hersson-Ringskog, spoke about the fourth main topic of the evening, “Thinking Outside of the Real Estate Box.” The variety of different backgrounds of everyone in the room, she felt, “leads to a lot of creative energy.” Her organization, No Longer Empty, harnesses that energy to transform empty storefronts into thoughtful temporary art exhibitions and programming.
“We’ll do research with local organizations,” she said, “and with businesses, schools, and the local government for a meaningful temporary stay that bring people into the neighborhood. What are the problems here? How can we help? Our programming can then revitalize a corridor.”
She cited as successful examples of collaborative, creative thinking No Longer Empty’s project at the former Tower Records site in Greenwich Village and “Weaving In and Out,” an exhibition in the empty ground-floor storefront of a new East Harlem residential building.
Following these remarks, panelists, discussion leaders, and attendees met at tables to explore these topics further in more-individual sessions. Table leaders were: Neil F. Carlson, cofounder, Brooklyn Creative League; Catalina Castaño, director, Brooklyn Small Business Development Center; Louise Crawford, founder of the Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn blog; Nicole Davis, publisher of the website Brooklyn Based; Susan Fox, founder of the Park Slope Parents website; Ezra Goldstein, owner, The Community Bookstore; Denis Hurley, founder and president, Mobile Meteor (and co-founder of Main Street Complete with panelist Caserta); Brent Lagerman, co-founder of the web-design firm mimoYmima; Alan Siege, founder/owner, Small Business Management Consulting; R.J. Wafer, owner of the site Mybeegle.com; and Amy Yang, founder and teacher, Brooklyn Design Lab.
“The discussion groups were great,” said Morris. “Hearing everyone sharing their experiences and their ideas was so exciting. It was exactly the kind of interaction we were hoping for.”
“I really liked working one-on-one at the tables,” Caserta added. “I liked answering questions and giving people in small groups new ideas to think about.”
Attendees were asked to fill out cards after the forum, giving their opinions about the event. Response was overwhelmingly positive, and could help point the way toward what one attendee called ” a community that shares their ideas and values for the betterment of others.”
This year’s event was the latest in the Civic Council’s annual series of forums focused on community issues that often have far-reaching results. As Civic Council President Michael Carl noted in his opening remarks, “in 2006, the Traffic and Transportation forum led to Livable Streets Committee and the Grand Army Plaza Coalition, and 2008’s Sustainability forum resulted in a new organizational initiative on that topic.” Last year’s Future of Fourth Avenue forum fostered a set of initiatives that are now bearing fruit.
Morris concluded: “I hope attendees walked away with some new ideas and renewed enthusiasm, and gained some new business contacts or mentors. Most of all, I hope everyone has walked away with a sense that they are not alone, and that while we all may struggle with our businesses, there is a larger community to support us when we need it.”
— David Herman; additional reporting by Sarah Murphy; photos by Gilly Youner
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