By Fletcher Word
The Truth Editor
Ebony Carter, vice president of Minority Business Services and director, Minority Business Assistance Center for the Toledo Regional Chamber of Commerce, was the guest speaker at the HerHub Women of Toledo Initiative’s networking luncheon on Thursday, February 20 at Toledo Botanical Gardens.
Thursday’s luncheon, a tribute to Black History Month, also featured a meal provided by a Black owned caterer, Tom Otieno, owner of Jikoni Toledo, and dessert by Alisha Stallworth of Pound Cake Expressions. Stallworth is also a member of HerHub.
Carter’s address to the attendees, most of whom were women business owners, was a primer on how to “scale-up” their enterprises.
“We are told that money is the root of all evil,” she began. “I don’t believe that. I don’t believe that. Money is a tool and if you don’t understand that, then you fear it.”
Carter’s talk was titled “The Art of the Scale Up,” and she drove home the point that entrepreneurs and business owners were the creative forces within their operations while others, such as advisors, were there to assist not to make the critical decisions. “You are the creator,” she emphasized.
She urged those business owners who felt they are ready to scale up to recognize their vision and to “make sure your vision is clear” and to adopt an effective plan to execute that vision. “Vision without execution is hallucination,” she noted several times during her speech.
Carter introduced to her audience a “financial freedom cycle” which consisted of 10 steps on the path to scaling up a business: “know where you stand, set your goals, track where your money goes, spend less on useless junk, pay off debt asap, save surplus money, create more sources of income, avoid lifestyle inflation, invest in the future and repeat the process.”
The Minority Business Assistance Center offers an eight-week course for entrepreneurs who desire to scale up, she informed the attendees. That course is currently taking place in the Junction neighborhood.
HerHub Toledo is a membership-based initiative of the Women of Toledo organization. WOT was formed in 2014 in order to assist women entrepreneurs to the resources they need and to foster the collaboration necessary to grow their businesses.
WOT provides educational, advocacy and economic empowerment programs and since its founding has served 7,775 women and youth with its programs and services.
HerHub began in 2018 and has more then 200 members. According to its website, the group hopes “to encourage and build confidence for new women’s businesses and enhance & elevate the visibility of the existing women’s groups, businesses, and events by building a large, diverse, inclusive, comprehensive community of women supporting women.”
HerHub is certainly diverse. Among its members are over 30 Black-owned, women-owned companies offering food, fashion, flowers, candles, photography, consulting services, construction services, among others.