On today’s episode, we chat with Jerry Ross. Jerry is an energetic and creative leader who has achieved success leading corporate, start-up, and non-profit organizations. He is a life-long entrepreneur that has been honored as “CEO of the Year” by the Orlando Business Journal, and the “Economic Development Leader of the Year” by I-4 Business Magazine for his work at the National Entrepreneur Center.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• What does it take to be an investible company?
• How can a startup ecosystem be built?  What is needed?        
• What are the resources that are available to startups that they might not know about?
• How does a founder find those first big corporate sponsors?
• How does a corporate partnership or a pilot program between a startup and a corporation usually work?
• What skills can or can’t be taught to a founder of a company?

BOOKS AND RESOURCES

• Connect with Jerry on LinkedIn
• Follow Jerry on Twitter
• Email Jerry
• National Entrepreneur Center

CONNECT WITH SHAWN:

https://linktr.ee/ShawnflynnSV

• Shawn Flynn’s Twitter Account
• Shawn Flynn’s LinkedIn Account
• Silicon Valley LinkedIn Group Account
• Shawn Flynn’s Facebook Account
• Email Shawn@thesiliconvalleypodcast.com

Pre-Intro 0:00

You’re listening to the Silicon Valley podcast.

Intro 0:03

On today’s show we have Jerry Ross was achieved success in corporate startup and nonprofit organizations is a lifelong entrepreneur that has been honored as CEO of the Year by Orlando Business Journal and The economic development leader of the Year by I-4 business magazine for his work at the National entrepreneurs center. On today’s episode, we’ll talk about how can the startup ecosystem be built? What are the resources that are available to startups that they might not know about? How does a founder find those first big corporate sponsors? What skills can or can’t be taught to founders of a company? This is much more on today’s episode. And also we have a special giveaway. We have a signed autographed copy of Jerry Ross’s book that will be raffling off to whoever writes a comment for this episode. So make sure to participate and enjoy.

Shawn Flynn 0:54

Welcome to the Silicon Valley podcast with your host Shawn Flynn who interviews famous entrepreneur, venture capitalists and leaders in tech. Learn their secrets and see tomorrow’s world today.

Shawn Flynn 1:11

Jerry, thank you for taking the time today to be on Silicon Valley.

Jerry Ross 1:15

Thanks for having me. This is a great opportunity.

Shawn Flynn 1:18

Jerry, can you give our listeners a little bit of background on your work experience your career up to this point?

Jerry Ross 1:24

I’m part of a big family. So we all learned how to get out and hustle pretty early. I had the paper route and the lawn mowing business. When I went to college, I was on the radio at an event business doing dances for the local high school. So I sold that when I graduated from college, and then I went to work for AT&T and Ohio Bell huge companies which taught me measurement management leadership. One of the things that I that I didn’t know as an entrepreneur, I went to a mainframe software company and sold about 100 million dollars worth of software over the phone. It was really good stuff. We eventually went public It was after that, that the entrepreneur itch, hit me again. And so I moved to Orlando, Florida with a friend of mine, who was starting a business and needed help was an 89. And by 1990, we were penniless. And it was awful. I couldn’t work any harder. And while we were cash flowing, it wasn’t working the way we designed it on paper. I think it’s Mike Tyson that says you can have a plan until you get punched in the face, you know. And so that’s kind of what happened. But within a year, I was back in my own business, a lighting business, a specialty lighting business, that theme parks and concert tours and film, that kind of thing. So I learned that business and we became very good at it. We had great employees and great clients. So we were growing. We opened in Atlanta, we opened in Charlotte. And then by 98, we were approached by a New York Stock Exchange company to buy us out. That was great for the employees. And for the last 13 years. I’ve been helping other entrepreneurs here at the national economic center.

Shawn Flynn 2:55

So why did that company approach you to buy you out?

