Editor's note: Este artículo está traducido al español.
Shaundell Newsome came to Las Vegas in the 1980s while serving in the U.S. Air Force. He later moved into the sphere of gaming and hospitality, before founding Sumnu Marketing with the help of the Nevada Small Business Development Center (SBDC).
Newsome — a longtime member of the Nevada SBDC’s Advisory Board — is stepping into the role of its chair. We sat down with Newsome to discuss entrepreneurship in Nevada, his goals for the Nevada SBDC and more.
What does serving as chair of the Nevada SBDC Advisory Board entail?
I’ve been on the board for well over a decade, so for me, it’s just keeping us focused on the vision beyond the 40 years. For 40 years, the Nevada SBDC has been providing resources and counseling services to Nevada small businesses, which employ 42% of the workforce. So I’m just excited to lead and then continue the strong vision started by folks like Sam Males and continued on with Winnie Dowling.
Why is it important for entrepreneurs here to have organizations like this to help them along?
Being a client myself, I realized that — while I had experience in the military and then had experience in our largest industry in gaming and hospitality — it is a different ball game when it comes to running your own business. And the simple thing is, you’re no longer signing the back of the check; you’re signing the front of the check.
Most people don’t realize how much that entails, and how it really has ... so many avenues for failure and very little avenues for success. For you to eliminate most of those avenues of failure, you must have someone alongside you telling you which way to go, how to handle your finances, how to handle your employees. How do you deal, if you don’t have employees, with paying yourself? How do you deal with economic downturn? So there’s so many ways that small businesses can fail, and then very little, very small, narrow ways for us to succeed.
So the Nevada SBDC helps you to mitigate some of those failures and minimize those avenues of failure, and then increase those roadways to success.
How has your experience as a small-business owner yourself and as a member of the Nevada SBDC’s Advisory Board prepared you to take over as chair?
I never really wanted to do any type of extra roles, if you call it that. Most small-business owners don’t, because just running the business itself is very, very difficult. It’s time consuming. You’re married to the business. You’ve got long hours.
So I never actually wanted to be a small-business advocate. I wanted to just take care of my family business. But when America’s Great Recession hit, I realized that everybody looked out for the larger industries, the big businesses, Wall Street — everybody came in and helped them. And nobody — nobody — looked out for small-business owners. So a lot of small businesses failed.
Recently, during the global pandemic, we did a whole lot better. And the Nevada SBDC was very instrumental in that, as well. The reason why I stay in advocacy, because — if not me, then who? My pastor said that to me one time. It’s hard to complain when you’re not going to jump in the ring and do anything about it. So Nevada SBDC, for me — our 12 centers around the state — means that we’re going to have a better chance of survival.
Over half of the small businesses fail within their first three to five years. And I want to make sure we can decrease that rate where we have more success than failures.
What’s your pulse on the state of entrepreneurship and small-business development in Nevada — what’s working and what challenges does it face?
We do a survey every year, so that gives us the pulse of our small-business community and what’s happening and their needs. Nevada SBDC is needs-based. We look at what is happening with the small businesses throughout the state and address those needs.
So for startups, the top three are they need more funding, they need to develop a marketing strategy and, basically, they struggle with licensing. And then for existing small-business owners, it’s finding customers, funding and managing the growth of their business.
Talk about the Nevada SBDC’s mission and vision, and your goals.
We have a very, very simple vision, and really it boils down to empowering our entrepreneurs to build our Nevada communities. It’s not an us-versus-them (with) corporations. What it is — we are ingrained in the community, and we reinvest back into our communities a lot faster than Wall Street or corporations. We’re part of our church community. We’re part of our Little League teams. We support them, not only financially, but our employees recently went out and gave out backpacks.
It is bigger than even a financial contribution. It helps the entire community. And that’s the greatest thing about small businesses, is that small-business owners raise their kids in the community. We build up our community. And when things go awry, like they did during the Great Recession or during the pandemic, we don’t have the option to jump ship and go to another company. We are there. We’re not trying to lay people off. We’re trying to keep people on. We just have a different sense of community. And that’s what makes small businesses special, is not only we add to the economy, but we add to the community.
You mentioned continuing the legacy of your predecessors. Do you want to talk about what you’ve learned on the Advisory Board and from outgoing Chair Bonnie Drinkwater’s leadership?
Bonnie is quite amazing. Always, I look up to Bonnie. She was a great mentor, and we spent a lot of time together. We would travel to Washington, D.C., and advocate on behalf of Nevada SBDC and all SBDCs. We spent these years really working side by side and ensuring that the investment is brought back into our small business community.
And kudos to Bonnie. Under her leadership, we’ve expanded the programs. We’ve expanded to the 12 centers throughout the state, covering north, south and in the middle — in the rurals. So she’s been phenomenal to work with and help me to see the whole state, because that’s what’s important, is the entire state has to win.
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