( ENSPIRE Business ) Suber & Company Expanding Virtual Offices Across The Country
ENSPIRE Contributor: Gabrielle Maya
In 2014, entrepreneur Natasha Suber Petty created and founded Suber & Company (SCO), a company dedicated to advocating for small businesses and economic development in underserved communities. They provide co-work spaces and virtual office services to over 420 businesses in Southern Maryland. SCO is celebrating a milestone of 10 years of excellence, being a beacon of support for minority-owned, woman-owned companies in the region. Starting with 1500 sq. ft. with four exceptional Black women, it has flourished over a decade with 8300 sq. ft. space.
Perry is a Prince George County native who served in the military for 12 years and was a government consultant for 14 years. She launched this company to empower entrepreneurs and foster growth for underrepresented communities. We spoke with Perry about her journey into creating Suber & Company, the membership plan, and the supplier portal. In addition, with resources and training working with Suber & Company, you will discover their office tours and what businesses they have impacted.
Share your entrepreneur story and how Suber & Company came to form.
Like most small businesses that eventually sustain themselves, the concept of what Suber & Company (SCO) is today started three business attempts ago. Suber & Company is really the 4.0 version of my first business, “All Your Type-ical Needs.” I started All Your Type-icaI Needs in 1998 while I was still in college and had an infant son. It was a home-based business that provided myriad secretarial services for students needing papers and dissertations typed, professionals needing assistance with resumes, and small business owners needing forms and marketing materials. In my excitement for my new business, I posted flyers on every campus I could think of in the DC area, and there were MANY schools. It didn’t take long to get responses, but I mistakenly put my home address and personal phone number on the flyers. So naturally, random people began showing up at my home and calling me at all times of the day and night, requesting services. It was terrible.
Shortly after putting all my personal “business in the street,” I discovered a company downtown that offered a virtual business address and phone service for a low monthly payment. I loved the service and made a mental note that someday I wanted to open something similar in areas like my community where these types of services did not exist.
Fast-forward nine years to 2007. I had nearly completed my time as a military reservist, worked my way up from the front desk of a commercial real estate company to managing army training programs, and had begun consulting on federal contracts as an independent contractor with my baby sister through our company, Suber, Dunn & Company. The initial plan was for me to work on the contracting side to build capital so that we could eventually open our first virtual office location.
In 2011, my baby sister was diagnosed with a sporadic and aggressive form of cancer and passed in January 2012. Because our organizational agreement did not address what would happen if one of us passed, I had to dissolve the Suber, Dunn & Company and honestly had no desire to continue business without my sister. But God, right?
Every W-2 position I took in the following year ended within weeks or a few months due to contracts not being renewed. Finally, when God saw that I was truly determined not to go back into business alone, I and all but one of my teammates were terminated from my last role. At that point, I could only laugh and surrender to God’s will. This is one of those few times when my direction was very clear.
I initially resumed business by partnering with a former colleague of mine. We formed Darkwood, LLC in February 2013 and began consulting on government contracts. Once I had enough funds to open the first virtual office location, my partner and I decided to split in October 2013 amicably. At that point, I started Suber & Company, which is what it is today. I opened my first location in June 2014 with the help of a cousin and another of my sisters, who manned the office while I worked contracts to fund it until it could sustain itself. In the second year, my current Operations Manager, the extraordinary Sonya Washington, joined the team, and we have been growing ever since.
How do the Suber & Company membership plan perks work?
We created a basic membership plan at the request of several of our members who moved out of the area but still wanted to remain connected to the SCO community. This plan allows access to our member portal, which serves as a platform for our team and members to share resources, post events and training, and communicate and network with hundreds of other small businesses in our community. The plan is only $25 a month and includes access to our virtual offices and meeting rooms with the members rate, two-day passes for the CoWork Lounge, and monthly business credit reporting.
What is the member supplier portal, what is its purpose, and when will it be accessible to members?
Within the newest version of our member portal, to be released in November 2024, we are launching a platform that provides enhanced information and resource-sharing features; an internal and external marketplace for our members; virtual networking and interactive forums; and overall account management for SCO members.
