Top Southeast official for SBA reflects on growing up in Sarasota

When he was growing up in Sarasota, Tyler Teresa recalls his father handing him a stack of business cards at the grocery store and telling him to put them on cars out in the parking lot. His dad owns Doctor Detail, an auto detailing company serving Sarasota and Manatee counties for more than 20 years. That was real person-to-person marketing, decades ago.

"I like to make the joke that I felt firsthand when businesses couldn't make payroll, which was often with my parents," says Teresa, whose mother handles bookkeeping.

At first, he says, his father, Charles Teresa, worked nights at Texas Roadhouse to pay the bills until he had enough clients to work for Doctor Detail full-time.

“That amazing journey has led to my parents being able to pay for my college and get me to this position,” says Teresa, 31.

That position is a high-level official for the U.S. Small Business Administration, which helps Americans start, build and finance a business. In June Teresa was named Southeast regional administrator for the agency. His jurisdiction includes Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee.

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“Helping small businesses is my passion,” Teresa says, “because I know it does lead to the American dream. I was the first in my family to graduate college. My parents were able to put a roof over our heads [and] provide for us, all with an idea my dad had.”

Teresa, a Riverview High School alumnus, graduated from Earlham College in Indiana in 2016.

After college, Teresa held various roles in the federal government, working as a staff assistant at the White House from 2017 to 2018 before taking on jobs at the U.S. State Department, Environmental Protection Agency and the Senate. From January to June, he served as the White House liaison for the SBA.

Message delivery 

His role at the SBA is threefold, Teresa says: get the message out about the SBA, manage the district teams and be the eyes and ears for small businesses.

Part of his job, in getting the message out, involves speaking at events. After a recent appearance, he says, a Tampa business owner approached him about helping to onshore its operations for making batteries. 

Once he heard what issues the company was running into, Teresa says, "I got a call set up to help them navigate [and] explain what we can do to help and try and make the business successful. That's what we do here at the SBA."

Teresa says the region he oversees offers great promise for a variety of reasons.

“The environment for businesses in the Southeast is ripe for opportunities,” Teresa says. “We have ports for exporting and importing....The skills are there, the labor is there, the opportunity is there."

Manufacturing is also big in the SBA right now. 

“President Trump and [SBA] Administrator [Kelly] Loeffler want to bring manufacturing back to the United States,” Teresa says. In March, Loeffler introduced the Made in America Manufacturing Initiative, which Teresa says was designed to help cut through red tape and regulations for small businesses and increase access to capital.

Says Teresa: “I do think manufacturing is going to come back.”

Help out

There are other ways the SBA, and Teresa in his role, can help entrepreneurs.

A web portal is available through the SBA for businesses looking to keep supply chains domestic or get local products out to market, Teresa says, as one example. Through this public-private partnership, “we're encouraging businesses that either want to shop and strengthen the supply chain with local businesses to go check it out, or if you manufacture something in the U.S., you should get on to this,” Teresa says.

Another way that the SBA helps businesses of all kinds is in navigating financing, Teresa says, adding the SBA has its own loan program.

The SBA also has an Office of Disaster Recovery and Resilience that assists with preparing for and recovering from disasters. Given that his territory covers the Southeast, Teresa says: “We will get hit with a storm. Unfortunately, it's just a matter of when and where.”

His team helps find temporary work locations where disaster recovery teams can get set up to meet with homeowners, renters and business owners after a storm to inform them about the process of applying for loans.

“That's what the SBA is here for, is to help these businesses get back on their feet,” Teresa says.

Around the region, outside of disaster times, the SBA also has Small Business Development Centers, which he says provide resources for entrepreneurs, from those who just have a concept to others looking to expand their operations. 

“We’re here to help at the SBA,” Teresa says. “If you have an idea” for a business, he adds: “I think there's no better time than now."