Jerry Ross 2:58

Well, they were manufactured and using Xenon lighting, which is a specialty light that they used in film to project the film onto the screen. And so they, they had about 80% of the film projection market in the world. And we’re great at manufacturing. And so they started consolidating the manufacturing of other Xenon products. And so they were buying the patents and growing their production facility. They got to the point where they said, hey, we’ve got a lot of patents, and we’re producing a lot of product. Now let’s go buy a company that knows what to do with it and how to sell it. We’ve been very successful at marketing to the concert business and also to military. We ended up selling the gear that lit the shuttle on the launch pad at night. And so if you’ve ever seen the shuttle lit up at night, I had something to do with that. So they approached us and said, Hey, what do you think about coming to workforce? And I said, I can’t I’m busy. I’m running a company. And they said, What if you didn’t have a company to run? What if we just bought you well, and then it became a matter of negotiation. When you negotiate to sell a company, you need to get paid for what you own. That’s an asset sale, but you also need to get paid for what you know and for what you’ve done, because many times entrepreneurs put off getting paid to build the business, and so they are sacrificing income to build the business. And when they sell the business, that means someone else doesn’t have to go through that. And so you should get paid for that. So we negotiated on assets, what we own, we negotiated on what we had done and building that business and that brand. And then we got paid for what we know, because we had a book that was our business plan that we would review as a company every year to say what worked and what didn’t, how do we improve that book became the value because it proved it wasn’t an accident, it proved that what we were doing was a strategy and that we had thought about where we opened and what we did and how to market. So that was one of the most valuable pieces that they bought. And then they have to pay you to come and do it. So I had a contract to come and help them transition the company and build it, which I did. And for the last 13 years now I’ve been here at the National entrepreneur center helping thousands of entrepreneurs live their dream

Shawn Flynn 5:00

Can you tell me about that transition from being your own boss starting this company that just accelerated to now managing the entrepreneur center and tell us a little bit about the entrepreneur center in Orlando, Florida?

Jerry Ross 5:14

Well, the transition First of all, is when you sold your baby, there was a lot of concern about I’ve helped build this, I helped vision this, and now I’m selling it to someone else. But by the same token, there was a whole sense of relief to say, you know, I don’t have to worry about some of the things that an owner has to worry about, like making payroll at the end of the week. On one hand, it was it was tough to give up your baby. And on the other hand, I saw that we were going to be able to grow the company in a way that I probably would never be able to with the resources I had. Before entrepreneurship was cool. Our community said, let’s invest in small businesses. Let’s help them accelerate. And let’s keep them here. Because for most folks, the model of economic development is that we recruit businesses from somewhere else, and then someone loses the city, they laugh loses and, and usually when the tax breaks run out, they look for another one, our community looked ahead and said, Let’s grow our own. The idea was, let’s put all of these support organizations that exist in the community in one location will reduce duplication will leverage the limited amount of dollars that our community has to support business development. And at the same time, we’ll make it really efficient for not only to support agencies that live here, but also the entrepreneurs that visit. So it’s a one stop location that now has 14 nonprofit organizations here with a single mission, and that’s to help our small businesses grow.

Shawn Flynn 6:39

Can you talk a little bit more about all these advantages of starting up your company in Orlando, Florida, or maybe if there’s some disadvantages to it as well?

Jerry Ross 6:49

There’s both and I think that’s true in every community. One of the advantages is Orlando is a worldwide brand. And so when people hear Orlando, they know where you are, that’s a little harder. If in a in a city that people don’t recognize. The second advantage is we get 77 million visitors a year that produces a huge demand for services, professional services, as well as just service industry, the hospitality industry. And so that fuels the engine of growth. The weather, I have not missed shoveling snow once since I moved to Orlando. The weather is great. So those are all advantages. Some of the disadvantages are that we have limited venture capital. I hear because we’re pretty young city. We’re not like a Chicago or in New York and then Disney arrived in the early 70s. That brought about the boom in Orlando, really, we’re about 50…60 years old as a city and that sometimes we don’t have the long-term residents and the long-term success that in other cities can rely on for funding and, and forgiving back. angel investment is limited here. And while we’re working on that we don’t have the decades of family history here to support some of the new ventures through venture capital. Also overcoming the brand that we are the number one tourist destination in the world. And so when people hear modeling and simulation, they go really in Orlando, or you know, shirt MIT, advanced manufacturing, you know, really in Orlando. Isn’t that where Disney is? And you say, Yeah, all of those theme parks need engineers, and they need modeling and simulation to say, how do we build the next Star Wars world. What that’s brought here through modeling and simulation is the military. So every branch of the military is here, doing modeling and simulation, and then you get into cluster theory to say if that industry sector locates here, then lots of industry players located around that. We’re seeing that with FinTech. We’re seeing that with our medical city, which 10 years ago was a pasture and today it’s got the Veterans Hospital. It’s got Morris Children’s Hospital. It’s got the UCF Medical School, they’re building a teaching hospital, and that was all in an area that was a pasture just east of the airport. And now you can fly into Orlando and be in medical city without going through a stop sign or a stoplight. Again, that’s visionary leadership. And I think that’s what has made Orlando, the leader in job creation for the last four years in a row in the country. That’s not an accident. That’s a strategy.

