Inner-City Entrepreneurs Learn Methods for Success : Business: Graduates of six-month program leave with renewed confidence they can improve their bottom line and aid community.

The president and chief executive officer of Shilpark Paint was there. So were the heads of Diahanne Design Construction, Wonders Wholesale and De Wright Inc.

Minah Park, Diahanne Payne, Dugay Wonders and Delilah Wright were among 25 company executives gathered Saturday in South-Central Los Angeles in celebration of finding ways to keep their businesses healthy.

It was graduation day for inner-city entrepreneurs who have spent six months learning how to run a profitable business in a community battered by riot and recession--a place where every job counts.

For some, the unusual business management school conducted by the nonprofit California American Women’s Economic Development Corp. came along just in time.

“The store was losing $3,000 a month,” said Eric Loyd, manager of tiny AM Vacuum Co. on Washington Boulevard. “It was burned to the ground in the riots 2 1/2 years ago and wasn’t covered by insurance.”

Participants like Loyd learned business law, accounting and record-keeping techniques, contract negotiations and personal management, things that even owners of the smallest mom-and-pop stores need to know.

“With the economy and the civil unrest and all of the other calamities we’ve had, this enables people in the inner city to gain knowledge about things like identifying their market niche, understanding operating cycles and cash flows,” said Letty Herndon, who helped put the class together.

“You’d be surprised how many people are running their businesses by the seat of their pants.”

That’s the way the AM Vacuum Co. was being run.

The business was started 18 years ago by Loyd’s father, Allen Meredith. After the riots, it reopened in a vacant storefront a few doors away from its original, ash-covered site. But its customer base was eroding, and it was in danger of closing when Loyd dropped out of Ohio University late last year to come home and help out.

“Small business management was completely new to me,” he said. “I’d never even intended to be in business.”

The entrepreneurial class, conducted Saturday mornings at the Dunbar Hotel on Central Avenue, taught Loyd, 35, how to computerize store record-keeping and tap into lucrative government service contract work.

As a result, the shop is once again experiencing a positive cash flow, and Loyd is making plans to open a second vacuum cleaner store in the Crenshaw district. After that, he may try to franchise the operation across the country.

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He wasn’t the only one coming away from the class with big ideas. Dawn Harris emerged with a whole new business.

Harris was working as a marketing consultant when she signed up for the course. A few weeks into it, there was a class discussion about strategic planning, where participants were asked to identify business strengths and weaknesses.

“The light bulb went off in my head: I wanted to make more money, and I realized there a lot of money to be made on the street,” said Harris, 35.

She created a company called the Amarage Group to manage sidewalk vendors and work with Los Angeles officials in creating “vending districts,” where cart sellers can legally operate. She’s already starting to make money, Harris said.

That’s the goal of the business program, which began in New York in 1976 and has trained 7,500 entrepreneurs since coming to California three years ago, according to Herndon, its regional head.

Like others, Willie Green said the course helped turn his Green Construction Co. around.

“I knew how to swing a hammer, but I didn’t know how to shuffle paperwork,” said Green, 64, of the Crenshaw district. “I’d grab my pants and my hat would blow off. I’d grab my hat and I don’t have to tell you what happened with my pants.”

Now, he said, he’s learned how to “get into the system--how to have a paper trail to present to the bank when you’re trying to get financing.”

Another building contractor, Delilah Wright, said her 5-year-old company, De Wright Inc., “was pulling me in all sorts of directions” as she tried to balance office work with construction field work.

“At first, I wasn’t sure I wanted to spend six months on this,” said Wright, 33, of Los Angeles. “But I was getting tired of work. After the third meeting, I couldn’t wait for the next one. I was getting excited about my business again.”

Besides management tips, she said she also discovered ways to market her business so it can expand.

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Lystra Keeling, owner of the Simply Wholesome health food store in Ladera Heights, came away from the class with ideas about getting her 19 employees more closely involved with planning future expansions.

Hector Navarro, the Walnut Park owner of Extension Plus Telecom telecommunications company, said he learned how to open lines of credit with suppliers that will free cash for advertising and hiring more sales people.

Aminah Muhammad, owner of Crescent Video and Tape Connection on South Vermont Avenue, said the class prompted her to expand from a video shop to a bookstore that is now drawing top authors into the neighborhood for book signings.

“This has helped me bring people together,” she said. “My goal now is to reach out of South-Central Los Angeles--perhaps to the world.”