Entrepreneurs often become business owners on the strength of having a “better answer to a customer’s problem.” Even so, most entrepreneurial journeys are replete with challenges for a small business owner to address – frequently without significant experience or business training, and most often without substantial support. Eric Kobb, the founder and owner of Rolling Green Landscape Solutions, faced just that predicament and turned for assistance to the Florida Small Business Development Center at the University of Central Florida (FSBDC at UCF) and its award-winning Advisory Board Council (ABC) program.

Orlando-based Rolling Green Landscape Solutions provides a full range of landscaping services to high-end residential and commercial clients. What sets it apart is the quality of its people and service, and the superiority of its technology. “The landscape industry is a crowded place,” explains Kobb. “The number one way we differentiate ourselves is through our people. We focus on hiring the best, on training and education, and on retaining them. We’re proud of the number of licensed and certified staff members we have. We also try to be more technologically advanced than most in our industry. It’s all part of making our teams more efficient, to allow us to communicate better with our clients, and overall just do a better job.”

“I have spent my whole life in the landscaping industry, so I have always known my trade,” Kobb points out. “I know my craft and I know how to service my customers. What I didn’t have any experience in was the business side of things: how to set up a business plan; how to have a marketing strategy; how to actually understand and grow our financials. I have seen other businesses flounder without that knowledge and I didn’t want to go down that path so I sought out the FSBDC.”

“When I first met with them, they recommended one of their programs: the Advisory Board Council,” Kobb recalls. Directed by Program Manager Jill Kaufman, each advisory board consists of a customized, no-cost panel of experts providing advice and counsel to help businesses grow. The FSBDC acts as a matchmaker between established local small businesses like Rolling Green Landscape Solutions and area professionals who volunteer their expertise as members of an advisory board, with each advisor purposefully selected to address the specific needs of the FSBDC client.

“We set up a board that would fill the voids in my personal experience,” Kobb states. “We built my board focused on the areas I could improve upon and we went from there. It’s been great. My ABC was pretty awesome in fact.” It included professionals in accounting and finance; Human Resources; advertising, marketing and branding; and banking. “It was really cool to see the different levers that can be pulled in the business world and how you could make yourself more successful and grow as an individual,” Kobb shares.

The FSBDC’s Advisory Board Council really made a difference for Kobb and Rolling Green. “Working with the FSBDC and my Board have been really impactful. It’s been huge,” Kobb concluded. “The results are staggering. Over the three years we have worked with the FSBDC, our profits are up, our revenues are up 139%, our employee count has more than doubled, we have expanded our facility, and we have increased our line of credit by three times (3X). It’s all really helped to position us for the future and for future growth, and I’m super excited about that. The FSBDC opened my eyes to how things are done and I want to thank them and everyone on my Board who helped me.”

For information about Rolling Green Landscape Solutions, please visit http://www.rollinggreenlandscape.com/

Success as an entrepreneur is built upon the knowledge, experience, and leadership skills one brings to the venture. The principles and values that Nick Pisano – founder, president, and CEO of SNA Software LLC – developed as an active-duty United States Naval officer placed him in a good position to lead and grow his business. Taking his company to the next level was his latest challenge and for that he turned to the Florida Small Business Development Center at the University of Central Florida (FSBDC at UCF) and its award-winning Advisory Board Council (ABC) program.

SNA Software is a veteran owned technology company specializing in data transformation and open systems business intelligence and application configuration. The firm’s customers consistently rate its software and customer service as exceptional. This is because SNA Software’s technology is a cut above the rest and its technical personnel are subject matter experts in the same business domains as their customers, ensuring that they understand the customer’s needs and are committed to their clients’ success.

“SNA Software is dedicated to the proposition that the customer should ‘Own the Data®’,” states Pisano, “and that is why our solutions support open systems, data democratization, and data transformation into open systems with powerful visualization based upon establishing a single, trusted point of information.” It’s how they successfully deliver organizational efficiency, cost savings, and organizational transformation to their customers.

Growing in the world of government contracting, earning large US military, civilian federal agency and corporate IT projects, is an immense undertaking. Pisano sought guidance to help steer through and excel at the challenges and opportunities facing his company and called on the FSBDC and its ABC program for help. Directed by program manager Jill Kaufman, each advisory board is a customized, no-cost panel of experts providing advice and counsel to help businesses grow. The FSBDC acts as a matchmaker between established local small businesses like SNA Software and area professionals who volunteer their expertise as members of an advisory board, with each advisor purposefully selected to address the specific needs of the FSBDC client.

