Archive for category: Success Stories

NoMo Bands of Hillsborough County

“My business started all because of my beautiful daughter.”

After delivering her daughter via emergency C-section, Dr. Jacqueline Darna found herself extremely sick with nausea and nothing seemed to cure it.

“When nothing worked, I ended up going to a natural source of acupressure,” Darna said. “I balled up a napkin, placed it on my wrist while smelling peppermint leaves from a plant my stepmom brought me. I kept dropping the leaves and I never had them where I needed them. So I asked for a piece of tape and taped together that little napkin with the leaves at the P6 point on the wrist.”

Less than six months later, Darna produced a prototype based on that quick invention.

She now has three products, NoMo Nausea, NoMo Migraine and NoMo Sleepless Nights, all of which are the first patented essential oil-infused acupressure devices that automatically and instantly stop upset stomach, headaches, migraines or sleep problems in 30 seconds or less.

Darna’s product is creating quite a phenomenon. She has appeared on ABC, NBC, been featured in TV series and even won Shark Tank’s Kevin Harrington’s The Big Pitch. She even has a following called the NoMo Mama Squad.

Darna attributes a lot of this local success to the help she has received from the Florida SBDC at University of South Florida.

“Because of Supplier Diversity, I was able to get into over 15,000 retail stores in less than two years,” she said. “And that was all because of the fact that Florida SBDC showed me what do I need and what do [consumers] want to see.”

Though the product is doing extremely well in the United States, Darna utilized the Florida SBDC at USF for help expanding her international market base as well.

“The NoMo Nausea Med Plus version has been utilized by hospitals in 12 countries of the world,” Darna said. “But I’ve actually utilized the Florida SBDC to help me extend, and to look at other markets and what their potential would be. not only in the pharmacy realm, but also utilizing their knowledge base of how marketing incentives can actually help me.”

Through the Gold Key/Matchmaker services at Enterprise Florida, Darna said she has been introduced to some of the diplomats in Panama.

She said she cannot thank the Florida SBDC at USF enough for all of the connections she has made.

“They gave me not only encouragement, but also the ability to be able to take one product, NoMo Nausea, move that into NoMo Migraine for headaches and migraines, and now even push the envelope into a brand-new sleep product, all because of the fact that I was shown that small business owners – Hispanic females like myself – that have no outside funding, can really do it and it’s all because of the people.”

ThNA Biosciences of Hillsborough County

Dr. Eva Samal has a passion for molecular biology. She has spent the last 14 years in multiple settings exploring the relationship between a unique class of molecules, specifically small ribonucleic acids (RNAs) and diseases such as cancer, Alzheimer’s, autism and diabetes.

More importantly, she devised a high-throughput platform to identify disease-enriched proteins that can be used to develop life-saving drugs. This technology can reduce the time needed to bring a new drug to market by vastly shortening the target discovery period from 20 years to two years.

This break-through led Samal to launch ThNA BioSciences, a small biotech start-up that focuses on disease-dysregulated small RNAs that can be used like bait on a fishing hook to identify disease-associated biomarkers for diagnostics and therapeutics.

For the layman, she explains that RNAs are intermediates of a fraction of the unique DNA sequence inherited from our parents. Many of the RNA molecules are converted into proteins in the body. For example, skin or eye color are manifestations of levels of protein in the body. It is a special class of RNAs known as small RNAs that regulate the levels of protein expression. They perform immensely important functions such as regulating heart rhythm and keeping cells in check from cancer.

“The value of these small RNAs became very evident once we were able to develop the technology to use these common small RNA molecules as a decoy to capture disease biomarkers”, Samal said. She emphasized overcoming the insurmountable hurdle of identifying those one-of-a-kind one or two molecules common to every solid cancer tested to date as a major milestone in combination with her high-throughput drug target discovery platform as strong foundations for her startup.

ThNA has since additionally identified “unifying” small RNAs for Alzheimer’s disease, autism and diabetes.

All of this time in a laboratory has left her little time to study the intricacies of owning a business. This motivated her to seek the help of the Florida SBDC at University of South Florida.
“SBDC has made a tremendous impact in helping me set up the business,” Samal said. “I started working with Mr. Lairmore even before I had established a company. He walked me through the process of setting up the company step by step.”

Mitch Lairmore, a business consultant at the Florida SBDC at USF, and Karen Krymski, a Florida PTAC at USF consultant, have helped ThNA BioSciences with a variety of tasks, such as creating a business plan, developing a marketing strategy and applying for an SBIR grant.

“We’ve applied for a grant after getting very good feedback from the program director and we have been short-listed for every pitch we have participated in,” she said.

Working with the Florida SBDC at USF has also allowed the business to gain more exposure. “We were among the youngest companies to make it to BioFlorida which is amazing because our company had only been in existence for three months when that happened. We were also a semi-finalist at USF’s B.E.A.T.”

“ThNA’s founding idea was also a finalist for the Pfizer-IIT Innovation Challenge, so, we have definitely gained exposition time with SBDC’s detailed feedback and input.”

She encourages other small business owners to be proactive in seeking out the help of the Florida SBDC at USF before their business is even begins. Though she has had a very successful start, she said she will continue to seek the advice of the Florida SBDC at USF, specifically with regards to attracting funding opportunities.

“We are actively soliciting the help of SBDC to reach out to potential investors or even private citizens who might be interested in making a difference in helping us discover these sui generis disease molecules in the areas of cancer, Alzheimer’s, autism and diabetes,” she said.

