Tim Mittan, the center’s director, said expanding the incubator office space within Southeast Community College’s building at 285 S. 68th Street Place will enable the incubator to add four new tenants to its current 13.

The SCC Entrepreneurship Center opened the incubator program to tenants in 2007.

“We wanted to create a nice, safe place for businesses to get started,” Mittan said.

This year, some businesses the incubator has nurtured over the past three years are beginning to make it on their own.

Engine House Café owner Roger Pletcher graduated from the center’s virtual incubator in October 2009.

Another business, Lincoln Life Coaching Center, graduated in February 2010. Although its partners ended that business and went separate ways, one of those partners, Deb Savage, said the incubator allowed her to learn from her first business attempt without “going broke” and now start a second business.

“Because for me, at least, I’d been a nurse for 23 years when I started and lacked a lot of business knowledge and background,” she said. Savage and four other partners recently opened a new business, KNECnet d.b.a. Up With Nurses.

“I’d never have been able to do this had it not been for the incubator,” she said.

Serenity Health Massage and Meridian Consulting are slated to graduate this summer. Nebraska Air Quality Specialties is scheduled to graduate in the fall.

SCC Incubator Lobby

Mittan said he’s not sure if the owner of Meridian Consulting will be able to wait until his business’s scheduled August date to graduate. The business is growing too fast.

“He cannot grow anymore here. He has employees. They are bunched up in two small offices. He’s running out of space. He’s running out of everything,” Mittan said.

While faster-than-expected growth might require adjustments, it’s a challenge many new businesses would likely welcome.

Mittan has directed the SCC Entrepreneurship Center for four years. He had a challenge of his own to meet when the center began developing the incubator program three years ago. Three previous incubator programs in Lincoln, all run by nonprofit organizations, had failed in previous years.

Like an entrepreneur preparing to start a business, the center staff started by researching their market, looking at entrepreneurial needs in the area and examining what made other incubators successful.

Mittan said a representative from a successful Colorado State incubator gave strong advice: “‘If you don’t create an incubator that emphasizes what you do as a college,’ he said, ‘you’ll fail.’”

The SCC Entrepreneurship Center incubator program followed that advice. The program has an educational component. The incubator is designed to help practical service businesses – businesses in the same industries for which Southeast Community College provides training, like auto repair, welding, accounting, day care, and practical nursing.

Center staff found at least 85 percent of the vocational technical students said they wanted to start their own business.

However, when the incubator opened, center staff received more requests from people in the community than students to locate at the incubator. Of the current incubator tenants, only two are students, Mittan said.

“We weren’t expecting that,” Mittan said. “We thought we might have some. I didn’t realize that 95 percent othe businesses would be from the community.”

SCC Incubator Office

Despite a somewhat different clientele than the center expected, Mittan said the incubator is meeting the center’s goals. Tenants must meet educational requirements, although the requirements vary depending on each business’s needs. Participants must leave the incubator after three years.

“That makes my job harder because we have to make sure they have a solid business in three years,” he said.

Since the center and the incubator are housed in a Southeast Community College building, tenants must follow the college’s rules. Tenants cannot serve wine at business openings or open houses. On holidays and snow days when the college is closed, tenants have no receptionist or mail service.

“Following some of the college policies is a little confining for them, but I think most of them deal with it just fine,” Mittan said. Tenants do have access to the building 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, so even if the building is closed, businesses can operate.

Besides constant access to the building and reception most business days, tenants get copies and faxes at an inexpensive rate, use of the shared conference room, use of classroom space if necessary, discounts on any SCC workshops (but not full-credit classes), at least three networking events per year, corporate discounts, and free access to center staff business counseling.

An onsite secretarial service is available to them part-time; the center bills the tenants back for the secretarial time they use.

SCC Incubator Tenant Conference Room

While the incubator program rent is priced to be affordable for new businesses, Mittan said tenants aren’t there for the cheap rent.

“They need the networking, they need the support, they need to know what they don’t know,” he said.

Mittan and education specialist/recruiter Linda Hartman have an “open door” policy for incubator tenants when tenants need business advice.

“They don’t have to take our advice, but we’re pretty good at what we do,” Mittan said. “We’re pretty good at business basics.”

Mittan also encourages tenants to create business agreements with each other favorable to tenants.

“This takes some of the risk off, provides them clients and creates bonds between everyone,” he said. In addition, once tenants leave the building, they still have the relationship, he said.

Incubator tenant David Hefley, owner of Meridian Consulting, said the business relationships and friendships among tenants are an important incubator benefit.

“We are able to talk among each other about the challenges small businesses face,” he said.

Mittan and Hartman interview people interested in the incubator program and request that they complete a business concept form. Depending on when a business is accepted, the business may need to wait to start the program until a directly competing business graduates or until space is available.

More information on the incubator program is available on the SCC Entrepreneurship Center Web site.

The “Business and Bagels” business education series provides one-hour information sessions on topics like taxes and networking at the SCC Continuing Education Center, 301 S. 68th St. Place in Lincoln. The sessions, which cost $29, include breakfast or lunch. For more information or to register call (402) 437-2700. Upcoming topics:

• “The Business of Non-Profit” April 22 from 7:30-8:30 a.m. will cover organizational aspects of non-profit organizations, membership engagement and programs and services. Lori Warner, president of the Beatrice Area Chamber of Commerce, will be the instructor.
• “Customer Service Across the Generations,” will be held May 20 from 12:00-1:00 p.m. This session will look at how different generations vary in customer service expectations.
• “Networking at its Best with Bonnie Coffey,” on June 10 from 12:00-1:00 p.m. will close out the current series with a session on Coffey’s five steps to networking success.

