“Today helps. Every day helps,” said Raoul Thomas, Founder & CEO of Milena International, Inc. during a program break May 19th at the Chamber office. “I learn new things to help scale my business every time.” The family-owned business created in 2009 is among the Black and Hispanic owned businesses in the Chamber’s 2024 Cohort of the Minority Business Accelerator. It’s an industrial supply distributor serving the critical infrastructure needs of its clients in commercial and municipal facilities – everything from electrical, mechanical, fluid, hydraulic and pneumatic power supply needs to facility maintenance services.
The May 19th session brought together participants from 2023 and 2024 Cohorts around the topics of communication strategies, public relations, and business development. Asked for an example of what impact, if any, the MBA program has had on his operations and the answer came instantly. “Yes! In just the last three weeks, we’ve hired a new employee as I am ramping up the business. That new employee does a lot of the things that I used to do, like deliveries. We love our clients, and our clients love us. They know that we are the company to call when they need something right away that might be part of a critical system at a hospital, for example. We have to continue to be very responsive and we always will, but Milena International can’t do that and grow if I’m always in the truck delivering things and picking things up. As of three weeks ago, there’s someone else doing that. That means I’m doing more business-building, growing our business, and learning things like this – how to do media interviews and public speaking about my company,” said Thomas, referring to the education session on networking and public relations with speakers from Chamber members Elevate, Inc. and Omni Public.
Meeting his fellow cohort participants in mid-January, Thomas and the others will complete the MBA program in the fall of 2024, after nearly 2 full years of robust curriculum and mentoring. Four months into the journey Thomas says he’s already seeing the fruits of his labor, in part, thanks to subject experts involved in the program. “I’ve heard from presenter after presenter who has said ‘You need to scale up. Put processes and people in place’ so that I can work on my business. I realized I can’t do that while I’m in the truck delivering a motor,” said Thomas with a hearty laugh and a new mindset.
###