Start Dakota

When Julio Fuenmayor noticed that supply chain issues were causing problems for farmers and ranchers in the midwest, he found a way to innovate and create a new product that would solve cattle ear tag supply chain delays.

On the latest episode of the Start Dakota podcast, Startup Sioux Falls’ president, Brienne Maner, sits down with Terry Liggins, CEO of TLC Services, founder of The Hurdle LIfe Coach Foundation, and a recent CO.STARTERS facilitator. 

Through The Hurdle Life Coach, Liggins offers mentorship, coaching, guidance, and facilitation services to organizations looking to build bridges with people from different communities.

“My cup overflows with the work I get to do,” he said.

When asked about the “why” behind what he does, Liggins says the biggest thing for him is the importance of community and how it matters to families. 

“I want our community to be a safe place for my 10-year-old daughter, and I want that for everyone else’s family, too. I want all people’s families to have prosperous, safe upbringings,” he said. 

He adds that, as a person of color and business owner, it’s a powerful inspiration for kids who grew up like him.

“They may not be exactly like me, but we're very similar in some of our conditions and our similar upbringings, and I know that by being in business for myself, by letting my vision come to fruition, that's also giving people hope that they can have the same thing happen for them in their lives.” 

Liggins went full-time with his business three years ago in 2020 after working for Lutheran Social Services (LSS) providing reentry services for adults coming out of incarceration. He says it was a wonderful opportunity, but he wanted to go deeper than the scope of his role. 

The challenge of entrepreneurship was, in his words, figuring out “how business works.”

“I didn’t have that type of mentorship around me in my upbringing. I’m a first-generation business owner, and I had the passion, the spirit, and the faith, but the understanding of how to incorporate, how to stay in good standing with the law, that was all a learning curve for me,” he said. 

“Now, I’ve learned quite a bit and am able to pass that on to others.” 

In a way, his journey has come full circle, as he recently had the opportunity to facilitate a CO.STARTERS cohort through LSS’ Center for New Americans, one of Startup Sioux Falls’ partners through the SBA Community Navigator program.

Liggins says one of the major takeaways from that experience was the importance of cultural humility. 

“It’s a posture and a mindset that allows all of us to stay in that learner seat as it takes us working with people from different cultures than our primary culture. Sioux Falls is filled with so many different cultures, so many different languages, so many different ethnicities, and that's a strength, and it's beautiful to see. But in order to leverage it, we have to keep the humility intact.”

That’s just a taste of the conversation. Tune into Maner and Liggins’ full episode — available now wherever you listen to podcasts!

Show Notes:

Episode 10 of the Start Dakota podcast features CO.STARTERS graduate (EmBe cohort), Desiree Donovan. The founder of a cleaning company, Donovan’s Diamond Details, she sat down with Brienne Maner to chat about jumping into entrepreneurship. 

Donovan has 25+ years of restaurant and hospitality experience, primarily in management roles, but she never imagined starting her own business. Nearly a year ago, however, she was working for a cleaning company and had the feeling she could run things better on her own. 

She set a goal of opening in February 2022, but when the time came, she still didn’t feel ready. As a mother of three, she wanted to feel more stable before taking the leap, so she held off. 

By July, however, nothing had changed, and she was still feeling frustrated at work.

“I was trying to decide what to do. Change jobs? Jump into this? Then CO.STARTERS came across my Facebook page. It just kept popping up, so I applied,” she said. 

CO.STARTERS participants dive deep on the process of customer discovery.

Donovan says Sioux Falls has two things going for it in terms of the cleaning industry — a booming construction and home building industry and lots of families with busy lives. 

She hopes to serve these two areas by providing post-construction cleaning and staging, as well as assistance for families who don’t have time to devote to their homes. 

There’s no shortage of competition for Donovan. However, she believes the love she brings into her work is what sets her apart from other companies. 

“When I walk into somebody's house, I see, ‘Okay, we definitely had hockey or baseball this week.’ I don't just walk in and see the mess. I see all the things that have added up to the chaos, and then I just give it a lot of love.”

She clearly has passion, but when it comes to self-identifying as an entrepreneur, Donovan hits a wall. 

“I was definitely one of those people who didn’t consider myself an entrepreneur,” Donovan said. 

She talks about comparing herself to the other women in the room and the types of businesses they’re pursuing. 

“One thing I have learned is even though I don't necessarily feel like I have this booming business sitting in front of me right now, all of the skills that I've built over the last 20-some years of management have given me so much more information than I thought I had, and I was actually able to offer some of that to some of those other ladies,” she said. 

She says building that self-confidence was one of the things she most appreciated about CO.STARTERS.