“The Advisory Board Council was extremely valuable to us,” explains Pisano. “It acts as a Board of Directors and as such asks a lot of the hard questions that need to be asked of a CEO. The composition of the Board provides you with a unique breadth of expertise you otherwise would not be able to access. You get a holistic and broader view of how you should run your business, navigate the rocks and shoals of the day-to-day business and do what you need to do in order to make your business successful.”

“Working with the FSBDC has been fantastic. It’s really a pleasure dealing with Jill Kaufman and the FSBDC. They’re always there to help and assist you,” concluded Pisano. “The level of expertise that we’ve been able to draw upon from the FSBDC has, in a very real way, increased our business over 100% over the past 3 years. In addition, our customer base has expanded greatly and our effectiveness on the job has also improved qualitatively as a result of the assistance from the FSBDC. The value of their support to our business was, in one word, invaluable.”

For information about SNA Software, please visit https://sna-software.com/.

For some small business owners, explosive growth – in revenues, employees, locations – can be an exciting yet daunting challenge. No one wants to miss an opportunity, but the fear of overextending and moving too fast can hold you back. Kelly and Scott Seidl, founders and owners of Kelly’s Homemade Ice Cream, recognized that ‘they didn’t know what they didn’t know’ as they sought to manage their rapidly growing business. To gain the perspectives and guidance they wanted to confidently push forward and nurture this growth, the Seidl’s turned to the Florida Small Business Development Center at the University of Central Florida (FSBDC at UCF) and its award-winning Advisory Board Council (ABC) program.

Kelly’s Homemade Ice Cream is a Cinderella story. In 2014, the company started its journey as a simple ice cream truck. Today Kelly’s has five scoop shops and three counters inside a partner’s coffee shops with plans to expand to two new locations shortly. Their success is a testament to the appeal and popularity of their local and handcrafted product. “We make all our ice cream inhouse,” Kelly Seidl states proudly, “using the highest quality ingredients and dairy from Florida. What makes us exceptional is we have uniquely created flavors, with over 100 recipes of seasonal and featured flavors that are rotated throughout the year. We cherish being part of the community, stay involved with the local schools and strive to give back to show our gratitude for the support we have received.”

“We originally sought out assistance from the FSBDC because our business started to grow and we needed mentorship,” Scott Seidl recalls. “Kelly is a registered nurse by trade, and I am an accountant. We had never started or run a business, so we needed help. The Advisory Board Council was the service we used the most at the FSBDC and it’s been extremely helpful.”
The FSBDC at UCF’s Advisory Board Council provides no-cost, customized boards of volunteer experts specially selected to address the specific needs of the FSBDC client by providing advice and counsel to help the business grow. In the case of Kelly’s Homemade Ice Cream, Jill Kaufman, ABC program manager, recruited advisory board members whose expertise
would be beneficial to the organization and would help the clients to explore and evaluate new opportunities as well as plan for the infrastructure that would be needed to support those developments.

“It’s a group of advisors that have a lot of different industry experience and they’ve been great mentors,” says Scott Seidl. “For example, our board had a member with a lot of food production experience which was knowledge we didn’t have. We can bounce our ideas off of them and get the feedback we need and know that they will challenge us. It has really helped us step back from the business and work on the business, not just in the business.”

“Since we started with the FSBDC and the Advisory Board Council, our revenues have grown over 100% and our staff has more than doubled. We had 3 locations, now we have 8,” Kelly Seidl concluded. “If I had to use one word to describe the FSBDC’s Advisory Board, it would be ‘Family’. I have trust in them and that they give us confident, knowledgeable answers that have helped us grow and manage that growth successfully.”

For information about Kelly’s Homemade Ice Cream, please visit https://www.kellyshomemadeicecream.com/

External expertise and alternative perspectives are invaluable resources when you are growing a small business, but they are not always readily available or easy to find. Chris Baeten, CEO and owner of Knight Federal Solutions – and an Orlando Business Journal 2019 CEO of the Year – had the wisdom and foresight to go looking for them, and he found them in the Florida SBDC at the University of Central Florida’s (FSBDC at UCF) Advisory Board Council Program (ABC).

Knight Federal Solutions leverages its core competencies – simulation & training, cybersecurity, and intelligence analysis – as a trusted provider to industry leading prime contractors and Department of Defense and Intelligence Community customers, having established strong standards and practices to ensure execution and mission delivery. Their motto says it all: “Armored in Excellence. Driven by Results.”

“We take that commitment very seriously,” says Baeten. “If we have not done so already, we aim to hire the highest level of subject matter expertise in our core competencies. Most importantly, we are driven by our results, and delivering for our customers.”