The member portal features a Learning Management System (LMS) module for training videos and direct links to resources to support information and resource sharing. Within the marketplace module, our members can add their services and products to the portal’s store and advertise special deals and discounts specifically for community members. The backbone of the member portal is the member directory, which will allow members to create detailed profile pages, including descriptions of their businesses and discussion forums, and connect directly with one another.
Over the last ten years, our members have organically created their own circles within the SCO community, including government contractors who have teamed up with another to pursue a bid on a government contract, realtors working with home renovation contractors, title companies, or lenders, and even therapists referring patients to one another based on specialties and accepted insurances. The newer version of our member portal will make all members more visible to one another and better support the spirit of collaboration and networking that already exists within the SCO community.
What resources and training do you learn when working with Suber & Company?
Our team and members are our greatest resources. That said, our team leverages our relationships with our local economic development organizations and consistently conducts research to identify and share resources such as small business grants, business training cohorts, and networking events. All of this information is posted in the feed in our current member portal.
While we track and post-training and webinars hosted by our local Small Business Development Center and Chamber of Commerce, we have also offered group sessions to guide members in preparing their set-aside applications for government contracting and registering in vendor portals for larger companies.
I am most excited about a series of training videos we are developing to launch within the LMS tool in our enhanced member portal. We have tapped some of our members to record “need to know” or “how to” videos within their area of expertise. This includes topics from cybersecurity and artificial intelligence for small businesses to the basics such as bookkeeping, HR compliance, and obtaining working capital. However, my favorite is the “lessons learned” series we are developing, in which some of us will share the small and big mistakes we made in our entrepreneurship journey to help those just starting their journey.
Could you explain the purpose of the office tour and how it helps members?
The office tour not only gives prospective members an idea of how our workspaces and services can be utilized for their business, but it also allows our team to learn more about the prospective member’s business and business goals. This helps us identify and recommend the best plan for their business and determine if there are other members who may be a great connection for them.
Often, prospective members come to the office tour believing they need a much higher-priced dedicated space or private office suite. However, more than not, after a good 30 minutes of conversation and seeing the workspaces and flexible options available for our part-time/virtual members, most see the value in starting with a much lower-cost virtual office plan.
Can you name a few examples of businesses impacted by your diversity, inclusion, and community development for underserved individuals and groups?
We love the success stories of our members who are leveraging our services. We have watched minority-woman-owned behavioral health providers start their practices in our offices and grow them into certified clinics with full-time staff within a few years. We have had logisticians start trucking companies as the sole drivers, and they now have regional contracts with Amazon and several drivers. The list goes on. However, our most significant impact was during the COVID-19 pandemic.
It was not until the pandemic that we learned many of our members were not “right on paper.” As the federal and state COVID assistance grants and loans came out, many of our members could not apply because of poor bookkeeping practices, unfiled local and state taxes, incorrect classification of employees, and all the other mistakes that many small business owners make. This is particularly true of the Black-American community that for years has operated ecosystems of business within our neighborhoods via “side hustles” that everyone depended on but were never “official” businesses.
Determined not to let COVID shut us or any of our members down, we began assisting with all the issues mentioned above for a number of our members at no cost. During this time, it was critical that everyone share any resources they actively found or stumbled upon within our SCO community. While most of our members, including ourselves, had to adjust business models to sustain our businesses through and after COVID, we did not lose any members because of COVID.
Since then, we have been more proactive with our start-up members to ensure they are more aware of the best business administration/operations practices at the start. We now offer all our members virtual administrative and management consulting services at affordable rates. Lastly, we continuously enhance our technology tools and create meaningful relationships with local organizations and larger companies to serve our members better.
You are planning to create a network of virtual offices across the country. When and how will this expansion work?
In the coworking industry, it is very common for operators like SCO to partner with larger virtual office providers or coworking lead-generating platforms. We are currently developing an operator portal for small operators that partner with us to provide virtual office services to our members. This would not only give our members access to additional workspaces and the use of business addresses with our partners, but it would enable our partners to enlarge their footprint by leveraging our location, coworking tools, and training for the operator and their members. The goal is to lock in the first ten partner locations by the end of the year!
Suber & Company has offered virtual office services that have supported hundreds of companies. Their impact and 10-year milestone have been because diversity, inclusion, and community development have been the driving force of their mission. Visit https://www.subercompany.com/ for more information on their services and how to schedule time for your growing business.
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