“One of the things I was hoping to get from this class was confidence in myself, knowing that I could move forward with anything I needed to do. I borrowed that power from those other women — I know it doesn't necessarily make sense, but you feel it when you walk in a room, when you know that everybody has their hands on your back and are going to push you towards whatever it is you're looking at.”

There’s so much more to hear from Desiree! Tune in to the full episode wherever you listen to podcasts.

Show Notes:

On Episode 8 of the Start Dakota podcast, Startup Sioux Falls’ president Brienne Maner sits down with CO.STARTERS graduate and AMPO founder, Amy Pokela.

The two discuss Pokela’s vision for her business and the supportive environment created by the CO.STARTERS program.

AMPO is a tech-based business with a goal of creating solutions for nonprofits.

“I’m really working on building a web ecosystem where small and mid-sized nonprofits will be able to go in and get their tools, products and services right there on the web without having to contract with anyone,” she said.

“A lot of times, people say, ‘We need to be teaching people how to fish.’ Sometimes, you just need the fish. So with my business and what I'm doing, I just want to give people fish, and then that might help them at some point in time where they’re like, ‘Okay, now I want to learn a little bit more, and I want to read more about the strategy.’”

Maner asks Pokela what drove her to go out on her own after spending the majority of her career in the corporate world.

“I just reached the point in time where I was like, ‘I have knowledge, and I'm not scared to take risks, and I was sick of other people not really being willing to jump off the cliff with me, so I decided to do it by myself,” she said.

Having the confidence to go out on your own doesn’t mean you automatically have it all together though. The CO.STARTERS Canvas provides a structure for entrepreneurs to assess their business or concept and identify the gaps and challenges that are in their way.

During her CO.STARTERS experience, Pokela dug into the barriers she faces when it comes to building a tech business. She was able to pinpoint three primary needs: web development, content creation and customer acquisition.

Additionally, Pokela says she deeply valued the community that CO.STARTERS provided during a time when she was looking for answers and confidence as an entrepreneur.

“I really can’t say how invaluable the experience was. I’d be lost without it.”

That’s just a taste of this fantastic conversation between Maner and Pokela. Tune in to hear more about Pokela’s business journey and how CO.STARTERS provides a supportive, collaborative environment for entrepreneurs to move forward with their businesses.

Episode 7 of Start Dakota brings us an interview between Startup Sioux Falls’ president Brienne Maner and CO.STARTERS graduate Jackie Wilson.

Wilson recently graduated from the EmBe cohort of CO.STARTERS, an offering made possible through the Community Navigator pilot program. She joined the program when her business, As I Am In Christ, was in its early development stages.

Wilson’s business concept is to create a platform for underserved women “to show up authentically as they are and to be able to leverage their skills in the community to get the resources they need and build the life they want.”

She was inspired by her personal experience and says that through the CO.STARTERS customer discovery process, she saw her younger self as the customer.

“I was an underserved teenager and child; I've come from a very difficult background that included a lot of different things that have the ability to put people at a disadvantage as they're starting off in life,” she said.

Wilson says she thinks a lot about what she needed as a teenager and a young woman starting out in life.

“Some of the women in the community are facing difficult situations, and they don’t know what resources are available in Sioux Falls.”

While there are organizations in the community that provide for underserved women, Wilson says many are geared toward giving women what they need in the moment instead of teaching them how to be successful long-term.

“I learned throughout my life that you can give somebody something, but if you teach them how to do it themselves, it lasts a lot longer.”

She is grateful to have been pointed to CO.STARTERS while her idea was in such an early stage.

“I had volunteered with Embe before and when I didn’t know how to get started with my business, I was pointed back to them, and they told me about CO.STARTERS,” she said.

“Another woman opened the door for me, and I want to be able to do that for other people.”

Wilson feels that her business concept has evolved significantly over the 10-week program. Looking to the future, she plans to pursue a degree in social work or sociology and then begin identifying specific resource gaps within the community before setting up her nonprofit.

“I certainly feel like I've gotten more [from CO.STARTERS] than what I initially went into it seeking. I was able to make connections with women in the community who are successful and started businesses out of ideas that they had brewing in their minds, and they actually turned into really successful stories. It's been nice to have those resources offered to us as women that went through that program,” she said.

That’s just the beginning of the conversation. Tune in to hear more about Jackie’s business journey and how CO.STARTERS helps entrepreneurs develop their ideas from the ground up.

Episode 6 of Start Dakota brings us an interview between Startup Sioux Falls’ president Brienne Maner and CO.STARTERS graduate Kendra Cersosimo, owner of Kendra Cersosimo Creative, which provides professional social media, graphic design and marketing services.

