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Columbia Business Monthly

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Last Updated: Dec 23, 2021 12:30PM • Subscribe via RSS • ATOM

Looking at Greenville’s Hispanic-owned businesses

Dec 23, 2021 12:30PM ● By Donna Isbell Walker

Between December 2020 and November 2021, we profiled a Hispanic-owned business each month. They ranged from coffee shops and bakeries to supermarkets and an insurance agency. Here’s a brief look at each of the businesses we spotlighted.

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Hispanic Alliance Partnership helped to showcase Hispanic-owned businesses and their contributions to Greenville’s economy

Dec 23, 2021 12:26PM ● By Adele Mendoza

Over the past year, Hispanic Alliance and Greenville Business Magazine embarked on a mission to highlight the contributions of Hispanic business owners and entrepreneurs to our community. We are proud of this partnership to promote diversity, inclusion, and awareness in the community.

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South Carolina Needs New Models for Skills Training

Dec 23, 2021 12:24PM ● By Dr. Susan Emmerich

As the U.S. emerges from the pandemic, discussions are focused on the future of work and learning. Rapid deployment of remote technologies during Covid-19 transformed our understanding of where and how these collaborative activities can happen.

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Your Next Employees Are Your New Marketing Audience

Dec 23, 2021 12:21PM ● By Allison Mertens

Recruiting: It’s the new marketing. French writer Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr wrote, “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose”: The more things change, the more things stay the same. That concept can be applied to business, too. Since the dawn of time, business has been based on making money by producing or buying and selling services.

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Leveling Up: How to Plan For Business Growth

Dec 23, 2021 12:17PM ● By Paul Ryll

The pandemic continues to transform how we run our businesses while propelling us into the future at an incredible rate as it relates to business transformation. The past 21 months have provided challenges we never would have anticipated prior to March 2020, and today, who we are as business owners has changed drastically.

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Pandemic Keeping Workers on the Sidelines. What Are the Barriers to Getting Them Back to Work?

Dec 23, 2021 11:58AM ● By Tom Barkin

This year, we’ve seen that shortages in labor supply can constrain economic growth. As lockdowns lifted, consumer demand picked up quickly. Job openings hit all-time records. But employers in many sectors were unable to staff to meet demand. Shockingly, that meant amid this strong recovery, we saw firms cutting hours and turning down business.

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CEOs of fastest-growing companies share marketing and hiring strategies

Nov 10, 2021 12:13PM ● By Donna Isbell Walker

For South Carolina’s fastest-growing companies, marketing and hiring strategies have been key to generating the growth that put them on this list. CEOs of some of those companies share their best advice for up-and-coming business owners and would-be entrepreneurs who are looking to make their own mark on the South Carolina corporate landscape.

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Columbia Business Monthly
Q&A Roundtable Advice for entrepreneurs from CEOs of fastest-growing companies

Nov 10, 2021 12:10PM ● By Kevin Dietrich

Businesses that make it into the list of the fastest-growing companies in South Carolina have gotten there through hard work and determination. They also have learned a few lessons along the way, lessons that could offer insights to other business owners. We asked our winning companies to share their advice to other business owners and entrepreneurs. Here’s what some of them had to say.

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A Grounded Theory Analysis On The Impact of Early-life Development on the Success of South Carolina Executives

Nov 10, 2021 11:59AM ● By Saanvi Merchant

The Covid-19 pandemic has increased the amount of time an individual spends at home and invoked harsh economic conditions leading to a surge of start-up businesses and shifts in executive-level positions. South Carolina has not been immune to these shifts.

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Columbia Business Monthly
Long Road Paved Way to Success

Nov 10, 2021 11:46AM ● By Liv Osby

Smith Heavner took the long road from the bottom third of his high school class to a Ph.D., even flunking out of nursing school along the way. But today he is scientific director of the CURE Drug Repurposing Collaboratory, a public-private partnership with the FDA and the National Institutes of Health.

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Racial Equity and Mobility Commission Seeks to Improve Disparities in Greenville County

Nov 10, 2021 11:38AM ● By Carlos Phillips

We’re often reminded about the need to improve vital infrastructure at the local, state, and national levels. Our roads need repair, bridges require rebuilding, broadband expanded to rural and underserved areas, transit optimized, and mobility reimagined, and the list goes on.

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Columbia Business Monthly
Doors are opening to new opportunities in Cherokee County

Nov 10, 2021 11:27AM ● By John C. Stevenson

Cherokee County might not be the first place in South Carolina an entrepreneur would think to call home for a new business, but the county chamber’s executive director makes the case that Cherokee County is open and ready to support new businesses.

