Free Business Coaching for Westchester Small Business Owners with TAP CEO Jane Veron

Westchester small business owners have a free, high-caliber coaching resource right in their backyard — and most of them don't know it exists. Jane Veron, founder of The Acceleration Project (TAP), joins the Brief to explain how her Scarsdale-based nonprofit pairs Fortune 500-trained consultants with local business owners at no cost, and why coaching matters as much as capital.

In This Episode:

(0:00) How TAP started at Jane Veron's kitchen table in 2012 and grew to 200 consultants nationwide

(3:00) Why a business loan alone can sink a company — and what coaching provides that capital cannot

(4:53) The EDGE program: a Citi Foundation-funded financial literacy program for Westchester small business owners — and why sign-up closes at the end of April

(9:08) The FinHealth Score framework: spend, save, borrow, and plan, broken into manageable steps

(10:43) TAP's verified 10-to-1 social return on investment, validated by the Bridgespan Group

(12:31) Income disparity in Westchester County and why businesses in both wealthy and low-to-moderate income zip codes need the same support

(14:50) How TAP differs from SCORE, the SBA, and Small Business Development Centers

(19:41) A New Rochelle success story: how TAP helped a nurse-turned-spa-owner weather a crisis and build a thriving business

TAP Website: https://www.theaccelerationproject.org/ EDGE Program: https://www.theaccelerationproject.org/tap-edge

Subscribe to the Westchester Brief newsletter at iliveherewestchester.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Nearly half of small business owners say they've had limited or no financial literacy when they started. And those owners report losing at least $10,000 in profit as a direct result. We spend a lot of time in this county talking about access to capital. What we talk about less is this. For a lot of Westchester entrepreneurs, the missing piece isn't alone, it's a conversation. Jane Varon has been making that argument from Scarsdale for 14 years. She's the CEO and co-founder of the Acceleration Project TAP, a nonprofit that has worked with more than 11,000 businesses nationwide by pairing experienced consultants with small business owners who need real strategic guidance at no cost to the owner. Every dollar invested in TAP generates 10 in economic and community value. This spring, TAP launched the Edge program. Eight months of free financial coaching for low to moderate income business owners right here in Westchester County. It's financial literacy month. Let's get into it. Jane, thank you so much for joining us today.

SPEAKER_01 1:03

I am delighted to be here, Jim.

SPEAKER_00 1:05

So TAP has been around since 2012, and you've been building it from Scarsdale this whole time. You know, take me back to the beginning. What was the problem you saw that no one else was trying to solve?

SPEAKER_01 1:16

I'm so excited to tell you about the history of TAP and where we are today. We did start around my kitchen table, like most small businesses entrepreneurs, trying to solve two problems really. At that moment, if in 2012 you could imagine the arrival of the online shopping, the internet and big box stores. And all of a sudden, small businesses that were in Main Street were shocked by this seismic shift in buyer behavior. And I used to walk in from store to store to store and talk to this business owners about what they were seeing in terms of like a depression of sales and a change in their customer purchases. And what I recognized was that they so much crave the support and advice and guidance, particularly in this very critical moment for them. And I wanted to be able to bring that support and advice to the small business owner. My background is in consulting. I started my career at Bain, and we were so fortunate to be able to advise Fortune 500 companies. And I thought, why can't we do that for small business? And in addition, I knew many, many women at that time who had left the workforce to raise their families. They came from banks and consulting firms and marketers. And I wanted to harness that talent and use it to deliver social good and also to be able to help them continue to enhance their careers.

SPEAKER_00 2:36

So now you build TAP on a dual mission. First, help small business owners and activate professional women to who want to keep their skills in use. How did you know those two things really belong together?

SPEAKER_01 2:47

Well, it was I'm always about mobilizing talent and solving problems. And it was so clear to me that we had this resource that was underutilized, which is like these incredibly talented women professionals, and they wanted to use their skills for good. And there were all these businesses that could so uh benefit enormously from the guidance that they could offer. So to me, it was a complete win-win. Today, I didn't anticipate this, but today we have 200 consultants across the country, and the consultants are actually 65% of them are working full-time or part-time, and they come from, you know, major Fortune 500 companies, special firms, entrepreneurs. And I didn't anticipate that that would be such a huge uptick, but now we have this incredible army of talent that is very excited to use their skills to advance small businesses.

SPEAKER_00 3:42

Now, everyone in the small business community really talks about access to capital, and Tapp's entire model says coaching matters as much, if not more. Make that case. What does coaching provide that alone simply cannot?

