Transcription of Ellen Golden for the show Coastal Enterprises Inc. #206
Dr. Belisle: This Dr. Lisa Belisle and you are listening to Love Maine Radio, show number 206. Coastal Enterprises Inc. Airing for the first time on Sunday, August 23, 2015. Coastal Enterprises Incorporated also known CEI has specialized in rural business development and financing since 1977. Founded in Wiscasset, CEI helps create economically and environmentally healthy communities in which all people especially those with low incomes can reach their full potential.
Today, we speak with Ellen Golden, Managing Director of CEI Investment Notes and Tae Chong of the CEI StartSmart program which helps refugees and immigrants start, strengthen or expand their own small businesses. Thank you for joining us.
Today in the studio with me, I have Ellen Golden who is the Managing Director of CEI Investment Notes. Ellen has expertise in research program and policy development with respect to women business owners and microenterprise development. She is a recipient of the SPA’s Women in Business Advocate, Minority Advocate and Financial Services Advocate of the Year Awards for Maine. She lives in Woolwich. Thanks so much for coming in.
Ellen Golden: Oh, my pleasure.
Dr. Belisle: I know that what you’re doing now the CEI Investment Notes is a little bit different than what you were focusing on before the microenterprise and the women business owners programming. Tell me what that is.
Ellen Golden: You think of that as impact investment. As you may be aware, there’s a history of people being interested in how they can allocate or direct capital in order to accomplish good as well as getting a financial return. Impact investing very simply is about looking for a financial return but also looking for social, economic and environmental benefit as well and CEI Investment Notes makes a fixed income product available to accredited investors who have a desire to allocate a portion of their assets to invest in the community because they want to do some good primarily here in Maine.
Dr. Belisle: Give me some examples of projects that you’ve been supporting.
Ellen Golden: Sure. Actually, there are two aspects to this program both of which are fun one is engaging the investors, right, because they’re the source of capital and understanding what their interests are, but then, the other is identifying really great projects, high impact projects that are going to benefit the community and putting the money out. I can think of lots of examples, it’s pretty diverse portfolio. It’s everything from refugee entrepreneurs who want to purchase a small restaurant in order to sort of recapture a life that they lost during a period of time when their country was in conflict.
We financed an Iraqi refugee family that had been restaurateurs in Baghdad, they’d had 15 years of experience. Obviously, they had to flee, they found their way to Maine and spent a long time learning English, saving money, looking for the right opportunity and we were able to give them a relatively modest loan that enabled them to acquire a restaurant and basically rebuild a life that they had lost. It was great. It’s everything from that to manufacturing, to young farmers acquiring farms and building obviously great lives here in Maine growing healthy food for Maine people and their families.
Dr. Belisle: It sounds like a win-win situation. You have people who want to support the young farmers and the Iraqi family and then, you have the family and the farmers themselves who are doing things to, I guess give back to the community as well as build their lives back.
Ellen Golden: Exactly. You have individuals or families that have money that they don’t obviously need for their immediate needs, they’re interested in getting some kind of return but they’re not interested in maximizing that return and they really want to feel good about where their money is going. The investors have a range of interests, some care about job creation, some care about affordable housing, some care about sustainable agriculture or renewable energy. It really varies pretty widely and we’re fortunate, they were able to develop and maintain a diverse portfolio that aligns with their personal interests and values.
Dr. Belisle: It seems as though that’s becoming increasingly important to people to know where their money is going and to feel good about the investments that they’re making.
Ellen Golden: Absolutely. We launched this program in 2009 and we now have 124 investors and a little bit over $7 and a half million that we’ve raised and it’s been so interesting to see sort of the nature of the conversation shift over that almost six-year period where we actually get people reaching out to us calling us and saying “We’ve read about CEI, we like the work that you do and we want to know if there’s an opportunity for us to invest with you,” so it’s great. It’s not just in Maine, it’s happening nationally and internationally as well, people are understanding that you can address certain kinds of social issues through let’s say a thoughtful allocation of money.
Dr. Belisle: Tell me about the specialties that you had before in female business owners and also microenterprise.
Ellen Golden: Sure. I started working, actually, a number of years ago with women business owners at a point when they didn’t have much credibility and they weren’t particularly visible in the community. Nobody was putting them on the front page of a newspaper and highlighting their accomplishments.
