University of La Verne SBDC Small Biz Blog

Wicked Bionic, LLC.  www.WickedBionic.com Dana Arnett is the Co-CEO of Wicked Bionic, a multicultural marketing and advertising agency in Los Angeles California. Wicked Bionic was established in 2015 and began to engage in government contracting about 2 years ago starting with the City of Los Angeles.  Looking to expand her business, Dana attended a presentation on government contracting from University of La Verne SBDC consultant Rene Cota. “I looked at him on Zoom and said ‘that’s the guy I want to work with -  the amount of knowledge he had, blew me away,’” Dana said, describing Rene's knowledge and experience with helping small businesses in the government contracting space.   Wicked Bionic dabbled in writing a few proposals a quarter but wanted to expand into contracting with the state and federal government. Dana felt overwhelmed writing each proposal from scratch with all the information and research involved and couldn’t keep up with the opportunities they fo...

by Joshua Botello Disclaimer: This is not legal advice and is for educational purposes only. If you need help starting a Cottage food operation please consult with an advisor here .  Starting a cottage food business may seem easy to start but you may get in trouble by not understanding the law. The cottage food law in California was passed in 2013 and opened up home bakers to start without the need for a commercial kitchen. There are still many different steps you need to know before you launch. So, in this video, I’ll break down what you need to start your next cottage food small business to see if it is right for you. Business Concept If you are looking to start your own home-based cottage food business you need to understand what you can and can’t make according to the law. If you don’t follow these rules then you will be denied permits to sell anything and could be shut down and unable to operate. According to the law , there are approved foods that can be made and sold from yo...

By Joshua Botello Starting a business is difficult for owners who need to get all the tools together to run their business smoothly. Small business owners who are just starting may not even know these tools that exist that make their lives much easier and more productive. In this video, is a list of 15 small business apps small businesses need to be using right now. Many of these apps are ones we use here on a daily basis for our own office. Many are free apps with optional upgrades so you can try without any limitations on what you can do if you don’t need a lot of bells and whistles. Most of these apps can be run on mobile phones for ultimate remote connectivity. So let’s get into the list. Office Programs - Google Docs & Gmail (Free with an upgrade to Google Workspace Starting at $6/mo) When you are just starting your business you want to make sure you have the basics down and office software is first on the list. A program like Microsoft 365 is expensive and open office is pr...