Dr. Eloisa Klementich With Invest Atlanta

Intro: [00:00:04] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Atlanta Business Radio brought to you by on pay Atlanta’s new standard in payroll. Now here’s your host.

Dr. Eloisa Klementich: [00:00:24] Lee Kantor here, another episode of Atlanta Business Radio. And this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor on pay. Without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories. Today on the Atlanta Business Radio, we have Dr. Eloisa Klementich and she is with Invest Atlanta. Welcome.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:43] Thank you for having me on this wonderful sunny day.

Dr. Eloisa Klementich: [00:00:46] Exactly. Before we get too far into things, can you educate our listeners a little bit about Invest Atlanta, how you’re how you’re serving the business community?

Lee Kantor: [00:00:56] Yes. So invest Atlanta is your economic development arm for the city of Atlanta. It’s our job in our mission to ensure that Atlanta is the most competitive and vibrant city in the world. But we’re doing that in a way that’s equitable and trying to ensure that every Atlanta can experience that growth. And so really, when it comes to businesses, what we can definitely help our businesses with. We have a small business loan program in house. If you’re looking to grow in the city, we can also help with those services. If you’re looking for a job, for a job, we can help through work. Source Atlanta Or if you’re looking to hire an individual and thinking about skills and skills training. So really trying to think about how we could provide businesses with support and services and meet them where they are. And the last thing I’ll tell you, Lee, that we can do is we are excited that we have business consultants ready and available. There’s 13 of them. So businesses today can tap into their services for free when it comes to getting help with accounting or finance or legal services.

Dr. Eloisa Klementich: [00:02:04] Now, when you use the word Atlanta in your title, is that the city of Atlanta or is that kind of the metro Atlanta?

Lee Kantor: [00:02:13] That would be the city of Atlanta proper? That’s correct.

Dr. Eloisa Klementich: [00:02:18] So now when you’re helping the folks in the city of Atlanta, you mentioned that there’s loans, but there’s also some grants that have opened up. Can you talk a little bit about the Resurgence Grant Fund?

Lee Kantor: [00:02:29] Of course. And so all of our businesses that are listening want to ensure, first and foremost, wants to thank you for your commitment to the city of Atlanta. We need every business to be successful and thriving because they provide very important amenities to a quality of place for our residents, but also support our residents through job and job creation. So first and foremost, thank you and excited to report that we have the resurgence to program. This is in the effort of the federal government, Department of Treasury. They have given a grant to the city of Atlanta. And so I want to thank each city council member because they voted on this. So please, if your business reach out to your council member and the vision of this mayor to really provide support to our businesses through this grant opportunity, Ms.. Elena rarely has grants for small businesses, so this is a prime time. What this will do in a nutshell is for businesses in the city of Atlanta. You’ll be able businesses and nonprofits, I should say, you’ll be able to apply for up to 40,000 to be reimburse for those costs that really you’ve had to incur as a result of business interruptions due to COVID 19.

Dr. Eloisa Klementich: [00:03:44] So now is this something that’s going to be a ton of paperwork a lot of folks get you know, they hear grant or loan and and in their head they’re thinking, oh, I just, you know, fill out a short form and then, oh, this money magically appears. But sometimes filling out the form and going through the process is a job unto itself.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:06] It is. And so I will tell you that we have been very conscious of the paperwork now. So it’s a it’s a balance. These are at their core. They’re taxpayer dollars that come from the federal government. So we have to ensure that they’re spent correctly. And you as a taxpayer want to ensure that they’re spent correctly as the way that they were intended. So we do have to ask for paperwork. I want to make sure I’m clear, but we’ve done everything we possibly can to streamline it. Let me give you an example. This this go round. Department of Treasury said that if you make the case for the broader group, you could ask for less documents. So we literally pulled up a study, made a statistical analysis to prove that our small businesses, the majority of them, were still impacted and literally ran data analysis to prove it. So we believe as a result, we are not going to ask you for your tax return. So you will see that in this application. We didn’t ask for it because we were able to prove it on a larger scale. So we’ve tried to limit the documentation we’ve asked for, but also tried to balance that with our need to be responsible with every dollar that comes our way. So yes, you will have some paperwork, but please know that every document we’re asking for has a purpose. So we wanted to ensure that it had a purpose and that it really would be easy. Our goal was that you could sit down and apply within an hour.