We started by doing some research because at that time, there was so little known about even the kinds of businesses they were starting and the kinds of situations that they faced, their experiences altogether and what we discovered was, of course, that although there are many women who are working very hard at being self-employed or as business owners with employees, they weren’t necessarily generating the income that they wanted or needed to support themselves and their families.
They weren’t necessarily getting access to the resources they should have, they were fairly isolated. We took that research and started to design and develop programs and ultimately created the womens’ business center at CEI which continues to thrive. We do a lot of individual advising to women business owners both women who want to start businesses as well as women who are in businesses and we’re also able to provide access to capital and equally important, although in a different way is we can help women form networks of support.
I mean there’s nothing like having a [inaudible 00:08:37] in your own life a great peer network to give you some advice and feedback on what you’re doing. It’s been great. Over a number of decades, we are able to see that not only are women accomplishing more but they’re finally getting recognition for what they’re doing.
Dr. Belisle: What about microenterprise?
Ellen Golden: Well, Maine, everybody is saying that Maine is this small business state. Well, it’s also really a microenterprise state and when we’re talking about microenterprises, there are a couple of ways to think about it. Some define it as businesses with five or a fewer employees and others say businesses that need capital in relatively small amount so under $50,000. There are over 100,000 microenterprises in the state and in some of the state’s counties particularly rural ones like Lincoln County where there really aren’t major employers, that’s a primary source of employment in the county.
Unlike women business owners, because they operate on a small scale, many microenterprises have difficulty getting access to resources, they also are sometimes not taken as seriously. People will misunderstand and think that they are hobbies when in fact, people are really very serious and genuinely need the income. [crosstalk 00:09:58 – 00:10:56]
Dr. Belisle: You have been listening to Love Maine Radio. Show number 206. Coastal Enterprises Incorporated. Our guest have been Ellen Golden and Tae Chong. For more information on our guests and extended interviews, visit lovemaineradio.com. Read our upcoming articles about CEI and Tae Chong in Maine Magazine. Love Maine Radio is downloadable for free on iTunes. For a preview of this week’s show, sign up for our e-newsletter and like our like Love Maine Radio Facebook page. Follow me on Twitter as Dr. Lisa and see my running, travel, food, and wellness photos as Bountiful One on Instagram.
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They could really make a go of it, because there are a lot of things that many us do that maybe you don’t care quite as much about. Is there a scale to changing something from “I really enjoy doing this. I don’t need to make money off of it, but it’s something that makes me happy too,” “I really enjoy doing this, I want to keep doing it and I’d also like to have it become my life’s work.”
Ellen Golden: Yeah. I think there’s a huge shift in terms of how you think about it and the way you think about your time and resources. This is not an example from one of our clients but it’s an example that I love from years ago. It came from another organization, one of our peers in another state where they were working with a woman who loved making egg rolls. She love to cook and she thought she was going to make a business out of egg rolls and she charged let’s say, for the sake of argument, a dollar a piece.
Well then, she did the math and discovered how many egg rolls she’d have to make in a year in order to make a living. As a hobby, you wouldn’t care, right? You would simply just continue to make eggrolls because you love doing it but if you thought you are going to make a living out of, then you would have to start looking at the whole process very differently and thinking about how many X widgets do I have to make, what’s the actual cost to it. If I need to make X, is there a large enough market to absorb it. It requires a little bit more thought and planning and analysis.
I think it’s really important for somebody who’s thinking about that to really think about what their ultimate goal is. Do you want to make a great deal of money, do you want to make a modest amount of money, do you want to be in a position to create jobs, do you want to have a home-based business, do you want to sort of move it out into another space where you can really grow. There’s sort of range of things. There’s a business owner, maybe you know, Mad Gab, she does wonderful products.
Anyway, she has a business that CEI’s worked with over a long period of time and as you may know from her story, she started making lip lube on a part time basis as a student. She’s a perfect example of somebody who has really had to learn to think differently as her business has evolved. She’s had her challenges like every other business owner, but as she’s tried to grow it, and develop new products, then think through what her competition is doing.
Dr. Belisle: I do. I am familiar with Mad Gabs, I have teenage daughters of, so there’s a fair amount of their lip palm in our house.
Ellen Golden: That’s great.
