Accessing Capital Despite Barriers: Four Borrowers’ Perspectives

In September 2024, the Momentus Capital team gathered in San Diego, California, for its annual meeting to share stories of impact from borrowers and beneficiaries, and discuss the organization’s strategy for the coming year. As part of that agenda, we held a panel discussion with four of our borrowers, showcasing the success stories of businesses and organizations that had previously faced barriers to accessing capital. The panel consisted of:

These businesses have benefited from the unique and innovative solutions that the Momentus Capital branded family of organizations delivers to disrupt the financial sector, and have been able to better serve their communities and build generational wealth.

We invite you to watch their conversation or read the accompanying transcript.

*Please note that this transcript has been amended for clarity from the original audio.

Transcript

Miriam Torres Baltys:

Good morning, everyone. I’m Miriam Torres Baltys and I am with the Smart Growth team. I am very privileged to moderate this panel because my favorite part of what we do is hearing the success stories of how we’re making a difference on a daily basis by providing capital to our borrowers. I’m going to go ahead and ask you each to give your pitch intro, and we’ll have your bios in the background as well.

Amber Coxsom:

Good morning, thank you for having me. I am honored to be here in order to share my story. My name is Amber Coxsom. I am the owner and administrator of Hope House LLC. I’ve been a registered nurse for over 15 years and now I have transitioned into running a residential care facility for the elderly. That’s what I do.

Stacy Kirk:

Good morning. Hello everyone. My name’s Stacy Kirk. I’m the CEO/founder of Quality Works. We are a process and quality engineering firm that focuses on getting all of the bugs out of a lot of the apps that you use daily, but also to build technology that is going to have an impact within communities that are underserved. I’m excited to share that I’ve been working with your organization for 10 years and it has allowed me to grow and to feed into many people and I’m excited to talk more about it.

Flor Rodriguez:

Hi, everyone. Good morning. I am based out of L.A. So, it is nice to be in San Diego. I never come to the side of town. So, hi everyone. My name is Flor Rodriguez, and I serve as the executive director of the CLEAN Carwash Worker Center. I am not a business owner, but we are a workers’ rights organization that works on the ground with over 1,800 members, car wash workers, who are just trying to improve the conditions at the workplace. 

Capital Impact Partners was the first one to believe in us back in 2018 when we shared that we needed an investment to start a worker cooperative. Because every time we would organize to improve the conditions at a car wash, things would go bad, and workers would get fired. They said it was about time they started their own and they would build a welcoming space for their workers. So, Capital Impact Partners did that for us by providing the first initial grant of $50,000 to get us going. I’ll share a lot more about where we’re at later. Happy to be here.

Ernesto Barahona:

Good morning. My name is Ernesto Barahona. I’m the chief Strategy & development Officer at St. John’s. I think they added strategy a couple of months back, so it’s a new title. I work for St. John’s Community Health. We’re a network of community health centers in South Los Angeles. We operate 22 health centers and five mobile clinics. We just expanded our footprint into the Inland empire. We provide quality healthcare to over 100,000 individuals through half a million visits a year. The work and the support that you give plays such an incredible, incredible role in our success. And like Flor just said, I’m proud to share this morning what you all brought to us. So, thank you very much.

Miriam Torres Baltys:

Thank you for those really good intros. Now we know a little bit about what you guys do and we’re going to dig in a little bit deeper. I’m going to start with you, Amber. What was the driving force or the reason, the aha moment that you had that said, you know what, I want to be a business owner.

Amber Coxsom:

So just to give a little background, I’ve been working in the nursing field for a long time and in the community setting. So, I knew the challenges that the elderly community faced. The majority of my clients lived in skilled nursing facilities, which are nursing homes. Pretty much a step down from a hospital but providing 24-hour, around-the-clock care. And what I found the problem was that a lot of residents that lived there didn’t necessarily need to be in a medical facility, but there was a gap in the healthcare system. So, even if they didn’t have a family, they couldn’t afford to be at home and have 24-hour care. And then they also couldn’t afford to pay eight to $9,000 a month for an assisted living facility as well. 