Shawn Flynn 9:17

You’d mentioned that there’s a lack of venture capitalists funding angel investment in that area. So then where are the companies getting funding? Or have they figured out alternative routes to fund their early stages?

Jerry Ross 9:30

Well, entrepreneurs will always find a way. But most of the venture capital funding and it has come here. But usually with that comes the pressure to move to it comes out of Boston or if it comes out of Silicon Valley. I know if I was investing in a company, I’d want to have it close by to keep an eye on it. I think that’s been an area that we have explored as a region to say, if we’re going to have these companies that scale, how do we keep them here and part of that is giving them the funding to grow.

Shawn Flynn 9:58

You had mentioned the kind of cluster effect of all these different organizations coming together the military. Can you talk a little bit more about the economic through small business and started development?

Jerry Ross 10:11

It’s a long process. And I stole this from a gentleman in Austin, when I was there to see how Austin does what they do. He made a comment about unity of purpose with a continuity of effort. And he said that led to their success. And so, I went up to him right after he spoke and said, I’m taking that I’m stealing it, and I’ll give you credit for it the first hundred times. But for years, I brought that same back here to say a unity of purpose means what can we all agree on? And what are we all going to get behind? And then when you do that long enough to be successful, not till it gets hard? When we look at economic development through small business development, it’s a long term approach, can I take a continuity of effort, but we agreed as a community that this was important in Disney invested and the University of Central Florida invested in The city and the county and the Orlando Magic and Wells Fargo and regions bank. And so we have all this local support to say small businesses are important to us. And now 17 years later, we have the success stories that we didn’t have the first five years, you know, we had to be willing to say, we’ve got to invest this and that’s why we do we call it Mainstreet gardening, that we’re planting those seeds of ideas. But you plant a seed and may work for a while and not see anything. And then it pops up. And that’s not time to harvest. You have to still take care of it and let it grow strong and then eventually you can harvest. And so we’ve looked at small business development that way and said there will be a harvest. And so 17 years later, the world is coming to our door, say how do we do in our country, what you’re doing in Orlando. And I say, you know, we’re not that smart. We’re just common sense, folks saying it makes sense to help our small businesses grow because that makes the economy and the small business.

Shawn Flynn 11:58

So when these countries are coming Do you ask him for advice, then? What are you telling them? Are you giving them any suggestions?