SPEAKER_01 3:55

Right. Well, first of all, I mean access to capital, of course, is important and getting capital to grow is vital. However, that's capital alone doesn't solve the problem. I watch capital being deployed in ways that actually have sunk businesses. So if you just get the loan and you don't think about the most strategic and leveraged use of that loan, you could really do damage to your business. And they're small businesses have they are the the the owners are have so much grit, so much determination. They're so good at their product or their service. But how could you possibly know all of the functional areas that are outside your kind of realm of experience? So when we guidance, support none of us, none of us succeeds on our own. Big companies have boards of directors. Of course, a small business owner should be able to have the same. And what's uniquely special about TAP is that we can work the 360 wraparound service. We can help with the finance, the marketing, the ops. We have a lot of industry-specific knowledge, if it's about construction or food or health beauty, wellness, because it's so important to have that advisor who has that entire perspective, and that's really what makes us unique. We're we customize to the business. And then the other piece that is vitally important is that you want people who are compassionate and trustworthy and who are in your corner. And that's what makes us special.

SPEAKER_00 5:20

So I have questions about the Edge program. But before we get into that, what is the Edge program?

SPEAKER_01 5:26

So I'm so excited. We are delighted that we received a grant from the City Foundation. It is all about building financial wherewithal, personal and business financial wherewithal, so that business owners feel very like that they can get their arms around both their personal, business, personal and business management of um of like their day-to-day finances. And it's not com it's the edge program gives real life experience to a small business owner so that they can walk through the different modules with the TAP consultants to be able to think about how do they spend wisely, how do they save wisely, how do they borrow wisely, and how do they plan wisely. And what makes this program different, and we target to it's all small business owners, we really also want to help low to moderate income business owners. But it's it's not just for somebody in financial crisis, it's for somebody who wants to understand all of the interworkings of the financial underpinnings of their business. It's really for absolutely everybody. If you what I think a lot of business owners don't realize is that their personal credit, if it's not strong, it impacts their ability to get business credit. And if they can't get the funds for their business, then they often go to predatory lenders, which really can do tremendous damage to the business, and then they can't even pay themselves income. And then that ultimately impacts their personal finances, and it's just this downward negative cycle, and we correct it. We have a very structured program to fix that.

SPEAKER_00 7:07

So if I'm a small business owner in White Plains, New Rochelle, or here in Borchester, and I enroll today, what does my next eight months look like?

SPEAKER_01 7:15

So I want to get you in immediately because we got started and we have uh we have about 250 businesses already, and then we get rave reviews. Just so I encourage all small businesses out there listening, please join. We have uh some slots left. You sign up by the end of April, and then for the next six months, there is very well-defined programming to make sure that we take the lessons we're teaching and apply it to your business. So you'll work in small groups so that you're actually not on you're not by yourself and so you feel good because you're not the only one struggling with these things. And then you have one-on-one coaching, we have very clear modules and milestones so that you could actually check off that you're acting you're making progress. What we really care about is seeing the impact of the advice on the individual business owner. We want it to be customized and personalized. It's there's so much information out there, but we want it to be about that person and that business.

SPEAKER_00 8:14

Of the 250 businesses, I'm just curious, are we talking dry cleaners? Are we talking media companies? Or is it across the board?

SPEAKER_01 8:21

Across the board because these we have we've served thousands and thousands of businesses every year. And even if you come to me and you present with a particular business challenge, 75% of our businesses ultimately want this kind of financial support, the the help around how do I think about these things. It is so you can't you don't wake up one day knowing this. You have to be taught it. And that's why there is no shame in not knowing. What we encourage you is just to get the support that will really make a difference for you. And don't do it when you're in a crisis. Do it before it's a crisis. It's also really manageable. It's, you know, very set hours, it's not overwhelming. And then by September you will feel so good. Or already we got our our it was in a um a flood of positivity after our first module. And we were so excited.

SPEAKER_00 9:14

So the program's built around the financial health networks, FinHealth Score framework, spending, saving, borrowing, and planning. For someone who hasn't heard of that framework, why does structuring it in that way matter?

SPEAKER_01 9:26

What I find with anybody who's learning something is you want to break things down into bite-sized pieces and you want to l learn in a way that's very digestible and and then and builds on it. So when we think about spend, you want to pay attention. And by the way, small businesses, so many of small businesses, they have they have so much work to do to run their business. Very often, like what they're spending is on like a spreadsheet if or on a bunch of post-its. And it's very hard to get that that snapshot. So what we want to do is think about how are you spending money? Are you actually spending and and what are your margins or what are you actually left over with after you spend? And then let's be disciplined about like saving a little bit of that. And and you so you do it in in stages. You think about how are you spending, what are you spending, let's get visibility. The hardest thing is getting visibility into it because what you intuit and what's real may not be the same. And so you want to actually think your numbers are your friends and you want to see what you're spending, and then you figure out what you save. And then that only then can you really borrow because you have to have what you can borrow against, and then you plan. Then you plan for your insurance and your retirement and all those things, and they they build upon each other.

