My Trip to WBEC-West
-- by Jessie Gabriel
We often get questions about women-owned business certification. What is it? How does it work? Am I eligible? But once you’re certified, then what? You’ve gone through this rigorous certification process, you’ve gotten your approval, and now you’re wondering what happens next. I went all the way to (Lake) Las Vegas to find out!
There are two aspects to the certification process: how to get it and what to do with it. We went over the former in a previous post. Now we are moving on to the latter. Before I get to that, let me catch you up on our own certification journey. Despite have helped many of our clients obtain certification, we had dragged our feet on our own submission (do as I say, not as I do . . . ). We finally gathered all the materials together and submitted our application earlier this year. After responding to a number of application questions (no, we don’t have stock certificates because we are an uncertificated corporation, but yes, of course, we’ll create some . . . ), we made it to the interview, which took place last week. Now we are crossing our fingers as they do a final review of our application.
In the meantime, I’d heard from my fellow woman-owned business founder, Linda Honan of Outset, that you could attend certain conferences even before you were certified. Okay then! With alacrity, Linda and I registered for the enticingly-titled, “WBEC-West 21st Annual Procurement Conference” and booked some refreshingly reasonably-priced rooms at the Westin Lake Las Vegas. Two weeks ago I spent three days wandering around, relatively clueless, introducing myself, asking questions, forcing myself out of my hotel room each morning (because, hey, it’s hard to turn up in a group of 300 people you don’t know, and sitting in your room alone working starts to sound pretty appealing). What followed ended up being a great introduction to the certification world.
As best as I can tell, there are three significant benefits to being certified (note: this all relates to certification through the Women’s Business Enterprise National Council (WBENC), which is a well-known and respected national certifier). First, you get access to a community of other women-owned businesses. These businesses run the gamut in terms of industry and, unlike in the venture world, many of them have been in business (and profitable) for 10+ years. Some of them are on the sexy side (e.g., tech-enabled green infrastructure solutions ), some are less so (e.g., lights). These are businesses that we don’t have access to in the “startup” community because most of them never took outside capital. They have just grown, slowly, steadily, and profitably. The other thing that was impossible not to notice was how nice everyone was. I had no idea what I was doing and everyone I met could not have been more kind, helpful, and encouraging.
But wait, there’s more! Second, through WBENC you get access to a whole other community: representatives of diverse supplier programs at major corporations. To back up, many large corporations have internal departments focused on ensuring a diverse pipeline of vendors come through their doors. Each corporation does it their own way, some with large departments and specific targets, some with just a person or two and no real mandate. My introduction to this community came in a session during which a group of us did ten-minute rotations between roundtables, each hosted by a diverse supplier rep from a large company (e.g., Disney, JPMorgan, Amazon). We got to introduce ourselves and our businesses and the reps got to tell us about their company’s program. Again, an incredibly nice group and all willing to offer very candid advice on how to approach their programs.
Finally, there’s the government. Many federal and state government agencies have programs targeted at women- or minority-owned businesses. The whole certification industry arose in response to these programs, which can range anywhere from the federal SSBCI program that is still being implemented at the state level, to public pension funds who track their allocations to diverse fund managers, to good, old-fashioned government contracting RFPs. This is the one part I was already familiar with, so I wasn’t too disappointed that these folks were not at the conference.
Okay, great. Now we know which groups touch on the certifications. Fine. But what does that really mean for my business? Yes, that is the question. There is of course the benefit of the network of other WOBs. These are our peers and potential partners. Then there are the “corporates”, who we see as potential clients. That’s right, we are not above taking on Disney as a client (did you know Disney has a corporate venture group and an incubator?). We’ve got to pay the bills, people. There is no All Places and no All Places team without a steady stream of client revenue, and if Disney wants to support our mission by hiring us and paying our rates, we are into it.
Will any of this materialize? That remains to be seen. But as you all know as business owners, you are regularly trying things without even the vaguest guarantee that they are going to work. This goes into that bucket for us. We’re going to try it. Hopefully it works and next year we are announcing our first ever All Places Bootcamp for Fund Managers and Entrepreneurs, in partnership with Disney (you know the branded merch would be ridiculous). Who knows what’s to come in that new world, less than three short months away, called 2025?