Jerry Ross 12:05

Oh, yeah, everyone is different. But you know, the basics of small business are the same everywhere in the world. Leadership is leadership and management is management, accounting better be the same everywhere in the world. And so the basics of running a business are the same. The piece that changes is the cultural piece. And that changes, you know, by city. I mean, even in the US, cities have different cultures. I spoke in Cairo, Egypt, and I was asked, Is it okay to pay a bribe? I said, I don’t know. It might be okay. In your culture. In our culture, we call it a tip. And it comes at the end of the meal, not before, in so those are cultural differences. And so today is the same thing in Istanbul, the same thing in many, all places where people came to hear about capitalism and small business development. And I taught the same things that we teach here. What we don’t talk about is the cultural piece because that is going to vary by various cases. So today, folks from all over the world will sign on and watch what we’re doing in our, our training rooms. And then they’ll put translators on the other side. And we’re, we’re changing the world one business at a time, because ownership is how you break the cycle of poverty. And so we don’t teach that in many schools. That’s fascinating. And when you’re working with these companies, I mean, I looked at your website, you’ve helped companies raise over 220 million so far, these companies that you’re working with, how do you know when they’re an investable company? What does that take? What does that mean? Well, first, we don’t make the loans here, you know, those are made by the banks. The SBA guarantees help a lot. When we say we’ve facilitated that? Typically, what that means is that we’ve brought a business in that maybe wasn’t bankable because banks are not in the risk business. They read your business plan from the back to the front. So they start with how am I going to get paid back? And then they say, Okay, I can get paid back. What do they do? And so most of the time, it’s helping them get their cash flow. statements together in their financial statements together to point out where they’re weak. Many times, our bank sponsors here, when they meet someone that’s bankable, they don’t have to say, No, they can just say not now and send them to us. And we help them get their financials together or their business plan, we may help them with their pitch to say, I don’t see what you see, I never bought a pet rock and the guy made millions, I would have counseled Google to change their name, and it seems to be working for him. And so our coaches can see a company that may see something they don’t, what we do is to say you have to have the basics in place for a bank will, will take that kind of risk. We do help a lot of businesses get loans, which helps them grow, which is which is our intent.

Shawn Flynn 14:42

So then in your situation or you’re the economic development area there. It’s more working with banks and lenders versus here in Silicon Valley where it’s probably more predominant angels and VCs.

Jerry Ross 14:55

Correct. And so, when we get those businesses who are bankable and growing you Using a bank, typically they’ll go through our incubator program, which relates to the University of Central Florida. That’s where we start working on how to pitch for angel investments in stage one and stage two funding. So we’re handling the masses, mostly here at the entrepreneur center, once we get them solid and growing, that’s how we utilize the resources of the second tier of support, because they can only handle so many parts of that screening process is, is the business going to be around? And are they going to be financially solvent? Because once they get to the venture stage, they’re going to have to produce returns.

Shawn Flynn 15:35

That’s interesting, because normally here, the venture stage is the first stage.

Jerry Ross 15:41

I understand that. And so, what we try to do is to say we get them ready for that. But again, in Silicon Valley, they’re so far ahead with the understanding of the new venture and the understanding of risk here. It’s a much younger version.

Shawn Flynn 15:56

Other than banks, what types of resources are therefore companies there that they may not know about or companies throughout the world that they may not know about.

Jerry Ross 16:07

Especially in the US, small businesses need to connect with small business development centers. It’s a national program. They’re in lots of cities, and they’re called SBDC. Some time for small business development centers, they’re usually connected with the university. And those are employees of the university or the organization that are trained in their subject matter and can help businesses and it’s free to visit them. Score is a volunteer organization that is National. So, if there’s a local score chapter, they need to engage with that score is volunteers, and they are volunteers with business experience, who volunteer to mentor and help small businesses, and it’s free. And so that’s my favorite word for a small business is free. And so when we can say come and talk to a coach and it’s free, that opens the door, and then it’s up to them. It’s not our job to open them. mail and read it to them. Now our job is to deliver the mail. And so if someone wants to engage, we have those services, then you get two chambers of commerce, we have about five chambers of commerce here. And each of them provides a larger circle for those businesses. So if they have a product that is specific to the Asian market, they need to join their local Chamber of Commerce, sometimes for the for the region, but also sometimes for that niche to say who’s in this space and who’s playing and who’s active, and that enlarges their circle of contacts. So those are all areas I think in any city that people can engage with that maybe sometimes they get busy and forget about don’t internationally am Cham is Chamber of Commerce that’s usually in in other countries. And that’s a larger Chamber of Commerce going to here in Orlando, we’re very fortunate because lots of conventions come here, conventions for industries or segments to say, you know, you need to get down there and meet the people who are players in the industry. And that’s been very easy for folks that are here, I speak at conventions. And so, it’s very nice for me to say I don’t have to charge you for travel. And so that’s one of the advantages of being here in Orlando that lots of conventions come here. As a result, if you’re in I mean, it’s it was just here, which lots of people engage in plastic shows here. So, someone’s in, you know, manufacturing of plastics or chemicals, they can go to the plastic shell, which comes to them. So whatever city you’re in, look at what conventions are coming or what leads groups are happening and around there, but it takes some work you’ve got to engage in in getting engaged. How does one of these companies find their first possible corporate sponsor or first big corporate partnership? I remember when I was getting started, I was pitching Disney. And they said, so how many clients do you have? And I said, if you sir, would be so kind as to sign this agreement, you would have the full attention of my entire team because they would be one of the first major clients So the first one is the hardest, but you have to research you have to do your homework, and you have to earn it. We were never afraid of saying, we’re going to make you proud. We’re going to make you happy. We’re going to give you what we promised. And if we don’t, we’re going to make it right. We were never afraid of competition. I had competition in every city I ever went in. But we always said, we’re going to be the best. And even when we had good shows, we would come back and say, what could we do better? I never got hurt helping other people. And so, there were times that that we just helped and said, maybe we’re not the prime contractor on this. But if we can help them do a better show, we’re in. We hired the best, we marketed excellence, and so that we didn’t have to shop price. But in order to do that, you got to be excellent. I think major companies will use a small business they prove with it that they can perform and that they’re not high maintenance.