Dr. Eloisa Klementich: [00:05:30] Now in your work as Leading Invest Atlanta, can you talk about what you’ve seen in the making of Atlanta that’s different than maybe some of the other communities out there. I’m sure most large, even secondary, even tertiary cities have some sort of economic development. It’s a must have in today’s world. But you’ve been around a minute and worked in a variety of places. Can you share a little bit about what makes Atlanta different?

Lee Kantor: [00:05:59] I’m happy to. I would say what is my or what I believe to be Atlanta secret sauce when it comes to economic development are the three verticals. So if you can imagine a house with three main pillars, the first one is this economic development arm. Anything to do with businesses in terms of business attracting, attracting new companies, helping your current companies grow innovation, entrepreneurship about creating innovative companies, but also entrepreneurs, anybody who wants to open up a business. So you add the small business loan program, right? So you have that in one of the verticals. The second vertical is community development. It’s about creating a quality of place and it’s meeting people where they are. So that could be from developing key commercial corridors for retail opportunities to finding affordable housing in our city. We think we have to ensure that we’re addressing housing. If you want to rent, own or somewhere in between, we have to make sure you have those options in our great city. And the third vertical is workforce development is we have to ensure if we want to truly make Atlanta this vibrant, dynamic city that it is, then how do we ensure that all Atlantans can partake in that? So we have to ensure that people can find the training that they need so they could take those jobs and then participate in this excitement that’s happening. The fact that you have and I know of only two other entities in the nation, two other cities that have something similar to us but not exactly like us, I believe it’s that that leveraging the braiding of funding is what’s going to provide us the ability to be successful in the future.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:44] So let me just give you a prime example. If I’m talking to a company to come into the city and we’re competing against my biggest competitors, which would be Texas and Florida, and we’re competing after this company, I should have workforce at the table with us. So when that company says I need to hire X number of individuals that have these skill sets, then I’m training them at the same time. So when we win that company and they say they’re going to choose Atlanta to open up their second office or the regional office, then we could say, Guess what? And I have all these individuals that now qualify for your jobs. And so not only does that become a competitive advantage because the number one reason I’ve been here, companies choosing where they locate, it’s the ability to have access to a qualified workforce. So I’ve made myself competitive. But on the other hand, I’m ensuring that everyday Atlantans can take those jobs. So by us merging them together under one roof and now we are all aligned on our goals and our metrics. Well, I love to say we’re all shooting north, whether you’re north west or northeast. Heck, let’s all go to the same direction, moving the same needle. That’s what I think is our secret sauce, is we’re courting, we’re talking to each other and we’re leveraging each other’s tools for the benefit of everyday Atlantans.

Dr. Eloisa Klementich: [00:09:04] Now are you seeing it trickle down to everyday Atlantans? Like our city is very diverse and there’s a lot of business owners from communities that may not historically have been business owners or have been able to maybe take advantage of some of the opportunities that other groups have when you’re doing those kind of pitches, are those people also getting a seat at the table so that when you do raise your hand and say, look, there’s 100 businesses here to support this new business that can cluster around them. Are those people being heard and seen as well?

Lee Kantor: [00:09:39] Yes. So if you look specifically to our grant program, so we’ve had three grant programs last year, very big ones, the resurgence one, the strength and beauty and create ATL. If you look at those three programs and we took up separately 53% of our resurgence program funding went specifically to our bipoc communities. Strength and beauty was 86% and create ATL 76%. So if I were to combine them, I would tell you that 63% of those three grants that we ran went to businesses of color here in our city. So, yes, we are doing what we can to get out that word to really target and ensure that they’re inclusive. So that is overall. The second is when we look at the toolbox that invest Atlanta has, we’ve been very intentional about which tools can we use for our larger companies because we like our larger companies, they provide many jobs, much activity and growth. But we love our small business communities because our small businesses really are able to address this equity question about creating wealth for you and your family and your friends that you’re going to employ in the job. So we literally have created tools for each of we separate them out large, medium and. Small companies so that we can meet people where they are. So small business loans are loans go anywhere from $40,000 up to about $2 million. That really is for some of our smaller not necessarily our larger companies, maybe some in the middle. So really finding how we can meet people where they are, that is the goal.

