So what do you do when you make promises to Louisiana residents in a place where so many other promises have been broken?
For Geoff Stewart and his staff at Louisiana Entrepreneurship and Economic Development Center at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, there was an obvious answer: Even if people are skeptical, you follow through.
In 2021, the LEED Center first pitched the idea for Accelerate Northside, a six-week entrepreneurial course for anyone on the north side of Lafayette who wanted to start a business. The area had seen other economic development initiatives arrive and then quickly fade. Program manager Jonathan Shirley said they opted not to tread lightly.
No matter how many people showed up, Shirley and Stewart recalled, they pledged to offer six weeks of programming.
Then a funny thing happened. Thirty-five people signed up. Other cohorts followed, and they also filled up.
Now, three years in, Stewart is on his eighth session. He said he can see tangible results. More than 300 people have taken the course. The current session has 40 participants.
That programming, he said looking back, has brought together a group of people interested in sparking change in their community.
“The diversity of interest and what they want to do and their backgrounds have been just remarkable,” Stewart said. “The magic is?— and we always talk about it?— it is the best room to be in for our team. There’s nobody complaining. They talk to each other and encourage each other. We finish at 9 o’clock, and they stay in the parking lot talking.”
Survey results show the program is having success. Of 90 former participants surveyed, 48 of them have turned their business ideas into a side gig, while another 39 turned their businesses into a full-time job. Forty of them have a website.
In this week's Talking Business, Stewart and Shirley speak about the program, the success of some of its participants and why he is drawn to this work.
Interview has been edited for length and clarity.
You conducted a listening tour on the north side of Lafayette. What did you do to help get community buy-in on the concept?
Stewart:?We identified that this wasn’t going to be an easy road because there had been a lot of promises made before and not necessarily a whole lot of outcome.
Bishop John Milton at Imani Temple, in talking with him, it was just kind of a wait-and-see kind of perspective. From our perspective, it was, you need to tread with purpose and follow through on the promises you make. We had one key performance indicator?— we were going to deliver six weeks of programming, and if no one showed up, we were going to deliver six weeks of programming. We made a promise. We sold out for that cohort, and about three weeks in, we started to see some engagement from people that we talked to in the community that were showing up and seeing that this room is full.
It just started to take off.
How did you go about making those connections early? You mentioned about approaching things with “the head and the heart.” Was that effective in that early success?
Shirley: A head-and-heart standpoint simply looks at, one, I care more about you than I do about your idea. The head and the heart thing is that the longest journey you ever take in your life is 18 inches long, and that connects your head and heart. Everything else is just work. Covering those 18 inches and really leaning into that is really what people attach to.
The other thing was we were going to do it again. That was what we heard?— you can’t just do it once. Some of the people who were in the room for that first cohort were certainly gatekeeper people who for three weeks, I think, were looking at it as, "Are these people going to do what they said they were going to do?" The last three weeks they were, like, "I have an idea, too. What if I did this?"
Tell me about some of the participants in the program.
Stewart: Vanessa Scott has Simply Chic Balloons by VScott. The stuff that she does is amazing. She works full time as a nurse and this is her side hustle, designed as a side hustle, and all of a sudden she’s fielding calls and she’s busy.
She had to figure out a business model to deal with a ton of demand and wanting to help everyone but recognizing that I love my career, I love my family and I’m not going to do all this stuff and sacrifice those things.
She got to a point where it’s like, these are the types of jobs I want to do, and if this is the type of job you have, let’s talk.
What kind of effect can moving the needle on poverty have on the north side of Lafayette, or anywhere else in the region?
Stewart: All of this stems from a from a presentation that (Notre Dame professor) Dr. Michael Morris gave here on campus where he talked about entrepreneurship as a vehicle for addressing generational poverty.
There was something to this notion of taking control of your own journey. If we look at poverty rates in the United States, it really hasn’t changed since the 1930s. We spend trillions of dollars and don’t move the needle on poverty. Starting a business and putting yourself in position to take control of it moves your needle for sure.
You seem to be someone who sees opportunities in areas most people don’t. Most people don’t give poverty a second thought.?Why did you start this and why do you do this?
Stewart: I’m a product of that environment. Growing up, I lived in every trailer park on the north side of town and Carencro. My dad was a high school history teacher and coach, and my mom was an LPN at Lafayette General. It was just a grind, but (they were) constantly watching their pursuit for education to open up doors for them but, most importantly, for their kids. Then education becomes a conduit for it.
If you start looking at it, it's a matter of opportunity, right? If there's an opportunity to learn and a process that you can learn, that's what we show them about entrepreneurship.?
What's the future of the north side of Lafayette look like? It looks like people taking control of their little space and pursuing whatever it is they want to pursue. There's an empowerment there and there's a love there. We can make it into whatever we want to make it.?