Greg Hallman remembers feeling uncertain about where to take his career in 2018. A former teacher, the financial pressures of raising a family were compelling him to consider a different job path ― but he didn’t know where to begin.

“I started reading books and listening to podcasts about how to start a business, and I would try to keep up with what was going on in the entrepreneurial scene in Oklahoma City,” Hallman said. “But it was from the outside, looking in. I was very much a window-shopper, and I didn’t have a seat at the table. I was on the bench, just watching others playing the game of entrepreneurship, but I was itching to get in, and StitchCrew got me in the game.”

StitchCrew, founded in 2017 by Erika Lucas and her husband, Chris Lucas, is an Oklahoma City-based firm dedicated to linking entrepreneurs with resources and networks to further boost their businesses. Among StitchCrew’s earliest projects was the Thunder Launchpad, a business “accelerator” workspace started in partnership with the Oklahoma City Thunder basketball team in 2018.

Hallman, in hopes of landing a spot in the accelerator's inaugural class, decided to pitch an idea he’d thought of during his days as a college career counselor.

Ocupath, as his business became known, grew out of Hallman’s wish to implement AR, or virtual “augmented reality,” as a way of overcoming geographic obstacles for a local high school student interested in job-shadowing marine biologists. As 2018 progressed and the first contracts were inked, Hallman shifted the focus to virtual workplace training, and by Ocupath’s second year, he’d seen a million dollars in revenue.

“Had it not been for StitchCrew, I’d still be on the bench, daydreaming about being in the game, and they showed me a path towards getting government contracts,” Hallman said, remembering how the organization connected him with federal research funding for small businesses. “Networking is the key. It really is who you know.”

Now, this spring, Hallman is joining with StitchCrew again to offer the same type of coaching and networking to metro entrepreneurs who are in a similar position as he was five years ago. The new program, in partnership with the Economic Alliance for Development of Oklahoma City, will focus explicitly on Latino-owned businesses, which StitchCrew founders see as a fast-growing powerhouse in the city.

“I’m Latina myself, and no one needs to tell us to launch businesses — it’s in our nature to do that,” Erika Lucas said. “The challenge is, although we are the fastest-growing segment of people launching businesses, we’re not scaling it above $1 million. So, the whole goal of the program is to help these existing Latino-owned businesses get to that threshold of $1 million, and then teaching them the principles to compound that wealth.”

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Each participant selected for the Latino Accelerator program will receive a $15,000 grant, shared from the Alliance’s allocation of American Rescue Plan Act funding, which the entrepreneur will not be required to pay back. During the 8-week program, participants also will be allowed access to the Thunder Launchpad where they will receive further training and mentorship from local leaders and investors.

The program’s advisory board includes Alberto Abreu, general manager at Oklahoma City’s 21C Museum Hotel; Rich Barnard, CEO of Tio Chuy’s Auto Sales; Laura Blakewell, owner of Red Carpet Car Wash; Hallman, founder of Ocupath; Hallman’s wife, Nancy Soto, president at the Crudoolandia restaurant chain; and Monica Ybarra Weedn, director of legal affairs at TBS Factoring.

Lucas said she requested the group as advisers for the program because of each individual’s successful careers and their longstanding reputations in the city’s Latino community. Several of the new advisory board members expressed a shared respect for StitchCrew and Lucas’ well-known advocacy.

“I knew some of the people that were involved, and I like the mission and the vision, so I was happy to be a part of it,” Barnard said. “As you can imagine, I’ve had opportunities to be on other boards and committees like that, but I’ve also got two young kids and a bunch of other stuff going on, so I have to be selective with things. But this is something that hit home, because it’s something that we felt we could make an impact with in entrepreneurship and understood well, so I think it’s a good fit for me personally.”

“StitchCrew has a very solid history of helping businesses succeed and grow and scale, and with this new focus on Latino businesses specifically, it’s really right up my alley,” Weedn said. “Frankly, I’m not so sure I would’ve been so willing to undertake this role if it hadn’t been StitchCrew, but they’re very reputable and very good at what they do.”

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Primarily concentrated in Oklahoma City’s southwest area, the Latino community is the city’s fastest-growing minority population, representing 21% of total residents in the city. But Lucas said systemic barriers remain in place, making it more difficult for the community to gain access to capital.

“We at StitchCrew just felt like we could play more, and we could build programming geared specifically toward Latinos, because we have the staff on hand and we have the mentors and the investors that look like the entrepreneurs that we want to support,” Lucas said.

Applications for the Latino Accelerator Program open in December, but StitchCrew is also launching a Women’s Health Accelerator, with a similar program specific to female entrepreneurs developing technological and product-based solutions for women’s health needs.

“We look at what’s needed in the community, where we really need to invest, and that’s how these programs have come about,” Lucas said. “It’s grown organically. We identify gaps that we see, we put together the resources, we gather the right stakeholders, and then we build and we learn as we go.”

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For Hallman, who benefited from StitchCrew’s willingness to support him from the start and pivot where needed, he sees his new role as an adviser as his own way of “paying it forward.”

“It’s the simple fact that you’re a part of a community, you’re talking to other people,” Hallman said. “You’re the sum of the five people you spend the most time with, and the advantage of that is, as you start talking with people about things, you hear information that ends up being worth thousands of dollars to you that you wouldn’t have known if you weren’t there to hear that.

“You don’t have to do it all on your own,” Hallman said. “You can lean on other people who’ve been through it. That one simple thing I really got out of my accelerator program was so instrumental in my company’s growth, but had I missed that particular workshop that day, I probably wouldn’t have done it. But it’s just so useful to be around other like-minded people.”

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: New accelerator program launching to boost OKC Latino entrepreneurs