Paul Garrison is a dyed-in-the- wool Detroiter.
He speaks with passion about grandparents, who were some of the first African-American homeowners on their block in Conant Gardens in northeast Detroit, and his father, who was a fireman and the chief supervisor of the Detroit Fire Academy.
“I am a son of the city of Detroit,” Garrison says passionately.
He is a dedicated advocate for the people he serves as the businesses manager for the Osborn Business Association (OBA), a business advocacy and support organization that operates out of the Matrix Center for Human Services in northeast Detroit.
“I have a panther mentality,” Garrison says.
“That’s the attitude of teaching, empowering, and uplifting people—and 200-percent dedication to your work.”
It helps to be tenacious when working on behalf of the people of Osborn, a neighborhood that has faced significant economic challenges in the 21st century. Home values plummeted during the subprime mortgage crisis of 2008, causing the neighborhood’s population to decrease at a rate higher than the rest of the city. With little funding available, entrepreneurship stagnated.
Part of the Osborn Neighborhood Alliance, the OBA was founded in 2012 by several small business owners and community leaders to uplift local entrepreneurship. Garrison, who has a background in economics and urban planning, was hired in 2015 to run the organization’s cohort program. Supported by the New Economy Initiative, the program assists new and existing neighborhood businesses, about one-third of which are in Osborn, to establish and grow through business mentoring and by connecting them to resources.
The central service of the cohort program is its six-week course covering the essentials of business development.
According to Garrison, the course is designed that way because the most common issue holding neighborhood businesses back is that some aren’t fully formalized. Due to a lack of resources, they haven’t filed as a legal entity or paid taxes in some time. But Garrison says making the case for formalization is simple.
“Entrepreneurs are some of the most ambitious, self-motivated people you’ll ever meet,” he says.
“It’s not hard to teach them or motivate them— they just need to see and understand the value.”
Sessions are led by leaders at important business support institutions, like Lawrence Jackson of the Michigan Small Business Development Center, who helps members develop a business plan, or Devita Davison of FoodLab Detroit, who gives members a primer on marketing. Other workshops cover accounting, legal formalization, and more.
171 individuals have graduated from the cohort program in the two years it’s been operating.
But getting business owners enrolled and graduated from the program is only the beginning of Garrison’s work. “Helping them through this process means following up with them and making sure they’re accountable,” he says.
Garrison and business coach Cindy Cleveland have worked hard to develop partnerships to ensure members have access to that funding. For example, they leveraged the Community Reinvestment Act, a law designed to encourage banks to help meet the needs of borrowers in low- and moderate-income neighborhoods, to encourage PNC Bank to conduct capital readiness workshops. Or when they arranged for 3D Marketing Solutions, themselves a graduate of the cohort program and a technical assistance provider to Motor City Match winners, to conduct a strategic marketing analysis workshop.
Graduates of the cohort program and OBA members have certainly been successful at raising funds—$578,500 since 2015, according to OBA. Eight have been NEIdea’s Challenge winners, including Osborn-based Bel Air Cinema, which won a $100,000 grant in 2017 to upgrade its kitchen and build out a bar.
That’s one reason why the organization won Community Strategy of the Year Award at the 2017 Detroit Community Development Awards.