“My goal with this collaboration was to give Stanford students the opportunity to roll up their sleeves and apply their learnings to actual products, while also supporting minority owned businesses with fresh ideas and additional marketing funds.” NEW YORK (PRWEB) June 24, 2021
Consciously CEO Rai-mon Nemar Barnes is announcing a collaboration with Stanford Graduate School of Business to provide software, professional mentorship and marketing experience to Black-owned start-ups and Stanford MBA candidates as part of the Scale-Up Garage pilot course. The collaboration comes at a time when many minority business owners are struggling to scale their businesses and reach their intended demographics. Through Scale-Up Garage, Barnes aims to start from the ground up, and give students the foundation of experience to help them in future entrepreneurial endeavors.
In the United States, Black women are more likely to start a business than white men, yet there’s a steep drop-off in the percentage of Black women running mature businesses, according to Harvard Business Review(1). Black-owned small businesses, in particular, face disproportionate difficulty in securing various opportunities that other businesses rely on(2). The disparity suggests potential challenges to sustaining a business are related to an inequitable distribution of access to experiential education, capital, and expert advising. Consciously’s collaboration with Stanford’s Scale-up Garage is modeled to address some of these challenges, bridging the educational gap between the classroom and the real-world.
“In my experience, so many minority owned startups have natural aptitude and innate ability to do marketing well, they’re just not always knowledgeable about the tools, processes and frameworks needed to refine and scale their efforts,” said Rai-mon Nemar Barnes, Founder and CEO, Consciously. “My goal with this collaboration was to give Stanford students the opportunity to roll up their sleeves and apply their learnings to actual products, while also supporting minority owned businesses with fresh ideas and additional marketing funds.”
As a professional advisor, Barnes has collaborated with student teams and founders to work together to identify and test approaches to digital customer acquisition, develop strategies and form a preliminary plan for cost effective growth. To be accepted in the program, founders must agree to a 20 hour time commitment over the course of the program to give students ample time to establish and execute their plan.
“For our small team, this program was extremely valuable in helping us shape our Amazon advertising strategy. Under Rai-mon’s guidance, the student team was able to test and help us identify the most efficient and high performing keywords to drive traffic to our newly launched Amazon product pages,” said Cora Miller, Co-Founder and CEO of Young King Hair Care. “The collective wisdom and findings presented to us by the group truly will help us expand and grow on this channel and fulfill our mission of impacting Black and Brown young men, which we are incredibly grateful for!”
Young King Hair Care was one of five other companies, who teamed up with students in The Scale Up Garage course. Over the past ten weeks, students focused on developing entrepreneurial skills in marketing and strategy – using platforms like Google, Facebook, Instagram, Shopify, Etsy, Amazon and others – and then applying those skills to these companies looking to scale while also building equity in the startup ecosystem by supporting Black and brown founders. The course concluded with students’ presentations of final reports to founders and advisors, summarizing key learnings, strategic recommendations on acquisition, and a continuity plan.
About Consciously:
Consciously™ is a thoughtful, socially-conscious strategic marketing and branding agency that helps each client consider all stakeholders in their unique ecosystem. Using the Consciously™ approach of Conscious Marketing Solutions™, clients strengthen their relationships, articulate their values, and communicate their purpose with an eye toward community-focused results. Learn more about Consciously here: http://consciouslyinc.com/
More About Stanford Scale Up Garage: https://scaleupgarage.crd.co/
More About Young King Hair Care: https://youngkinghaircare.com/
Sources:
1. Harvard Business Review & Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, 2021 (https://hbr.org/2021/05/black-women-are-more-likely-to-start-a-business-than-white-men)
2. Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, 2016 (https://siepr.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/publications/17-003.pdf)
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