Latest / Small Biz Florida / Ep. 413 | How CareerSource Helps Florida Businesses Hire, Train, and Grow

Transcript

Ep. 413 | How CareerSource Helps Florida Businesses Hire, Train, and Grow · Small Biz Florida

• 0:00
  Welcome to Small Biz Florida, your go-to podcast for all things small business in the Sunshine State.
• 0:08
  This podcast is sponsored by Florida First Capital, your trusted partner for financing and support.
• 0:13
  Here, you'll discover the latest news, trends, and invaluable resources to help you grow and succeed.
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  From startup strategies to scaling your business, we've got you covered.
• 0:23
  Join us as we explore the vibrant Florida small business ecosystem
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  and connect you with the experts who can make a real difference.
• 0:31
  And now, please welcome your host, Tom Kindred,
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  Regional Director of the Small Business Development Center at Indian River State College.
• 0:39
  This is Small Biz Florida, the podcast and broadcast that's all things business across the state of Florida.
• 0:48
  And it is hard to believe, but yes, it is that time.
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  It is the annual 2026 Florida SBDC Small Business Success Summit.
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  Always takes place sometime around mid to late August.
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  And it is time again for this incredible gathering of small business owners, operators, entrepreneurs,
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  all gathering here at the Sunseeker Resort in Charlotte Harbor.
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  And it is all about sharing best practices, trainings for small business owners and operators.
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  The room is full of small business owners and operators.
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  The lobby is full of vendors and suppliers who support those entrepreneurs and small business owners.
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  As always, Small Biz Florida is here to cover all that is happening with this incredible gathering to support small business owners and operators.
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  And we have one of those very powerful and valuable organizations that supports small business.
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  We've got with us right now, Anthony Gagliano, who serves as the COO with Career Source Sun Coast.
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  Anthony, thank you for kicking us off here at the 2026 Small Business Success Summit.
• 2:12
  Glad to be here.
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  This is my second one and excited to see it to continue to grow and be a partner and supporter of the small business development centers.
• 2:19
  Nice.
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  As I told you before, we hit the record button here.
• 2:24
  I love to talk to, talk about the Career Source program across the state of Florida.
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  Very valuable, very powerful resource for small business owners and operators.
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  But let's start, as we always do, just a little bit of your background pathway to your current role as COO of Career Source Sun Coast.
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  Well, you know, again, I'm a USF graduate, so I appreciate the opportunity to always go Bulls, represent USF.
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  And so, you know, I got a degree in journalism there and we had moved away and kind of came back to the greater Tampa Bay area and Bradenton Manatee.
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  And then in recession 2009, we just bought a house and I got laid off.
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  And so Career Source was kind of that first place to turn there.
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  And so I wasn't sure where this would take me as a career.
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  But here we are 17 years later and just love our mission because we are around all things employment and training.
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  And so that allows us to get involved with job seekers and businesses and education and government and just anybody who is interested in Manatee and Sarasota when it comes to, you know, education and training.
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  Yeah, incredible resource.
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  Let's let's talk a little bit about Career Source itself.
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  Give us the high level overview of Career Source.
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  I know there's multiple regions across the state of Florida, but give us a little bit of a high level mission purpose behind Career Source Florida.
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  So big picture, you've got Department of Labor, you know, setting policy around employment and training for the whole country.
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  Each state has its own state level entity.
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  We're very fortunate in our partners at Career Source Florida who are helping sponsor this event, working with us on initiatives and setting policy.
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  But then there are 21 local boards covering all the counties across Florida.
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  We serve Manatee and Sarasota here on the west coast of Florida.
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  And so, again, I love our mission is so broad when it comes to employment and training.
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  And so just the ability to be able to help lots of people in terms of what are the needs of our community and tailor our services to what businesses and the community are telling us that they need to be able to provide some resources, whether that's training dollars, job fairs.
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  Or, again, on the entrepreneur and small business side, looking at what can we do around education and support.
• 4:33
  Nice.
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  Talk to us a little bit about your local program.
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  What initiatives is your region involved in?
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  And I heard you say you do kind of partner with USF, the SBDC at USF.
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  Talk a little bit about that partnership and your initiatives.
• 4:52
  Sure.
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  I'm very fortunate.
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  I've gotten to be on the advisory there for, I think, three years now.
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  But our partnership with them goes way back.
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  You know, we've been involved with the Community Entrepreneur Opportunity.
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  Our CEO program was started by the city of Sarasota and Comerica Bank more than 15 years ago at this point.
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  And so it was just kind of a 10-week boot camp.
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  How do we get, you know, individuals in our community who want to start that small business, have that idea?
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  Or maybe they've just gotten started, but feel like there's more that they want to be able to learn, whether that's the marketing, the pricing, you know, strategies around running a small business.
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  And so first we were just kind of that fiscal agent.
