Business Advisor, City of Santa Monica

>> So my name is Moises Cisneros, and I am a business advisor for the City of Santa Monica and the Santa Monica College. And they have an agency that's a public-private partnership between the federal government, the city, and the college and it's the Santa Monica Small Business Development Center. I actually have a retainer with them. I'm actually a consultant and I've been retained by them now for two years plus. And as part of the business advice that I provide, I focus on international trade advice for startup companies, as well as for companies that are experiencing exponential growth, and so they're going to make growing pains. So we provide them a way to navigate all those different situations that a lot of CEOs really don't want to deal with. These are things that -- they know their product, they know their service, but all these other things -- the back-office operations, the dealing with the legal aspects, or dealing with human resources -- all those areas, that's where we come in and we provide that service. We get companies from all types of different industries visiting us. So, for example, one of our clients is a young lady who had this idea to develop a certain type of yoga mat. She was very disheartened by the designs that were out there at this point, and she said, "You know, I want to bring some color and splash," and she created a company called Affirmat. And they're affirmations emblazoned or imprinted onto the yoga mats. And we helped her to source the company overseas that would produce these. We helped them to figure out what the duties would be, the tariffs, understand the transportation and shipping process, how to choose the appropriate customs broker to pass U.S. customs. And then, once here, we helped them with their marketing and distribution of that product. Before all of this, we also helped her with her projected financials and her business plan strategy. We're really like a real partner. We're a real partner, and the beauty about it, what I really love, is that when we're good, when we're doing what we're supposed to be doing and we're successful, the client comes back to us and they are ecstatic about what we provided for them, and they're very appreciative. I think that's the biggest paycheck: that we're really helping others to succeed and achieve a level that they expect for themselves.