- April 16, 2024
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Business Assistance Center’s Joe Roy believes in the little guy.
Joe Roy
Age: 66
Family: He and his wife Judy have been married 44 years; four kids; nine grandkids
Occupation: Palm Coast Business Assistance Center Area Manager / UCF’s Small Business Development Manager
Quirky fact: He once turned down a tryout for the Dallas Cowboys, offered to him through his college basketball coach.
Since its opening in May, the Palm Coast Business Assistance Center estimates that it has created/retained 19 jobs, added $645,000 in salaries to Flagler’s economy and helped start six businesses.
To Area Manager Joe Roy, however, those numbers are chump change, considering the BAC has yet to realize even its basic identity.
“The BAC is an infant,” Roy said. “And as far as I know, there are no business assistance centers (like it) anywhere.”
Technically, the center is a place where residents can come for free business consulting, whether to build a company from scratch, tweak a plan or change focus. It’s also in partnership with the University of Central Florida’s Small Business Development Center which, like the BAC, is a one-man show run by Roy, created when Palm Coast contracted with the university.
So Roy works for UCF. But, he is the BAC. The lines separating the two are blurry and unimportant, he says: “It’s less about the name, and it’s more about what it has the potential to become.”
Through tactical assistance (helping with permitting, technicalities, etc.), Roy hopes to expand the BAC.
“Prior to the business center coming in, there was no cohesive growth strategy encompassing existing and new businesses,” he said.
So that’s what he wants to create.
Bunnell and Flagler Beach have already signed on, he said. Next is to get organizations like SCORE, the Center for Business Excellence and the Flagler County Chamber of Commerce & Affiliates more involved, then analyze, down to the dollar, what each entity contributes.
Then Roy plans to mine Flagler’s retirement community for talent.
Some may see the BAC as working in opposition to the county’s new Economic Opportunity Advisory Council, but not Roy. He wants everyone involved. The center is a “virtual organization,” he says, which means it’s a fluid network, not a set-in-stone infrastructure.
The more third parties to participate, the more data, research and experience Roy, who plays consultant/middleman in all this, would have at his disposal.
To Roy, it’s simple: Flagler has resources. Use them.
“You get far better use of your tax dollars by growing locally,” he said. “When you spend a dollar, you’re getting something back.”
One aspect of his strategy is to help create health plans for small businesses. Others include loan-assistance options, extending Small Business Saturdays, launching “buy local” campaigns, making a registry and creating a charity into which residents can fund business loans.
“What we’re trying to do is get the community to understand the importance of small businesses for national growth,” Roy said. “If you can get residents to transplant 10% of what they spend (annually) in a big box to locals, you can add $200 million to the community.”
He said it costs 10 times more to attract a new client than to keep an existing one. But according to local business consultant Tom Hellman, Roy goes the extra mile for his clients not because it pays, but because he wants to help.
“That’s one of the areas that make Joe suited particularly well for his role at the BAC,” Hellman said. “He’s viewed by most of his clients as being sort of a business partner. … He gives a full complement of support.”
Charlene Binder, who’s known Roy since 1987 when he hired her at Unilever, agrees. She was in her 20s and single when she started for him, and she says Roy took her under his wing. Eventually, she began going to church with his family and would spend holidays with them. Roy pushed her to focus more on her personal life.
But that sort of treatment wasn’t unique to her, she says, adding that Roy changed the way Unilever factories operated. He “broke up the hierarchy paradigm,” she said, where only senior workers were given the power to offer input or make decisions.
“It was all about empowerment,” Binder said, “and empowerment wasn’t even a word in 1990.”
She tells the story of an employee with a drinking problem, who got and stayed sober after Roy offered him a second chance.
“If it hadn’t been for Joe, he wouldn’t have had the life he had,” Binder said. “Joe believes in people.”
It’s a theme heard often while meeting with BAC clients, like the Dudkewics, of E’lan Hair Studio, or Mercer and Ross, of the Sweets Boutique. When they speak of Roy, they don’t speak of some bureaucratic pencil-pusher who helped them clear a few permits. They speak of their buddy, Joe, who emailed every day for updates and “held their hand,” especially when they felt terrified or lost.
Roy sees himself as a coach. “I like to think I can sell hope,” he says, “hope in them, belief in what they’re trying to do, encouragement not to lose their dream.”
Roy has managed 2,000 people in factories. In 1992, he ran a plant that was named the best in America in Industry Week Magazine. He served in Vietnam, ran his own company and is an adjunct professor.
But to his clients, credentials likely seem secondary. When they come in, filled with determination and anxiety, they find more comfort in the understanding in his eyes than the diploma on his wall.
“What we have today is not really what (the city) conceived,” Roy said, smirking, like he’s getting away with something. “And that’s a good thing.”
The BAC started simply, but he has bigger plans. Currently, only 40 clients are on the BAC roster, out of 4,000 small businesses in Flagler. Since opening, Roy says, the center has had contact with just about 3% of all companies.
And even though he estimates that $40 are generated from every dollar he is paid, to him those results are marginal.
He’s ready to redevelop.
“In business, you go do something. You don’t just talk about it. And if it doesn’t work, you change it, and then you do something again,” he said. “Innovation comes from … doing things differently than how they were done before.”
