Success Stories

Black History Month SBA Success Story

Topp Knotch was certified in March 1998 as an 8(a) firm to provide professional, administration, clerical and administrative office support staffing solutions and staff augmentation services. This dynamic company was was founded in 1995 by Diedria Joseph, an African American woman from New Orleans, La.

In February, 2000, the company received its first contract in the amount of $325,000 to provide office support to the Veterans Administration Medical Center. Later that year, Topp Knotch Personnel received another contract valued at $275,000 to provide data entry processor staffing to the USDA National Finance Center. In March, 2002 the company received a contract from Lockheed Martin valued at $870,000 to provide support staff for the Mailroom and Help Desk.

Since its inception, Topp Knotch Personnel, Inc. has employed over 10,000+ employees that are proficient in such industries as Medical Billing, Data Entry, Medical Clerk, Mailroom Support Staff, Temporary Help... Read More

SBA loan helps Total Woman wardrobe women for success

Total Woman originated on the North shore in Covington in 1979 and expanded its operation to Uptown New Orleans on Magazine Street nearly 10 years ago. Cindy Molezion Conde is the chief executive officer of Total Woman. Conde was born in New Orleans in 1959 and studied Art at the University of New Orleans in the late 70s. She got her first job at First NBC bank in 1981. Her banking career ended in when she resigned from First Bank & Trust as the President in Marketing 27 years later. “I decided that it was time for me to dedicate my skills and talents to managing my own business and I began to research opportunities to purchase an established business,” Conde said.

Through a group of local business brokers Conde was made aware of Total Woman being for sale and she began the process of negotiating with the previous owners in January 2008. On April 30, 2009, with the help of a $210,000 U.S. Small Business Administration loan through First NBC Bank, Conde closed on the... Read More

St. Martin Brown & Associates, LLP is a design, planning, and project management consulting firm formed in December 2005 by Joseph St. Martin and Deron Brown.   Together both Brown and Martin have over twenty years of combined expertise in planning and architectural design in projects ranging from $50K to over $400M. The company is recognized in the design of a range of building types including department of defense, adaptive reuse, frisked based operation terminals, casinos, churches, convention centers, entertainment/themed projects, resorts, hotels office buildings, and recreational facilities.

The company’s mission is to achieve excellence in design through the orchestration of a highly skilled professional team working together to communicate and express our client’s needs and visions making them reality.  Awards and Designation include: Official Architecture Firm of the New Orleans Saints; the 2009 Excellence in Construction of the New Orleans and Bayou Chapter of... Read More

Ronald Wilkerson built his energy industry consulting business one contract at a time, from a one-man shop with no track record and $10,000 in sales to a 370-employee company with more than $23 million in annual revenue - in less than 10 years.

Critique Resource Consulting, a U.S. Small Business Administration 8(a)-certified firm, provides budgetary and administrative support to the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve and support services for the U.S. Department of Energy and other federal agencies. Critique's primary business base is centered on the energy and energy-related fields.

Before he started Critique, Ron had more than 17 years of financial management and business analytical experience, so when he started the company, he already had the background and experience to methodically build an infrastructure to make Critique viable in both its business operations and contract execution.

Even though Ron brought built-in knowledge about many of the regulations... Read More

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