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  And then over time we were kind of like, we really love this program.
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  If we could take it on more than just the fiscal side, we could run as many cohorts as we can get.
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  So now we do three cohorts a year of the CEO program.
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  We have an intermediary 10 weeks.
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  On top of that, we've brought in online curriculum from the Kauffman Foundation so that in between, you know, those weekly classes, we're able to give those entrepreneurs something to work on, some homework to be able to continue to flesh out that idea and be able to see, do I really have something viable here that I can turn into a business or at least, you know, a side income?
• 5:56
  And you make an excellent point there too.
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  It really is for an entrepreneur, not all ideas are business opportunities.
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  Is that a fair statement?
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  Absolutely.
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  Right.
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  We see, you know, we'll start, this class started with 77, you know, here in the beginning of August and our last class just graduated with 43.
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  So many of those people, right, over those 10 weeks are going to realize, you know, we did a study in 2022, right, that is there capital here, right, to be able to make this idea?
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  Can I grow this idea?
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  What does the market competition look like?
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  So we're trying to give them the basics in 10 weeks and many of them will figure out maybe this is just too hard or maybe the idea isn't right for me right now kind of thing and not get all the way to the end.
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  And for us, that's a win too.
• 6:39
  Yeah.
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  And, you know, it makes an awful lot of sense, obviously, for the SBDC, Small Business Development Center, to be involved in that.
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  That's our wheelhouse.
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  Again, pretty innovative for a career source to be involved in that.
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  You're normally kind of at the end of this process, right, in the employment part of it.
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  How do you, you know, find your way into an entrepreneurship program?
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  I mean, a lot of the times, right, like you said, when I started 17 years ago, right, it was, yeah, we help people get jobs.
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  But realizing that sometimes the best job is the one you make yourselves, right?
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  You know, my dad was an entrepreneur starting his own painting business.
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  And I wish you to take advantage of resources like SBDC, right?
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  You know, knowing that these things are out there to be able to help you is real beneficial.
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  So, like I said, our team, you know, when we finally had the expertise to be able to teach it in-house and then make sure that we have the great partnerships like SBDC or SCORE or other partners in the community, financial institutions, so that our entrepreneurs know where to go after 10 weeks.
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  And, you know, a big part of this business planning process and vetting the idea is, of course, understanding what does my human capital look like?
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  How many people am I going to need to run this business?
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  How many people will I need if I need to scale this business?
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  Is that a valid question that, and again, that CareerSource can help those entrepreneurs answer?
• 7:59
  Absolutely, right?
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  Again, you know, we want them to know, hey, there is a free resource right here, whether it's job fairs, job postings, when you need talent to be able to do it, taking advantage of those training grants.
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  I'm really excited.
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  I've got a session on Wednesday with some of the consultants around the SBDC centers of the state to try and further that relationship across all nine SBDC regions, all 21 CareerSource regions, to make sure that those small business owners and entrepreneurs who are using SBDC services know how to tap into the CareerSource network when they're ready.
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  And talk about some of the other value-add services.
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  I know for our region, CareerSource Research Coast, there's on-the-job training grants.
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  There is some apprenticeship connection for manufacturing.
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  Talk a little bit about those other programs that are offered through CareerSource.
• 8:46
  Excellent.
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  I'm glad you mentioned apprenticeship.
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  We became an apprenticeship sponsor for our largest manufacturer way back in 2018 because they weren't sure how to navigate that process with Department of Education and how to get a program registered.
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  And so we're like, you know, those are partners for ours.
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  We can certainly help to do that.
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  We now have, we just worked with Sarasota County on a wastewater treatment one.
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  So that's our eighth different, ninth different occupation, sorry, with six different companies when it comes to apprenticeship.
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  But we also, again, those training grants can help offset those costs.
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  So helping you create something new or join an existing program.
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  But then there's those training grants, whether it's somebody new you're bringing on, like on the job training, as you mentioned, or just looking at those incumbent workers and how do you skill them up?
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  You know, some apprenticeship can do that, but also we can do that as a customized basis, depending on the industry and the need of the employer.
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  You know, you can't have a meeting and we'll see if it's the same on the West Coast.
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  I really can't have a meeting on the East Coast with small business owners, operators, manufacturers.
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  Can't have a meeting without, obviously, someone questioning, how do I find good talent?
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  You know, how can I tap into a talent pipeline?
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  What is, do you see that on the West Coast, first question?
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  And what's your response as a career source to those folks that are struggling to find that workforce?
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  Certainly, we hear that all the time, right?
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  And one of those things we're doing is our summer youth program.
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  I was just looking at our partners, you know, up and down the West Coast in our planning area.
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  They're trying to gather the number of teens that we all supported.
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  And it's, you know, well over 700 here just in the summer where, again, for us, it's starting as young as 14 and 15, putting those kids on our payroll and finding employers willing to take them to get that work experience, to build up those skills.
