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MOSourceLink seeks to connect with entrepreneurs

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MOSourceLink, a statewide business resource that has been largely dormant for the past 15 years, was kick-started in September with a $1.25 million investment by the University of Missouri System and Missouri Technology Corp.

Part of that investment includes hiring the program’s first-ever director, Alexces Bartley. Her role oversees the operations of Kansas City-based MOSourceLink, helping business-building resources in the university and community more accessible to entrepreneurs. The free program’s aim is to connect aspiring, emerging and established small businesses to a network of nonprofit resource organizations.

The program can be utilized by anyone in southwest Missouri and beyond to start or expand a business, Bartley said. She was in Springfield on Sept. 25 to speak at the Small Business Resource Fair at the Library Center.

Bartley is one of five employed by MOSourceLink, a statewide expansion of KCSourceLink, which has offered similar assistance since 2003. She said Maria Meyers, director of the University of Missouri-Kansas City Innovation Center and vice provost, started SourceLink and KCSourceLink, which has a regional focus on the Kansas City metro. MOSourceLink is housed in the UMKC Innovation Center, and Bartley said its major goal is to increase the visibility and reputation of entrepreneurs of Missouri across the country.

“If we can amplify that voice and show the rest of the state what is happening in all four corners, then we can really amplify the state of Missouri and attract individuals who may want to relocate,” she said.

Bartley moved to Missouri this summer from Stillwater, Oklahoma, where she worked in the Riata Center for Entrepreneurship housed at Oklahoma State University. While there, she was a liaison between entrepreneurs and the support resources available at the university and in the state. She said conversations were starting this year among state officials in Oklahoma about what needed to be done to build up its branding and reputation as an entrepreneurial state. However, she said Missouri seemed to already be at that level with the regional success of KCSourceLink, leading her to pursue the MOSourceLink program director position, which didn’t previously exist.

“We’re being methodical about how we relaunch this into the state,” Bartley said. “We really haven’t had the bandwidth or financial resources to really amplify what we’re doing. Now we do.”

Part of those financial resources comes from MTC, a public-private partnership created by the Missouri General Assembly to promote entrepreneurship and foster growth among new and emerging technology-based companies. MTC receives funding from the state.

Bartley’s role as network builder is to visit all across the state with entrepreneurial service organizations, which she refers to as resource partners. These are nonprofits that are providing some kind of free or low-cost service to small business in Missouri. She said the program has identified 520 and is working with those organizations to find more. It’s free to be in the network, she added.

The next step will be to make sure entrepreneurs know about MOSourceLink through the resource partners.

“Rather than asking those organizations to try and be the primary point of contact and know everything … what we’re asking resource partners to do is to just refer them to MOSourceLink,” she said. “We can make those next-step referrals.”

To be more effective, the program created an online resource navigator tool, Bartley said. Users can access MOSourceLink.com to search by ZIP code, type of business or type of help desired, such as general business planning, financial assistance and human resources. Resource navigators provide the same assistance by phone from 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday through Friday, at (866) 870-6500.

“It should be more effective than a Google search,” she said.

Sarah Mote, marketing director for MOSourceLink, said because the program has been primarily focused on building the network of resource partners at this time, there aren’t many entrepreneurs who have utilized the service yet on a statewide level. As a result, when asked by Springfield Business Journal for some local entrepreneurs who have used MOSourceLink resources, Mote said she hadn’t been given permission by any of them to release contact information by press time.

While he’s never used the program, Eric Hadley, owner of Got Your Six Coffee Co. LLC, said MOSourceLink would have been beneficial to him in the early days of forming his e-commerce business. The company sells coffee, tea and apparel.

“If it’s up to a high standard, I think it would be a great resource for up-and-coming entrepreneurs,” he said of MOSourceLink.

Hadley leaned on Missouri State University’s Small Business and Technology Development Center, where he took classes in 2016 to learn about nonprofit companies before starting his business in 2017. He had plenty of questions, and said SBTDC staff was great to answer a lot of them. However, he said having a one-source location to make connections for entrepreneurs and service organizations is ideal, as questions continue to crop up.

“I’m still asking questions, I’m still learning,” he said. “It’s a lot to balance.”

In the short term, Bartley said MOSourceLink would be monitoring new businesses launched, jobs created and capital being brought in and developed in the state.

But a long-term economic development goal is to influence out-of-state corporations and companies to take note of entrepreneurs in the state, which could lead them to relocate.

“In conversations that I’ve had, there’s long-term investment in what we’re doing – and not just to say the financial investment, but the powers that be – the University of Missouri System – believes that innovation, entrepreneurship is something that needs to be supported and needs to be focused on,” she said. “If MOSourceLink is the tool to kind of reach across the state, that’s something that they’re invested in and our partners are committed to supporting for the long term.”

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