OVER $20,000 IN CASH AND PRIZES AWARDED TO FURTHER CENTER’S OFFERINGS TO THE SMALL BUSINESS COMMUNITY IN MONMOUTH AND OCEAN COUNTIES
In the photo (from left to right): Pasqualina DeLucia – America’s SBDC New Jersey at Brookdale Community College, C. Edward “Tee” Rowe, III – President/CEO America’s SBDC and Jackeline Mejias-Fuertes – Regional Director – America’s SBDC New Jersey at Brookdale Community College
On September 11, 2014 at the national conference for America’s Small Business Development Centers in Grapevine, Texas it was announced that the Brookdale Community College center of the New Jersey SBDC won the inaugural national business pitch plan competition from LivePlan, which resulted in over $20,000 in cash and prizes to help further the center’s goals and reach.
The America’s Small Business Development Center New Jersey at Brookdale Community College (also known as MOSBDC, serving Monmouth and Ocean counties) submitted the winning business plan using LivePlan, Palo Alto Software’s flagship software, which offers the “lean planning” approach and helps small businesses pitch to investors, write business plans, forecast financials and more.
“The focus of our submitted business plan was to represent our location’s unique demographic profile while also clearly demonstrating the ultimate goal of the pitch, which was to host our own business plan competition for our clients”, said Jackeline Mejias-Fuertes, Director of the SBDC at Brookdale Community College. “As detailed in our pitch, our center helps create and grow sustainable small business enterprises on the Jersey Shore by assisting seasonal restaurant, retail and tourism driven businesses. One of our goals was to offer these businesses the opportunity win cash and prizes by pitching their own business plan, and now by winning the LivePlan competition ourselves, we are able to achieve our goal. It’s is very exciting and we thank LivePlan and Palo Alto Software for bringing this goal to fruition.” Details on the center’s business plan competition will be provided in October on the center’s website mosbdc.com as well as on their social media channels.
Some of the many prizes the America’s Small Business Development Center New Jersey at Brookdale Community College will receive include: $2000 cash from Palo Alto Software, Adoption by PAS for one year including 4 free 1-hour live courses, a hosted pitch competition for the center in 2015, a custom infographic depicting the center’s impact on the local economy and 20 free annual LivePlan accounts to give away to clients.
“SBDCs throughout the nation offer training and counseling in regards to business plans (among many other small business topics) and much of what we teach our entrepreneur clients was utilized in our own pitch”, said Mejias-Fuertes. “Plus the utilization of LivePlan’s software made it very easy to drill down to the core of the plan in an impactful, one page pitch. This was a great win for our center’s clients and we look forward to implementing our winning plan with our own soon-to-be-launched business plan competition.”
For more information about LivePlan from Palo Alto Software, please visit http://www.liveplan.com/