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...

Unspoken Language Services, Inc. https://www.unspokenasl.com Amanda Martin is the President and CEO of Unspoken Language Services, an American Sign Language (ASL) interpreting service agency that provides onsite and virtual ASL interpretation for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing community. Amanda started the business as a sole proprietor, solely interpreting for as many deaf individuals as possible. After working full-time as an ASL interpreter, she thought, “how can I help more deaf people on a greater scale?” With what seemed impossible, she soon transitioned her sole prop to a corporation. Amanda described her business journey, “I took the unbelievable leap of faith and took a risk. I quit my full-time job, started Unspoken, and I haven’t looked back since. I began sharing our mission with more and more interpreters, who wanted to join a company with the same values and passion as them within the industry. Our primary focus at Unspoken is supplying effective communication to an under...

Photo by  Kelly Sikkema  on  Unsplash by Joshua Botello Getting small business certifications has been a way for disadvantaged businesses to get a leg up on the ever-competitive market. These are the most common small business certifications you are going to find. They definitely offer an advantage in the marketplace, so here is some background on what these programs are about and what you’re going to need. Photo by  Hannah Skelly  on  Unsplash Service-Disabled/Veteran-Owned Small Business (SDVOSB/VOSB) The Veteran-Owned Small Business certification is a federal certification through the Department of Veterans Affairs. This particular program is not what is known as a set-aside, the government does not allocate a specific amount of contracts to VOSBs. What this certification offers is a spending goal of all contracts at 3% of total spending. Now, this might sound small, but in fact, amounts to $40 billion in contracts annually. T...