SPEAKER_00 10:42

So TAPS data shows 10 in one social return on investment. Walk me through how that gets calculated because that mum number is remarkable, and I want listeners to understand what that actually represents.

SPEAKER_01 10:52

Right. So we're so proud of the results. So we know in our hearts how impactful we are for small business owners because they come and they tell us, they say, Jane, like you helped us, your team helped us so much. We were able to grow revenue 30%. And I actually hired two people, and now we have such, you know, the promise of our future is so enormous. So we know the impact, but what we decided to do to validate what we know is we hired um the preeminent firm, a nonprofit consulting firm, uh, the Bridgman Group. And they took our data and they took academic research and they looked at what every dollar delivered to TAP would ultimately result in in terms of economic impact. And they broke it down by the revenue that we're able to help businesses generate, around the jobs we're able to help businesses build, around the community impact. If you think about that, you know, every time you invest in a small business, you're building up the community. The business owner will will call upon other businesses in the community for their supplies to be their vendors. So you keep you have this really virtuous circle. And so the between our data and what the academic research shows, it's a 10 times social return on investment. It's quite enormous. And that, by the way, is our fixed, it's it's a fully loaded cost. And we're so proud of being able to deliver to quantify what we truly have seen over and over.

SPEAKER_00 12:26

Jane, Westchester has a real income disparity story inside of it. The county has extraordinary wealth, one of the wealthiest uh in the country. And it also has a significant com has also has significant communities of low to moderate income residents running businesses in those same zip codes. So how does that tension shape the work you're doing here?

SPEAKER_01 12:46

Well, uh one of the things, like our our overarching mission is to accelerate economic mobility, to provide for independence and wealth generation. And you're right, this this Westchester County, our entire country, there's an enormous disparity. And in fact, sometimes it has negative implications for businesses when they are actually located in a in a more affluent zip code because the expectation is that they're doing enormously well. But in fact, these business owners need the support of their local residents to be able to fuel and sustain them. And the challenge always is that the small businesses they operate on such thin margins, they have very little cash in reserve. It is exceedingly hard to deliver the products and services. And so we as a country need to continue to support these small businesses because they represent 36 million, there are 36 million businesses in our country, and they represent 60% of private sector jobs. And we saw, we saw in COVID what happens when they all shut down. It shuts down our communities. And it is incumbent upon us to be able to lift them up. Uh and so just no matter if they're located in more affluent or less affluent zip codes, the demands and the challenges are the same. They need to build businesses that have growth, that can create assets outside the business owners, create assets outside themselves, create jobs, and create opportunities that will eventually translate into wealth for their families and communities.

SPEAKER_00 14:27

There are a lot of small business associations, if you will, score, small business development centers, the SBA. There's a lot of free advice. And frankly, now with AI, there's probably more advice in your phone than you ever wanted. But if so many resources exist, in your opinion, are they working or not? And what makes you confident that TAPS model is actually different? Right.

SPEAKER_01 14:48

Well, we are different. But I'll start out by saying that I am thrilled that there's so much in the ecosystem to help small businesses. The number is vast of those out there. And and half of the small businesses that get started fail within the first five years. Ours stay open. Ours, like we can't we actually tracked it, tracked the numbers, and like 90 something percent were open a year after working with us. But it's so there's I am thrilled that there's support out there no matter what. We are different. We have a very leveraged business model where we can harness talent from Wall Street, Fortune 500 companies, entrepreneurs. We train, we vet actually very significantly. In fact, we don't, even though we our business model has a paid team that unlocks pro bono team time, we only take maybe two-thirds, uh, a little bit over 50% of applicants because we're not only looking for business acumen, we're looking for people who really get it, who can walk in the shoes of a small business person, who who are trained in cultural competence, who understand how challenging and hard it is to be able to do this. And what our business owners say is, yeah, you guys are really smart. But what I felt like is like you really, I could trust you. I really, and you may, so you talked about this flood of content. We're needed now more than ever because there's so much content. How do you discern what's relevant to you at this moment? And how do you take that content and translate it into your the particulars of your business? In fact, I was just with a business owner last week and she had gone through a lot of these programs, and they're great, no doubt, like in educate. But she said, Jane, it was night and day between what TAP was able to do and what these other programs did because you customize it to me. You also real-time lived with me and helped me weather some of the things that I were unanticipated. And one of the things that we have been able to do at TAP is we've gone beyond transactional relationships to become like it's a relationship model. Once you're a client of TAP, you are always part of the TAP community. Like any business, at different moments you need different kinds of advice. If it's like joining our edge program where we're getting you, you know, the the building blocks of feeling confident about your finances, or if it's later when you need help getting a loan, or if now you need to figure out how to deploy AI to help to streamline how you do your to run your business or your branding or your marketing, different moments you need different things. And we have this enormous enormous breadth of programming from, you know, you know, big webinars with back-end support, customized coaching, groups, because people like to be in groups, you learn from each other to one-on-one, and we're always here for you.

