Q. What are the primary functions of the center?

A. The Honolulu Minority Business Enterprise Center tries to increase access to minority business owners. It can be through capital or market expansion. We provide some training and technical experience, a lot of professional counseling. Our focus really is on minority business in order to develop and expand those startups, as well as those looking to expand from medium to large businesses.

Q. Are there fees associated with the service provided by the center?

A. People can just give us a call. We're housed at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa, Shidler College of Business, which is a benefit to the extent that we can use the resources here to assist our minority business clients. There is no membership, there is no fee to give us a call and to discuss how to expand, how to get financing. We do help a lot of those businesses wanting to do some job-costing or even get some procurement contracts with the federal government.

Q. There are a lot of agencies that offer assistance to small business. Is there an advantage to going to the center?

A. I believe there is, to the extent that we have the partners here that can assist us. One that we operate under is the Pacific Business Center, and its whole purpose is to assist and create business enterprise. So we use them as well as many of the university faculty to provide the kind of expertise that many of these minority business owners need, which is business plan assistance, job-costing, cash flow analysis, bonding requirements.

Q. How long has the center been in existence and how many people has it helped?

A. We are on our third year. We have assisted clients with regards to financing, bonding or revenue, roughly about $46 million in the 2005-06 year. I was fortunate that I was coming into a center where the federal funder considered us to be performing at an "outstanding rating" so that shows kind of what is available, the opportunities that the minority business enterprises can access through our organization.

Q. Your background is as a loan officer and in banking. What led you to the Minority Business Enterprise Center?

A. What really brought me to the business development side was I was doing business banking in San Francisco for a bit and part of my volunteer work was sitting on a loan committee for an alternative lender. If a bank cannot finance you, they refer you to an alternative lender, and I was part of a San Francisco group. I got interested in looking at business development on that side because I saw a lot of the startups, a lot of small companies, primarily minority small businesses, that were looking to get financing but got turned away from the local banks. When I moved back to Honolulu, I worked with the Office of Hawaiian Affairs with the Native Hawaiian Revolving Loan Program. We did something very similar in that we provided training and technical assistance as well as access to capital for Native Hawaiians looking to either start up or expand their business. So I've been interested in this type of career for quite some time, and it's a very good segue to go from the Office of Hawaiian Affairs to minority businesses for Hawai'i.

Q. Are you finding that a lot of minority business owners aren't aware of your center?

A. Yes. There are many resources out there that startup companies, or even those that are looking to expand, are not aware of. One of the challenges for us is to try to make sure that we get out in front in the community and make sure they understand that there are resources available to them. Most of the time they tend to walk straight to the bank or they talk to someone to try and find financing. I think for their first step they should call one of these resources to find what's available.

Q. What are your goals?

A. The major goal is to look at the client list and try and find out what we did well. We've had an outstanding performance rating, so one of those challenges will be how to do better. How can we best meet the needs of the minority business community? What kind of opportunities do we see for owners and how to use our expertise to connect with those opportunities?

Q. Are there similarities to what you did at the Office of Hawaiian Affairs and this job?

A. I see a lot of similarities to the extent that there are a lot of business owners or those that are interested in starting their business that are looking for resources. They are not exactly sure where to go and what to ask for. So the initial call tends to be the same: Tell me about your business. What are you looking to do? What's your product? What's your service? What kind of financing needs do you have? Have you put together some type of business plan? I try to strategize with them how to get started and I find that to be the major similarity between the two organizations.

Q. Are you involved in community and volunteer work?

A. I'm currently with a couple of boards; one is the Native Hawaiian Chamber of Commerce and the other would be the Hale Ku'ai Cooperative, and that is a membership of Native Hawaiian producers and crafters. My role is really to translate what they do — the craft, their expertise — into a way that can create sustainable economic opportunities for those producers and crafters. At the Native Hawaiian Chamber my goal is to create awareness, provide mentorship for those up-and-coming businesses, provide a forum for them, and provide some type of mentoring on how to get your product out there into the community and be successful.

Q. Is it tough to balance all of your responsibilities as well as your private life?

A. Like anybody else, you try. Sometimes it doesn't always work out, but you try to balance it as best you can and you try to make time available. My family is just as important as my career and trying to find a way to balance both is always a challenge. But I think I would rather be more busy than have a lot of time on my hands with nothing to do.

Reach Curtis Lum at culum@honoluluadvertiser.com.