Conference on Global Entrepreneurship: Economic Development for Asia and the U.S. – Session 1A: Global Entrepreneurship and the Asian American Community

Eddy Badrina: Good afternoon, thank you for coming, I hope the general session was fruitful and insightful to you. As we start these break out sessions, keep in mind that they are sort of tangential conversations to what has been discussed this morning, and during the afternoon, during the next break out session, you’ll have another chance to hear a different aspect of global entrepreneurship and society and then in the afternoon at 4:30 and 5:00 we wrap up and sort of bring back together all the disparate conversations that we’ll be having between now and then.

My name is Eddy Badrina and I am the Executive Director of the White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders – a long title. A friend of mine, also in the government, likes to say that in government, the shorter the title, the most powerful. For instance, President, Vice President, Secretary of Commerce, he goes down the line. Of course, my title is Executive Director of the White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders and Director of President’s Advisory Commission on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, so I’m but a small cog in the wheel within the White House organization. What I am tasked with doing is to talk to the Asian American community around the United States and the Pacific Islander community about ways that the government, through programs, through benefits, through policy, are affecting their lives in a real tangible way, and I speak on the behalf of the President. Also what I do is I coordinate the President’s Advisory Commission on AAPIs—that’s made up of 14 prominent Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, both geographically and ethnically diverse, who, like the title says, advise the President on the needs and the concerns of the Asian American and Pacific Islander community.

We’re pleased to have one of the commissioners, Joe Melookaran, here with us as one of our panelists. As we discuss more, and as he talks about his background and where he is in the Asian American community in Kansas City, you’ll discover that it’s folks like him who really are able to express the needs of the community and bring them back to the President, and thus he’s able to make policy changes based upon those recommendations, And that’s one of the things that we’re doing. We have on of our researchers here, Anita Lee, sitting up here in the front row and we’re researching for our report to the President. That’s a report that will be due by the time that Joe and his fellow commissioners’ term expires in June of 2006–hopefully it will be done in January of 2006. We will be giving to the President a list of best practices within the Asian American and Pacific Islander community in terms of economic development as well as community empowerment. What I mean by best practices is that the Asian American community, maybe the Chinese community in Philadelphia, has a fantastic development corporation, non-profit corporation, that advocates for the needs of the Chinatown there, but they’ve done it in such a way that the Vietnamese community in Houston doesn’t know about, or maybe the Korean community in Los Angeles can learn from some of their processes, from some of their structures, even from their leadership positions, to see how better to organize their community structure, how better to empower their social services or to advocate for their needs and concerns. So, inasmuch as it is a report to the President, it will also be a report to the community about different ways that different communities are bettering themselves and bettering the community as a whole around them. So, I encourage you to look out for that report as it becomes available and we’ll keep on speaking and talking and researching at places like this to ensure that we get a good breadth and depth of research.

As we talk about global entrepreneurship and the Asian American community, a couple of interesting statistics to note: the Asian American community as a minority population, as a minority business population, Asian Americans own three percent of all minority businesses in the United States. They employ four percent of all minorities within the United States, but they account for 51.8% of all the gross receipts within the minority community. It’s an outstanding and very interesting statistic to look at and study because for whatever reason whether it be culture, whether it be educational foundations or background, they have really excelled. As a general statement, the Asian American and Pacific Islander community have excelled in economic development more so than some of the other minority communities. As we talk about community and the global entrepreneur, one thing to question is whether a large part of that success has to do with the community itself. Is there a community support structure that is engrained in the Asian American population that we either don’t see because it’s right under our noses or is there something that has yet to be identified that helps Asian American entrepreneurs be so successful?

We also should be looking at the Asian Pacific American community as buyers on the global market. It’s estimated by some census and then some private research that the Asian Pacific American community accounts for one to two trillion dollars worth of buying power and that’s just with four percent of the population. It’s a highly disproportionate amount when compared to the overall buying power of the American population, and that’s even with the higher rate of savings that Asian Americans tend to have within their households. So, once again the economic power of the Asian American and Pacific Islander community is something to be studied and something to see whether it can be translated to the other minority communities, because if it can, it bodes well for America as an economic powerhouse and its continuation as an economic super power but also bodes well for the minority communities—all of them—as they try to level the playing field, so to speak, in the economic environment of America itself. We need to look at Asian Pacific American communities as buyers on the global market. Do they have an access advantage because many of them are first and second wave immigrants? Do they have a built-in need for foreign goods that the general population doesn’t have?

We also should look at the APA community as supporters of APA entrepreneurs, what does that look like in terms of community support for the local entrepreneurs? As they grow, are Asian Americans involved in non-formal angel capital ventures, so to speak, as the Kaufman foundation has researched? Angel venture capitalists is a group of investors, but they’re not really even investors, they’re a group of high net worth individuals who cluster together to encourage entrepreneurs through almost a grant of money. They don’t even require an equity stake in the company, and that’s where the ‘angel venture capitalist,’ term came to be, because they are the angels bestowing a gift, so to speak, on these entrepreneurs. Do the APA communities have that going for them?

