How Can Small Businesses Win Bigger Contracts and Help the Next Generation Build Resilience?

It's coming up this Thursday at 500 Pearl Street here in Buffalo.

We'll give you registration information toward the end of this.

But the focus is on minority and women-owned businesses, or as Talia just mentioned, also service-disabled veteran-owned businesses as well, and looking to connect them to opportunities here with the state of New York.

Interesting that $3 billion was available in 2025, but you're telling me that there's a lot more available now.

Absolutely.

So $3 billion was actually what was spent in 2025 with small and diverse businesses.

That's what New York State spent this year.

We know that $124 billion is coming to the state.

Now, it's not coming at one time, right? This will kind of be spread over maybe 15, 20 years.

I don't know.

But for the semiconductor, and a lot of people think that that's completely out of reach for them.

They're like, what's a semiconductor? What is that? Well, if you pick up your cell phone, you're turning on your television, you're starting your car.

It's a little microchip that runs all of that, right? Yeah.

It's being manufactured now in upstate New York.

So Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse is the new tech hub.

Semiconductor is something that any small business can get involved in.

And the first thing that, you know, like you asked me, like, how can they get involved? Do they have to change their business? No, because they need everything we just talked about.

There's facilities that are going to be built online.

And someone has to build those facilities.

Someone has to also maintain those facilities.

Someone has to also feed those people.

They may need a coffee machine.

We know Golden Cup Coffee that is minority-owned, right, was in the Bills Stadium.

He's been minority-owned forever.

He is state-certified, so he can provide the coffee machines for those small businesses or for these particular buildings that are going up.

It's coming up this Thursday at 500 Pearl Street here in Buffalo.

We'll give you registration information toward the end of this.

But the focus is on minority and women-owned businesses, or as Talia just mentioned, also service-disabled veteran-owned businesses as well, and looking to connect them to opportunities here with the state of New York.

Interesting that $3 billion was available in 2025, but you're telling me that there's a lot more available now.

Absolutely.

So $3 billion was actually what was spent in 2025 with small and diverse businesses.

That's what New York State spent this year.

We know that $124 billion is coming to the state.

Now, it's not coming at one time, right? This will kind of be spread over maybe 15, 20 years.

I don't know.

But for the semiconductor, and a lot of people think that that's completely out of reach for them.

They're like, what's a semiconductor? What is that? Well, if you pick up your cell phone, you're turning on your television, you're starting your car.

It's a little microchip that runs all of that, right? Yeah.

It's being manufactured now in upstate New York.

So Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse is the new tech hub.

Semiconductor is something that any small business can get involved in.

And the first thing that, you know, like you asked me, like, how can they get involved? Do they have to change their business? No, because they need everything we just talked about.

There's facilities that are going to be built online.

And someone has to build those facilities.

Someone has to also maintain those facilities.

Someone has to also feed those people.

They may need a coffee machine.

We know Golden Cup Coffee that is minority-owned, right, was in the Bills Stadium.

He's been minority-owned forever.

He is state-certified, so he can provide the coffee machines for those small businesses or for these particular buildings that are going up.