over three hundred people signed up so welcome everyone please talk with each other let's help businesses it's a need and let's build those bridges of the weekend to medicaid and we can to help foster good business here in our community so thank you very much and wel the most important thing that we've learned about minnesota business is that our state's economy is first and foremost home grown we really depend on the start up and success of new business and that's why an event like this is so important because the businesses represented here you folks most of you have taken the risk and started a company and that's really the life blood of our state economy and then when you think about the combination of cultures that's here one of the other things that we've learned is that there's no better group of entrepreneur entrepreneurs then the culture is represented by this panel so it's an enormous contribution yours is an enormous contribution to our state's economy and i want to thank you for that and encourage you to keep doing what you're doing which is starting and growing businesses in minnesota thank you very much we want because we all know communication is the key i don't know what you need i should tell me and you don't know what i need or what i can offer and i should tell you and so i think breaking down some of those barriers that have been there for a while and this is one of the first that here we all want to get to know each other and business does a good job of that you know because you know you cannot not like a community because they're not going to shop at your stores so this is a great way  to allow people to come together to work better my main purpose is the somali community in minnesota especially i'm from the business community i'm here to show to give a good idea about the community what do we need to be successful and what you need is you need people that can to build if there's weather services or products and you need people to buy and so it all comes together through businesses and governmental entities community based organizations working in partnership and self and what i'm seeing more of and what i think is very exciting is the partnerships saying we're all in this together what do we do i've been to the nice introduction they tell you do we have done a lot of work tonight it's all thank you for your work and everything that you've done here we want to welcome you we think this is a great event and we're so happy that you are here in maplewood on how it's going to work as i'm going to do a couple of thank yous we're going to hear from a couple of people we're going to hear from the panel and then there's door prizes at seven forty five right so you got to stick around and say around enjoy yourself and do some more networking as you all know the purpose of this event is to build cultural religious connections alliances and partnerships with members of the ethnic business community that only do we believe that this is the right thing to do at the right time but we are committed to fostering economic growth by creating unique opportunities to engage and support local businesses people which is not just a great great place for business it's a kind of city where people all cultures have the opportunity to enhance the quality of their life and if you want to know more about maplewood please do stop by  table as do we said and now before you get the formal course of our program i want to take a minute to recognize some of the folks that made this even possible first as bill lazar bill if you want to come over from the president he's the interim president of the minnesota parking convenient location to the highway it's really a great facility so i hope everybody will use it the minnesota chamber is have business association that represents about twenty three hundred minnesota companies that are scattered throughout our state about that twelve years ago we began an economic development program called grow minnesota we operate in a so that in partnership with seventy six local chambers of hundred fifty minnesota companies a year and as a result of those visits we provide some kind of assistance to about one in four of those companies over the course of the twelve years we've learned an enormous amount about minnesota's economy we've got a database of about nine thousand minnesota companies the one the most important thing that we've learned about minnesota business is that our state's economy is first and foremost homegrown we really depend on the start up and success of new businesses and that's why in event like this is so important because the business is represented here you folks most of you have taken rest and started a company and backs really the lifeblood of our state's economy and then when you think about their combination of cultures that here one of the other things that we've learned is that there is no better group of entrepreneur entrepreneurs then the culture is represented by this panel so it's an enormous contribution yours is an enormous contribution to our state's economy and i want to thank you for that and encourage you to keep doing what you're doing which is starting and growing businesses in minnesota thank you very much 're trying to do our goals are regarding economic prosperity for all and trying to make sure that we invest in what we need to invest in order to make it a good business climate i is really very very important to us there are many different ways in which we can do that one of them i think you can see over by the door there is busy recycling or recycling through ramsey county for grants a lot of people probably didn't know that if you're going to start a recycling program we'll help you with that there's so many different opportunities and what it really comes down to is talking to each other that's just one example rush line is another where we're trying to work with the business community to make sure that we can have a really vibrant economic quarter along rush lin well but really what it comes down to is this and that is communicating and listening because none of us are well maybe somebody are some of you are clairvoyant i am not but to be able to see to ask you what do you need how can we help and vice versa that's really what it comes down to and to me what tonight represents is that opening up more opening up of communication and figured out how can we partner together to really make this area just incredibly economically viable and i guess i will end with this and it's maybe something that many of you know but many of you probably don't know and that is that ramsi excuse me ramsey county is the most has the most diverse population in the state of minnesota right now we are as diverse as the rest of the region metro region is going to be in twenty forty so again this is very very important to us to make sure that we are in bracing that we are working together because we are all in this together