Shawn Flynn 19:53

What is the process normally looks like for a company reaching out to these corporations from day one? To sign in a contract

Jerry Ross 20:02

A long time, and many times in getting paid. It takes a long time, when we were negotiating with NASA to light up the shuttle, it was an enormous amount of time to prepare, answering the bid, preparing the data and the documentation to prove we could do what we said. And then it was a long time to get a decision. And then it was a long time for implementation. And then it was a long time to get paid all of those things. You say, is that worth it? Well, when the check came in, it was all worth it. For most businesses they’ve got to decide is do I invest his time and energy and effort? Will there be a return and sometimes that’s the call that you have to make that it could have gone the other way that we would have said we spent a whole lot of time and effort and didn’t get the deal? So I think part of it is finding the right person and talking to the right person, everyone can sell. But most people who say they can’t sell are talking to people who are not qualified and interested. If you’re talking to the wrong person. You can do it wonderful presentation and still not get the order those big companies, it’s like dealing with a government, you’ve got to learn the organization and learn who makes the decisions, and then talk to them about what it’s going to do for them, not just what I do, you know, to come in and say I do this, and I do this. And I do this, like, they got a whole bunch of people already doing that form. So if they come in and say, here’s what I can do for you, they like to hear that even if they’re a big company, they always like to hear what you’re going to do for them. One of the examples in the software business, we had really good software that made an IBM mainframe run more efficiently when we would hire people. And when I was hired, I said, I don’t know much about mainframe software. And they said, you don’t have to know lunch. We know what our customers pain is. And we know that our product will solve that pain. And so we call people up and said, you have a storage Pro. You have an IBM 3090. They would say, yeah, you have a storage problem. Yeah, I got a product that will make you a hero. I’m going to send it to you for free and when you’re a hero, you send me a check. Fair enough. was as simple as that. And we sold 100 million dollars with a software, when we would send them the software, they would put it in become a hero, and then you think they would send me a check. They always forgot that part. And then it gave us an opportunity to say, we want to earn your business, we want to have this be a partnership, because if you make a partnership, you get paid for life, make a sale the patient wants. And so it’s finding those companies that you say, here’s what I can do for you, rather than saying, here’s what I do.

Shawn Flynn 22:26

Jerry, you’d mentioned sales there. Are there skills that entrepreneurs can learn and skills that entrepreneurs can’t be taught.

