subsidized funding for employment. the new program with the mayor's office and invest in neighborhoods. the sf shine programs and do facade improvements. encourage businesses that might have low wage workers to encourage them to use either -- currency sf is to inventivize employees not to use check cashing entities to check their cash but maybe provide like a credit card that they replenish with their wages, and then any other sort of current programs or initiatives that we may have. in your packet i also provided -- we recently launched license 123

which allows a business to go on to our website. we offer our services monday through friday eight to five in city hall so there are people that are working and may not be able to access our services during that time so we launched license 123 to provide businesses with an overview what it maybe to licensing and permitting regulations so i just did a profile on a pizza shop and somebody wanted to open it and what it may involve in terms of the key licenses and permits, and as can you see there is a listing. some things we have listed as optional so under the department of public health you might -- you have the health department permit, but if they wanted to be a piss realia cooked on the inside and just a

window and served then that is a take out,, so that maybe a different department of public health food establishment permit so that's why under item eight it's optional. if they were a pizza shop and had out door dining in the back and wanted speakers and music they need to get an out door loud speaker permit and of course if they were a pizza rhea and sell the dough they might need a weights and measures permit if they're selling by the ounce so we hear what the business model is. we have a conversation with them and then really tailor what are the licenses and permits that they may need based upon their business model. and as you can see the fee from all the state

-- from the local and the state level and federal level if they were to engage in all those activities could range between $18,492 to $20,046. so i think you heard from our previous service providers about the cost of doing business, and that that is definitely a barrier. a couple things that i also wanted to note that our office worked with la cocina right after we opened and that is san francisco has sf car and so as a means for individuals who are not able to get a drivers license or a government issued id and so the state board of equalization had an internal memo that said it would accept sf card to be able

to obtain a seller's permit but they were having difficulty in getting the local office to be able to recognize that, and so with our office we were able to call the state board of equalization and be able to talk to betty yee's office and with that she reissued that memo to the local office, so that that would no longer be a barrier for those individuals being able to obtain their seller's permit, and then if there are some policy recommendations in addition beyond -- excuse me, first i want to talk about people's credit, and understanding their financing. we do have individuals that not only -- for those that are low

income and navigating their financing and being able to understand their credit score and really understanding that. i think it's a conversation that we really need to be having in our schools starting in junior high. to do you manage your money? what does it mean for the future? and if we're going to talk about womens' empowerment women tend to be more likely to be able to loan money, to be able to share money, to keep the family floating, so sometimes their credit gets maybe a little affected because of that, and with the lack of understanding of what it may mean, so i do -- i don't think we do enough of educating about financial management, and what credit may mean to individuals in the future, and then secondly we do -- with the presidential election was

conversation with student loans and what does that debt mean and we also see this at our office in terms of individuals with student loans and what does it mean in being able to access capital? so i think those are just two kind of points that i wanted to identify with some of the things that we have seen in our office, and i know that it's kind of getting late so i will take any questions that you may have about our office and our role in partnering with our organizations that you have heard from tonight. >> any commissioner questions? commissioner shorter. >> sure. i have a question. regina thank you very much. very thorough and very much appreciate all that the small business assistance center in your department d a couple

questions. it's really related to your overall theme of presentations this evening. there is a presumption that many of the businesses will seek to become brick and mortar, and have the shop and certainly all of the necessary tools that go along with it, transportation, vehicles, that sort of thing. but one thing that i am not hearing much about, and maybe it's the nature of these businesses because we're talking about women in business, small business, is e commerce, and how that is being integrated into these businesses and how when one starts a business in san francisco, and you have an online component, or if your business is purely online driven are there particular -- i don't

see anything that really suggests sort of a 3.0 world of business online. >> right. and what i would say is that yes we do see businesses that come into our office that are planning be virtual businesses so we do advise them on what is required their business registration. they may need a seller's permit. are they dealing with exporting /importing things so we tailor the counsel to that. i would say that the requirements are much smaller -- the heavy licensing requirements around and costs are around the brick and mortar . so we do -- i think most businesses it's almost for those that deal in any kind of commerce having an on site -- an online to be be able to

exchange money is something that most businesses have. while we as government may not be able to say these are the best types of means of business able to take payments and how do handle that, that's kind of where we might defer to there are classes at the sba that provide that kind of information, but we can't do that kind of advisement but to point them in the direction for them to get that information to figure it out. >> thank you. >> any other questions? comments? >> i had a comment. i really commend you working with the elected officialos the state level to overcome particular problems with the government id and the permitting process so i encourage that in anything that we could do because although we're not overtly political we do in our individual capacities have access to our elected

officials at the state level and federal level so thank you. >> and i will definitely keep that in mind. >> any other? okay. great. before we head on to the next section do we have public comment on starting your business, a, under new business ? and public comment -- oh are you presenting or public comment? >> (inaudible). >> presenting. pardon me then. would you like to close public comment? anyone want to make public comment? seeing none public comment is closed. next section. >> commissioners we're on section b, financing your business and we're starting off number one. san francisco resolving fund by working

solutions. kelly lovien director of operations.