Dr. Eloisa Klementich: [00:11:20] Now what personally gets you the most fired up? Like when one of these mega companies says, hey, we’re going to throw our other headquarters here, or when one of those aspirational firms kind of raise their game and get to a new level and then become a thriving, you know, entity unto themselves.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:43] I have a I have. We all have our desks in our office in my upper right hand corner desk. I have all the thank you notes I’ve received. And so when you talk about what gets me excited, I pull out those thank you notes. So whether it’s from a small business that says, Hey, how are we, son? I think of the guys over there at Nonstop who said, you know, we want to make everybody taste my mother’s Indian food recipe. And this these guys started off in a food truck and now have three or four locations throughout the city. That to me is super cool. Like we they were like Alisa, no one was giving us funding. Investment came in and gave us a small business loan. Now we were able to continue to grow super excited about what that meant to that family and how it’s impacted. And it’s seen that those businesses continue to grow. I do get excited as well when I look at like Coda over there in Technology Square, that was one of our bigger projects, but that was a visionary of how do you work with Georgia Tech and creating a condominium sized building. This had never been exist before where you have the education institutions on one floor and small businesses or innovation businesses on the other. And you have professors coming up and down the stairs and talking to these businesses as they create their next new, you know, great invention that those type of projects are really excited to. Getting a letter from someone that says, Hey, thanks for helping me get my first home, I was able to use Invisalign as a down payment assistance. Oh, that to me is the best. I love those. So those get me excited. And I every time, you know, things get a little crazy or I’m working a little bit longer hours than I wanted, I pull out those thank you notes and that’s what drives us because we’re really know that this work and really feels a privilege to be able to say that we are impacting the lives of different people in different ways. It truly is an honor.

Dr. Eloisa Klementich: [00:13:38] Now, you mentioned the importance of mentorship, and now there’s the availability of mentors as part of Invest Atlanta. Has there been anyone in your career that’s been a mentor or influence that has helped you get to the level that you’re at?

Lee Kantor: [00:13:55] You know, mentorship is really important and crucial. There are two things that really drove us to drive to really for the first time, create this business consultant. We never had this available for businesses. The first was my father. My father owned a body shop. It helped to get me through school. He was amazing at fixing cars. Just amazing, but not so much into accounting or marketing or answering the phone. That was either my mom or my responsibility. So that’s where I knew that, you know, entrepreneurs are really good at what they do, but sometimes they need that network around them to help ground them out and to really help their businesses scale. So for us, that’s why this business consultation became important. And then for me personally, there are key people in this city that have helped me grow personally, grow professionally, and really it’s about how do we support others in their trajectory of growth. And so if there’s anything I’ve learned is give it forward, give it back, and it comes to you, if not to me, to one of my beautiful daughters. And that’s what I try to do every day.

Dr. Eloisa Klementich: [00:15:03] And I think that that’s part of Atlanta’s secret sauce, is that spirit of collaboration. It’s less of a cutthroat dog eat dog world in Atlanta, I believe, compared to other markets where people are sincerely trying to help other people be better.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:23] I’ve literally have hosted. So I’ve had a couple of colleagues throughout the nation. They’ve called us about, Hey, Alice, how did you do that resurgence? How would you do about the business community and how did you. I’m like, sure, here and here’s all the documents and here’s how we set it up. And they’re like, You just gave me your entire program. I’m like, It doesn’t matter. Did they make it better for us? Yes. So I not knowingly I would I would have to agree with you. I think if that’s anything I learned when I came to Atlanta about 11 years ago was the concept of give it forward, give it back. There’s a lot of people in the space that have taught me that, and I just continue to do the same.

Dr. Eloisa Klementich: [00:16:01] So now as your journey kind of evolves in your career, are you enjoying the ride?

