(Editor’s note: This essay is part of PBN’s 35th anniversary publication, which can be viewed here.)
Five years ago, Jhonny Leyva, of Heroica Construction in Providence, was one of 30 Rhode Island small-business owners enrolled in the first cohort of the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses program at the Community College of Rhode Island.
Thanks to then-Gov. Gina M. Raimondo, in 2016, Goldman Sachs and the Goldman Sachs Foundation committed $10 million over five years to support Rhode Island’s small-business owners to grow, create more jobs and access capital.
Leyva applied to this new program to learn how to grow his business from a residential subcontractor to a commercial general contractor. He credits the 10KSB program with helping him develop a five-year growth plan that transformed his company.
“Before the program, we were getting $5,000 contracts,” he said. “After graduating the program, we were running $500,000 projects, our revenue [was] up 70% and we had our most successful year since starting Heroica in 2007.”
Since graduating the program five years ago, Leyva says his employees have grown from 10 to 25, and annual revenue has more than tripled.
His small business outperformed the national average small-business growth rate for revenue and job creation. Surveys completed by thousands of 10KSB graduates nationwide, including Rhode Island’s, consistently show stronger revenue growth and hiring rates among 10KSB graduates than the small-business national average.
The most recent survey found:
• 66% of participants reported increasing their revenue just six months after graduating, which rose to 76% after 18 months. That’s compared to 45% of U.S. small businesses, according to the National Small Businesses Association.
• 47% of participants reported creating net new jobs just six months after graduating, which rose to 57% after 18 months, compared to 22% of U.S. small businesses, according to that same survey by NSBA.
The success of Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses lies in the approach: That greater access to a combination of education, capital and support services best addresses barriers to growth facing established small businesses.
10KSB’s growth-oriented, practical, peer-learning classroom experience, together with business support services, including one-on-one advising, provides program participants with a new mindset and skill set that streamline their business practices, expand their aspirations and produce significant growth.
Rhode Island small businesses employ 52.6% of the private workforce, and in 2019, created 3,186 net jobs. Job creation and economic growth in our state is driven by the growth of our small businesses.
To date, our R.I. 10KSB program has supported over 350 Rhode Island small businesses.
Collectively, our 10KSB graduates employ over 5,000 Rhode Islanders, generate nearly $1B in annual revenue and make significant, positive impacts on our local communities. Our 10KSB grads truly represent the big power of small business!
In 2020, during the COVID-19 shutdown, our program doubled down on advising and business support services to all of our graduates as they overhauled their operations and revenue strategies to adjust to ever-changing circumstances.
We helped them to pivot their growth plans, connected them to resources and referred them to local bankers and accountants for help with funding applications.
“10KSB gave me the confidence and the foundation to survive the pandemic,” said graduate Minnie Luong, owner of Chi Kitchen Foods in Pawtucket. Asher Schofield, owner of Frog & Toad stores in Providence, told us: “10KSB ... gave me the tools to grow and adapt, and with the extreme challenges we’ve faced this past year, those tools have been invaluable.”
In March 2020, right as the COVID-19 shutdown struck, graduate Christine Paige worked with her 10KSB business adviser on a pivot plan to transition her existing Bliss Salon business to Bliss Medical Hair Replacement Center: rebranding, moving locations, developing new marketing strategies and making new hires.
When U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris visited Providence a year later to meet with women-led small businesses, she asked them, “How did you survive the pandemic?”
Paige simply replied: “Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses.”
(Karina Holyoak Wood is executive director of Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses at the Community College of Rhode Island.)