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  So when they're ready for a full-time employment, they're there.
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  But certainly, again, we talk a lot about apprenticeship as a way to grow your own model.
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  So how do you develop talent internally yourself?
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  Education, right?
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  We do a lot of scholarships.
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  So working with our schools to make sure the technical talent is there that our employers need as well.
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  And again, we offer some free online self-paced courses through a company called Metrics.
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  So again, as we hear some of those soft skill things or maybe building up those basic technology skills, we want job seekers to know that they're, and employers for their existing employees, that there's a resource they can tap into us for as well.
• 11:06
  Wow.
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  Again, always been impressed with CareerSource and all that you offer.
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  And it sounds like CareerSource, Suncoast, even more innovative, getting involved in that, you know, that entrepreneurial pathway.
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  You talked earlier, too, about one of the tools that you use in that Community Entrepreneurship Opportunity Program is the Lean Model Canvas.
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  Did I catch that right?
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  The Business Model Canvas.
• 11:32
  Yeah, absolutely.
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  Talk a little bit about that tool and how you use that.
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  Right.
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  And again, just trying to be able to help those businesses be able to look at, like you say, what are the basics they need to be able to operate their business?
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  Is the market there?
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  Where am I going to get the capital from?
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  You know, just trying more of that thought out planning, right?
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  So that they feel like when they're ready to present themselves, you know, in front of a bank or in front of friends when they're asking for that capital, right?
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  To be able to, when they're in front of that first client, that they have a great plan ready to go and that people can understand their pitch, right?
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  We do a, you know, after the end of the 10 weeks, we ask businesses to give us our pitch kind of thing, 30 seconds at graduation.
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  And we're really appreciative of sponsors like the City of Sarasota who sponsor the program so that there's no cost to the businesses to participate.
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  And then the Greater Sarasota Chamber of Commerce offers them a free year membership.
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  So hopefully giving them that starting point to be able to go out there and network and hit the ground running.
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  Very nice.
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  It is Anthony Gagliano who serves as the COO with CareerSource Suncoast.
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  Anthony, how does one find CareerSource Suncoast?
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  CareerSourceSuncoast.com.
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  We're also starting to gear up Global Entrepreneurship Week in November.
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  We're going to have our sixth annual event.
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  We call it our e-rising conference.
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  So again, trying to, last year we brought in that ecosystem around entrepreneurship.
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  So we had speakers who'd gone through an SBDC program, gone through our CEO panel, gone through, had a SCORE mentor to be able to talk about what that's like.
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  And this year we're really excited for our sixth event on November the 18th.
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  We'll be streaming it live if you can't come see us in Sarasota.
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  Just talking about how do you make that lasting impact.
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  So we want to see those businesses who beat the curve and are here with us 5, 10, 15 years down the road.
• 13:13
  Wow. You guys are doing some incredible work in the area of entrepreneurship and small business support and always have.
• 13:20
  Always been very appreciative of the partnership and the program through CareerSource.
• 13:26
  And I guess you mentioned, was it 21 workforce development boards?
• 13:33
  Yep.
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  So again,
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  So everyone has access to this same kinds of support, right?
• 13:37
  Absolutely. State of Florida, we're all CareerSource Suncoast.
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  And again, there's a workforce board like us anywhere in the country for all your listeners, you know, tapping in and wherever they may be.
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  There's a local workforce board ready and willing to help.
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  So thanks for the opportunity to talk about it on the podcast.
• 13:51
  Absolutely.
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  Anthony, thank you.
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  Again, Anthony Gagliano, who's kicking us off here at the 2026 Annual Small Business Success Summit, all brought to you by the Florida SBDC Network.
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  Anthony, thank you for the great work you do.
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  Thank you for your support of Florida's small business community.
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  Thank you for the partnership with the SBDC.
• 14:14
  My pleasure, Tom.
• 14:15
  Absolutely.
• 14:16
  This is Small Biz Florida.
• 14:19
  I am Tom Kindred, your host, and it is all about small business and entrepreneurship here at the 2026 Annual Small Business Success Summit,
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  all taking place at the beautiful Sunseeker Resort in Charlotte Harbor.
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  Stay tuned.
• 14:33
  A whole lot more to come over the next two days.
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  Stay tuned.
• 14:38
  This is Small Biz Florida.
• 14:41
  That's all for this episode of Small Biz Florida.
• 14:44
  We hope you found valuable insights and inspiration to fuel your entrepreneurial journey.
• 14:48
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• 14:55
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• 14:57
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• 14:59
  So follow us for exclusive content and connect with fellow Florida small business owners.
• 15:04
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• 15:12
  That's floridasbdc.org forward slash podcast.
• 15:16
  Until then, keep innovating and keep growing.
• 15:18
  Thanks for listening.
• 15:20
  We'll see you next time.