Cersosimo participated in CO.STARTERS in 2022 through Dakota Resources’ cohort in Mitchell, as part of the SBA Community Navigators Grant. Upon joining the program, she had been running her business full-time for less than a year, though she had been freelancing on the side since 2018.

“It got to the point where I either needed to stop spending all my nights and weekends pouring my soul into this business, or I needed to take the leap of faith and do it,” she said.

For Cersosimo, figuring out the structural elements of running a business was crucial to feeling secure and setting herself up for success.

Though she has been creative since childhood and remembers, as a third-grader, saying she was going to own “Kendra’s Crafts” someday, by the time she was out of college, freelancing and running her own business didn’t sound that appealing.

“I love stability. I love a schedule. I love a routine. So, being a freelancer was never something that sounded like something I wanted. It sounded unstable and out of my comfort zone.”

Faced with the reality that her side hustle had the potential to succeed full-time, she dove into research, reading books, listening to podcasts and meeting with accountants, health insurance providers and financial advisors, as well as connecting with the South Dakota Small Business Association (SBA).

She initially heard about the SBA Community Navigator grant program from a former employer, Laura Klock of Klock Werks, who was facilitating the CO.STARTERS program in Mitchell.

“I saw that Laura had posted about it on LinkedIn or Facebook, and so I clicked on the link to read a little bit more about it, and honestly, it seemed too good to be true. It was one of those things where it was like, ‘Why wouldn’t I?’ I have a graphic design degree, I have a master’s in project management, but none of those really prepared me to start a business. That was exactly what CO.STARTERS provided me, and so it was kind of a no-brainer to apply.”

Cersosimo appreciated the diversity of her fellow CO.STARTERS participants and the different perspectives they each brought to the table. She also valued the insights of the various business experts who came in to present each week.

“It was really fun to hear each and every business owner’s story, but also to get to hear from the experts on how to correctly go about these different areas.”

That’s just the beginning of the conversation. Tune in for more details on Cersosimo’s business and how she serves her clients. You’ll also hear how she plans to move forward by utilizing mentorship and continued resources from the CO.STARTERS program, along with so much more!

In Episode 5 of Start Dakota, Startup Sioux Falls’ president, Brienne Maner, sits down with Ryan Hussman of Thunder Valley Development Corporation to discuss entrepreneurship in the Lakota community. Thunder Valley’s mission is to empower Lakota youth and families to improve health, education and culture through healing and strengthening of cultural identity. The organization takes a holistic approach to accomplishing that mission with eight different initiatives: food sovereignty, housing and home ownership, Lakota language and education, regenerative community development, regional equity, workforce development, youth leadership and social enterprise. Hussman serves as the regenerative economy development director for social enterprise, and he says one of his biggest goals has been to develop a business development center or incubator on a reservation. 

A few years back, his team conducted a feasibility study and interviewed Maner, who provided insight on what makes a successful accelerator program. Fast forward to 2022, and Thunder Valley is now one of Startup Sioux Falls’ spoke organizations through the Community Navigator program. “When the Community Navigator pilot program showed up and you reached out to us, we were really excited for the opportunity to make things happen,” Hussman said. Hussman and Maner went on to discuss Hussman’s personal connection to and interest in entrepreneurship. Born and raised on the Pine Ridge reservation, Hussman grew up on a cattle ranch, working with his family for much of his life. 

As early as fourth grade, he was pursuing entrepreneurial ventures, selling homemade stress balls to his classmates. Now, he is completing his education in an entrepreneurship program at a community college and has plenty of entrepreneurial ideas up his sleeve, including a farm-to-table business connected to cattle ranching. Maner asked about the challenges the Lakota face as one of the most economically disadvantaged communities in the United States. “The biggest thing is infrastructure,” said Hussman. “In terms of having a business, infrastructure is the biggest thing you’ve got to build up … and it’s just a high investment for any regular community member to do. You start talking about big numbers where a simple business can’t really sustain it.” Maner says that when Startup Sioux Falls was putting together its group of spoke organizations, they knew they were ill-equipped to support underserved communities across the state for a number of reasons. “I think the biggest thing that came up for our team was trust and how we haven’t had the opportunity to build rapport or build that relationship, partly because of the miles between us, but also there’s cultural barriers here, there’s history, there are feelings,” she said. 

Show Notes: Learn more about Thunder Valley here. Submit an interest form for CO.STARTERS. CO.STARTERS Challenge: Your Solution Complete your “fieldwork” before the next episode: Take time to identify and write down your solution. Whether you’re selling retro-themed t-shirts or tattooing services, formalize in your mind what your solution is and all the features it includes. Business Minute: Learn more about SD CEO here. This project is made possible through a partnership with Startup Sioux Falls and grant funding provided through the Community Navigator Pilot Program, powered by the SBA. More information can be found here.