Diane Moca: Welcome to our Creator Economy Entrepreneur Learning Series. Today, we're talking about programs that spur creativity and tap into needed dollars. I'm Diane Moca, reporter at Talk Lab, a media incubator in Aurora, Illinois, and I'm with our CEO, Jimi Allen. So Jimmy, you developed your business with special funding that anyone can tap into, but I want to start out with what is a media incubator. We've been talking about that, but let's share with people what your version of that is. Jimi Allen: Well, incubation is a basic concept where you're taking care of something that needs to mature and grow. So in a community like Aurora, or even just in the Midwest in general, there's a lot of incubation that needs to occur. So kids leaving high school and going directly to college, or leaving high school and maybe trying to get into a career, there's a period there that needs incubation. We used to call them internships or on-the-job-training, but obviously the economy has changed and the new word is incubation, at least early on. So for us, what that means is trying to structure programming, find partnerships where we can get the management structure in place to work with kids, work with young people before they get into the role because a lot of times... I mean, all businesses are struggling right now with the way the economy is and just trying to get think momentum going and the last thing they want to do is hire somebody and then find out it wasn't a good fit. And the incubators, just that concept, is getting people into an environment where you're figuring things out the soft skill side, and then finding out where those hard skills are. But the incubation is just a concept that's necessary for the Midwest to really start to embrace. Diane Moca: So why is this the right time and place for that to happen here? Jimi Allen: Well, we talked about this quite a bit and I think the interesting part is going back to concepts like the Bauhaus in Weimar, Germany. When that period happened and all of those great creatives spun out of there, we got all kinds of intrinsic value, kinds of value out of what they did and where they went in the world. There's homes here in Illinois that were designed by people from there, there's just painters, all kinds of things, fonts, everything comes out of that space. Well, when you go back, why is this the right time to do that? Because we're in a culture pressure situation right now and what needs to happen is we need to get people into denser proximity where they're trading ideas faster, they're banging off each other's impressions on things, they're getting feedback, good, quick feedback cycles, and the tools and the equipment, the facilities are all readily available. The worst thing to do is to have an idea and not have a tool to execute that idea. I mean, that's my grandfather's greatest saying was, "You can do any job as long as you have the right tool." So if a city needs to be economically developed, if businesses need to thrive, if you want good food in that community, if you want all the things that everybody wants out of something, you've got to create proximity, at least in a way that you would roughly call, archetypally call, an incubator. And so a city can incubate in that way where you're getting people close together to work on ideas. But it's going to take partnerships to do that because if you're running a business like we are, it's difficult on our own to run the business and cycle through those ideas. But just getting kids together, getting people together, mentors together, is really the name of the game, so that's what we're after in that way. Yeah. Diane Moca: So it's about human interaction, but a lot of creators work from home and they don't sometimes see the value of working in a separate space. So why did you decide to put so much into converting this building where people would be together when a lot of people can do their jobs from home? Jimi Allen: Right. Well, I mean, the jobs that people are doing from home, we're going to see how that plays out in the economy moving forward. That's a new concept and it was there when we started to imagine what we were doing. We were calling it co-working back then and it had a happy face on it back then. And now some of the dialogue going about work from home is good for companies, is good for employees, but it's still all up in the air. The real question is looking at history, and if you fail to... You know that saying, "You fail to look at history and not understand what you learn from it." Again, I'll go back to movements like the Bauhaus or the Seattle music scene or in New York, some Soho area, proximity is a big deal for creativity. You can't really innovate... And creativity and innovation are hand in hand for me. But you if you have to go long periods of time to really exercise your idea, let's say you have a great idea for, I don't know, a conference room or the build out of this building. So we built the building out, and what we knew we needed to do was bring a lot of the equipment to the area where we were building so if we needed a weld or we needed a use a certain tool, we had it readily available. And that's just common knowledge, it's how you build a building. I mean, you need all the tools on site. So I think it goes without saying, it's the same idea in an economy. If you have all those resources nearby, and then people use phrases like labor force and stuff like that, but a labor force that isn't skilled and doesn't have the tools and isn't nearby, really isn't going to help you do much. So I think what it really comes down to is trying to help the population in an area understand that they're going to get a lot out of doubling down on what skill sets they have around and what ideas they have around and what successes that are happening in the community, and then incubating those, coming around, partnering to make that happen. And, and I think we're wrestling with that on a national level and locally, where if you just are giving and giving and giving but you're not really giving for any kind of skills building that is around something that is