By Mark Woolsey

Her 18-month-old occupational therapy and professional coaching business wasn’t moving forward as she had hoped, even though Kristen Santos had herself hired a coach to help her navigate the challenges.

She says a significant turning point came when she became aware of the Cobb County Business Bootcamp toward the beginning of this year. She indicates it filled in a missing piece for her.

“I wanted a local network of people and experts to check in with so I can make my own choices on what was best for me and my business,” she says.

That’s just what has happened, she says, with her metrics showing steady improvement during the last several months.

The program is aimed at minority small business owners, gathering in such constituencies as women, veterans, the disabled and the LGBTQ community. A soft launch happened in March of 2024, says founder Brian Kramer, and now the free-of-charge program and its suite of services have officially debuted. It’s supported by a grant established in 2022.

“There are just a handful of things that impact small businesses and my team and I know what they are because we all owned small businesses,” he says. In addition Kramer says he advised many small entrepreneurs during a stint with IBM and then segued into business consulting and workforce development.

“I like to call what we have a business trade school,” he said. “In the trades you learn by doing. You take specific short courses to learn things. We have broken down a lot of bachelor’s and master’s degree topics into short modules designed to help people to learn what they need to learn just when they need to learn it.”

He says they use on-line courses, virtual meetings, roundtables and live workshops. The program offers a half-dozen multi-course pathways that focus on everything from operational and legal topics to sales and marketing, HR and growing and evolving a small enterprise.

He says one area that they will be concentrating on more going forward is people management. The team is working to bring additional subject matter experts on board who will focus on that area, including a pair of HR experts. They’re also establishing a “done with you” consulting program where participants can meet one-on-one with a subject matter expert for two hours and pick their brains.

“How can you define what a job will be and how do you hire people for that position?” comments Kramer. “How do you reward people in that position and how do you let people go who are not getting the job done?”

Kramer says they have been offering their services for four months and have about 100 members working through the program. And he can cite a number of success stories, including one owner who said that the program has helped not only her business, but also has improved her personal stress level and has even helped her marriage.

Santos says the self-paced curriculum and ample opportunities to ask questions and get feedback from both experts and other entrepreneurs have been valuable. She adds cash flow and the number of clients she works with have both shown a steady upward trajectory.

Close to graduating, she says “I don’t feel alone. That’s it right there.”