Tim Mittan, SCC Entrepreneurship Center director and Linda Hartman, education specialist/recruiter, provide free one-on-one business coaching sessions for entrepreneurs at any business stage.

According to the center’s Web site, the center provides “information to help guide you through your start-up process or take your business to the next level.”

Both the business education sessions and the free coaching are designed to meet needs the SCC Entrepreneurship Center identified when center staff did research before opening the center. Mittan said center staff learned would-be entrepreneurs knew entrepreneurship resources existed in Nebraska but were unsure where to start.

“Nobody really had a definitive starting point. We decided we could be that starting point,” he said. “That’s how the center came about. We decided that we needed to have a place where people could come and ask questions,” Mittan said.

In addition to non-credit education sessions and free business coaching, the center offers entrepreneurship courses for credit, hosts a business incubator, and houses the Lincoln Public School’s Entrepreneurship Focus Program and the Information Technology Focus Program.

Student pitching in front of Memorial Stadium - Photo credit Three Pillars Media

An “elevator pitch” is a bare-bones run-down of a business proposition, truncated so as to be deliverable in the time it takes an elevator to travel from the bottom floor to the top. So, it was only fitting that students hoping to win cash prizes for their budding business ideas took an elevator up three floors to the Memorial Stadium West Stadium Club, where the first ever Make it Happen Student Quick Pitch Competition was held on February 25.

The competition — a joint venture sponsored by the Nebraska Center for Entrepreneurship, the Southeast Community College Entrepreneurship Center, Lincoln Public Schools’ Entrepreneurship Focus Program and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln chapter of Students in Free Enterprise — saw nearly 50 students from seven educational institutions pitching ideas as varied as a microdistillery focusing on vodka and gin or an LGBT outreach center offering psychiatric services and complicated surgeries, all in hopes of securing $1,000 to move forward with their plans. Some 40 judges, executives at their respective companies or owners of their own small businesses, evaluated the ideas, eventually declaring six students (three from the university level, two high school competitors and one participant from a community college) the winners.

Student with Memorial Stadium and Nebraska State Capitol in the background - Photo credit Three Pillars Media

“We thought Memorial Stadium would be a good venue because it was our first time doing this and we wanted an ‘awe’  factor,” said Travis Pillen, the NCE’s graduate assistant who helped coordinate the event. “It’s really neat to see the preparation that goes into these pitches, to see students take a risk and develop an idea. It’s good for them to get that feedback from the judges, whether they start the business or not.”

And even the students who didn’t win gained valuable experience in the business world, laying the groundwork for future success.

“The event definitely exceeded my expectations — the best part was the networking, looking around seeing everybody talking to everybody,” said Kathleen Thornton, the NCE’s interim director. “People coming together, sharing ideas in a more relaxed atmosphere, it’s hard to create that. A lot of business plan competitions tend to be stuffy. You talk to students all the time about networking, but it doesn’t pan out and tonight I think it did.”

Already gearing up for next year’s competition, Thornton said she hoped the 2011 Quick Pitch contest would attract more students from Western Nebraska. She also stated she’d like to see separate divisions for non-profit pitches in the future.

“Those are always hard to judge when set against for-profit business plans,” she said. “It’s like comparing apples to oranges sometimes.”

2010 Make it Happen Student Quick Pitch Competition Winners
-Tanner O’Dell, Lincoln Focus Program, pitching “Chef’s Table,” a restaurant where patrons’ meals are a randomized surprise every time they dine

“I’ve talked to a lot of chefs here in Lincoln, and one of the problems is always the pickiness of some of the people about their food. I came up with this concept to get people to try something they haven’t tried before.”
-Devante King, Lincoln Focus Program, pitching “U-Band,” which would supply silicon sports bands popular among athletes, custom-tailored to a patron’s stylistic desires

“These bands are worn by a lot of sports athletes, but what these bands lack are the customization that (U-Band provides). You can have whatever word or phrase you want that’s appropriate on the front, back or inside the band.”
-Kim King, Southeast Community College, pitching “Tara Belle’s Bakery,” a cake-making enterprise that’s grown out of her home largely by word-of-mouth

“I want to actively seek financing next. If all goes well, I have a target date of opening my bakery in Lincoln this October.”
-Landon Bailey, York College, pitching “Morelity,” a company that harvests, packages and sells naturally occurring morel mushrooms

“I’ve been doing it for five years, picking and selling them. I pick them naturally because, right now, you can’t reproduce them; they’ve got to be found in their natural condition.”
-Brittany Benson, UNL, pitching “F.A.B. Fitness,” a multipurpose complex offering dance, fitness and sports, set to open in Glendale, Arizona

“Arizona is demographically the most fitness-orientated state. I took a job with a sports training facility that I’ll start at in August in Glendale. First I want to just build a client base, and then, hopefully within the next five years, be able to actually start the business.”
-Morgan Allen, UNL, pitching an unnamed wet wipes dispenser project

“I’m trying to keep quiet about my project for the time being. Even the judges told me to protect my idea.”

Staff - Nebraska Center for Entrepreneurship - Photo credit Three Pillars Media