an industry, you get stuck in a corner. You can't give forever and you might get inflation. Diane Moca: And when you talk about resources, one of the resources a lot of people, nearly everyone needs, is money, right? So you didn't have unlimited funds to make this happen, so what resources did you use to buy and rehab this? There were resources out there that you had to learn about and you say other people can tap into those too, right? Jimi Allen: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I can go right to where the large pool of funding came from, but I'll start in the incremental. A lot of it is like what we've talked about before, you learn to do something, you build a skill and then that skill allows you to charge for margin just over what it is that cost you to do it. And early on, creatives are going to wrestle with just a break even, but you're really pouring into your skillset and a lot of people, I think we miss that. We got to realize that the longer you do something, the longer, the better you get at something, the more that hard skill will allow you to be on a team with other people with those professional hard skills. So that's how we early started the funding in which we had to show cash flow and then we had to run that cash flow through your traditional banking processes. We had to run projections, we had to build a business plan. And the business plan was really hard early on until I realized a business plan is really your idea. It's not a template that somebody gives you, you take that and you glean from it, but you have to write your own story, you have to write what it is that you see as taking your skill and replicating that over and over and making that work. So once we had those things in place, it became a question of like, "Well, now who is it that we can go to for a debt financing to help us do construction?" And when you talk to a bank, they're not risk institutions, they're equity institutions. And so when you're in a community that doesn't have that equity, or you can't buy into that equity, you're looking at other options. And we were really fortunate to come across a new market tax credit program, which is a federally recognized program. And what it means is that there are institutions, groups that are lending with that program that have basically some guarantees from the federal government, so you go into a new market tax credit without a large amount of equity and there are 25 year amortizations on whatever the market rate is. I think it's a point over market rate. But looking into those programs, the key is that if you're a young entrepreneur or you've cash flowed for a little while, maybe a few years, and you have some accounting... So you got to grab an accountant, get just some, basically numbers, that you can sit down with somebody, and you talk to a broker, you can reach out to new market tax credit lenders, and they will help you build a pro forma that you can then realize in an area like Aurora. Or there are a map... You can look up new market tax credits and see federal maps, see all over the country areas you can do this. It's been labeled opportunity zones before, but the fact of the matter is that the country wants to develop and the money is there, the lending is there, and it wants to match up with skill sets. And I think today, I mean, to wrap this whole thing together is to say that if you're incubating, even in your own company, meaning that you've got more than one skill set there, because you really do need a lot of skill in-house or have good partnerships, but when you do and you're running financially positive and you can project out, new markets is a great opportunity for people that may not be bankable in another way. Diane Moca: Sometimes all of these things sound great in theory, but people don't even know sometimes where to start. Jimi Allen: Yeah. Diane Moca: They know how to pick up a camera, they know how to design something beautiful. But what would you recommend? Where does someone even start to just take that step? Jimi Allen: To take the step? Diane Moca: To get something... They have a big vision, what do they need to do to get there? What steps should they take? Jimi Allen: Well, we talked about this a little bit earlier, but don't stop believing the vision, that's the first thing. Doubt will overtake you. So many people will doubt a big vision, it's just normal. I'd read a book called Start with Why by Simon Sinek that talks about the one percenters, those visionaries, and then the early adopters and focus in on that. Look for those people, look for mentors that will believe the dream that they've dreamed and they've made it. And sometimes people will come back with harsh criticism stuff, but you got to believe your vision, you got to really dream it, you got to go for it. And then the next step is really looking at how you're taking whatever skillset it is that you're wanting to be great at, to be professional at, and finding buyers for it. Those are the very first things to do. And if you're not even, I mean, you could just be a great entrepreneur that recognizes other people's skill sets, and then it's just a matter of creating a management structure for that or whatever operational structure you want to. But really, at the end of the day, this still is the land of opportunity. I mean, you can do anything you want to do, you just have to have a dream and you have to go for it and just keep at it. And the last part I'd add to it is you got to do it every day. It is every day, and it's not overwork, it's just don't let a day go by that you're not processing on it. You can have downtime, but you focus on it and you don't give up. It's year in, year out, you just keep plugging away. And really that's what distances you from everyone else, is just stay at it. It's a long distance occasion. Diane Moca: Long game. Jimi Allen: Yeah. Long game. Diane Moca: Consistency. And you're proof of the success. Well, thanks, Jimi. Jimi Allen: Yeah. Thanks. Diane Moca: And thank you for joining us for this edition of the Creator Economy Entrepreneur Learning Series. For Talking Cities, I'm Diane Moca.