I think the Kaufman Foundation has really studied it without looking at the Asian American population, and that’s something to consider as well.

We also should be analyzing the APA community as advocates and mediators between business and government and between private and non-profit entities, like SCORE. You’ll hear from Alvin Roselin, down at the end, who runs a chapter here of the service corps of retired executives and how that organization is involved in the Asian American entrepreneurial scene and how that leads to global entrepreneurship.

We need to be thinking about how the community can develop a small business development strategy of its own, how it can develop an entrepreneurial support strategy, how a local leadership team can support the strategy and promote it to the entire community, and how to increase community awareness of these local APA entrepreneurs and their attempts to go into the global marketplace.

And lastly, we’ll be looking at how to strengthen the relationship between the state and federal resource providers, namely myself. President Bush has gone a long way in moving the White House Initiative to the Department of Commerce to help focus on the economic and community development needs of the Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.

So with all that, I will ask our panelists, all of whom are very distinguished in their field. They all have extensive experience as entrepreneurs and experience as community leaders. It’ll be interesting to hear from them their background, and I’ve asked them to talk a little bit about where they are from and what they are doing both in work as well as in their relationship to the Asian American community and in relation to Asian American entrepreneurs. With that, I’d like to introduce Joe Melookaran, to my right. Joe is an entrepreneur as he is an accountant from Kansas City and I’ll dispense with the big introductions because I’d like for him to talk more about himself.

Joseph Melookaran: Thanks Eddy. My name is Joseph Melookaran from Overland Park, Kansas; it’s a Kansas City suburb. I’m deeply honored to be here especially in this city which has fulfilled the dreams of a lot of Asian American entrepreneurs. As you know, I’m from Kansas. It’s a long way and you don’t see large Asian communities as you see in the large cities, so it is different still. Twenty -one years ago, it was very different and very difficult, especially for job seekers, and entrepreneurs you don’t even have to talk about. I can say that I’m probably one of the first fifty Asian entrepreneurs who ventured into business at that time. I’m one of the pioneers who went through all the hurt before I could really establish myself. I’m one of the first ones. It was really difficult twenty-one years ago when I came here. I’m a chartered accountant. I was working for Coopers & Lybrand, had a strong resume, but to get a job was really difficult. I still remember I went to Macy’s for the internal auditor position, and the interviewer asked me whether the double entry bookkeeping system is the same here as in India. I said, “It is the same, there’s no difference.” “By the way, have you heard about Luca Pacioli, one of the Franciscan priests?” I said ‘no.’ “He is the father of the double entry bookkeeping system,” he said. I didn’t know that. But anyway, he didn’t give me the job. I had to start as a shoe salesman. That’s how I got started.

In 1989, I started my business. It was very difficult, but again the Asian community was very, very small at that time. Many people have seen doctors and engineers, but they had not seen accountants and other professions: teachers and other people from the Asian community. Also, what I found out was that when you go for different federal programs or city MBA programs and that kind of stuff, they do not recognize Asian American community as a community that needed. That was a big problem. First I thought that there was no such thing. I was working with the Minority Supplier Development Council and wanted to make it strong so all the minority communities could get the benefit. Then I realized that when I submitted a bid for the area Transportation Authority, and even though mine was a technically very well qualified bid, I did not get it. I was kind of debriefing what happened and even though we had the best resume and everything, he said, “We do not really consider Asian Americans as minority that needs help because they are very well off.” And again, another incident happened the same way. I thought there’s a problem here: the perception and the visibility is causing a lot of problems in this area.

Then we started working on Asian American Chamber of Commerce. At that time, I did not even know how many Asian businesses there were in Kansas City. I thought maybe a couple of hundred, or three hundred or something like that. Then I started getting into developing the Asian American Chamber of Commerce and I knew that there were a lot of businesses, whether it is a convenience store, to janitorial services, to beauty shops, to dry-cleaning. In so many areas, Asian Americans were in business, but people did not know, the public did not know, civic leaders did not know. So, it was a Herculean task.

In each community here you have Chinese Americans, Indian Americans; there are different, very strong critical mass for each of those groups. In the cities outside the East Coast, West Coast and Chicago, there’s not a critical mass for the Asian community, so we have to build coalitions among the different ethnic groups. Myself and a Korean businesswoman talked about building a coalition and building visibility. From 2001 onwards, we started working on it, and I’m really pleased about the way it has developed. We have high visibility now among the corporations—they want to do business with the Asian community as their suppliers; the government because we invite them for our events; minority Asian community business owners did not know about these certificates; and also some of the major corporations because with the globalization there are a lot of new services and new opportunities that are coming up for the Asian community to take advantage of. We built the partnership between the corporations and the government and brought them together and we were very successful in building that and in enhancing visibility. There are about two thousand Asian-owned businesses in Kansas City now, with a total revenue of about 800 million and employing close to 10,000 employees and people didn’t know about it and we are making it known. Our visibility depends a lot upon our communication with the corporations and the government. So we were very successful in that.

