Chesapeake,

VA

Transcript

Rodgers' Banana Pudding Sauce

GeeGee: Hi, my name is GeeGee and I am one of the co-owners of RR enterprise or Rodgers' Banana Pudding Sauce located in Chesapeake Virginia. Yup, this is our product. One SBA program that really helped our business take off was the Small Business Development Center. There we learned the nuts and bolts of operating a business. The bottom line, the class helped us distinguish reality from fantasy. You are wondering how?

Speaker 2: Yeah, how?

GeeGee: We had to write a detailed business plan that covered our personal profile of skills and experience. In other words, do we really have what it takes to be successful in operating a business. We had to describe our business objectives, meaning do we really know what we want from a business.

Speaker 2: Cha-Ching.

GeeGee: If getting rich was our only objective than our plan was seriously flawed. We would need to rethink our objective and we had to show that we were up to date on the current and future trends. Essentially, we learned that the world is continually changing and if we remain stuck in doing things the old way, we would be left behind wondering what went wrong. The second SBA program that will help us in the near future is the Patriot Express Pilot Loan for veterans and members of the military community. We applied for this loan because we wanted to expand and grow our business so we can take it to the next level. The most rewarding part about growing our small business is being able to help others make memories with their family and friends with our product. My father is a service disabled veteran. He served 26 years in the United States Navy. We truly understand the challenges of military life, therefore, we have a non-profit organization called Divine Destiny whose mission is to support Purple Heart Medal recipients who were wounded by an instrument of war. We also support the food bank and the joint military sponsored appreciation event, Evening under the Stars.

Speaker 2: Whoo-Hooo.

GeeGee: To end, my father had a saying in the Navy. This poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part. Yeah, heard that a lot growing up. We had a too much to do to stay on the sidelines, so with the help of the SBA program it turned us from spectators in to local payer participants. We listened to what we had to do, we had seen what we needed to do and now we do...together.