So, I had one client that really touched my heart. She was young, 65, and she actually fell at home and broke her hip and was transferred to the hospital. And from the hospital they transferred her to a skilled nursing facility. Now this was a lady that had always lived at home, independent, and was very social. She had a group of friends there but lived in a low-income building. So, once they transferred her to the skilled nursing facility, she kind of got stuck in the system. They found that it was unsafe for her to go back home, and she couldn’t afford to hire caregivers. So, she became very depressed. She stopped eating, she didn’t want to partake in social activities. She even expressed to me that she felt like she didn’t have a quality of life. And that’s one thing that nurses were very big on, quality of life. That’s pretty much what we stand for.

So, at the time there was a social worker who was very resourceful, and she actually went above and beyond and found this new program called the Assisted Living Waiver, which actually pays for Medi-Cal and low-income recipients to live in outside settings that are more homelike. So, six bed residential facilities, which is what I’ve established. And once I found out about that assisted living waiver, I started researching and I was like, okay, I need to do this because that wasn’t my only client. I had several clients that were kind of stuck in skilled nursing facilities, and the families couldn’t afford to provide caregivers, and they couldn’t afford to have them at home. They couldn’t care for them. So, this was going to fix the problem. But the issue was that it wasn’t really out there yet. The information wasn’t out there, a lot of people didn’t know about it.

A lot of facilities that in the past accepted only private pay were unsure of the program because it was Medi-Cal. And I said, okay, this is going to be my niche. I’m going to open facilities and my priority is going to be to serve the underserved population, the low-income residents, and give them that opportunity to live outside of these skilled nursing facilities in a more home-like setting. So, that was my drive, just finding out about that program and saying, okay, this is what I’m doing, and this is how I’m going to do it.

Miriam Torres Baltys:

Thank you so much for sharing that. That’s honestly near to my heart as I have aging parents, to know that there’s people like you that care about people that a lot of times get ignored because they don’t have much of a voice. So, thank you for what you do. I’d like to ask the same question to Stacy. What is your why? What was your aha moment that you’re like, “You know what, I’m going to go do this.”

Stacy Kirk:

I don’t think I had a specific moment, but I’ll say years. I’m from the Dallas-Fort Worth area. I only have one smoker, but I’m working on it. I knew from a very early age. I came from humble beginnings. My parents didn’t go to college, and I felt like technology was an outlet that could give opportunity to people that never had opportunity. And where some doors were closed, we needed so many workers in technology that this would be an opportunity where you could put bigotry and racism aside because you needed people to code. 

And so, I moved quickly in my life into senior management and technology. I spent 15 years in rooms where I was the only woman, only BIPOC. And when you become a senior leader, as you know, there’s more politics that come into play. And I found myself being isolated very often. I’ve had people come into my corner office and say, “I want your office, and if I can’t get it, I’m going to make sure that your staff and your employees don’t get file access or the laptops that they need.” I have been called many names, and when you are senior, you can’t go to HR with that kind of stuff. You actually have to make it work.

I stand six feet tall, I’m a confident woman, but I felt little. I said, “I want to start a company where people’s brilliance and excellence can be elevated and where any and everyone feels supported.” And so, even before I hired anyone, I created my core values where I wanted integrity and teamwork to be at the forefront. And one of the things on my company reviews, every year people say they’re there for the culture, a culture that builds on people instead of breaking them down. And so, for me, leaving corporate America and going and starting my own business was to pretty much be in an environment that was going to allow me to thrive and others as well.

Miriam Torres Baltys:

Instead of putting up with the culture you were in, you decided to create a much better one. Yes, I love that. Okay. And Ernesto, what was that impetus moment or that moment where you said, you know what? I want to do something for my community that’s meaningful.

Ernesto Barahona:

Okay. It’s a little crazy for me. So, I’m a fashion designer by trade. That’s what I went to school for. So, I’ll bring it together, I promise it’ll come together, bear with me. So, I was dating this doctor, and he was volunteering at St. John’s, and he said to me, we need interpreters to come and volunteer at the clinic that I’m volunteering at. And I did spend a couple of Saturdays a month helping people fill out their forms, etc… 

In fashion, when you’re designing, you get sample yardage from your fabric manufacturer. So, you get samples, you design into the fabric, and that line, those pieces go to New York for sale, to Macy’s, Bloomingdale’s, whatever. And if you design something beautiful and Sachs buys it, that fabric person is going to make a lot of money. So, during the holiday seasons, these fabric people would give me some really, really nice presents, like nice stuff. And so, I’ve been volunteering at St. John’s and that year I decided to create this little pamphlet with what St. John’s did, the services they provided, and I met my fabric people, and I said, “Look, this year please don’t buy me stuff. Make a contribution to this health center where I’m volunteering.” And I went through the whole month of December getting checks, and I think I raised like $70,000.