A couple of things I wanted to make a special mention of is that in my working with the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce as well as the Asian Chamber of Commerce and Minority Supplier Development Council and a lot of the civic organizations. For Asian American business owners, I believe, one of the ideas that we emphasize is the mentoring program. Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce has 7,500 business members and a lot of funding. They are doing a lot of programs, but they have not included the Asian business community in their mentoring program. So the Asian Chamber of Commerce worked with the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce and I was inducted into the Executive Committee of the Mentoring Program so I was able to work inside the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce Executive Committee to include Asian Americans in the Mentoring Program. That is one of the best things that happened for the Asian community businesses in Kansas City. And Kansas City Greater Chamber of Commerce has one of the best mentoring programs and they have brought in the corporations as good mentors to select the mentees and develop them; and it was really successful. In fact on February 4th of this year, we had a program in Kansas City where we signed a memorandum of understanding with the SCORE association and also we had a briefing on our mentoring program to the commissioners over there. That is something we are trying to see as one of the best practices to take to other cities, coordinating with the Chamber of Commerce and other entities who are doing the mentoring programs benefiting the Asian American business community.

And the other thing is that corporations like Sprint are doing a lot of business outside, but at the same time they can do a lot of business with the Asian business owners and use that in their global business framework to have some segments of the business that benefit the Asian community. For example, we got a contract about two or three years ago to be the gatekeeper for the networks for Sprint for the call centers in India and Ireland. We get our revenue from the companies in India that run the call centers. This is a business opportunity that is easy for us because we are an Indian-owned firm and we know the parties on the other side. There are so many opportunities like that for the major corporations; in their globalization, they can have a lot of services that can be outsourced to the Asian business community. That is one of the areas that even the Asian business community, at least at our level, did not know about. So there are a lot of opportunities that the Chamber of Commerce and other organizations can bring to Asian community business members and they can pursue these opportunities and be part of globalization and be given economic opportunities.

Basically, that’s all that I wanted to talk about, but I would like this to be more interactive, so if you have any questions, I’d be more than happy to answer. I have an accounting firm and a technology firm. I have about 130 employees. We specialize in the wireless networking area, that’s our core strength. We’re using the same strategy, benefiting from the globalization, working with the major corporations and the governments. Thank you very much.

Eddy Badrina: Once again if you have any questions, this has definitely less of an academic feel to it, because we have all entrepreneurs on this panel, so if you have any questions, please, by all means raise your hand and interrupt. The next panelist is Ms. Yee-Ping Wu. She’s the founder and Chief Operating Officer of Knoa Software. Ms. Wu.

Yee-Ping Wu: Thank you. Well, let me maybe start by telling you a little bit more about what we as a company do. Knoa Software is a leading user performance management technology for the enterprise market. What we provide a company is the product that allows the company to have very clear visibility and insights to measuring how the true user experience as they use their enterprise applications. Knoa Software technology allows companies to have critical metrics to manage some very fundamental areas, such as how the application is really performing to the user and how the user is able to execute the processes throughout the applications. Today our company is partnering up with some major enterprise software companies, and many of Fortune 500 companies are our customers. So that is the technology company that we have been building throughout the last many years in New York City.

Actually I was really appreciative of hearing some of Joe’s comment on all the different kinds of activity and challenges that he built through the last 10 to 15 years. Our company I just started in ‘87. Now, the software companies actually have a lot of interesting challenges. I’m actually really quite amazed that today all the different community populations now have a category called Asian community. And that’s actually a very interesting…we have to congratulate ourselves that there is now a true category, because there was a time when even in ’87, there was a whole category called minority. I remember even in ‘87 when we started as a software company everybody was asking me, “Why is it that you are starting a software company in New York City?” because there are so many technology companies, of course the focus was really in the Boston Area as well as in the West Coast. If you looked at the raising the investment all the way from the basic activities to actually the work force, it is a huge challenge when you try to establish your company over on the East Coast.

I think that when you’re really coming down to talking about IT, software, technology building, entrepreneurial business, besides the issue of the Asian or the minority, there are many different issues that you are dealing with. When you’re looking at it now, 10 to 15 years out, today, of course, it has become a major force—the Asian community, as was the software technology in the East Coast—has become now a very, very critical force. Generally speaking, I think that there are many different types of business the Asian community is now involved in, which in early days, were not really directly related to the kind of business that Asians would get in.

I remember the very early days when I was actually trying to get a certain kind of minority certification; they actually did not even have a certain certification that was literally directly related to the woman in technology. There are so many policies that are very, very outdated. One of the major processes I had to go through to actually even begin to be able to get minority certified in technology literally took me two years to get through. That was in the late ‘80s. Today, you can see the progress. We have certainly made a tremendous progress. Today, I believe if you get the same kind of certification, it would take about a month. Just the amount of time has changed. In this city, a lot of things need to continue to evolve and we need a lot of input from all the different types of entrepreneurship. Certainly, I myself had to go through many of those types of situations as an entrepreneur and also in technology. I welcome in this session any kind of a question, certainly relating to the entrepreneurial, particularly in this area. I’d be very happy to have a discussion with you. Thank you.