Dr. Belisle: It is a great story to write. I think that several years ago, I read about her initial forays into this as a college student. It is interesting to me that this is something that she was able to do from a fairly young age so she didn’t have to wait until she was established anyway, she could … kind of keep showing up every day, keep putting her energy behind and actually build something over time.
Ellen Golden: Well, it’s an advantage. There’s so many different ways you can get into business. I mean some people buy an existing business, some people save. It varies a lot with the kind of business, but there are a lot businesses that you can get into on a very fairly small scale as she did where it was more or less within her means or she may have had a little bit of family help in terms of a little bit of capital to help get her going before she look beyond that, but by the time she started looking for outside capital, she also had a little bit of a track record and she had some experience.
Sometimes, you see people who start by catering for example, and ultimately they go into a restaurant or people who will do specialty foods and do it at home before moving into a larger facility or even people who will start with for example, a home-based child care and ultimately expand into a larger facility where they can care for many more children. I think there are lots of examples where there is a path where you can start by limiting your risk. If you start small, gain some experience, test the market, see whether or not your original idea is really the one that’s going to work.
Because lots of people start with an idea and end up in a very different place once they actually start presenting whatever they’re doing to the market.
Dr. Belisle: Yeah, that’s an interesting point because there has to be a flexibility, I would think, a flexibility of mindset between what you see as a possibility and what you learn overtime is the likelihood.
Ellen Golden: Absolutely. I mean, over the years, obviously, we’ve reflected a lot on why some businesses grow and some don’t, why some succeed and others don’t and I would say one of the biggest factors is that ability to adapt, right, to be able to pay attention to what’s happening, to see and understand trends, be aware of changes in the market or changes in competition, but then, also to be strategic and make changes as you need to.
You may love a product beyond all reason, but if nobody else does, it’s obviously not going to be very successful. You may have to abandon something, it may be even the first thing that you made to go into the market and I’m sure that can be very difficult for somebody, but in order to be successful, you have to prepared to really respond to what’s happening outside of you.
Dr. Belisle: It’s also an ability to see the things that are happening outside of you as not failures.
Ellen Golden: Absolutely.
Dr. Belisle: As, if you start with something that you love and it doesn’t really work for whatever reason because the market doesn’t support it, there’s just isn’t enough interest, it doesn’t mean that it’s not valuable or valid, it’s just wasn’t valuable or valid enough and it’s something from which you can learn.
Ellen Golden: Absolutely. Sometimes, it’s really a question of timing. I can’t think of a good example off the top of my head right now but there are lots businesses where somebody had an idea and it didn’t work but five years later, it does, right, because the market’s just not there yet. Things are constantly shifting, it’s pretty dynamic.
Dr. Belisle: Yes. I was just thinking about a conversation I had with an art professor of Bates and he just reminded me that many artists never become popular during the time in which they create their art. It’s only after they passed away and they cannot even financially benefit from this.
Ellen Golden: Exactly. I mean that would be a perfect example of people doing something that really matters a great deal to them. In the case of artists, you can only do what you can do and the public just not being ready for it. Yeah, it’s often sad and unfortunate. Van Gogh is a famous example of that of somebody who is certainly not appreciated during his life and look at him now.
Dr. Belisle: Your job as someone who is trying to match up investors with people who are seeking investors is try to make sure that the timing is right, that the product that whoever is wanting to put out in the marketplace actually is going to be wanted and create success.
Ellen Golden: Right. Well, the way that we actually work, our investors are actually investing in a pool of funds, so they don’t have a direct connection with a particular project although we certainly let them know where all the pool of funds has gone but fortunately, in addition to providing capitals, CEI has a great staff of business investors and so, we’re able to make sure that people have access to the good advice that they need in order to make sound decisions.
It’s an amazing resource because in fact, there’s no charge for all of that advice. Maine is a great place in some ways to be able to start a business because we do have a lot of resources available for business owners.
Dr. Belisle: How did you personally become interested in this line of work and how did you end up in Maine?
Ellen Golden: I moved to Maine, it was sort of a sense adventure. I was living in New York City and felt that my future wasn’t in New York. I had friends in Maine, I think it’s in a way a lot of people get here and we had spent some time up here and so, we thought we would give this a try and of course, there’s so many things about Maine to love beyond the physical beauty, but there are so many interesting and engaging people here. I think the scale of life certainly after living in New York City was something I really value.