SPEAKER_00 17:38

Well, that's important that's important to know because I I think one of the questions I had was what happens at the end of Edge? And there's life after Edge with TAP.

SPEAKER_01 17:47

Always. You you are once a client, always a client, always part of the TAP family. And you never know. I I mean I liken it to like you're an alum of a university, you don't pay quo close attention. Maybe you show up for a reunion, but then maybe you have a job search and you need more help. And we're always here for you. And that um makes us different. We have people who keep, you know, our businesses keep coming back. I mean, I I I structured this to solve problems. I told you two problems, helping those small businesses ex, you know, excel and harnessing talent for impact. And I did it, I set it up as a financial because I knew business owners could never afford to have we offer this for free. They could never afford these this high-caliber support. And so we spend a tremendous amount of time fundraising to be able to support the engine that delivers this service. And we were so lucky to get the city grant. And we're getting another grant to roll the edge program out to other markets. And we need the funding from these generous grant, you know, grateurs and family offices and institutions and so forth to be able to deliver what I believe small business owners deserve. And then they soar.

SPEAKER_00 18:54

Any fun success stories of a TAP client that uh you could share with us?

SPEAKER_01 18:58

Like a million fun success stories.

SPEAKER_00 19:00

There give give give me one. Give me, give me this like the guy who's selling ice skates or something.

SPEAKER_01 19:07

So our business owner of the year, she um is uh actually New Rochelle. Um, I think that, you know, right right in Westchester County. She her her name is Shanika. She has Touch Spa. It is unbelievable the spa she's built to help with skincare. She was a nurse for 20 years. She had to weather, small business owners have to weather so much unexpected. She was in a building, um, had 30 days to find new space because they were going to um develop that space. She hustled like crazy, found a wonderful landlord, gave space, built the space out. We helped her with her pricing, we helped her grow her revenue, we helped her figure out who to hire. She is like a rock star, drove up, you know, every possible measure. And she will tell you that not only was it the business smarts we were able to help her with and help her with all pieces of her business, but that she like we we were our her trusted advisors and sh we are there for her and we're always there for her.

SPEAKER_00 20:08

So, Jane, if a Westchester small business owner is listening to this right now, or someone who's been grinding through uncertainty or maybe managing cash flow stress or wondering what if they're missing something, what's the most important thing you want them to walk away with knowing?

SPEAKER_01 20:24

Get the support that's out there for you. Come to us. Don't wait for a crisis. We make it easy. It's relatable. We're here to help you. It's not daunting. And every single business owner who comes feels uncomfortable, insecure, not knowing, and they walk away feeling great. So don't let your internal inhibitions discourage you because please get started, one foot in front of the other, and you will walk out stronger.

SPEAKER_00 20:50

Small business, the background backbone of the county. Jane, I want to thank you so much for your insight and sharing the information about the Edge program and TAP.

SPEAKER_01 21:00

I welcome more applicants. We want uh Westchester is an incredible place. We want you to grow and thrive, and we want to support you, small business owners. So please, please, please sign up.

SPEAKER_00 21:13

If you're listening to this and you own a small business in Westchester County, I want you to look up the Edge program from the Acceleration Project at theaccelerationproject.org. Application for Edge closed April 30th. The coaching program for those accepted lasts until the end of September. Coaching is free. Go find out if it's right for you. If you want to keep going deeper on what's actually happening in the county economically, socially, and at the local government level, we've got you. Westchester Prefronts Monday through Thursday. Local accountability journalism, the stories that actually affect your life here. Find it wherever you listen to your podcast. On Fridays, we drop the Friday Intel, one data-driven deep dive into what the numbers are telling us about Westchester. You want to understand this place behind the headlines? That's the one. Follow us on Instagram and visit iLivehearmedia.com. dot com and that's where everything lives. I'm Jim Jocal. This is I Live Here, Westchester, and thanks for being here.

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