Business incubator center on Plant City

Roderick Henderson is a BIC mentor.

JASON TURNER/STAFF

Roderick Henderson is a BIC mentor.

  The Business Incuba­tor Center (BIC) opened in room PEPC 136 on the Plant City Campus in the fall of 2016 in order to bet­ter serve the community and the college. The BIC was first established by six local business owners from vary­ing companies as a sort of entrepreneurship program to help people start their own businesses by offering classes. They met with Dr. Clay, the Plant City Cam­pus President, and he was impressed enough to help them set up a collaboration space on campus so people could meet with business mentors.

  One of the mentors in­volved is Roderick Hender­son who is a business own­er and graduate of HCC. He actually started a business while he was still a student and ran into quite a few is­sues. He had no one to talk to, so he had to learn on his own from any mistakes he made. Now, Hender­son wants to “to help others with issues they may have.” He focuses on what the first three years of a business look like and the issues that arise, such as budgeting and business plans.

  Besides budgets and business plans, the BIC of­fers classes in topics ranging from business conversation, marketing, and business and bank relations. Hender­son stresses that businesses show some kind of growth before going to a bank for more support. Banks like to see “You’ve been in busi­ness and will respect the growth you’re having.” When banks see that a busi­ness has grown from a small idea into something suc­cessful, they are more like­ly to help out. Henderson’s advice to students or others starting a business is to start as a sole proprietorship. He believes it is the easiest, es­pecially for a student work­ing on his or her own. The next step would be to move up to a limited liability cor­poration, or LLC. As a busi­ness gets even bigger, Hen­derson says a business cane become a C-Corp (if there are multiple people in­volved) or an S-Corp (if the person is still alone in own­ership).

  Currently, the BIC focus­es on low budget/income businesses and students just starting out. Henderson says there are three phases that the BIC mainly helps with. The first is the idea phase, which is where he believes most students are. They may not know the context of how they should get started and the goal for them is to plan a budget, set up a business plan, and get the required li­censes.

  The second phase is the startup phase, where the business is getting going. Finally, there is the running phase where things are go­ing well. The classes the BIC offer help in all three phases and the BIC hopes to offer the classes online soon with possible outside licensing from large corpo­rations.

  To contact the BIC, call 813-308-0916 or email them at info@bicofplantc­ity.com. Their website is www.plantcitybic.com and they have information there as well.