Lucky Pet of Hillsborough County

Though Lucky Pet only opened their doors in Tampa less than three months ago, owners Mariel and Gerardo Diaz are no strangers to the pet care industry.

“I think we were born into this business more or less,” Mariel said. “I started as a dog trainer when I was 6 years-old and Gerardo got certified as a groomer, here in Tampa, 23 years ago.”

The Diaz’s opened their first Lucky Pet – a one-stop shop that offers professional dog grooming, dog training and daycare services, as well as natural foods and treats – in Puerto Rico more than 20 years ago. They moved to Tampa after Hurricane Maria struck the island.

Though they have had plenty of experience successfully running their business in Puerto Rico, they turned to the Florida SBDC at Hillsborough County when they found opening a second store in a new location came with its own set of challenges.

“Corey [McCaster] has been so helpful during this process, he knows everything from A to Z,” Mariel said. “We had so many doubts in the marketing aspect, because Tampa was new for us. Getting to know the market and how to impact it without spending extra money was a challenge. Corey just knew everything about that and he helped us during that process.”

Corey McCaster, business consultant for the Florida SBDC at Hillsborough County, helped the Diaz’s create a marketing strategy, develop a successful balancing sheet and secure a U.S. Small Business Administration loan.

“We just opened a few weeks ago, but we were able to get the funds to get all of the construction stuff started, to buy merchandise, and to start working the first few months,” Mariel said. “We knew everything about the business, but putting it all in writing made us see our business in another level. We were able to see more future for our business in terms of opening other branches and being more organized during our opening process.”

Not only do they plan to use the Florida SBDC at Hillsborough County for all of their marketing strategies in the future, the pair also recommends small business owners turn to the Florida SBDC at Hillsborough County if they have any questions about business strategy or growing into a second location.

“Whether you are a business owner or you are planning on opening a new business, being organized in very important and having a good coach that leads you during that process is very important,” Mariel added.

“Having Corey during the process really helped us not waste extra time or money. The moment we got in we went to SBDC; everything fell into place. We immediately got all of the help we needed to make a powerful business plan and we even got the funding to be able to open our second location.”

O’Lakers Moving of Hillsborough County

Although Mark O’Laker said he stumbled into the moving industry by accident in 1989, 30 years later he has turned that accident into a successful Bay area business.

O’Laker is the owner of O’Lakers Moving, a long-distance service provider, and 3 Guys Moving, a local in-state moving and storage company.

After his business suffered a loss due to Hurricane Irma in 2017, he turned to the Florida SBDC at University of South Florida for help acquiring a State of Florida Emergency Bridge Loan.

“[The bridge loan] was instrumental in getting us back on our feet after tons of jobs, as you can imagine, came off of our board due to the hurricane,” O’Laker said.

Though he initially sought out a loan, he quickly realized that the Florida SBDC at USF had so much more to offer to help rejuvenate his business.

“[The Florida SBDC at USF] has also put us in touch with some resources that I didn’t know were available to us, like advice on hiring, marketing, and accounting. They even offer actual QuickBooks accounting classes that I did not know were available to us.”

The Bridge Loan was not the only financial assistance to which the Florida SBDC at USF helped O’Laker with.

“SBDC has also assisted us in getting a loan from a local bank,” he said. “This helped us out tremendously in getting rid of our high interest debt and moving into something a little more reasonable. That has helped us out a lot with cash flow.”

O’Laker said he will continue to seek out the advice of the Florida SBDC at USF for the good of his business.

“We just finished phase one of the Growth Acceleration service offered by the SBDC,” he said. “I think it is going very well and we are looking to take advantage of phase two, which is going to help a lot with marketing to reach those goals that we have been trying to achieve.”

As he continues business growth with the help of the Florida SBDC at USF, he said he can’t speak highly enough of his experience to fellow business owners.

“I have been telling a lot of my friends who are business owners about the Florida SBDC,” he said. “Just like me, they didn’t know that it was available. There is so much value there and so many different ways that small businesses can benefit just by making the trip down, making a few phone calls, and getting involved.”

Onyx Cleaning of Hillsborough County

When Maria Leon first opened Onyx Cleaning, LLC, she wanted to be more than a successful Latino woman business owner. She wanted to be an inspiration to not only the women in her family, but to the entire Tampa Bay Latino community.

She began her business by subcontracting with USSI Janitorial. She was thankful to have a company that was willing to give her chance as she built her business. While subcontracting, she turned to the Florida SBDC at Hillsborough County to seek advice on how to grow her business so she could branch out on her own.

The Florida SBDC at Hillsborough County is one of two subcenters in the Tampa Bay region, connected to a county entity.

There she met Jannette Blanco, a certified business consultant who has extensive knowledge in doing business with the government and specializes in assisting minority and women-owned businesses with the government bidding process.

Through many one-on-one consultation sessions, Blanco helped Leon secure several contracts with the City of Tampa. These contracts have allowed Leon to make quite the impact on the local community.

“I have several contracts with the city of Tampa worth $2.5 million and special services for up to $6 million,” Leon said. “I have the opportunity to create jobs. So far with the help of the SBDC I have created 30 jobs.”

She is very grateful to the City of Tampa for giving her such an amazing opportunity, but this is only the beginning for Leon. As Onyx continues to grow, she said she will seek the help of Janette and the Florida SBDC at Hillsborough County along the way.

“I will continue to work with the SBDC because I want to participate in more county opportunities,” she said. “Janet teaches empowerment for the woman-owned business and how to navigate the government contracting world.”