Kalamazoo BETA program empowers Black entrepreneurs with training and capital

Editor’s Note: This story is part of Momentum: The people and companies shaping what’s next, a weekly series that explores new ventures, founder support, and the resources powering entrepreneurship and small businesses across seven counties in Southwest Michigan. This project is sponsored by Southwest Michigan First.

KALAMAZOO, MI – The next session of an immersive training program designed to support,  mentor, equip, and provide resources for growing African American entrepreneurs is set to begin this spring in Kalamazoo.

The Black Entrepreneurship Training Academy has scheduled its sixth annual training session for April 2 to June 4, administered by Black Wall Street Kalamazoo and Sisters in Business Michigan. Feb. 6 is the deadline for those wishing to participate.

“The BETA program is the Black Entrepreneurship Training Academy,” explains Nicole Triplett, founder of Black Wall Street Kalamazoo. “It’s a five-month, cohort-based training program for entrepreneurs, with the priority on Black entrepreneurs.”

Triplett says the academy, which has had 50 graduates thus far and has provided $270,000 in equity-free support capital, is available to any motivated business owner. But participants need to have been in business for at least six months and have annual revenues of less than six figures. Speaking of the age of participants, Triplett says, “We’ve had as low as 16 and as high as the age of 62.” 

Except for three mandatory in-person gatherings, the sessions are online, with one weekly class that can be accessed at any time early in the week and a second that involves remote instruction each Thursday evening. 

“This is business basics,” Triplett says. “So it’s not specific to any type of industry. It is for a person who actually has been working in their business. They have a product or a service already established, and they just need some type of organizations and systems put around their business to help them grow.”

Facilitated by experts, the academy’s six training modules are intended to cultivate an entrepreneur’s mindset, business structure, business finance, business plan, marketing, and pitching. Those who complete the program will receive a grant of $5,000 to support their efforts. An end-of-season business pitch competition (in which participants “pitch” their enterprise to prospective users and investors) will provide the winner with an additional $5,000. BETA has received support from various sources in the community. Primary support for the grants is provided by the Stryker Johnston Foundation and Chase Bank.

Triplett says she was motivated to start the academy when she noticed there were a lot of Black-owned business people who were unprepared and lacked the knowledge to obtain beneficial relief funds that were made available by the federal government during the COVID-19 pandemic slowdown. Data from the Federal Reserve also indicates that Black, Latinx, and Asian business owners receive less business financing than white small-business owners; are subjected by banks to more scrutiny than white business owners; are approved for loans less often by online lenders than White business owners; and receive a small fraction of the outside equity that white startup companies receive.

Triplett is a private practice psychologist whose entrepreneurial efforts include ownership of the The Roché Collection winery and distillery in Kalamazoo. Black Wall Street Kalamazoo is an organization she started online in 2018 to allow people to become more aware of locally-owned Black businesses. Sisters in Business Michigan is a networking and mentoring organization started in 2017 by Nicole Parker and her sisters to support business-minded African-American women. 

More information about the BETA academy is available HERE. BETA was developed and launched in April of 2021.