So, I had all this money. And so, I looked for the president and CEO of St. John’s, which I had not met because the guy was not there on Saturdays when I was volunteering. And so, I asked to meet with him, and I said, “I have all this money for you.” He was incredibly appreciative and impressed, and a couple of weeks later I was back volunteering, and he and this woman named Lynn Gillis were in the lobby looking for me.

Lynn Gillis was the president of the board of directors. She thanked me, and then she came up with this crazy, crazy question and she was like, “Would you like to do this professionally?” And I said, “Do what?” She goes, “Ask for money.” “No, I’m brown.” I grew up not asking for money, knowing that you don’t ask for money, you work for your money. I said, “No, there’s no way I can do this.”

She and Jim Manja got together, sat me down, and by this time I had come so close to seeing the struggles, the heavy burden of poverty that our community and our patients were coming in with. I mean, this is a population that struggles with the harshest challenges. And I could see at that moment in those couple of hours that I was at St. John’s, that little health center was like a beacon of light for them. It brought hope. And so, I went back to school to do this fundraising program and joined St. John’s 23 years ago.

Miriam Torres Baltys:

And Flor, I’d like to know a little bit about what conversations you had with fellow business owners that got you to the point where you thought, you know what, how can they be owners as well? So, tell us a little bit about that.

Flor Rodriguez:

I wish my story was fun and creative and moving, but it’s really upsetting actually. When we’re going out in the community, talking to workers about their rights, about minimum wage, about their rest breaks, meal breaks, a lot of the workers look at us and be like, sure, that doesn’t happen here. And that’s the culture in the industry. 

There are some workers that are very strong-willed, and they say let’s make that happen at this particular workplace. Unfortunately, when they do that, a lot of them do get retaliated against and they get fired. We needed to create a space where those workers could continue to organize and could continue to share their skills so that other workers feel motivated by it. How can you possibly be motivated about standing up for your rights when you’ve seen one of your coworkers do it and get fired? That is very intimidating. If you are the breadwinner in your home, you can’t even risk that. You’re just going to look the other way and continue working. 

And so, for us as an organization it is about being able to walk in and not only talk to workers and meet them where they’re at, whether that’s the bus stop, whether that’s at their home, at their nearby park, but it’s also to walk in and talk to employers. And a lot of the time, the moment I would start introducing myself, the employer would start cursing me out, “Get out of here. You’re just going to make my workforce go bad. Let them work. All they want to do is work. You’re getting in the way.” I kid you not. I’ve gotten thrown out, cursed off, thrown Gatorade empty bottles at me, or whatnot. Employers sometimes don’t want to hear that they could pay the right wages and that they’re not above the law when they have to follow minimum wage and labor laws.

And so, we did a lot of that. We partnered with a lot of different students as I found out that employers are okay with talking to students because they feel like they don’t know and that they’re coming in here just to give them information. And so, they saw them less of a threat. What we did is we removed the wrapper of the brand off of water bottles, and we did a nice script projected to workers, and the students went in there and said, “We just want to give water free water to your workers because it’s a hot day and it’s free, and we’ll be out of your way.” And so, the students were able to talk to the workers and say: Hey, here are your rights. We’re going to be around when you get out. We can still talk and answer any of your questions. And so, we got around to it. 

But when workers know their rights and they understand that there is something bigger they can do, they feel empowered and protected to step up, and they will want to create change. And that’s the beauty about organizing. When they did, they came together and said, “Now that we’ve been in this organization, and we know more about our rights, we have to get back and change some of the conditions at our work site.” And mind you, there are over 10,000 car wash workers in L.A. County alone, the majority of whom are older males, a lot of the time undocumented immigrants. And I can tell you how terrifying that must be for them to stand up and say something. 

But when they did, they said, “A lot of us have been in the industry for over 15 years. We are the reason why customers come back, because they like our work. How about we get together and train other workers who are new in the industry? Because there’s nowhere we can go to get trained. There’s nowhere we can be where they’re talking to us about our health, where they’re talking to us about our rights.” And so, I said, “Sure, let’s come together and get to hear what you want to say.” They’re like, “No, no, no. Just bring us in together on a day off and we’ll talk to workers, and we’ll show them right here.” And then I said, “Well, that doesn’t really work that way. We actually need to get together and create a structure where more workers can do this continuously.” And so, they were okay with it. 

