Count Me In has joined forces with Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and Micro-Biz Buffalo to get the word out to the women of that city about the availability of micro business loans and education through www.count-me-in.org.

Micro-Biz Buffalo is a coalition of lending and service providers who are all working together to help Buffalo, New York entrepreneurs get their businesses started and growing. Count Me In has pledged to make $100,000 worth of loans to qualified women in the area.

On Friday August 6th, Nell Merlino, CMI President & CEO, along with Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and Melinda Rath Sanderson, Executive Director Women's Business Center held a press conference to launch the initiative.

Count Me In President Nell Merlino, Buffalo Entrepeneur LaDoris Burton and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY)

Nell Merlino was named an Outstanding Women Entrepreneur of 2004 by Enterprising Women Magazine and inducted into the Enterprising Women Hall of Fame. The award recognizes Nell's significant contributions to advancing the growth and development of women's business enterprises.

Two Count-Me-In entrepreneurs were also recognized at the NYC Awards Ceremony for outstanding accomplishments in growing their businesses and giving back to their communities.

In the category of a business with up to $1 million in annual revenues, the winners were Joyce Patterson-Saleem of JMPS Phlebotomy Services, a Washington DC-based mobile medical laboratory; and Karla VandenBerg of Monkey Dooz, a Wapato, WA-based owner of three children's hair and spa salons.

Both businesses were started with CMI loans. Congratulations to Joyce and Karla!!

CMI entrepeneur Angela Waldon, creator of Formal Response RSVP Service, an online response service for special events, landed a lucrative contract with the New York City Department of Health and the Office of Emergency Management to handle RSVPs for their emergency workhops. Way to go, Angela!!

CMI entrepeneur Linda Ippolito will have a showing of her works on paper at the Prince Street Gallery in New York City. The show, entitled Paesaggio, will run from September 7 thru October 2, 2004. It will feature Linda's collages of natural landscapes. For more information please call the gallery at 646.230.0246.
Thursday, July 15, 2004 marked a very special occasion in the history of CMI. We made our first $25,000 loan to Beatriz Ramos, Founder of Dancing Diablo, a digital animation studio in Brooklyn, NY. Beatriz' business has been flourishing since she received her first CMI loan in 2003. Creating animated characters for clients like MTV, Nickelodeon, the Cartoon Network and Disney has kept her and her 12 person staff extremely busy and Beatriz is developing an animated series she plans to sell to a network. The additional loan monies will be used to help with her expanding payroll and burgeoning business needs.

Beatriz came to the U.S. from her native Venezuela in 1996 and started Dancing Diablo soon after. Though she was an extremely skilled illustrator and animator, she was unable to secure a bank loan. She turned to CMI, and quickly qualified for a $5K loan, which she used to purchase additional computer equipment. Since then, Beatriz worked hard to expand her client base. We're proud to be part of her success and look forward to assisting other CMI borrowers with second and third loans to grow their businesses.
An important part of CMI's mission is to further the possibility of systemic change in the way women get access to credit and capital. We thank all of you who took the time to answer our questions. The feedback we gathered from this survey, about your experiences and expectations around access to credit, is a critical component in developing the recommendations we make to banks, training organizations and the government

Here are some of the things we found:

66% of respondents started a business as a means of supporting themselves and their families

66% of respondents were turned down at least 3 times by financial institutions before approaching Count Me In; 2% had been turned down over 10 times

54% of respondents have taken at least one class to gain information about starting a business (via community college, small business development center or community agency)

These findings corroborate many of the observations we made at CMI since we began making loans 4 years ago. We plan to issue a full report on the survey this fall.
Find your target market. You will have limited advertising and marketing dollars in the start-up phase of your business. It's important that you target who to pursue as potential customers. Don't think everyone is a market, as you will not have enough marketing dollars to reach the world. The more you can focus on a specific target market, the more likely your advertising dollars will reach your potential customers. Define potential customers by demographics like age, income, geography, etc. Be as specific as possible.
 
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