Jerry Ross 22:34

Well, I’m always careful about saying that someone can’t learn something because I think anyone that has the desire to learn and learn anything, it’s a little harder to learn grit. It’s a little harder to learn passion, vision. I mean, those can be taught creativity. You know, some people say I’m not really creative, but there are exercises to learn that. So those are things I think that naturally come to entrepreneurs that they see things that other people don’t and their passions Passionate enough to say, all risk at all. That’s not normal. I think some people are born with a higher degree of that. People ask me if entrepreneurs are risky, and I don’t think they’re necessarily risky people, I think they’re, they have a bigger risk box than most people. It’s about managing your risk box. You’ve done all the things to reduce the amount of risk, and it’s a good decision and believe that that can pay off. I don’t think that’s risky. I think that’s making a good business decision. The other skills accounting, yeah, anybody can learn accounting, I even learned it. I don’t like it so much. But I learned how to do that, mostly, so I could spot when something’s wrong. And then I bring in someone that really knows what to say, how do we fix it? Or why is it wrong? marketing? I think anyone can learn. Those are skills I think anyone can sell and it’s just putting them in the right opportunity to be successful. Sometimes we would bring our salespeople in and say, what’s the worst challenges you’ve had or the worst negatives that you’ve had? So how would we answer that? What’s a killer answer? That would work for that. What objections Do you hear? And we’d say, you know, every industry has about five objections that they hear all the time. Well, it’s not going to be a surprise. So, think about it, come up with a response that says, I appreciate your input. And here’s what we think we would equip our salespeople to be successful, rather than just thrown out there to the wolves and saying, have at it, but also, I think it’s about finding people who are qualified. And if they’re not qualified to buy, you shouldn’t be presenting to them. If they’re not interested in buying, that means not now, everyone’s going to buy from me, they just don’t know it yet. And so if they say, no, that just means not now, and there may be an opportunity in the future. So, you always protect those as well.

Shawn Flynn 24:41

You’d mentioned some organizations like SBDC score. Are there any other suggestions you might have for finding the right mentors or advisors for your company? Then how do you know who is the right one? The right mentor advisor.

Jerry Ross 24:56

First, another organization I forgot to mention was Micro lenders and every region has different micro lenders we have ACCION here, which is a micro lender, and our black business investment fund is here. Those are both specific lenders who are set up to help small businesses. And I’m sure that they have nationwide offices. But if not those there are micro lenders typically in every state that we’ll look at a small business. As far as mentors are concerned, I have been blessed with great mentors, people that can tell me the way it is, give me the unvarnished truth. And that doesn’t mean I have to do what they say or follow their exact advice. But you need those out people outside your circle that can look in and say, I think you’re doing this wrong, or I think you’re missing something over here. I have been blessed from day one with good bosses and some bad ones that taught me a few things. But entrepreneurs are I’ve never asked an entrepreneur for help and I didn’t get it. And so, I think entrepreneurs, I look for entrepreneurs and say, Can I take you to coffee, and I don’t do lunch and dinner and all that stuff because first, it’s expensive. But second, it takes a lot of time. When you’re asking someone who’s busy to give you that kind of time. I think they’re, that’s a lot. But I usually say coffee, let’s meet for coffee in the morning or in the evening. And I would like to get your input on what I’m doing. And I’ve never had an entrepreneur set say no, you know, I mean, they’ve said, you know, I’m busy. I can’t do it now. But I think the best place to look for entrepreneurs are people that have met a payroll. Once you’ve met a payroll, you become a different person.

Shawn Flynn 26:26

I meet entrepreneurs or meet mentors, advisors,

Jerry Ross 26:29

Mentors and advisors, a lot of entrepreneurs are my mentors, people who’ve been there and done that. I’ve had bosses who have been mentored by board chair has left the board and is retired and is still a mentor. We still meet for coffee. I asked for that input. And then I have lots of younger folks that I love to hang out with. I’m going to be doing that this weekend in New York with a lot of young folks that say, here’s what’s important to us. And here’s how we’re starting businesses, and here’s how we’re doing technology. I think opening yourself up to people who have different ideas and who are outside your circle, you really need to get someone that’s going to tell you the truth. And what I found is that entrepreneurs that I say, I get, you know, half an hour of your time, and we go to coffee, can you give me some insights? They’re usually more than happy to do that, because they have a story to actually really like that. Because, in my mind, whenever I get asked this question, mentors, advisors, people are always looking for those industry experts, where at the same time, your fellow entrepreneur could probably maybe even be a better mentor than one of these people that maybe have not experienced what you’re going through in the last 20 years. Right. And sometimes, they have experiences where they say this really worked, or they can say, this was awful. Don’t look at that. Like, tell me about human resources and managing staff. because growing up, I was the staff. And so a lot of times, it’s like having your own place and then someone you know, you get a roommate, all of a sudden you’re going you know, you’re in my space, it’s sometimes you need One outside your space to come in and invade and, and move things around and challenge those things you’re doing that might just be doing it because that’s all you know. So especially with personnel, and management and leadership, those kinds of things. I have great mentors there. And then as far as technology, I go to people that are in the technology business and say, what do you think we have to do? And does this make sense to you? What would you do if you were sitting in my chair? That doesn’t mean you have to do it, because as I say, I have a lot of ideas, but they’re not all good. Mentors are doing the best they can to help you. But that doesn’t mean that everything they’re telling you is right.