Eddy Badrina: Thank you Ms. Wu. Next we will have Mr. John Wang. He is the head of the Asian American Business Development Center here in New York City. Mr. Wang, if you would.

John Wang: Thank You. Asian American Business Development Center was established in 1994. It was a grand department of the Small Business Administration. The mission of the AABDC was to assist Asian American entrepreneurs to better compete in the mainstream marketplace. We provide information access, technical assistance to entrepreneurs to help them enter into the mainstream marketplace. We pilot with the private sector and the public sector institutions to provide resources, to assist Asian American businesses. That is the basic background of the organization. Of course, the two previous speakers talked about the domestic interests in terms of Asian American entrepreneur development, and certainly we have a lot of issues and, I think that there are many issues we have touched on.

I’m interested here in, since we’re talking about globalization, and perhaps the thing to address in this area is how an Asian American entrepreneur can play a role in the globalization process. Perhaps there are some of you that have read Crain’s New York Business in the last two weeks. In two weeks in successions there were front-page articles about the United States—or New York—and Asia. The first one, two weeks ago, was about New York trying to catch up, in terms of developing a relationship with China. And the second one, actually this week, was about how Newark now has become a major international airport to have direct flights to Asia. It’s all the result, of course, of the rise of many of the Asian countries: China, India, Korea, and various other countries, which generate this tremendous interest on the U.S. side of how to access the market in Asia.

The article in Crain’s about the New York City’s development of the relationship with China was interesting because the article was essentially talking about the fact that there was no relationship until now, that the New York City parliament decided that we need to develop a relationship in order to bring more trade, more business, and more business investment from China to New York City. I sent in a letter, commenting on the article, basically saying that the reason, of course, is that for decades, New York, as the capital of the world, had no need to go anywhere to develop a marketing strategy to attract business economy, because all the international businesses would love to come to New York City to set up a headquarters or to set up shops here. And a part of that situation changed, and then China was rising as international player in this global marketplace, so that New York finally realized the importance of China to New York’s own economy and was beginning to look at ways to develop a relationship with China in order to attract more Chinese business and investment to New York City.

My letter also pointed out that in the process of developing the strategy to attract business investment from China, New York really failed to tap into one of the major resources that the city has, which is the Chinese American community or the Asian American community in the larger sense. Certainly the Chinese American community has been in New York City for 150 years or more, and long before New York or anyone else had started thinking about China, the Chinese community has been doing business with China, importing trade and doing all kinds of things. Chinese Americans have been traveling back and forth, to here and China, for many, many years and have developed a tremendous relationship with many parts of China, many industries, and many businesses of China. If New York really wanted to develop that relationship, I think it would certainly be reasonable to tap into Chinese American community and with many of the entrepreneurs, business executives, professionals, who have the knowledge, the cultural background, the language facility and the expertise in business, they could do wonders to help New York in terms of developing that relationship. That’s one area, certainly, that perhaps both on some kind of the governmental level and on the private sector level, less on the private sector level because I think we can see that today many corporations certainly employ a lot of Asian Americans in their senior executive branch to assist them in terms of developing the market in Asia, because the corporation understands that Asian Americans have the knowledge and background to help the company advance in the market.

The second article I’ve mentioned in Crain’s that was also talking about Newark which has now almost overtaken John F Kennedy airport as the main airport with flights to Asia, and particularly to India. Now they started direct flights to India. Many of the Indian business people have said that they would prefer it actually, since Newark provides direct flights to India, to have their office in New Jersey, rather than in New York City. And that’s actually another way, if you’re looking at it, New York City may in the long run lose out because many of the entrepreneurs will go where it is the most convenient for them in terms of their business. And since Newark Airport is able to provide that type of service to business, naturally, they will gravitate towards New Jersey, and that would put New York in some way at a disadvantage. Again, we speak of the importance of Asian American business playing a role in terms of economy in and out of local area. I guess on the national scene we will see the greater and greater role the Asian Americans play in the development of the general economy.

Four years we ago started a program called the Outstanding Fifty Asian American Business and actually Yee-Ping was one of our honorees a couple of years back. And the idea of the project was really to highlight the Asian Americans’ contribution in the larger economy and also to recognize the individual entrepreneurs and businesses, and their own achievement in the field chosen. I think it’s important that we’re developing a network of entrepreneurs where Asian American businesses will be able to be part of the network that can help them in terms of accessing the market or help them identify areas of opportunity or help them develop strategic alliances with the government or private sectors. We see that the entrepreneur network is an important way to not only help Asian Americans to expand their own business, but it’s a way to play a greater role in the larger economic arena. There is a diverse Asian American population just in the New York area; and they can really play a major role in the tri-state area, in terms of developing business and trade with Asia, whether it is Korea, India, China, Japan, or any other country. Again, with their cultural background, language facility, expertise, and understanding of the local area and, not to mention, many of their contacts and connections that they have back in many of those Asian countries, they can really bring all those resources to play in developing the business.