We created our first curriculum on how workers work, a curriculum from workers for workers where they would talk about everything that they’ve learned and then they would put it into practice.

And we did phase one and then phase two. Our current standing curriculum is where workers come in for an hour to learn about their rights and about health and safety. In the second hour, they get hands-on training where they practice on actual cars. We ask community folks to donate their cars for the night for two hours and then they work on them one on one. They are taught how the chemicals work, how to protect themselves, how to use the machinery, how to buff the vehicles, and how to clean the inside of the cars. 

This curriculum is a 10-module curriculum. So, workers come in after work and it’s two times a week from 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM. It’s a beautiful model where the students become trainers, then the next students become trainers, and then you have a good pool of a lot of good trainers. Beautiful. 

Then they come to me, and they say, “Flor, all that is left is for us to be owners.” And I was like, “Oh, good luck with that.” We’re a nonprofit. We don’t know anything about starting a business. You should get some help. But then they came back, they’re like, “No, we want to do it with you guys. We want to do it together. We don’t just want a business for ourselves. We want to create a business that will be able to hire the workers that get fired when organizing. So, they could have an experience of a good job and then be able to look for that in their next job. And I said, “That’s a beautiful idea. Let’s figure it out.”

And so, what drives me is I am the daughter of two undocumented immigrants who worked in the garment factory and my brother, and I would spend endless hours there. And I always wondered if my parents are always at work, how come we don’t have money? How come we had to take turns on getting shoes for back to school because they couldn’t afford to buy both of us shoes? 

So, every time I would meet with my group of workers, I’d figure they’re always at work, but they don’t have enough money. How do their kids feel about it and how can we create a space where that can be changed? We knew of a lot of workers who had multiple jobs and it was still not enough. How can we create a space where they’re safe and one job is enough and they’re able to go back home healthy? And so, we embarked on this, let’s figure it out. We partnered with different universities and figured out what structure they wanted to follow. They learned about whether they want to do an LLC or another type of business. 

And so, that’s really the driving force for me. And what I will hear from them is we need to create something different. We need to create something that can really speak to us and can be long lasting. And that can become a space for other workers to feel what we’re feeling right now.

Miriam Torres Baltys:

I love that. There’s a lot to say about that. I think as an organization that’s one of our main missions, to create generational wealth. And just as you shared in your story, you’re unable to do that a lot of times in that scenario as an undocumented person, unless you have the opportunity to have ownership. That’s a really good way to create generational wealth. Also, very relatable to me. I’m a first generation born in Mexico and it’s been quite a journey. So, very, very relatable of just that general fear that Latinos, Latinas have in even just doing anything other than what grandma and grandpa or your parents told you. Just put your head down and work hard. You know what I mean? Thank you for empowering them and giving them a voice. And then I love how at the end, they empowered you to empower them again. 

Okay, so I wanted to ask each of you, Amber, Stacy, and Flor, what types of barriers have you had in accessing capital? How did you overcome it? But first, what has been the main pain point?

Amber Coxsom:

I knew nothing about starting a business. I was a nurse, and I’ve had a lot of obstacles that I have had to overcome. It has not been easy. I remember establishing my business, my LLC and getting my EIN and walking into the bank and thinking I was going to get a loan. And they were like, you need two years of business tax records. And I was like, okay, I haven’t even been up and running. So, it was very intimidating, it was very discouraging. And I remember just feeling like, okay, maybe I can’t do this because I knew I didn’t have the money that I needed to be able to start this business. 

And so, the first thing I did was I started researching what exactly I needed to do.  So, I created a business plan. And I actually went and took a business class to learn how to do that. And with this business, it may seem like it does not cost a lot to start up, but it actually does. I mean, you have to make so many modifications to the home. You need wheelchair ramps. You need hospital beds. The home has to be handicapped accessible. You need fire sprinklers. And so, I needed about $150,000 just to make the modifications to the home. 

And so, I had to go to a business class and learn how to create this business plan in order to submit for someone to believe in my vision and my goals and what it is that I’m trying to do. And I just remember being in business class and my instructor telling me that there’s going to be an organization that’s coming to present and they’re going to speak upon how to get a business loan. And I remember that day as if it was yesterday because it was like a breath of fresh air. I actually felt like Iman was speaking directly to me. And that’s why, yeah, sorry, I’m trying not to get emotional, but I actually felt like, okay, there are people out there that will help you, that will back you, that will believe in your vision. And I remember just feeling that relief and I took her information down and I caught her the next day, and I told her what I was trying to do and I wanted to help the elderly population, and she told me the steps I needed to take. 