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Columbia Business Monthly
Spartanburg Group Focused On Aiding Micro-Entrepreneurs

Nov 10, 2021 11:06AM ● By John C. Stevenson

A group in Spartanburg is working with entrepreneurs to help bring new businesses and business opportunities to underdeveloped communities in and around the city. Start:ME Spartanburg is an entrepreneur accelerator program that focuses on helping small startups gain a foothold in the Northside community. It is a collaborative effort between USC Upstate and the Northside Development Group that began in 2016 and is based on a program begun in Atlanta.

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Columbia Business Monthly
Focus on the Future. Making Connections, Area agencies offer many ways to help entrepreneurs tap into local resources

Nov 10, 2021 10:46AM ● By John C. Stevenson

An interconnected ecosystem that permeates the state’s 10 northwestern counties and beyond stands ready to help budding entrepreneurs connect with the wide array of resources they need to turn their good ideas into success stories. The business ecosystem comprises private nonprofits, local, regional and statewide government agencies, area colleges, universities and technical schools, and a host of others, all working together to support both new and existing businesses in the region.

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MUSC Project: Preventing Risk of Disease

Nov 10, 2021 10:27AM ● By Liv Osby

If your doctor knew your risk for colon cancer or heart disease years before the disease developed, he or she could help you take steps to prevent it. And by collecting DNA samples from thousands of South Carolinians, the Medical University of South Carolina is embarking on a project which hopes to do just that.

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A Niche for Success, Upstate native strikes gold with automotive-focused transportation company

Nov 10, 2021 10:21AM ● By John C. Stevenson

It’s fair to say that Justin Jenkins is driven to success. Jenkins, 34, is the owner and president of Greenville-based Paveway Express LTD Co., a transportation company with an emphasis on the automotive industry. The company Jenkins founded in 2017 with one truck and one driver currently boasts a payroll of 42 employees and an impressive list of customers including BMW, Volvo and Volkswagen.

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‘The best ingredient IS LOVE’

Nov 10, 2021 10:07AM ● By Donna Isbell Walker

Pereira Bakery brings a taste of Colombia to Taylors Twelfth in our series in partnership with the Hispanic Alliance

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Columbia Business Monthly
Leveling Up: How to Plan For Business Growth

Nov 10, 2021 09:58AM ● By Stephen Stokes

The idea of substantial business growth is something that we all want; it’s what we spend our days working toward. But for business owners and entrepreneurs, the question is this: If scaling up is something that you really want, is it something that you are planning for? After all, the worst time to try to get a bank loan is when you need money, and similarly, the worst time to plan for growth is when you’re in the middle of growing. It’s important that business owners realize that the best time to start planning for your next stage of growth is now, before you’re in the thick of it and caught up in being reactive, rather than planning proactively and strategically.

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Five Marketing Tips to Drive Your Business Through the End of the Year

Nov 10, 2021 09:52AM ● By Ben Pettit

Many companies seem to go into neutral when it comes to the last few months of a year, but now is the time to really get creative with your plans. There are lots of ways to drive your business in the coming months. Here are five to try that you may not have thought about:

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Should You Invest in SEO? Three Questions to Ask Yourself

Nov 10, 2021 09:39AM ● By Chris Manley

Even if you don’t know much about search engine optimization (SEO), you’ve probably heard of it or at least seen some stats like: • 68 percent of all online experiences begin with a search engine • SEO drives 1,000 percent-plus more traffic than organic social media

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Social Skills: The Top Six Things Business Owners Should Know About Social Media

Nov 10, 2021 09:31AM ● By Lindsey Breitwieser

Twenty years ago, the idea of an online entity that would feed us information on a constant, 24/7 stream, provide connection across the world in the click of a button and allow access to customers anywhere on earth would have seemed like the future-forward machinations of “Star Trek” back in the ‘60s. But here in 2021, those types of platforms are many, and the world of social media has become a part of everyday life for people across the globe.

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Commerce Secretary Harry Lightsey says SC ‘well positioned’ to take advantage of new opportunities

Nov 10, 2021 09:23AM ● By David Dykes

Harry M. Lightsey III was nominated by Gov. Henry McMaster and confirmed by the S.C. Senate as South Carolina’s secretary of commerce in June. In nominating Lightsey, McMaster said, “Harry Lightsey has been a fixture in South Carolina’s business community for decades, and I’m confident that with the vast experience he will be bringing to the Department of Commerce, South Carolina will keep winning.

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Life Sciences Sector Poised for Growth, Success in Upstate

Oct 13, 2021 12:30PM ● By Erin Ford

When describing South Carolina’s life sciences industry of today, words like “surging” and “booming” are often mentioned. Life sciences is diverse, with seven sectors: drugs and pharmaceuticals; medical devices and equipment; digital health solutions; research, medical and testing laboratories; bioscience distribution; bio-agriculture and ecosystem support.

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Columbia Business Monthly