I think this is an important area especially for the public sector to understand: how to tap into those resources. It’s also up to the Asian American community to also make that point as well because sometimes if you wait for the public sector to realize what to do, it may be too late. That’s why it’s important to network, whether it’s a Chamber of Commerce or a Business Association or if it’s what we’re trying to do with the Outstanding Fifty Asian American Business Network. We want to use a more organized fashion to assist Asian Americans, to inject them into a role of public policy and also in the way of how particularly these things can affect the business, and that Asian Americans can play a role in many of the areas.

I think that just to sum up, I think certainly the Asian American community can play a tremendous beneficial role in terms of economic development of the local area, or regional, or the national area. But at the same time, I think it’s up to the Asian American community to better organize themselves in order to be able to play a significant role. Thank you.

Eddy Badrina: Mr. Wang, thank you very much. And last, we will have Mr. Alvin Roselin of the Service Corps of Retired Executives. Mr. Roselin, please tell us a little about your background. I looked at your CV and it’s very varied, to say the least, so we’d like to hear about your background and how you are interacting with the community.

Alvin Roselin: Thank you. I noticed in looking at the panel, I’m the only non-Asian. So I guess it’s safe for me to say, “Ni hao, Yomo seyo, Konichiwa, and Good Afternoon.” As far as my background, I did have an opportunity to visit all of these countries that I just mentioned. I gave some talks in Tokyo and elsewhere on entrepreneurs: how to improve your business. Part of my business, which I had as an entrepreneur was producing public relations films. One of our clients was the Intercontinental Hotels where we had to shoot a film in most of their hotels in the world. We had to stay there at least a week, get a tour of the surrounding area, naturally staying in the suite, because we had to shoot the best parts of the hotel. And it took us not only to Tokyo and Singapore and Jakarta, but Riyadh, Manila, Germany, England, France. So, we truly became travelers of the world and learned all about the businesses in so many other countries. In China, we had a chance to travel along the Silk Road and went all the way to Kashgar.

As far as background, I was able to start my own company. It was successful. I sold my half of it almost 20 years ago. And I’ve been doing community-related pro-bono work ever since. And now, with China as an emerging economy and going to make a major impact on the global economy, entrepreneurship there, as you know, is being promoted. But because of the people’s lack of small business ownership experience, I will tell you, many of them are going to fail. Forty years ago, the U.S. government through the Small Business Administration, had conducted a survey to determine why small businesses fail. The common wisdom was that they simply ran out of money, which is true. They couldn’t pay their bills and they ran out of money. But the results of the survey showed they all lacked management skills, and that was their undoing. So the SBA had put a call out, and this goes back to 1964, for people to come along who had business experience, and help small companies, and therefore, they started the Service Corps of Retired Executives, which is now commonly known as SCORE. But we don’t only have retired executives. We’ve become the counselors to America’s small business. We have volunteers with business experiences who’ve come to help people like you.

How many of you are in business or have a business, or are you all educators? Mostly educators. Isn’t that interesting? So hopefully, you will take the word out to the entrepreneurs and the entrepreneurs here will know more about SCORE, I hope by the time we finish. Right now, there are 11,000 counselors, professional business executives, counselors, or volunteers in the United States, who are like me. There are 400 chapters all over the country. Here, in New York City, there are four chapters. I also have a one-word title, not President, but Director. It’s Director for SCORE in New York City. SCORE around the country has become known as a national treasure because we don’t charge for any of the counseling services that we give. We have over 400,000 years of business experience in areas that range from accounting to warehousing, from advertising to insurance, from film production to market research. If you name a specialty of any business whether it’s electronics or software, we have a counselor, who can sit with you, counsel you, become a mentor to you. I heard mentor before. Last year alone, we had 9,000 counseling sessions here in New York City.

What do we do? Let’s assume someone has this burning desire to start their own company. We would help them with the start-up: find out first what experience they had in the industry, find out whether it’s a solo proprietorship or a partnership, explain the difference between sub-chapter S, big C corporation, and LLC and LLP. We’ve learned what all of these are. If there are some people who do want to incorporate and they don’t have enough money for a lawyer, we also have pro-bono lawyers—not on staff, but major firms who will do it. We would help them register. Where do you go in these five boroughs? Where do you go in any city of the country? In Kansas City? Where do you get it registered? A business plan, you’ve all heard of business plans, they seem like daunting tasks, but in reality what a business plan is, is a roadmap: you start here, you want to go there, how do you get there? It’s a road map, it’s a business plan. And the SCORE people will sit and talk with you and say “Here’s a guide. Follow it along. Come back in two weeks once you have it done and we’ll work on it and do it.” So, in this case, we become mentors. If you’re in business, we would help develop a strategic plan for growth, work with your cash flow, even develop an exit plan. You’ve been in business for 20 years, 30 years, 40 years, and you say, “I think I’d like to go out and play golf. I think I’d like to become a SCORE counselor; I don’t want to work over there anymore. I have enough money.” So we would help them develop an exit plan, which most, if not all, companies that start, develop an exit plan. I don’t know if you have an exit plan yet.