And it was just a moment of like, okay, I’m really going to do this. I’m going to be able to open this business. I actually have somebody that believes in me. And so, I felt like that obstacle, at that point, it was removed because that’s all I needed was somebody to hear me. I mean, they wouldn’t even listen or talk. It was kind of like they shut me down at the door when I went to the bank. 

So, I’m just so thankful and so grateful for organizations like this that actually support startup businesses because we need that in order to serve our communities and we need to know that we have that support because it takes money, and we don’t always have it so blessed.

Stacy Kirk:

I think for me, at first, I didn’t even know there was a possibility of accessing capital. I think I was just so focused on bootstrapping. And as an entrepreneur that bootstraps, every decision has an asterisk. Do you have enough cash flow to do that? So, you can’t really move the way you’d want to move because at the end of the day, you have to make sure that everyone gets paid. 

And when we began to grow, I ran into two challenges with accessing capital. One is that people couldn’t understand what I was doing. I’ll say people just want to put me in the bucket of an IT staffing company. No, we are experts in using AI and automation to do really incredible things. And it’s just rare to see that in an entrepreneur like myself. And so, they couldn’t understand the business model to invest in or they got it, and they wanted all of it. Let me give you a little and take a lot. And then for me, tied into what we do is always impact. And that’s not always appreciated. 

So, I was just very grateful with my first loan, my small business loan of $30,000 and now my second investment of one and a half million, that at both phases, the people here have kind of been there to understand the full value of what we’re doing.

Flor Rodriguez:

Barriers, we’re going to be here all day. We serve a community that is, like I mentioned, majority male, undocumented immigrants who are already at a very, very low poverty level. So, thinking of a business and how do you get started? And culturally, you don’t ask for money. And so, for workers to even think of the possibility of getting a loan? Not even there, I could not even bring it up. They’re like, no, we’re going to be in debt before we start. That’s how businesses work. No, no, no, no, we can’t do that. It took us a lot of community car washes. It took us a lot of grant writing, knocking on doors.

I mentioned earlier I serve as the executive director of the nonprofit organization. Fundraising for that is already difficult. There’s nothing sexy and appealing about give us funds to improve this industry, which is horrible. So, there was nothing like: come and support the youth. It was nothing like, I don’t know, supporting folks who are coming out of programs that already exist within the county or the city. So, these barriers, they’re all around, but the biggest barrier was the fear of being in debt before you even get moving that we couldn’t get past that fear. And I don’t think we have. We’ve never gotten a loan. And that’s because we have been able to do all the training through our nonprofit side.

And on the business side for the cooperative, there was a program called the Seed Initiative, which was a federal grant given to a group of folks, and that included our workers. More workers can receive a stipend for getting training and support on developing the business plan and knowing about taxes and knowing about the structure and their titles and creating that plan. While they went through this training, workers, the five workers that were part of the cooperative, could have taken that money home, but they chose not to. They chose to open a business account and put all their money in there, all of it. And when that came to close, they had enough to buy their vehicle, a vehicle that they use now for their mobile car wash unit.

And then together they were able to do other smaller fundraisers to buy the equipment that they needed. And then in other trainings that we were able to receive and get funding for the printing of materials, we were able to do that. And earlier I shared a pamphlet with Alison of what we have now and what we’re able to display and that they’re able to learn about marketing. So, everything has come together very organically, very willingly from the workers to be able to grow their business. They’re now in a phase where they’ve gotten community contracts. We do wash St. John’s mobile clinics and other vehicles.

We actually celebrated our very, very first contract with our council member and with Jim Manja doing the grand opening of the mobile wash, saying the investment in small businesses and local businesses is vital to our communities. And that was our very first contract. From then we have gotten others, and I’m used to saying we, but it’s the cooperative that has gotten those contracts. But we have been able to leverage our nonprofit side, our organizing side to meet, and ask other organizations to allow us to go and speak to them in their staff meetings and give them an update on what we’re doing and be able to introduce the cooperative. And then the cooperative is able to offer their services. So, while folks are in their staff meetings, the cooperative shows up and washes all of their cars. By the time they’re done with their workday, they’re able to go home in a clean car. 