Lee Kantor: [00:16:10] Oh, I love what I do. I love this work. I love being able to wake up in the morning and think about making. I know it sounds a little altruistic and I remember sitting in my eighth grade class Spanish teacher and she looked at me and she was like, What do you want to do with your rest of your life? And I was like, Ah, I don’t know what I do. It’s great. And I remember sitting down and she said, Well, write everything you like. And I remember love speaking different languages, love working with people and want to make the world just a little bit better. And I really believe that. That’s why when I drive around and I see all these projects or I see businesses that we’ve touched play a role and just somehow influence, it is an honor, I think that for us to be able to invest Atlanta, me personally, to be able to to engage, it’s the it’s the biggest thrill for me. It really is what keeps me going. And again, excited that we have a council and a mayor, this mayor Dickins, he is pushing hard, he’s running and he’s just as excited. It is nice to just feel the energy to to really focus on city growth, city businesses in a way that’s equitable. So I love what I do.

Dr. Eloisa Klementich: [00:17:25] Yeah, I think that we are uniquely qualified and to really serve America, serve the South, the Georgia, the southeast, everybody around us. I think the power of our university systems having Georgia State, Georgia Tech, Emory all in the in the city right there. And it’s just a gift. And the way that the public and private sectors work together. There are so many entrepreneurs that believe what you believe, the importance of giving back and helping others up. You know, the sky’s the limit.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:57] Too, is that that we have the diversity that’s so unique here in Atlanta. The AUC Center Schools is powerful. Powerful. When I’m talking to big companies, the big ones there, like the fact that you have so many access to so many just African Americans coming out just really has driven the focus in Atlanta. I’ve talked to my colleagues throughout the nation and I’ve heard them say, are you kidding? If you if you want to start a business and you have to go to Atlanta, the network of support for African American businesses, for Latino businesses is great. And so I think that is really become something as a city that’s that’s continuing to attract more individuals. And this this hospitality, I think, also plays a role. People have said they love coming to the south. They love Atlanta and the spirit and the openness and these small neighborhoods that was in many neighborhoods and Adams Ville and People’s Town. And it’s just everyone carries their own unique spirit and energy and really all tied up with the 22 mile beltline. It’s just all of these things as we’re creating a great quality of place, our focus is just we want to ensure that everyone can partake and that we are protecting our legacy. Residents that have been here for years, our legacy businesses that have been here for years, we want them to stay and to continue to grow and be successful in the city.

Dr. Eloisa Klementich: [00:19:23] Right. And benefit from the overall growth. And and we can’t ignore the diversity of industry here. I mean, that really is special to we’re not beholden to just one company or one group of companies. There’s a it’s a big world in Atlanta that we’re doing a lot of different things and a lot of different areas that involve a lot of different people.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:43] Yep. And oftentimes there’s some people that just don’t recognize we are the third largest Fortune 500 city in the nation. And so and to your point, it’s not concentrated, right? You’ve got New York Financial, you’ve got Texas with the oil and gas. And here we’ve got fintech health information technology, transportation, logistics. All of these together is really allowing for diversity in the economy, which makes us much more resilient, resilient to to impacts, but also resilient to allow us to to grow very quickly and to recover and rebound. And we’re seeing some of that. Right now, we’re seeing businesses being able to recover. They now have to really get places because now we want them not only to recover, we want them to continue to thrive. And that’s why I’m excited about this second resurgence. Grant And just reminding anyone who’s listening. Applications closed April 29th. Go on our website. We’ve have over 2000 applications started. You still have time. You haven’t missed the deadline. But we want you to apply. We cannot review you unless you push send. So please ensure that you’re filling out your application.

Dr. Eloisa Klementich: [00:20:51] And the website one more time.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:53] It would be WW W Invest Atlantic.com It’s right there on the first main page about the resurgence grant opportunity. And again, I’ll remind you, we don’t have many times where we have grant funds available, so please check out our websites today.

Dr. Eloisa Klementich: [00:21:10] All right. Well, thank you so much for sharing your story. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Lee Kantor: [00:21:15] Oh, thank you, sir. I appreciate it. And thank you for your interest in supporting our businesses.

Dr. Eloisa Klementich: [00:21:20] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see y’all next time on Atlanta Business Radio.