Shawn Flynn 28:34

So, with that, can you tell us some of the success stories, or maybe just stories in general from the entrepreneur center of companies that you’ve worked with or have gone through the program.

Jerry Ross 28:45

There are a lot of great stories here. We’re doing good work. Last year, the organization’s here just coached and trained face to face over 15,000 business people. We connected with over 200,000 business people out of the center. So there have been lots Some businesses through the years, a couple of examples. I walked into our computer lab one day, and this was years ago, and a young lady was emotional. And I said what’s up and she said her computer had crashed at home. She didn’t know who owed her money. She didn’t know who had paid and she didn’t know where she was supposed to be that weekend because she had taken reservations. She ran a pedicab company. She said, ultimately, if I don’t have enough marketing dollars, I don’t make enough money this month. I can’t pay for my cab license. And so, I lose my business. They surrounded her with some support with marketing to say, No, that’s a marketing issue to get some money in the door. But we also helped her look at how that she developed her business and whether that was, and she was a warrior. If you remember President Obama’s inauguration it snowed. She put her pedicabs in the trailer and went to Washington and drove people in the snow because people were having a hard time in the traffic. She grew her business. At one point she had 50 independent drivers for her that were doing anywhere. Between 200 to $800 on a weekend for somebody in their part time job on the weekend, that’s pretty good. I came in my office and said, I’ve got a problem. And I said, Oh, you know, small businesses in the first five years have problems. And she said, the NBA All Star game is happening in Orlando. And they booked all my pedicabs, and then I got a call that the Daytona 500 is happening the same weekend and they want my pedicab. What do I do? I said, how many new pedicabs do you want? And she could order business. I think it was Oracle that came to the convention center and said, we want to hire your pedicabs to take people from the front door to the parking lot, because it’s a huge parking lot. And we want you to wear our shirts and hand out flyers to people that are going to their cars. And she said, Great, I’ll bring all my pedicab. And I said, What’s the problem? She said, how much do I charge? I’ve never dealt with a big company before. And I said how much debt Are you in? Because the billboards were already sold the advertising. It’s a huge convention, the electronics convention home electronics, so it was a huge market for us. think she charged every she was in debt, but they gave her an idea about thinking big. On the other end of the spectrum. LIDAR luminal is a company here that’s in the cutting edge of autonomous vehicles and driving. We’ve had some drone companies that use 3d scanning. First of all, they were driving it through the orange groves to tell you how many oranges one of the trees because there never been a physical California is in Florida, they started this project and this algorithm of we can tell you how many oranges are on the tree, but at the same time, they could tell you where the trees were planted, and where they had holes in the road. And then also the caliber of the tree. So, they could tell if the trees were growing, they scaled, they got venture capital and I said Are you ready to sell yet? And they said not yet, because we’re still driving it through the groves and today, they fly it through them a drone. I said to them, how are you going to make money who’s going to pay and they made the most money from the sprayer fertilizer companies because the farmers were saving so much money, not spraying fertilizer, whether it was a treat, it became ROI Immediately for them, investors looking at product production. So, there was lots of angles to that. And now they’re working on I think blackberries and blueberries and other agricultural products. Lydia chickens is a tech company that’s here. Dried Maida. In fact, this is a this is the full circle of what we envisioned as a community. I was the first person to arrive met when he came to visit a few years ago. And he said, I’ve got a T shirt company, and we’re doing well. But I have capacity. I have a facility that has capacity. I thought, okay, t shirt shop, international drive tours. No, I went to visit him, and he had a 50,000 square foot warehouse. It was a production facility and they were producing t shirts for Vegas for everything Park. Amazing production. We worked with him on capacity. And he grew from about $4 million to I think he’s doing 22 million today. And last week he paid for the holiday reception for all of the 14 organizations here to Say I want to give back when we started this process, it was how do we grow our own businesses. And after 17 years, we have a business that we had helped. They have grown to over 100 employees. And now here they are coming back to pay for that event here. And so they’re giving back. And that was the idea from the beginning is let’s build businesses who stay here and give back.