So, we’ve been able to partner with 10 different organizations, other nonprofits, whose staff is more than willing to support a good business, and they get to know and interact with the workers. So, that has been a way to kind of go over those barriers. But there’s some that we haven’t gotten over and now there’s conversations about how to grow to scale and the possibility of a loan doesn’t seem as scary as it used to a few years ago.

Miriam Torres Baltys:

I know I’m okay with that scenario. I’ll get my car washed. Okay. 

Ernesto, I know that you do fundraising. So, it looks a little bit different, but I’m sure you still have challenges with getting the amount of money for what you want to do or what you’re dreaming of. So, tell me a little bit about one of those challenges.

Ernesto Barahona:

Well, there’s an ongoing challenge in healthcare, especially in California. So, we’re dealing with two issues for community health centers like us: California budget – if that budget is touched and cut, we’re the first ones to go. Our social programs get slashed. So, that’s an ongoing thing. We operate in a great state that’s very committed to health and social services, yet that’s an ongoing issue. 

And we also get money from the federal government. So, you can just imagine with the administration, the changes in administrations, we get impacted as well. So, it’s been an ongoing, it was not until about three years ago, four years ago, that the uninsured undocumented population of Los Angeles was able to tap into some level of health product health insurance. 

For many years, the undocumented population was 100% uninsured. No one was paying for any of the services that they needed, so they would end up in the emergency room. So, programs came in and out giving us a hundred dollars for a $425 visit. That is how much our visit is at St. John’s between medical, the medication, because we provide the medication and all of the lab work. Our rate, our cost is $425, health plans are giving us between $250 to $300. So, there’s that negative when the development team, the team that I’m so proud to be a part of, comes in through grants, contributions, fundraising, we’re able to meet that margin that we run behind, but it’s an ongoing thing even for health. It’s an ongoing challenge.

Miriam Torres Baltys:

Can you hear me okay? Okay. So, this question is a little bit about us and how Momentus has changed your life, your business, your challenges, and allowed you to get through some of those challenges. Start with you, Amber. And this question is actually for everyone. 

Amber Coxsom:

I don’t know if Hope House would exist if it wasn’t for Momentus. I mean, I literally was at the point where I just wanted to kind of give up and say forget it. And I had lost the confidence that I needed to pursue my purpose, which was to serve the population, the elderly population, and the underserved population at that. 

And so, Momentus, I mean, it opened that door that I needed to be able to start my business even as a startup. And it took a risk, a big risk because it was a startup, but just believing in my vision, my purpose of what I was doing and supporting that. And so, that helped me overcome those barriers of not being able to get the financing that I needed because I know that with that type of business, I had to have financial backing. So, it would not have been possible without that. 

So, definitely, I’m so grateful, so thankful. I can’t say it enough. I hope that I can expand and continue and grow and have multiple facilities, but this is just the start for me.

Stacy Kirk:

As I shared, I’ve been around for a while with you all in 2014. I had been in business for a few years. It was just me and maybe a few contractors from time to time. And I’d made the decision that I wanted to grow, and I found a place where I could hire and train in this technical specialty that I had acquired. And I’d met some brilliant young people. And one of them that I kind of want to share with you because I feel like it’s important to put a face to the work that you all do. I went, I interviewed, I identified 10 or 15 people I thought were incredible to continue to grow my company with. They were in Kingston, Jamaica at the time. And one of the women was still about 20 years old, still in college. And she was working at Amazon as a call center making about $2 an hour. But when I interviewed her, I asked her the same questions I had asked the hundreds of people I’d interviewed in my career, and not knowing my specialty, she answered them like a pro. And I gave her an offer. This is before CDC Small Business Finance gave me my money, but I gave her an offer. She said, “Stacy, with that money that I get, I support my entire family, my mother and seven siblings. I need you to tell me that if I go and work for you that I am going to be stable.”

And then I got my money from CDC Small Business Finance, my $30,000, and I told her, “I will make sure that you are able to meet your commitments.” And I got to tell you in my mind, for many years I was thinking like, oh, I told her I got to make sure I get payroll. 

