ORR Webinar Encourages Women, Minority Entrepreneurs – RVBusiness – Breaking RV Industry News
The Outdoor Recreation Roundtable (ORR) on Thursday brought together six entrepreneurs to encourage women and minorities to get involved the $1.1 trillion outdoor industry economy by starting their own businesses.
Vice President of Programs Chris Perkins said, for example, that the state of Michigan has created a $3 million seed fund for startups in the outdoor recreation industry that can help get things going.
The entrepreneurs on hand each had stories of success and challenges in starting their own business.
The speakers were Katie Doherty and Ehnao Li of Founded Outdoors, Camilo Barcenas of GOES Help, Germaine Simonson of Rezduro, Jahmicah Dawes of Slim Pickins Outfitters and Yvonne Leow of Bewilder.
Doherty said her business helps entrepreneurs get into business, but makes sure they are going in with their eyes open.
“It’s all on you,” she said. “You have to wear all the hats. Work-life balance is hard to achieve.”
But she said starting a business can be meaningful to people who are attracted by a challenge and have the right skillsets.
Li said starting a business has never been easier thanks to the resources available including social media, targeted advertising and Artificial Intelligence.
But she also acknowledged the challenges.
“It isn’t easy to get the funding needed to grow,” she said. “There are very few investors who focus on outdoor businesses. Financial options, though available, can be very expensive.”
Barcenas’ GOES Help provides an app that can be vital to wilderness survival.
The app includes information on weather alerts as well as 24/7 access to wellness and emergency information.
“We have grown into a team of 27 wilderness medicine experts who have created our platform along with my team of co-founder,” he said. “With the weather that’s changing, there is more an more danger that is appearing. With more people going outdoors, this has resulted in more injuries.”
Simonson’s Rezduro is a growing mountain bike race on the Navajo Nation in northeast Arizona.
Simonson’s son had become interested in racing and asked if she could help him establish what he called just a “bro race” among friends.
Over the next four years, that race has grown into a much larger event that has gained support from the larger community.
“It’s great that it has grown 100% every year,” she said. “It has taken a ton of family support.”
Because of her remote location, Simonson said she doesn’t have as ready a supply of financing as some looking to become a startup. The nearest bank, for example, is two hours away.
Dawes says his outfitter business is the first black-owned operation in the outdoor industry.
Since he started the business in Texas, five other black entrepreneurs have followed suit.
He stresses that anybody hoping to start a business needs to have their eyes open to the amount of work required.
“Don’t romanticize the results in such a way that it conveys the absence of work,” he said. “Real dreams take work to achieve, work to sustain and work to pass on and pay it forward.”
Leow’s Bewilder is boosted as the next generation’s Boy & Girl Scouts.
She said one of the group’s most successful programs is an afterschool program for kindergarten through eighth grade that gets kids outdoors in nature.
“It helps them improve their flora, fauna and wilderness skills,” she said. “Our challenge is how do we adapt and bring others with us?
