Director of Goldman Sachs program wants to see it continue

The leader of a successful job- and revenue-creation initiative in Utah wants to see it continue. Beth Colosimo, executive director of the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses program in Utah and executive director of business development resources at Salt Lake Community College (SLCC), recently hailed the results of the program in the state and laid the groundwork for continuation of the program if Goldman Sachs were to end its connection to it.

The leader of a successful job- and revenue-creation initiative in Utah wants to see it continue.

Beth Colosimo, executive director of the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses program in Utah and executive director of business development resources at Salt Lake Community College (SLCC), recently hailed the results of the program in the state and laid the groundwork for continuation of the program if Goldman Sachs were to end its connection to it.

Colosimo suggested to the Governor’s Office of Economic Development (GOED) board that GOED could succeed Goldman Sachs, if necessary.

“The question for this audience is, how do we sustain this as a potential state program so that not only are you all helping the large companies in incenting the ones that are coming here today but also for the small businesses?” Colosimo asked the board.

The 10,000 Small Businesses program was started in 2010 with funding from the Goldman Sachs Foundation, in partnership with Babson College and ICIC. So far, more than 6,100 companies nationwide have participated in the program, designed to provide business training, business support services and opportunities to access capital as ways to increase companies’ revenues and job creation.

The program’s eighth site launched in Utah in 2012. With an annual operating budget of $1.2 million annually and help from several partner organizations, SLCC trains about 100 company CEOs a year. It is one of 14 community colleges participating in the program.

So far, 11 executive groups, representing 333 businesses in Utah, have completed the training.

Nationally, 48 percent of participating companies have added jobs six months after being in the program, 56 percent have added them in 18 months and 61 percent have added them at 30 months. Revenue has seen similar growth, with 69 percent of the companies seeing growth of 47 percent in six months, 74 percent growing revenues by 90 percent in 18 months, and 82 percent more than doubling starting revenue at 30 months. All the figures exceed the national small-business averages for job and revenue growth.

Colosimo projected that participating Utah companies, who started in the program with $502 million in combined annual revenue, would have added $340 million in revenue in 18 months after participating.

“That equates to $16 million in additional corporate tax revenue,” she told the GOED board. “So these companies are adding a significant amount of tax revenue by exceeding the national average. Yes, they’re going to grow hopefully organically, but our program and our intent is to accelerate their job growth so that they’re contributing to the tax revenue of the state of Utah.”

Among the success stories Colosimo cited are Jones Creek Beef of Springville, which had revenues of $3 million to $4 million upon participating but 18 months later saw the figure climb to $14.5 million and it is expected to reach $26 million in 2017. OnSite Care had revenue of $1.5 million and 17 full-time employees, but three years later has annual revenue of $6.3 million and 61 employees.

Participating companies have 18.6 employees, on average, and 40 percent are women-owned and 10 percent to 15 percent are minority-owned. The program is offered three times a year, with 30 to 40 CEOs trained in each group from among 100 applicants.

“There’s a large demand for this type of program. There’s no other program like this in the state,” Colosimo said.

With about 74,000 small businesses in Utah, including 33,000 in Salt Lake County, she sees Utah as fertile ground to continue the program.

“We’ve got 74,000 small businesses that we could potentially be working with, and we also have an extremely high success rate,” she said. “We do survey all of our graduates and we get very, very high remarks for what the transformation has been to their business by having this training.”

By year-end, the program nationally will have trained 6,500 small-business executives, likely leaving it two to two-and-a-half years to reach its original goal of 10,000. “We’re kind of planting the seed now to say, ‘How do we keep this program going?’” she said.

“How do we sustain this growth? This program, as it’s called, is Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses. We don’t really know what the program, what the plan, is for Goldman Sach to continue this momentum. We as a state have obviously built the momentum, we’ve created the impact, we’ve done the heavy lifting that it’s taken to put this program into place. … We’ve got this down.

“We’ve trained 333 companies, we have the systems in place, we have the people in place, we have the program, we have the curriculum. All the pieces and the heavy lifting is done. … This program has been transformational for Salt Lake Community College and we think it’s transformational for the state.”

If it were to become a state-run program, it perhaps could become a certification-based program and aid Gov. Gary Herbert’s push to have 66 percent of Utah residents have post-secondary degrees or certifications by the year 2020, or it could have a rural component or be focused on specific industries, she said.

The GOED board made no commitments except to follow up on the matter. Board member Jerry Oldroyd suggested having a Goldman Sachs official address the board in the future.

“It would be really interesting to find out what their plans are going forward. … I think it’s been a great success for them,” Oldroyd said. “I suspect that they’re very happy with what they’ve achieved.”

Jeff Edwards, president and chief executive officer of the Economic Development Corporation of Utah, praised the program and its results. “To put it in context,” he told the board, “think about how hard you have to work in recruiting new companies to generate the same kind of revenue that happens through this mechanism.”