Baeten’s pursuit of excellence was a motivator in approaching the FSBDC and ultimately participating in the Advisory Board Council Program. FSBDC’s Advisory Board Council provides no-cost, customized boards of volunteer experts selected to address the specific needs of the FSBDC client by providing advice and counsel to help the business grow.  “I didn’t have a strong enough accountability mechanism,” recalls Baeten, “so, I turned to Jill Kaufman, the FSBDC’s ABC program director, and decided an advisory board would be beneficial for my organization.”

“The Advisory Board that the FSBDC provided me had six individuals who had very different backgrounds across multiple specialties, including expertise in marketing, finance, and the law. I also had people from my industry who had experience helping small businesses grow. They were able to provide support in areas we weren’t focused on.”

Working with this team of volunteer advisors, Knight Federal strengthened its capital position and worked to bring its back office in line to be compliant for DoD contracts. They addressed legal issues that a small business might not ordinarily consider. Additionally, according to Baeten, “Most importantly, we were able to put together a marketing and public relations plan that gained us exposure locally and nationwide that has really paid dividends for us. We have been recognized with numerous awards, including being named to the Inc. 5000 (ranked #261 in Florida) and as one of Central Florida’s Top 25 Modeling, Simulation & Training Companies by the Orlando Business Journal – both for two consecutive years.

“With the plans we put in place, including the marketing, business development and building our pipeline, since we first started with the FSBDC, we’ve grown our business by almost 56% over the past three years,” remarked Baeten. “I think if anyone is given the opportunity to work with the FSBDC and have an Advisory Board Council, they should look at it as a blessing and a privilege. I didn’t quite understand until I got in the middle of it just how beneficial it could be.”

For more information about Knight Federal Solutions, please visit https://knightfederal.com/

“You don’t know what you don’t know.” That’s the mantra of many of the smart and successful small business clients that seek assistance from Florida SBDC at the University of Central Florida (FSBDC at UCF). And all credit goes to those business owners; recognizing that they don’t have all the answers and that they can benefit from the FSBDC’s services, including its programs for established, second stage companies as well as its expert, confidential, no-cost consulting.

Jennifer Vargas, President, and Luis Vargas, Vice President, lead and are co-owners of Enviro-USA American Manufacturer LLC, the producer of environmental protection apparatus. It makes containment booms for the oil industry, silt or turbidity curtains for the marine construction industry, and seaweed barriers for the tourism industry. They had grown the business to more than $1 million in sales by 2016 but had hit a rough patch.

“We were at a point where we felt like we needed assistance,” recalls Jennifer Vargas. “Challenges were presenting themselves. Unfamiliar issues and problems were arising, daily it seemed. We knew we didn’t have all the answers and needed guidance. We needed professionals to help us move forward. That’s why we signed up with the FSBDC.”

Enviro-USA American Manufacturer’s Facility

Enviro-USA and the Vargases accessed multiple of the FSBDC’s services. They received in-depth marketing and financial analysis consulting from the FSBDC’s Eastern Florida State College sub-center. The local Procurement Specialist from the FSBDC’s Florida Procurement Technical Assistance Center at UCF (Florida PTAC at UCF) assisted with government contracting opportunities. And the FSBDC at UCF’s International Trade Program Manager Jill McLaughlin led in developing an export marketing plan for the company.

“The FSBDC is amazing to work with,” says Luis Vargas. “They dived deep into our issues. In the export marketing plan, we learned what countries to target and so much more. With our financials, they opened our eyes and pointed out where we needed to focus. On the marketing side, they got is down into the nitty-gritty to grow our revenues.”

If that wasn’t enough, the Vargases also joined the FSBDC’s Advisory Board Council (ABC), a no-cost board of volunteer experts, selected to address the specific needs of the FSBDC client providing advice and counsel to help businesses grow.  “Working with the ABC advisors was so important and so valuable. They shared so much knowledge; about production, sales, human resources, business-to-business marketing. It enabled us to make so many better decisions at the company. And ABC Program Manager Jill Kaufman was instrumental in making it happen,” stated Luis Vargas.

The Vargas’s work with the FSBDC has paid rich rewards. Enviro-USA has achieved remarkable results since starting with the FSBDC: the company has been able to double its factory space, its work force and its manufacturing capacity. Revenues have increased more than 90% and profits have grown by 1,000%.

“You can’t go wrong working with the FSBDC,” concluded Jennifer Vargas. “You can only improve your business. You get experts to help you with every aspect of your business and it’s at no cost. They are there for you, to help you every way that they can.”

For information about Enviro-USA American Manufacturer  please visit www.enviro-usa.com.