10 years later, she owned six homes. She was ranked. She is ranked one of the top seven women in the world in technology. She’s a sought-after keynote speaker in London across the country. She has built a home for her mother that didn’t have running water. She has supported not only her family, but her leadership has allowed me to do what I wanted to do, which is to come back to the U.S. and train and develop people on that same technology. She has developed bootcamps that have gone into the community and trained and developed people to deal with technology. She married someone at my company and two weeks ago they got married on the ocean and I cried like a baby. 

But the value in that small $30,000 gave me the confidence to give someone a platform for global greatness and to feed into not just jobs, which is part one, financial stability, part two, but generational wealth building. And all three of those came from that small starting investment that has continued to grow now into a better and bigger investment.

Miriam Torres Baltys:

So powerful. This is why we do what we do. I’m one of the people that’s on the ground that gets the phone calls, that gets the text messages, that does public speaking to let people know what we do. And you guys embody why we do this. So, thank you for sharing. Okay, Flor.

Flor Rodriguez:

So, I’m trying to remember how we came across applying for Capital Impact Partners. There was an application, but it’s coming to me. I remember I had seen an email, and this is the whole development department for my nonprofit. And so, the whole team had seen it, and I was like, “We qualify for this!” When I read through the application, it was an application to apply for Workers’ lab. I don’t know if any of you guys know of the Workers’ lab, but it’s basically where you go and you pitch and certain projects, maybe two, three projects make it across the board and they’re able to receive $150,000. 

And with the new idea of a cooperative, I was like, we qualified. I’m going to go in. I’m going to do the pitch. I remember they flew me out and went out, did the pitch, I practiced. I practiced with the workers, I practiced with the rest of my team. We had flashcards. I was set and ready. I think it was the first time I ever bought myself a blazer. And I was like, I’m doing this and I’m kind of a professional doing it and we’re going to get it and we’re going to come back and get it. And we made it to the second round, which is awesome. But then we got disqualified at the end, not disqualified, but we just didn’t get chosen as one of the top projects. So, there was no investment coming. 

And I remember the CEO at that time was like, oh, we love you guys. What you guys are doing is great. It needs to grow more. It’s not where it needed to be for the judges, but we’re going to work around it. And then they put us in contact with Capital Impact Partners and they gave us a $50,000 grant. I remember when we were flying back, when I heard the news that we were in, the whole flight, I was crying. 

And don’t get me wrong, we applied to a lot of grants. We know this. And a lot of times it’s a no, you apply to 10, maybe none of them even respond. We know that. But there was so much time and investment that it felt so real, and we had a plan, and it felt so real. So, when we got the No, I think it was the first time and one of those No’s that I was just bawling out, and when I got to talk to another one of my teammates to give them the news, I was like, you need to tell them because I can’t. I am going to start crying if I tell them we didn’t get this. And they’re like, no, no, no. You should show these emotions, it’s fine. They need to understand that we tried and maybe this is where it ends. 

And when I shared with them, I started feeling, oh my God, the tears are coming, the workers themselves said, that was just one note. You said for the worker center you’ve applied to a hundred and you might get two that say yes. So, why are we stopping now? And I was like, okay, yes, yes, yes, let’s keep going. And then we got this email from Carmen Rojas and she was like, you can partner up with them. They are great people to follow up with and we believe in you, and we just want to see where this goes. And where that amount has gone has been incredible. It allows us to give some stipends to the workers to dedicate the time to learning what kind of business they wanted to do.

It allowed us to grow. It allowed me to take some training on how to best support it as a nonprofit to a for-profit business. How do you make that separation? And then also allowing workers to learn about technology. A lot of our immigrant community, they don’t know about technology. They didn’t have email addresses. They didn’t know about social media. They didn’t know about marketing, about branding. So, we went through this whole rollercoaster ride to learn together and where we’re at now, it has developed to a point where they have been able to all five workers who own the business now, one of them works full time and the other ones are in transition, which means they work their days off in the cooperative and other days they work at another car wash. The plan is that this year they’ll be able to transition two more workers to full-time. 

What that meant for a worker like Rodrigo, that means he was able to quit his second job because one job has been enough to be able to afford what he needed to work in, and he’s able to spend more time with family. And that has created a big difference.

Rodrigo shared it was at a point in his life where his kids were grown, and he wasn’t going to practices or nothing like that now that he had the time. But then grandkids have come along the way and he’s able to enjoy his grandkids in a way that he didn’t get to enjoy his kids, and he could only want that for other workers. 

