ROBERT PIERCE
• Leader & Times
One of Liberal’s entrepreneurship leaders recently took part in a global event to learn more about helping local entrepreneurs.
Seward County Development Corporation Entrepreneurship Director Raquel Arellano was one of 40 delegates chosen by the Kansas Department of Commerce (KDOC) to attend the Global Entrepreneurship Congress (GEC) in early June in Indianapolis.
The event took place from June 1 to 5, and Arellano said the week served as an initiative for ecosystem builders, policy makers, founders and startup people.
“They have them in different parts,” she said. “It’s an international summit.”
As the name suggests, people from all over the world were at the GEC, and Arellano met many from countries like Uganda, Bolivia and Ecuador. She said she attended many of the ecosystem builder activities and a few policy making activities as well.
“It really was a time to come together to network to see what other organizations are doing that are similar to ours all over the world and to see how we can best help the entrepreneur be successful,” she said.
That success, Arellano said, includes areas such as startups, policy changes to help entrepreneurs thrive better and helping ecosystem builders piece together and connect organizations assisting entrepreneurs in obtaining funding, creating business plans, accessing capital and any other situation they could encounter.
“That was the purpose of an ecosystem builder to be in that location,” she said.
Arellano said her biggest takeaway from the ecosystem building activities was the amount of knowledge imparted to those in attendance.
“There were so many new and fresh ideas and things that are happening in the global sphere in entrepreneurship, but one of the things that resonated with me was most communities, be it large or small, in the United States or outside the United States, have the same situations,” she said.
Arellano said many entrepreneurial leaders create large curriculums anywhere from six to 12 weeks, and they are trying to do this as the entrepreneurs are working at their business.
“The problem with that is they can’t access because they’re so busy working on their curriculum,” she said. “There’s no time to work on their business.”
With this in mind at the GEC, Arellano said she most connected with various organizations and the idea of starting tiny fires, meeting five people at a time and discussing what challenges they have and for ecosystem builders to go into those spaces. She added questions need to be asked such as what is going on with the business world and how business owners can be helped.
“We need to think about how can we make a difference, and how can we make your road to entrepreneurial success possible?” she said.
Arellano said many communities from across the globe face similar situations when it comes to entrepreneurship.
“We have these big programs, fascinating, very informative, but connecting with the entrepreneurs still requires people like our office and people like this everywhere who would say, ‘I am willing to serve as a mentor. I’m willing to connect people with resources they need,’” she said. “We can’t possibly know it all, but we can serve as connectors for other people.”
As part of a pool of 60 applicants from Kansas, Arellano was one of the 40 delegates chosen by the KDOC, and she said the group was made up of a mix of ecosystem builders, founders, entrepreneurs and policy makers, all attending the GEC with a purpose.
“The vision of the Kansas Department of Commerce was to really go into all of these spaces and glean and learn as much as you can so we can bring that back, confer together and see what pathways we can make for our Kansas entrepreneurs to be as successful as people all over the world and to create some pathways for them to move forward,” she said.
Those pathways, Arellano said, include funding access to entrepreneur knowledge and information and things already in place on a local and state level, which she said makes it easier for entrepreneurs to start up and excel in business.
Arellano said she was honored to attend the GEC, learn invaluable lessons she could bring back with her as an asset to local businesses.
“It was amazing,” she said. “It was such a good opportunity. I had people I had worked with in the past. We were a mixed, very diverse group of people, both racially and by gender. There was a mix of all sorts of people there, and it was really interesting to sit with them in the room as we got to know each other and know each other’s story.”
Arellano too said it was fascinating to see the different walks of life those in Kansas came from and to see what thrives in the Sunflower State.
“There’s opportunity not just in the urban area but in rural areas too,” she said. “I was really proud to be able to represent Southwest Kansas and to talk about how diverse we are, how unique we are in our part of the world. I got to share that with the other delegates as well.”
The KDOC recently rolled out the Connect Kansas platform, and Arellano said members of the group that attended the GEC were the first to take part in the program to start connecting people from across Kansas needing assistance that can be provided by economic development departments such as SCDC.
“They can reach out to us, and we can certainly serve as a resource for them no matter where they are in Kansas,” she said.
Arellano said the GEC was a connection piece with the underlying tone of a village structure.
“The message they were trying to convey is it takes a village to build a business, to grow whether it’s online or in person, whether it’s urban or rural,” she said. “It takes a village of all sorts of people to come together to make the entrepreneur’s journey easier and successful. If that wasn’t my biggest takeaway, I don’t know what was.”
Arellano said this solidified the fact entrepreneurial leadership cannot continue working in silos and replicating the same type of service in various organizations in one city or state.
“We really have to be intentional about building on what somebody else is offering,” she said. “If they do finance and do it really well, they being another organization, I want to be able to partner with them and say you guys can do it better, but I have an entrepreneur I’m going to connect with you.”
In addition to everything else at the GEC, Arellano likewise attended several AI sessions.
“Google was one. Meta was there,” she said. “We had a lot of opportunity to hear the new and upcoming things that are being rolled out on a daily basis with AI and how it can actually serve and help the entrepreneur with the boots on the ground.”
Arellano also learned many hands-on exercises and other techniques that cam be implemented with local entrepreneurs, and she spent time with Angel investors and leaders from community development financial institutions who loan money to entrepreneurs. As with everything else at the GEC, she found this very helpful.
“As I listened in on some of those sessions, I really understood it’s about the pitch and how us as mentors, business advocates and coaches can help the entrepreneurs story tell and pitch their idea to potential investors to receive the funding they need in their business,” she said.
Arellano said she found her time at the GEC very useful.
“It was a great opportunity to go,” she said. “Indiana is beautiful. It was amazing to be in the space where we met so many different people from so many places all over the world, but it was a wealth of resources from the simple things like meeting people from Barbados and Florida and seeing we have the same issues they do.”
Arellano said she found everyone has people problems, and those are things that can be fixed together, and she added there were many things she was able to bring back from Indianapolis.
“I’m going to continue to share online and in person,” she said. “It was so much, so my cup is full.”
One thing of particular importance to Arellano was seeing how local entrepreneurial leaders are on the right track with programming, mentorship things offered at SCDC.
“It was important to see we are headed in the right direction in the effort to help the entrepreneur,” she said.
