A Member Sold the Same Day. Another Found $120,000 in a Room She Already Had.
Trust TSP Detroit, with Black Innovation Alliance
Black Innovation Alliance built a 12-week founder cohort in Detroit and brought Lamar Tyler in to teach it. Two BIA executives explain why he was the only name they considered. The founders in the room describe what he actually did.
Black Innovation Alliance built a 12-week founder cohort in Detroit and brought Lamar Tyler in to teach it. Two BIA executives explain why he was the only name they considered. The founders in the room describe what he actually did.
At a glance
Organization
Black Innovation Alliance
Program
TRUST TSP Detroit, a 12-week cohort
Location
Detroit
Audience
Black founders working to grow revenue and scale
Format delivered
Multi-week cohort training
Booked by
Dr. Kelly Burton, CEO, and Wendi Dillard, Senior Director of Impact and Initiatives
Prior relationship
TSP is a BIA member and won the Spirit of BIA Award at BIA's Sustainability Summit
Organization
Program
Location
Audience
Format delivered
Booked by
Prior relationship
Build in Tulsa, an entrepreneur support organization in Tulsa, Oklahoma
Underrepresented founders and small business owners
Training workshop
The Hidden Revenue Formula, delivered with a book and workbook
The Hidden Revenue Formula, delivered with a book and workbook
Dr. Kelly Burton, CEO, and Wendi Dillard, Senior Director of Impact and Initiatives
TSP is a BIA member and won the Spirit of BIA Award at BIA's Sustainability Summit
The $120,000 she already had
One member walked in with a space she was already paying for. She walked out having found the hidden revenue she had never counted.
"The idea of hosting the literary dinners, if we just host the dinner in our space, could easily bring $120,000 annually. And that's only if we have one dinner a month. If we secure a global partnership, which is something that we're working on and a proposal that we are pushing through right now, it could be a high six figure deal."
No new capital, no new location, no new product. The asset was already on her balance sheet. What she did not have was someone showing her how to look at it.
There was no one else on the list
BIA had spent years supporting ecosystem builders nationally. Detroit was their move to work directly with founders, and it raised the question of who to do it with.
"There was no one else who really was on the list, because TSP has results. I've seen it time and time again. I've been to the TSP conferences and I've been wowed and amazed and personally have benefited from the teachings of Ronnie and Lamar. They're the real deal."
Wendi Dillard, Senior Director of Impact and Initiatives
What he delivered
A working session, not a talk. Lamar delivered the Hidden Revenue Formula with a book and a workbook, built around revenue founders already have and are not capturing.
"The fact that Lamar talked about unlocking hidden revenue that's already in your business. He talked to our entrepreneurs about how they can double their business today by pulling some of these levers is amazing. This is how we help founders who think they have limited resources really increase their impact, really drive revenue."
Dillard was not evaluating a brand. She had sat in his sessions herself and applied the material to her own work before she ever put him in front of Detroit founders.
"I decided to partner with TSP because they are the best. They are the cream of the crop. They are masters at their craft."
Dr. Kelly Burton, CEO
This was not a cold booking. TSP is a member of Black Innovation Alliance and won the Spirit of BIA Award at BIA's Sustainability Summit the previous year, so both executives had watched them operate inside their own network before building a program around them.
The gap it addressed
Dr. Burton draws a distinction most program directors will recognize immediately.
"If you are a person who is ready to take action, and you know that there's some money you've been leaving on the table, then you can go past all that other stuff you see on social media and come directly to this workshop."
-Tara Payne, CEO, Mavens' Meet
Two levers landed hardest, and she names both.
Proposals. "When he talked about proposals, I actually thought: do I need to be sending a proposal? Can I take that out? Because that's something that's just delaying them from making the sale."
Upsells. "Automatically as he talked about upsells, I was thinking: what can I create that can upsell them? They're here for a reason, how can I keep them here?"
The host organization took the notes too
The clearest measure of a training is not how the room felt. It is what changes afterward. At Build in Tulsa, the staff came out of the session with their own action item.
"Oftentimes entrepreneurs have access to training and resources, but they often lack access to the right training and the right resources. The beauty of TSP is that they provide you tactical, action oriented advice, guidance, support, accountability, community. All of these things are necessary in order for a business to actually grow and scale. TSP delivers it in spades."
Wendi Dillard heard the same thing from the room, in sharper terms. One founder pulled her aside afterward:
"We don't do this in Detroit. We have a hustle mentality. There are not people who are encouraging us in our businesses to grow, who are feeding our vision. They're trying to take you away from the vision and tell you to get a job."
What the room said
"What I heard most often from the participants today was: finally. Finally, someone has come along and given them the game, access to the information that they can deploy in their business right now. That was the biggest piece."
Dr. Kelly Burton
Finally is a word that only shows up when the audience has sat through the alternatives. The cohort members put it their own way:
"I had never seen an entity create such community and produce seven and eight figure earners."
"There's no way they're coming to Detroit and I'm not going to participate."
What he did in the room
The founders in the cohort were specific about what moved them, and it was not the curriculum alone.
That is the mechanism underneath every result on this page. Founders do not diagnose their own weak points in a room where the person on stage is performing. They do it when the person teaching has already gone first.
What members did with it
The measure of a training is what changes afterward. Cohort members reported, in their own words:
- A same-day sale. "Practical information, keys, takeaways that you can start today. I actually sold today because of some of the things that we learned in the training."
- A customer journey exercise that moved a metric. After mapping her customer journey, one member added flyers with a QR code for Google reviews and reported her Google Maps numbers jumping by an order of magnitude the month she implemented them.
- Belief, which precedes the rest. "It has really helped me believe that I can generate more revenue than I ever thought was possible, because the concepts that we're learning are so applicable to our everyday businesses."
The case to funders
Both executives made the investment argument on the record.
"This work deserves investment, because every entrepreneur in this cohort is going to deliver return on investment. Not for themselves, not just for their business, not just for their family, not just for their community, but for the national economy that we're trying to build."
Dr. Kelly Burton
"Sometimes the thing that you need is access to information that will take your business to the next level. With consistency, and with a community, and with the trainings that you get with TSP, you have no choice but to succeed."
Wendi Dillard
Dr. Kelly Burton, CEO, and Wendi Dillard, Senior Director of Impact and Initiatives, Black Innovation Alliance
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