Maybe you’ve gone public and you have your stocks and your shares and it can go. I know we have an entrepreneur there who was a shoe salesman, who made good, which is terrific, and with a 150 employees, I think you said you had.

Here we are in New York City. Most of our clients are in the communities. And I know John talked about the Crain’s articles about business with China. How long ago was this? Two or three weeks ago. They, in Crain’s, had a chart that showed the ethnic breakdowns of the boroughs from 1985 to 2004. Just taking the Asian community, in the five boroughs, twenty years ago, there were 160,000 Asians. Twenty years later, almost a million—800,000. The borough that has the most, I’m sure you know, is Queens with almost 400,000 Asians out of a total population of 2.2 million. So they’re way up there.

What do we do to help the Asian small business development? We signed the agreement with the AAPI so that SCORE will work with all of the Asian and Pacific Islander entrepreneurs in a concentrated effort to see to it that they succeed. And part of our success story would be if someone came along and wanted to start a business with a burning desire and we don’t think they have enough experience to do it and we don’t want them to lose their money, we would discourage them from doing it. We would see to it that they got a job somewhere, learned that business, then come back and we’ll help you with the business plan, we’ll even help you find finance. So part of what we do is develop relationships with lenders. Because we were part of the Small Business Administration, I don’t know if you’re aware, they don’t give loans, but they guarantee loans. The bank will give the loan or even a non-bank lender, and anyone who wants money can get from, let’s say, $5,000 to $10 million, with SBA guarantees. And going through SCORE, who also becomes a technical assistance provider for those programs that require a technical assistance provider, they would go to us, and we would continue mentoring them to get their money. We even have a relationship with John Wang. When did we do this John? A while back, not too long, a year. [Holding up a newspaper clipping with photo] I’m sure those of you who are Chinese can all read it: it says what it does, and there’s SCORE and in the picture, there’s John, sitting, same as here, to my left. We were that way, and we had many, many clients coming through, many who didn’t even speak English, and there was a translator who sat there and we did the counseling. But as John had said, they’ve gone on to other areas in doing more international trade and more global trade rather than start-ups.

We opened a branch of SCORE in Flushing. We have a Flushing Chapter. It’s a Flushing branch right now staffed only by Korean Americans. We read a statement at the grand opening in the beginning of December, and there was a statement from the White House Commission on what a wonderful thing it was. If I’m not mistaken, it was the first such opening of an organization that was staffed mainly only by Asians to help at no charge, again, all free, other Asians or anyone who comes in. And the reason they had started it, the reasons these Korean Americans wanted to become counselors is that they came here years back and struggled and went broke, made lots of mistakes, lost money, because they didn’t have SCORE to go to. They felt if they can start a chapter of SCORE that will help their people, they would be free to go to them. One of the things we did learn is that, not that there’s mistrust, but you talked about the Asian communities helping the Asian community. I’m not an Asian, and sometimes, there’s difficulty with the language. So what we are constantly looking for, and hopefully, some of you can contribute to this, is to find volunteers, who have business experience, who would like to give up their time to help the Asian community. So what we need then is qualified people. And hopefully, if any of you are so inclined, you can take one of these. If you have an uncle or an aunt, who’s a successful business person, when you’re ready to retire, you could become a counselor. You don’t have to be retired. In fact, someone said, “I’m not retired,” to me. You’re so busy working, you’re doing your thing. Fortunately, business was good. And it isn’t necessary to go out and earn money. I have enough. Now I’m giving it back. I’m helping the community at large, and as you can see, the Asian community where I mentioned a business plan. We now have a business plan. Is it in Mandarin? It’s in Chinese. So that could happen. We have a marketing plan outlined in Chinese. We would like to get it done in Korean or in other languages. There are free cards—well, yes the card is free as well as the counseling services—that list the branches that the Manhattan chapter has. The same is in Chinese, which we also have to get translated into other languages, wherever we have counselors who can speak that language. The reason we have trouble finding these Asian counselors is that 20 years ago, 30 years ago, 40 years ago, they weren’t here running successful businesses, and they’re not yet retired, but here we have two people almost ready to retire [laughter].

One of the things that Eddy has mentioned was relationships with governments. Through SCORE we have direct lines to the New York City Department of Small Business Services. In fact, there are SCORE counselors at the Small Business Solutions Centers around the city. We have a direct relationship with the New York State Empire Development Corporation. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard the name Una Clark. She’s in Brooklyn, she has been a councilwoman, now her daughter is a councilwoman. She is all gung ho about helping the ethnic communities. SCORE is in there, helping those ethnic communities. And then there’s the Federal government. SCORE, as you heard me say earlier, was started by the SBA, although we’re not a government agency. We’re a non-profit 501 C3. We stand on our own and very little of the funding comes through the SBA. Everything else we have to rely on ourselves to get grants and contributions. But there is a Department or an Office of Advocacy in the Small Business Administration that will intercede for any small business having regulatory problems with the Federal government—any department of the Federal government. There are many programs. You mentioned certification. If you wanted to do business with the Federal government, they have something called the “8a Program,” where they will take you under their wing, so that you can be a bidder for some of the Federal government contracts and sometimes you would be the only bidder, if it’s a sub-contract. So, again, through SCORE, there is access to all of the government programs for the city, state, federal. And I see that you still have some questions, so I will say: send us your retired, your knowledgeable, your experienced. My name is in there, my phone number is in there, take them, and send us your people. Thank you.