Shawn Flynn 33:22

Jerry, what type of technology Are you really excited about? You just mentioned drones and autonomous cars. Tell me what your thoughts are for the coming years.

Jerry Ross 33:31

autonomous vehicles are going to change lots of things. that technology is getting better. Jason, I can hold us here with luminal that is using LIDAR to do that. And we have beep, which is a bus out at like Noah, that is an auto self-driving bus have only the technology here. But we also have the test facilities here that they’re able to put those out in the public say it’s time to test and so when your beta testing stuff, that means it’s moving forward. blockchain is you’ve got to know about it. It’s coming. It’s implemented in in a lot of places, and it’s going to change industries, I think that’s something that people aren’t aware of, of how far along it is. And so, we’re still far enough away that you cannot know about it. But ultimately, I was speaking up in Ohio to a group that was managing risk. We were talking about selling insurance and how that process and that delivery channel will change, but also in how do you manage the risk in a drone that has an accident at 100 feet and lands on my head? We have a hard enough time talking about who’s at fault when the accident is in front of us self-driving cars, how do you ensure if I’m in the backseat, and we have an accident, I wasn’t driving, I was in the backseat. And so was it the technology. So, it’s those kinds of subsequent waves I think this technology is going to do AR and VR is changing the world as well. Medical Research when doctors can stand around a hologram and peel it to look at the insides. I really haven’t done that and work on me to have that ability with virtual reality. So Have the rides at Disney. I know I couldn’t go out and surf the way they did at Disney. But I feel like I have some of those experiences that the technology is getting better are very exciting. And I think yes, it’s going to change a lot of industries in a negative way. But I think it’s going to provide huge opportunity for those that say amen and embrace the technologies.

Shawn Flynn 35:22

Jerry, before we wrap up, what other information can you give us about small businesses?

Jerry Ross 35:27

Well, I think overall, small businesses are taken for granted in the Edward Lowe Foundation has a website called your economy.org, which will break down the number of small businesses in a particular region and also how many jobs they create. So in Florida, the number of businesses headquartered in Florida, that have less than 10 employees is 84% of the businesses. They produce about 33% of the jobs in Florida. 14% of the businesses in Florida have 33% where the 84 was hired. So 98% of the businesses in Florida have less than 100% We hear about the big companies hiring 2000 people. Well, you also hear about the big companies laying off 2500. You know, when you look at the big companies, the net jobs are coming from the smaller ones, because they’re less efficient and they hire people. I think it’s important for every city to look at how do we support and build our small business community because that’s where the jobs are created. And I think that’s what builds the strength of the community. And any last words for entrepreneurs out there, you can do it, it will work. It just takes time it takes you got to be all in and you got to have a good idea and it’s not bad news to hear that it’s not a good idea. That means that maybe there’s another one along the way, so get help. You’re not in this alone. Seek help. If you go to the national entrepreneur Center website, which is National ec.org or you can get us on Twitter at nationally see we’re on Facebook at nationally see or they can email me at Jerry at national ec.org. We’ll connect.

Shawn Flynn 37:01

That’s great. And Jerry, I want to thank you once again for taking the time today to be on Silicon Valley. I’d also like to thank Nigel Celina who made the introduction to dairy that allowed this conversation to happen today. And, anyone at home if you enjoyed this conversation and you want to hear more, please subscribe to the podcasts. So, you’re always up to date and write us a great review on iTunes or whatever platform you’re listening to this on. So once again, Jerry, thank you again for your time today.

Shawn Flynn 37:27

Thanks again.

Outro 37:30 Thank you for listening to the Silicon Valley podcast. To access our resources, visit us at the Silicon Valley podcast.com and follow our host on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn at Sean Flynn SV. This show is for entertainment purposes only and is licensed by the investors Podcast Network. Before making any decisions, consult a professional.