Springfield native offers support to small businesses during pandemic

April 7, 2021 | Carolyn Noel
cnoel@thereminder.com

Springfield native Darrell Byers has helped over 400 small businesses during the pandemic through his company Interise and their program Interise STRONG.
Reminder Publishing submitted photo

SPRINGFIELD – Darrell Byers was born and raised in Springfield. He attended Classical High School and continued his education at schools in both Worcester and Boston. He left the state in the 1980s, but still continues to help businesses both locally and nationwide. Byers is now CEO of the company Interise, which developed Interise STRONG to provide educational programs to small business owners during the pandemic.

Byers was a small business owner himself before he transitioned into nonprofit work. He started his career in Boston working for public media stations WGBH and WBUR, Harvard Graduate School of Education and UMass Boston. Before becoming the CEO of Interise he had leadership roles at Easterseals Bay Area and Earthjustice and was the chief advancement officer at Habitat for Humanity Greater San Francisco.

Now working with Interise in Boston, Byers said that the company is dedicated to helping minority-owned small businesses or businesses located in low-to- moderate income neighborhoods grow. The company has been doing this for 17 years through their StreetWise MBA program.
StreetWise MBA is a seven month program that is administered to small business owners to help them develop growth strategy plans and learn about what it takes to run a business.

“At the end, you have developed a comprehensive three-year growth strategy that you can follow,” said Byers.

With the COVID-19 pandemic, Interise pivoted and grew on the StreetWise MBA program. They developed Interise STRONG, which is a more condensed course that helps small business owners deal with real-time struggles.

“The pandemic really made us pivot. We created a program called Interise STRONG which delivers immediate resources for a company to really help them survive the pandemic and, in some instances, grow during the pandemic,” said Byers. “What’s been great about this program is 99 percent of the businesses that have taken this course have received one or two of the small business Paycheck Protection Program loans. Ninety-nine percent have developed a pivot plan, 20 percent have actually experienced revenue growth, around 25 percent have rehired staff and around 32 percent have actually hired new staff.”

The Interise STRONG program has had 400 participants since it began in April 2020 and there are currently over 200 businesses on the waiting list. Byers said that Interise STRONG has helped businesses in over 84 communities across the country.
As a former small business owner, he said he knew it was important to use the resources he had to help those struggling during the pandemic.

“Let’s face it, starting a business at any time is very difficult, as I can attest to. But black and brown businesses are closing at two times the rate of white businesses and we had to step in. We could not allow this to continue because a small business is part of the community,” he said. “They hire from the community, it helps the community thrive, it builds wealth in the community, so you have all of these stores or businesses shutting down… empty storefronts is not something we want to go back to. So we want to be part of building a community.”

The Interise STRONG program is free for business owners to take. They work with established small businesses who have been in business for two to three years, have an operating budget of $250,000 and have at least two employees. Byers said that many small business owners told him they knew they could count on Interise to help during this time.

“We knew Interise would have something and we came to them immediately and we weren’t disappointed,” Byers said of small business owner’s reactions to Interise STRONG.

Byers said that Interise will continue to help small business owners far beyond when the pandemic ends.

“We see this as part of our mission. We’re about transforming lives and we could not stand still during the pandemic. As we come out of the pandemic into a new normal, that’s going to mean different things for different businesses and we want to be there to continue to help them stabilize or continue to grow,” he said.

Byers also said he plans to visit his hometown of Springfield once the pandemic subsides.

“When this is over, I’ll get back to Western Mass. as often as I can,” he said.

Those interested in learning more about Interise or joining the waitlist for Interise STRONG are encouraged to visit their website at https://interise.org/.

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