. >> good evening everybody. my powerpoint is somewhere in an email so i'm just going to present what i have to you today, so thank you regina and the office of small business, the small business commission and the department on the status of women for this opportunity to speak to you today. i am kelly and i am with working solutions and we provide loans to entrepreneurs who are ineligible for bank financing. our mission is to serve low income women, minority

entrepreneurs who are lacking the access to conventional financing. a little bit about the terms of our loan. we offer loans from 5,000 to 25,000 to start a business and 5,000 to 50,000 to existing bs businesses. loans have a typically five year term. it's a fixed interest rate between four and 6% to businesses that are through our san francisco resolving loan fund loan pool and to our creating jobs. otherwise it's an interest rate of eight to 10%. we have minimal fees. 50-dollar application fee. 5% loan closing fees and additional fees for pulling credits, late payments and returned checks but what makes the program unique and contracts to the 98% repayment rate is working solutions provides up to five

years of post loan business coaching and advising to every entrepreneur in our loan portfolio. this means that every entrepreneur that receives a loan from us must meet with our director of business services quarterly the length of the loan to review their financials, go over their marketing, talk to them about any legal issues they maybe having, any hiring issues they're having, basically anything that is on their mind or making them struggle through day to day business operations. we also provide workshops on topics that are pertinent to them at that time so they're ad hoc workshops. i know regina hosted a workshop on ada compliance issues. we've done a lot for hiring like i said, hr like i said, marketing and one thing that's been really great we had a lot of legal

assistance, so i think upwards of 50 of our micro loan borrows have received legal assistance pro bono. we also provide access to capital workshops so they can learn about equity financing, government subsidies and the rest. we also provide opportunities to promote their business such as grand opening events with mayor lee and his staff, our annual holiday gift fair and social media. finally as you know working solutions is san francisco working intermediary and title nine funding and other funding and soma stabilization funds and general funds. 49 loans approved or funded today or 33% of our loan portfolio have come from these pool of funds.

that's 1.32 millions to small businesses and average size of 25,000. districts include every district except one and four. to date our impact stretches over the entire bay area. we made 3.6 billion to small businesses and like i said we have 98% repayment rate. we have seen the borrowing leverage 3.6 million which means that the loan we provide them makes them eligible for funding from banks, other nonprofits and credit unions and the rest. 21 businesses have graduated to conventional financing. 65 new businesses have been created and 80 have been able to expand and 8400 entrepreneurs have been educated to date and 1200 have received resource referrals.

63% of our women entrepreneurs are women. about 40% are minority and 63% are low income. now i want to talk to you about women entrepreneurs in san francisco and these statistics really impress me when i looked at these today. 53 loans to date have been to women business owners in san francisco. now, think about that. we provide loans to businesses in all nine bay area counties. 145 loans to date. 53 of those loans have been to women owners in san francisco. that's 1.3 million lent and average loan size listed here. 164 jobs have been create friday this. of these. >> >> we have loans to majorities and the hispanic population and

as well as as these other populations and our staff is fluent in spanish and chinese and different dialect of chinese. different businesses include clothing consiemment centers, tatoo steed studios and restaurants and coffee shops and basically anything you can think of we have it in our loan portfolio. in fact at our loan committees i am always shocked to see what kind of ideas people are coming up with. okay. let's see here. now i want to talk about barriers faced by women entrepreneurs. so i met with my colleagues earlier and she does coaching and veases advising and this is what we

said are the biggest obstacles faced by the entrepreneurs. obviously a work life balance as many women professionals now -- this is a huge challenge. second thing is cost of living. as my colleagues already mention the cost of living in san francisco, the cost of operating a business in san francisco is very high. the next things i want to mention is status of citizenship. with working solutions we had to turn down entrepreneurs who didn't qualify in terms of citizenship status. the next thing i want to that talk about is affordable space. a number of businesses are approved but not funded because of losing space or not able to find an amenable space for their business. another thing that i wanted to mention that i didn't put on her are child care

services. that has come up quite a bit recently. in terms of post and business monitoring some of the challenges our entrepreneurs are face ago so these are people that have obtained a loan and operating their business and these are the struggles they're facing. the biggest one hands down is financial management. keeping a close and careful eye on overall finances of the business. this proves to be challenging. a lot of times is because the people that come to us they're extremely passionate about their product. they have been a barita for nine years and want to open up their own shop in their neighborhood and provide loans to the community and one thing not in the minds are profit margins. and time management of course. speed of growth which si think is really