Eddy Badrina: Thanks Alvin. Obviously we’ve heard about good partnerships between the local community and John’s group with Alvin and then with SCORE and their, especially the community in Flushing, and being able to recruit and attract mentors who speak the languages of the different Asian American community. I wanted to ask a little bit. We have time for just a little bit of conversation, but I wanted to ask Joe and Yee-Ping from a corporate point of view, how did you partner with corporations? What was the catalyst for partnering with corporations and what would have made it easier?

Joseph Melookaran: Our strategy in partnering with the corporations was to bring them to the table through our functions and asking them what they can do to include Asian community businesses as a part of their Supplier Diversity Program. And also, they, for example, Sprint and Hallmark, had some within their corporate structure. They have tracking of minority businesses or diversity programs and how many suppliers there are and what the level of business is. So to have Asian community businesses was a direct effort through the forum as well as though individual contacts. They started tracking Asian community businesses as a separate component within the diversity program. And that helped by increasing the consciousness and also for some of the functions. When I say Asian community businesses, other corporations see that they are being recognized. Within the supplier diversity as well, Asian businesses are recognized. That kind of gave them encouragement for other major corporations to also start doing business with Asian community businesses.

Yee-Ping Wu: I actually am not really involved specifically in the area relating to the Asian community, in just direct relationship-building with other corporations. I am involved very deeply in the software industry. In this case, there’s an organization of New York called, NYSIA, New York Software Industry Association, founded about ten years ago. I think it would be very interesting possibly in Kansas and area, and maybe perhaps part of it is because I’m not as familiar with some of the activities going on there. I think that there is not as much activity as what you have started there and we would like to learn more, because in a sense, New York has the need. I think that the consolidation of the many Asian communities here, business I think could really have a consortium, a very strong consortium. I know John has been doing a lot of work in that area. I think, in consortium, one of the key areas right now is IT, which is a very broad word. I think there are a lot of things out there relating to implementing, in particular in the software area. Actually, from you, I would really like to learn more how actually we can have a consolidated type of organization established in a very strong relationship with other corporations to do really whole business.

Joseph Melookaran: I just wanted to add, in terms of bringing all organizations together, what we have done is that in the Asian Chamber of Commerce, we have a Board of Directors and we have an outer ring called Advisory Board. Within the Advisory Board we have the presidents of the different ethnic associations, like Korean Association, Indian Association, and their presidents or designated representatives. Then we have representatives from the Physicians Association, which is very big in Kansas City—there are so many doctors—and the Vietnamese Association. There is always strength in numbers and how bodies constitute it, so we made that conscious effort to bring in people from different strong associations so that for the public, for the corporations, for the civic leaders, they see a big critical mass that can influence.

Eddy Badrina: Do we have any questions from the audience? I think that we have one, maybe two questions.

Male Audience Member: I’m glad to see Alvin Roselin trying to share all the information to see what’s happening, and promoting. The Asian cultural drawback, the cultural defect is not organizing. I’m glad to see organizing different groups and doing a lot in New York City where the politicians are organizing. [To Eddy Badrina] I want to ask you how you are in the White House Asian culture hierarchy, how you can utilize your authority, use your resources to help each of them? How you can mobilize the Commerce Department and the Labor Department to benefit the local communities?

Eddy Badrina: That’s a good question. We actually have 34 federal agencies that technically the deputies’ secretaries from each of those agencies, or their equivalents, report back to the office once a month. We ensure that each of those agencies are focusing on Asian American issues, whether it be Health and Human Services making sure they focus on HIV or AIDS within the Asian American community or Breast Cancer Awareness within certain segments of the community; down to Housing and Urban Development, making sure that they have particular notice to Asian American low income housing projects. The White House really is a coordinating body, so to speak, of all the executive agencies. What I try to do in my role is to make sure that each of them is focusing, in their own area of expertise, on the Asian American population, whether it be health, housing, commerce or whatnot.

John Wang: If I may just, just comment on this. I think that the White House Commission, this Asian Pacific Initiative, certainly is very important. The issue is the continuity and the implementation. Because in the previous administration, during the part of the early Bush administration and the Clinton administration, there was a similar set-up and similar type of studies: all the commissioners were going around the country, doing testimonies, hearings, and all kinds of studies. And then what happened to the studies? They never got implemented. And now every administration comes in, they go through this exercise. It’s not really going to be benefiting, unfortunately, the Asian community directly, because I think that what is important for the commission is probably taking some of the earlier findings from the previous administration, previous commissions and studies, incorporating it into what you’re doing right now and then working with all the Asian American communities throughout the country in developing an implementation plan. That will carry on despite whichever the Democratic or Republican administration that is coming up. So this way the recommendation can really be carried out and implemented, and the community can benefit directly.