The fact that as an individual, you have the potential to make a difference here in a way that you can’t in a more densely-populated place. Certainly, as a professional working at CEI, you have access to policy makers and decision makers in the state like Maine where you as an individual or as an organization can have some influence. In terms of CEI, quite honestly, I wasn’t necessarily interested in economic development but what I was interested in was working for an organization that align with my personal values.
I was personally interested in social and economic justice and wanted to do something that was closer to community, something that would add value and do some good, benefit some people. I was fortunate to stumble across CEI and so, it’s been, for me, it’s really been a great opportunity to align both personal and professional life and values.
Dr. Belisle: Talk to me a little bit about this idea of social justice and what that means to you.
Ellen Golden: Social justice really means, it’s about equality of opportunity in one way and certainly, that’s been the focus of the work that I’ve done at CEI, it’s really about making sure that people get access to the resources that they need, that as jobs are created for example in a small business, that they don’t automatically go the easiest to hire people, that there’s an effort made to make sure that people, low-income people or people that are unemployed or new Americans or women, have access to the information about those jobs, that they’re well-prepared when they go for those interviews, and so, that they got a chance to compete.
Unfortunately, there are sort of structural flaws in a way that societies are organized, and so, some of us don’t, as we’re growing up, as I’m sure you know all too well, just don’t have access to the same opportunities. I was personally fortunate to get access to a good education, lived in a middle class family. I don’t know anything personally about hunger, so I’m conscious of my own personal privilege and would like to see that everybody would have access to the same kind of opportunities that I personally had.
For a place like CEI, ironically, it’s using, you could say the tools of capitalism to address social issues. It’s about making sure that people have access to capital and sort of understanding the good that can come from the allocation of capital. Obviously, I talked earlier about impact investing, that’s one aspect of it, but it’s also investing in businesses that have good practices.
We wouldn’t work with a business that was a polluter, that didn’t have a safe work environment, that didn’t treat its employees fairly. We’re interested in sort of promoting the kinds of workplaces that are aligned with our organizational values that will then create good opportunities for people here in Maine.
Dr. Belisle: It sounds like there is more than enough of those types of organizations that are out there, that are seeking help.
Ellen Golden: I think so, it maybe of course that the kinds of organizations that come to us are self-selecting but I’m quite honestly amazed on an ongoing basis to see how many entrepreneurs are out there with great ideas who really see their businesses and opportunity to make a contribution to the community in one way or another where they’re thinking about being a good employer or where they’re thinking about how it relate to sort of some larger social issues. I can give you an example.
We recently supported something called Blue Ox Malthouse, which you may or may not have read about. He’s a young entrepreneur who’s really steeped himself in the technology of malting grains and as I’m sure you know, malt is a key ingredient in making beer. With the growth of Maine’s micro breweries, there’s been a desire to do more organic beer but there hasn’t been a source of organic malt in the state of Maine.
This young man has come along and he’s basically providing the missing link in the supply chain so there are growers in [inaudible 00:25:08] County who are interested in growing organic grain. He’s going to be able to process that in a way so that it can support the growing craft brewing industry in the state and he’s also going to be creating jobs. He’s a perfect example. I’m sure he wants to make money, but he also really cares a lot about what he’s doing and wants to do it in a way that he thinks is adding value to the community.
Dr. Belisle: I’m fascinated by our conversation and I think like many people who live in the state, I truly believe that there is something important about, I don’t know, living your values, creating a business out of your values and it sounds as though, CEI, this is something that’s of pretty significant importance to your organization as well.
Ellen Golden: Absolutely.
Dr. Belisle: How do people find out about the work you’re doing with CEI Investment Notes or just CEI in general?
Ellen Golden: Yeah, we do have a website, it’s www.ceimaine.org and of course, they can always call us at 8827552 and we do have a Facebook page and I understand we’re also in Twitter.
Dr. Belisle: Well, great. I hope that people who … if you’re listening and you have an interest in the type of work that CEI is doing, the type of work that Ellen is doing, you go to their website. We’ve been speaking with Ellen Golden who is the Managing Director of CEI Investment Notes. Thank you so much for the work that you’re doing and bringing great businesses together with the investors that are looking to support them and keep up the good work.
Ellen Golden: Thank you, and thank you for inviting me. It was a fun to talk to you. Thanks.