Entrepreneur of Impact: Katrina Cobb
We're delighted to introduce you to Entrepreneur of Impact Award winner Katrina Cobb of The Small Business School Challenge. She is one of the amazing, everyday entrepreneur heroes doing good things for the world & her community during the COVID pandemic. We hope you're just as inspired by her story as we are!
Tell us a bit about your business & how it came to be.
The Small Business School Challenge was born directly from the COVID-19 crisis. It was the brainchild of my CoFounder David, a good friend I met while nomading and growing my consulting practice who also supports freelancers and independent business owners, and when he asked for help to pull off an ambitious event to help small business owners adjust to the crisis I was all in.
The idea was to gather MBA students (who's experience was also diminished with remote learning and event cancellations) and challenge them to use design thinking and their business strategy and knowledge to help real small business owners clients as part of a unique virtual business case competition over 48 hours.
We'd both experienced small business owners reaching out and asking for help because they felt blindsided by the closures and economic impacts from COVID-19. The SBSC gave us a vehicle to bring free business consulting right to hundreds of business owners in need in a timely fashion. It was 6 weeks from idea to event.
How was your business affected by the COVID pandemic? What shifts did you have to make in order to continue operating?
I'm fortunate that my personal business was not drastically affected, but 2 of my small business clients needed to make serious pivots to manage short term survival. So my brain was already in the mode of thinking about creative solutions, new ways of serving customers, and new ways of generating revenue for small business owners. When approached to help put on the first SBSC event, I jumped in with my time and energy, and basically stopped all the normal marketing activities for my consulting practice to double down on outreach, content marketing and crowdfunding to make the SBSC event possible.
You were recognized by the community as an Entrepreneur of Impact! Tell us about your efforts to create a positive impact during the COVID crisis.
The crazy reality is that I had 2 weeks initially to help make the SBSC event a reality. As a grassroots effort, we essentially were asking for business schools to chip in $1000 to participate and put the event in front of their students, asking MBAs to volunteer and participate, getting the event applications in front of small business owners across the country to encourage them to participate, and crowdfunding to raise the estimated $8000 needed to host the national event on a technology platform and cover the operations side and some cash prize money to the business owners.
I came on initially to help reach the crowdfunding goal (I had 10 days to raise $7000!) so I launched social channels, content marketing, and email marketing to get the word out. That role expanded to helping reach small business owners and not only explain the concept of our unique event but get them to apply. We had a goal to serve 200 small business owners. And then on the school side, marketing to encourage 600 MBAs across the country to volunteer to problem solve and take part in our challenge.
It was a flurry and a blur of 2 weeks! I think I calculated at one point that within 10 days I created 54 social posts, 73 tweets, 4 press releases, 12 marketing swipe files, 4 crowdfunding campaign posts, 6 email campaigns, and then an hour-long workshop presentation and slide deck as well as a 10-page pdf resource kit for all the business participants.
The amazing thing is we helped more than 150 businesses, had 450 MBAs and 100+ mentors participate, and received so much positive feedback on the impact that we're turning the SBSC into a full nonprofit and plan to continue hosting 2 events every year to help hundreds of business owners continue to innovate and adapt to be successful. My role is now to continue the marketing and content efforts, collect stories of impact, share the 150+ business case solutions and build a website of free information and resources, and then continue as Executive Director of the new nonprofit to plan and execute the next event bigger and better than the first. I'm incredibly honored and excited to have a new way to serve small businesses with free consulting from top business minds in a fun event moving forward.
What quote or motto you live by?
The most powerful question you can ask yourself is 'why not?'
What does the world need more of?
Dreamers and doers. People willing to imagine and then work to create something new and better.
In 3 words, what does it take to be successful as a business owner?
Drive, humility, and curiosity.
If you were to impart one tidbit of wisdom to up-and-coming entrepreneurs, what would it be?
There's no shortage of opportunity, and success isn't one size fits all. Trust in possibility and trust that you can do things your way.
We help women entrepreneurs build powerful, purposeful, and profitable businesses. Through actionable education and meaningful opportunities to connect, we cultivate growth-minded entrepreneurs to achieve personal success, while positively impacting their local community, economy, and causes they care about. We believe entrepreneurship is a force for greater good and our mission is to help YOU succeed. Join us inside the Hatch Tribe Collective!