Eddy Badrina: I think that’s a great point, John. The previous commission was focused on health and health disparities. They produced a report on that front, which we’re still following up on through one of the commission’s subcommittees. There’s a subcommittee on health and they’re advocating those recommendations. This commission will be producing a report on economic and community development. All throughout, like John was saying, there’s an underlying implementation plan within the federal agencies, that has been going on since 1999, that has continued throughout each of the commissions that focuses on just the implementations plans for each of the federal agencies. The long-term vision of it is to institutionalize those implementation plans. My hope is that we work ourselves out of a job. It will be so ingrained within the government to focus on Asian Americans that there won’t be a need for the initiative, because the initiative just highlights the fact that the government isn’t focusing enough.

John Wang: I would argue the contrary. You want to make yourself a permanent institution rather than work yourself out of a job.

Eddy Badrina: That’s another way to look at it.

John Wang: To have the Asian American initiative within the government and then be able to carry out this policy and make sure all the agencies carry them out.

Eddy Badrina: And what I mean by working myself out of a job is that the Asian American influence within the government would be ingrained in the White House and within each of the federal agencies. Yeah, I totally agree.

Audience: I have a question for Miss Wu and Mr. Wang because I think now would be good timing for Asian entrepreneurs, but the competition is so hard, especially in high technology. How could they overcome the competition to grow as entrepreneurs?

Yee-Ping Wu: Well, I think first of all, you’re absolutely right. I think today, you have a lot more competition, because of globalization, and by nature, the competition is broader. You have all different dynamics and all different kind of culture, of course. As you know, the Chinese, and the Asia side, have a tremendously strong tradition in terms of being individualized and being extremely entrepreneurial—there’s no question about that. I think that in the end, it depends, of course, on each entrepreneur to really focus on the business that he or she builds. And I think that one of the key fundamental areas— doesn’t matter whether you are Asian or any type of culture—the core function of any business, I think, should keep in mind, particularly in the IT area, that innovation is very key. As much as I appreciate and think that it is critical to feel a real sense of the Asian community and so on and so forth, I think that when it comes to building business, I think there should not be much of a culture gap or any kind of different type of cultural borderline. I think the key here is to really reach out, cross over, really understand that fundamentally you’re building a business of a specific market need and marketing that.

I think that’s one thing that people asked me for a long time of what it takes to be an entrepreneur. I think skill, yes, of course, is one part of the area, but if you’re smart, you can learn any kind of skill. I think what’s actually even more important is whether you have the stomach to be an entrepreneur, because fundamentally you’re an entrepreneur by nature. You’re adventurous and the fact of the matter is you’re going to have to expand and take nothing for granted. The fact of the matter is you’re going to face a tremendous amount of competition. So that is part of the preparation of being an entrepreneur and I think Alvin talked earlier about the fact that a lot of entrepreneurial businesses fail and there are many different reasons. Some of it is absolutely from a culturally different way of doing business and so on and so forth, and some of it is because of missing and running out of funding, but it has a lot to do with the dynamic happening of all the different types of situations. You need to be changing your ability to face these adverse and very different types of situations. I don’t know whether I answered your question well.

I think that when it comes down to it, innovation is key. I think that learning crosses over and all different types of things are really well beyond the culture issue. I think just prepare yourself and getting yourself really into the area that you’re building, but using globalization to your advantage to see how you actually leverage money for resources, how you’re building your workforce, how you’re building your technology, how you’re actually delivering your technology, how you deploy your technology, all these questions you really can’t go into details in a minute, but certainly these are all the areas that you need to consider.

John Wang: I would just add that competition is probably the main ingredient in entrepreneurship. Without it, probably entrepreneurship wouldn’t flourish. At the same time, for entrepreneurs themselves, it doesn’t mean that they couldn’t get together and learn from each other and perhaps cross-fertilizing each other’s ideas and efforts. I’m a firm believer in a network and that’s important to help the business, because you have a kind of support system there, not only to help your own business, but then you could also benefit from learning from your competitor, what they’re doing, and then, the same thing, they will learn from you.

Alvin Roselin: Competition is wonderful, because it shows that there’s a big market out there. Otherwise you wouldn’t have all of these people in business with you. The key in your competition and yourself is to find those elements of your enterprise that’s better than theirs. You have to know the competition. You have to find out who they really are, what they’re selling, how much they’re selling for, all of those elements. And you determine why you’re better than they are, then that’s what you market. Everyone knows everyone’s out there, but you’ve got to go out and say, “Yes, they’re fine, they do this, they do this, but we’re way ahead of them, because what we’re doing is more innovating than anyone else. Therefore, we’re the ones you should be doing business with.”

Eddy Badrina: Well, with that, panelists, thank you for your insights, your comments, truly very helpful. Audience, thank you for your questions. Enjoy the rest of the conference.