Supporting Diverse Business Owners

Brandon Wheeler with one of the totes he creates from animal feed bags. (Photo by Christine Carignan)

For Brandon Wheeler, a person with autism and ADHD, there were few job prospects near his home in Stewartstown, a small rural town in NH’s North Country. So Wheeler created his own opportunities.

"Finding jobs around here is difficult,” Wheeler says, especially ones that accommodate his needs. “So, I started my side business.”

Initially, Wheeler, 25, tried making dog biscuits, but the government regulations and required licenses made it too expensive and cumbersome to pursue as a business. That’s when Janice Duplessie, a community integrator with Northern Human Services who has been working with Wheeler on life skills since 2022, had an idea. She suggested upscaling animal feed bags into tote bags.

To start his new business, Wheeler secured a $500 grant from the NH Council on Developmental Disabilities, which provides small grants to individuals and families impacted by disabilities to support personal, educational, leadership, and employment goals. He used the money to buy a sewing machine and supplies, and launched Lindy’s Goodies, named for his grandmother who passed away from cancer. Now, Wheeler sells the totes in local stores, including Agway and IGA, for $8.

Wheeler is one of a number of business owners from marginalized backgrounds in the state. While these business owners—including people of color, new Americans, women, veterans, rural businesses owners, and those with disabilities—face many barriers, including access to capital, there are now more resources to support them in the Granite State.

“There has been progress,” says Tricia Santamaria Utley, program manager at the Center for Women & Enterprise NH. Yet, “there is a lot of work to do” to provide more support.

Around the country, 85% of small businesses are majority-owned by white people, according to Pew Research Center, and 61% are majority-owned by men. Only 22% of small businesses are women owned, and there’s little data on the prevalence of business owners with disabilities, though the National Disability Institute estimates there are about 1.8 million business owners with disabilities across the nation.

And yet, entrepreneurship is appealing to many people from diverse backgrounds: 36% of Black adults and 30% of Asian adults say that owning a business is important to their view of the American dream, according to Pew.

Expanding the Definition of Success
To meet the needs of diverse business owners, experts say the business community needs to expand the concept of what it means to be a successful business owner. Growing profits is not the only measure of success, says Loick Muyuka, inclusivity commitment director with the NH Small Business Development Center (SBDC).

That definition of success may not resonate with diverse business owners, so nonprofits that support business owners, like SBDC, are now asking their clients to share their own definition of success.

“It’s up to the client,” says Utley.

While some might aspire to growth and expansion, others want to be able to support their families while working flexible hours. Wheeler, for example, has decided that making four bags a week is the right level of production for him to sustain his business, without feeling overwhelmed.

Taking All Businesses Seriously
Too often, biases mean that businesses run by women, people with disabilities, and other marginalized communities are seen as a hobby or as an inspiring story, says Vanessa Blais, director of policy and planning with the NH Council on Developmental Disabilities.

“We’re trying to break down that barrier to being considered serious in the business field,” she says.

When a business isn’t taken seriously, it can lead to discrimination in accessing capital and funding, experts say.

“Lending institutions tend to ask questions that they won’t ask the white male counterparts,” Utley says. Often, lenders analyzing businesses owned by diverse populations focus on the limitations of a business, rather than its potential. This can compound the historical ways that women, people of color, and other marginalized populations have been excluded from accessing capital.

Increasing Access to Capital
The NH Community Loan Fund aims to counteract that by providing funding to people who have, historically, been systemically denied business loans.

“We can offer more flexibility when it comes to our lending guidelines,” says Latonya Wallace, director of economic inclusion at the nonprofit. Though not all loan applications are approved, the loan fund is equipped to work with people who have low to moderate income, limited credit history or low credit score, no collateral, or who are facing other barriers to traditional lending, she says.

Sharing the Best Kept Secrets
Recently Muyuka of the Small Business Development Center connected a woman with free business advising. The business owner had previously been paying hundreds of dollars per month for similar services and had no idea that SBDC offered a free option. She proclaimed the program “the best kept secret”—a refrain that many people working with marginalized business owners in NH hear.

That’s a problem, Muyuka says. “It’s a secret to the minority business owners.” The SBDC is starting a Network Hub to help these resources better connect with marginalized communities. The Network Hub brings together business assistance organizations in the state to meet quarterly with community leaders representing diverse populations. “We learn from those communities, to be able to better serve them, Muyuka says.

SCORE, a national free business mentorship program that has two chapters in NH, is also expanding its reach, says Heather Turner, co-chair of SCORE Granite Region. Her chapter has four Spanish-speaking mentors, who have been doing outreach to Hispanic and BIPOC communities, while Chinese-speaking clients have offered to translate between other clients and mentors. Online, SCORE offers resources in many languages, and the NH chapters can tap into a national network of mentors when they need assistance that isn’t available in the Granite State, Turner says.

As recent shifts in census data shows NH’s population is becoming more diverse, business assistance organizations  are finding ways to support a more equitable business community, says Wallace. “It’s up to us as a state, as community members, and as community leaders to make sure that resources are available and people continue to feel welcome here in New Hampshire,” she says.