interesting to point out. not going fast enough and generating enough take home pay. i talked to people in our pole folio who aren't able to take home enough to make ends meet and most of the time it's because of high costs and like i said cost of operating a business in san francisco. so some policy implications. this is something that working solutions is working on. we're putting together our step ahead loan program and this is a loan program for immigrant businesses, more cash base businesses, really our sweet spot mission clients, individuals that need the cash but don't necessarily meet all of our criteria. the loans are 5,000 to 10,000 and what we're

really looking at here is just six months of bank statements. the other thing that i could recommend to the city is financial management programs including the women business centers and additional technical assistance training. one thing that i have seen makes or breaks women entrepreneurs that come to our program is those that have been previously through the womens' initiative program or the renaissance program or the la cocina program, sf made or other partners that we work with. i can't tell you how more advanced, more knowledgeable, more holisticically think going their businesses these entrepreneurs are, and the beauty of the technical assistance training that they receive is that they're within this kind of small business network and resource group and support center to where they're telling us about resources instead of us telling them

about resources even. and then i would say cost of living for families. i'm not sure what the city can do about that necessarily but it's something that has come up quite a bit. but i just want to wrap up by saying san francisco really progressive and when we're putting this together it was -- we just kept reiterating how far advance san francisco is compared to other communities in terms of what services they do provide for women, and you know barriers to entry for women are not as high as we would imagine them to be in other communities, so i want to leave it at that. >> great thank you. do we have any questions? commissioner

riley. >> you mentioned earlier that one of the challenges is the status of stsship. can you clarify that? i think if they're legal residents -- >> that's right. >> -- they should be able to borrow money from you. they don't have to be a u.s. citizen; right? >> yeah that's right. they need to be a legalress dent but a lot of the individuals and entrepreneurs that we meet from la cocina don't even that have citizenship status yet. i know many businesses and my colleagues work with don't meet that criteria. >> so it's not citizenship. it's the legal status. thank you. >> commissioner rodriquez. >> yes thank you. i wanted to ask and you might have mentioned this and i missed it earlier but where do you get all of your fund something.

>> good question. so we have been extremely fortunate to work with the city of san francisco through their micro-loan resolving loan program. we're also a cdfi which is funding through the federal department of the treasury and this has been a huge source of funding for us in the last three years we received a $600,000 grant which is flexible for lending and operations. they required 2/3 of the grant be for lending which means $200,000 for operations which is quite a lot. we also received funds from banks and other institutions such as ginetec. we're a sba micro-lender. we recently made our first quiva loan and it

provides working solutions with a $200,000 line of credit. we provide a loan to a entrepreneur. we post it on their website. individual lenders such as yourselves can lends to that business as little as $25. as soon as that business funds working solutions is reimbursed. it provides marketing and exposure to the business and working capital for working solutions. also star bucks and the opportunity finance network has given us lending capital but i want to mention that wells fargo is the organization that initially capitalized our loan fund 2005. >> does the queva and prior loan status like a traditional loan provided to a client? >> that's a good question. i'm not sure but they have to meet our eligibility requirements but that's a good question.

>> okay. >> any other commissioner comments or questions? great thank you very much. you guys do very, very good work. next speaker. >> thank you commissioners. next under financing your business is the u.s. business women owners. we're joined by mark quinn direct director for northern california. >> thank you. >> welcome. >> thank you president adams. nice to address you here. thank you commission. actually i'm privileged to be able to do this. i think it's great to speak to both commissions. i'm a little surprised this is the first occasion that both of you have been meeting because i feel as soo much of what we see in san francisco related to small business relates to small business and women owned

business, so it's surprise this is the first occasion to do it but i'm glad we had the opportunity to do it. i wanted to give you a little context. i decided instead a powerpoint i would like to have a conversation with you and if it's okay with you i am opened to be interrupted in the midst if that works for you all to answer questions. i want to give context around some of the issues that weren't discussed with some of the organizations here. first off i think that the micro-enterprise part of what sba sees and serves all of the organizations here we partner with including the city. all of the organizations do tremendous work in san francisco. i think that the micro-enterprise world of what serves small x business, low income women, and this world is the most exciting part of small business but i want to fill in some of the gaps of other aspects of small business that

weren't covered and the contracting work and work that sba does to get business on the federal side and the state side as well but a little bit of context. i think one of the things that was mentioned president adams mentioned it 38% of businesses are owned by women and it's same nationally and in the state and 30% and 8 million businesses are owned by women. another important part is really the growth in women own said business is twice as fast for businesses in general so we're seeing they're growing faster and start ups and growing. i think another important point to make is about half of the percentage -- about 30% of businesses are owned by women but only