So, doing this transition for workers to think of a bigger vision of creating the second step as having a standard car wash so that they’re able to fulfill their contracts out in the field and getting bigger contracts like our county, our state vehicles, they’re getting washed, probably not by a good business. And so, where do we come in to do that partnership like we did with St. John’s? 

And so, I think that small investment has gone that long way. And for me, it did feel like what you mentioned, like fresh air again, into my lungs because I felt like we were not going to be able to do this. And being able to have that small investment really made that difference. 

I think now we are in a way where we’re thinking we are moving into a new office space where we share the space for our training center. Now we have started, and I wouldn’t be an organizer if I wasn’t here sharing this, but we have started our pitch for our own capital project where we’re acquiring a building and we’re fundraising $4 million to be able to equip it and put all the stuff that we need and have training mechanisms where workers can come to a place where it’s not our driveway with lamps overnight, but it’s actually a training center because that is the only space that workers in this industry, and I mentioned there are over 10,000 car wash workers in LA County and they will be able to join, and we’ll be able to get the adequate and proper training in a good setting, not in our driveway.

So, we’re starting that campaign now. So, that initial investment has grown so much, it has changed workers’ lives, our staff’s lives, but now it has the vision to be able to set roots in our community because as a nonprofit, the highest overhead costs other than staff is the rental of the property in which we operate. And so, being able to acquire a building is really setting down the rules and the roots for workers to be able to run this, whether there’s funding for that industry or for the worker center at all, but for them to be able to have a space where they can continue being a safe space for their community.

Miriam Torres Baltys:

Thank you, Flor, for speaking from your heart, and I think that it should be our new tag. Momentus is a breath of fresh air. And then also when you’re ready for fundraising, we do have our Capital Impact Partners or Marty is in here somewhere. Maybe he can raise his hand, but he’s our loan officer for commercial real estate. So, however that pans out, maybe a combination of fundraising and loans. Hopefully maybe we can be a part of that too.

Ernesto Barahona:

So, I took these notes out because Liz Meisler, our chief financial officer, was the person that was scheduled to be sitting here. She said to me, you can answer the other questions however you want, but this one, you need to stick to it. I could have done this without the notes because I know, but this is how it all came down. This is the impact that all of you and the work have had in our history. 

So, back in 2013, our budget was $20 million. It was April of April 30th, and we were at a 4.2 million loss. We had received a grant from HRSA for $9.4 million to renovate our major campus. It was Williams and our corporate building that needed our Frasier and our corporate renovation. We decided to include the third building in this renovation project, and we were short $3.5 million to finish the project. 

Liz decided to bring our three lenders together. She told me, well, she was explaining in these notes that it was a tricky move. It was a sensitive move to bring the three lenders to the table, but she said: Ernesto it was best for me to be straightforward and update them on how fragile we were, because eventually they would talk to each other, just bring them together. I did not know that you guys talked to each other behind our backs, but now I know we promised the three lenders that we would break even that year, and I remember that year was a pretty tough year for us, but Capital Impact Partners stood by us. They gave us that loan. I did not know that our attorneys, according to Liz, had a pool going on that we would not get the loan. I hope they’re no longer with us. But yeah, Capital Impact Partners was willing to lend us 3.5 million to finish the project, and it took a year to get the loan funded.

Next year, we are $200 million strong. We have 1,300 employees. Frazier, the clinic that we were able to renovate with the $3.5 million loan represents 26% of all of the visits, the annual visits. Capital Impact Partners believed in us, and we have paid back the loan, and we would not be where we are without them. As a community health center committed to serving underserved populations, St. John’s always faces the challenges of securing sustainable funding and resources to support our mission. The partnership with Momentus Capital provided not only the financial backing, but also strategic guidance necessary to expand the services at St. John’s. Through this collaboration, St. John’s gained access to flexible capital, allowing the organization to scale its operations without compromising its commitment to serving those in most need. This infusion of resources was critical as St. John’s continued its expansion into new communities, opened additional clinic sites, and increased its capacity to provide comprehensive, culturally competent healthcare.

Miriam Torres Baltys:

From all of us at Momentus. I just want to say thank you, you guys, for sharing from your heart and letting us know the impact that we have. Sometimes we’re behind our desks on our computer, and I know that everybody here in a different way, I’m sure was touched and encouraged, hopefully to know your stories and what awesome impact you guys are making in our community. Yeah. So, in a way, you’re part of us too.