th from the maplewood parks and rec tom snell from the worker area chamber of commerce susan braun from the city of maplewood and myself and we recognized and identified that we have a wonderful growing diverse community here in the city of maplewood what can we do to foster bridges and communication between businesses because we all know was toria said that really successful businesses bring in jobs and support families and help communities to thrive and that's really what we wanted to do in this very room forty five months ago when we started meeting we all knew people that we thought well we'll bring in this person and let's talk to that person and pretty soon this developed into this amazing business event i don't believe the there's than any other event like this in the state of minnesota and it's happening here for the first time so i'm just very excited about it and you know when we had our first meeting i'll tell you that we were really hoping maybe we'll get people to come that would be really great and then we were thinking well maybe a hundred well last time i heard it was well over three hundred people signed up so welcome everyone please talk with each other let's help businesses need and let's build those bridges so that we can communicate and we can help foster good business here in our community so thank you very much and welcome victoria right her we think true but she's worked really hard in this event over back here so it's ok for korea require clearly district director of school or i know that they have a table and doug peterson chair for score st paul writing free mentoring and training for businesses and for helping us get the word out about this amount so let's say strong state director for the minnesota small business development center network and andrew mauro so this deputy district director of s b a for the important work they do to support the start up funding growth and success of most of the small businesses groups and the team at f b i community outwards to provide critical information about protecting businesses individuals  a vice president sunrays banks for providing quality financial services to the monk business community and i saw they have a table back here so for the day and finally we are to our panel so thanks for being patient and i will have the pleasure of introducing them they're going to talk about some do's and don'ts for doing business with members of their cultural community after that we'll have a couple of a board of directors chair of the long chamber of commerce so first we'll start with mr leone i'm going to give you a little bit of background on him and then he will give you some remarks were mon leone began his career as an entrepreneur and business owner w young man growing up in mexico and has continued on that path every move after moving to the united states serving on the board for several nonprofit organizations and government committee this ramon has worked tirelessly to give voice to immigrant communities such as the neighborhood development center and the metropolitan concert community developers charities review council and the minnesota council oh i see another economic development related committees in st paul in minneapolis so mr lee on what advice would you give our audience if in from us to let people know who we are why we're here i'm the rescue people also going forward and say i'm peter and your neighbor and how can we be good right  green and so it's great for business the dome's when you're dealing with among our customers are other monkey me don't look them in the eyes ok ok because in business we like to look people in the eye we're talking to them but to them on community to confrontational and it's a sign not respect of disrespect so be very careful when you're serving on mean we have long town i think the last eight counties about three hundred small businesses businesses inside among town it's in frogtown so if you want to check that out there's a lot of inside their store if you guys don't know that some mom are every saturday if you go inside you feel like you're in among the country you know also it's great to take your children there to shop a great opportunity for you to attend the eighteen picnics that's going to start soon every play and every extended family is going to have a picnic it's a great opportunity for you to participate in that to get to know each of the eighteen families better and then comes back in october we're going to have eighteen holes so dinners ok great opportunity for you to get to know them as well and that's all the to provide for us and gatherings like this for us to meet and i might sound like you know one of us is a cliche but this so important that we do build these bridges through know each other  hesitation and here we are everybody here human beings we have so much in common i want to talk a little bit about some of the you know the distinctions i guess and how to avoid some  environment for their families and therefore it is important also to tear down those fears that have been created by i would say unfortunately i think every day if you hear the news there's something negative it is a politically charged environment especially i that practices its religion so you really want to push in from that as big and in so many different ways it's funny i mean you know the two things that you want from you know as far as i don't honk and the other one  now as far as the gender i mean it is important i guess i want to rescind religion now wouldn't that sensible we talk about it it is i know you cannot learn everything about it but as any successful business person you go to school you go to google you go to whatever resources and please that's the other thing is everything i do jumping from one thing to the read receipt reliable and credible sources for your knowledge and whether it is political or business or whatever it might be honestly do not rely on just that the you know major news outlets specially fox want to you know when it comes to the muslim american community where we are not good friends with fox so what we are here  lot to do to have a very successful business relationship that will create more successful business relationship culturally one of our i mean u it's that culture asian acts as an advocate for the interests of numerous businesses in the twin cities and metropolitan area thank you thank you to my panel colleagues up here into everybody who made the effort to come out tonight it's much in common for a moment we heard building stronger connections alliances and partnerships for the shoe i think the last part about trusting and building trusting relationships really sums it up i think that's really what's important here tonight and why we're all here together as a next step in conclusion if you like this multicultural networking event and others like it will be a plan for the future for the city of maplewood we know we're trying to