Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose met Monday afternoon with local community leaders to talk about how to support minority business owners and entrepreneurs during a stop in northwest Ohio.

“I’m here to listen more than anything,” Mr. LaRose said at the beginning of a roundtable discussion at the Northwest Ohio Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in Holland. He stopped earlier in Findlay to meet with the Findlay Hancock County Chamber of Commerce.

What followed was a discussion about the challenges that minority entrepreneurs face in the business world, whether in opening a new business, getting grants or loans, navigating a language barrier, or just in ensuring their basic necessities are met.

Part of serving the business community needs to be ensuring that offices that cater to business needs — such as governmental and financial — are staffed with multilingual employees, said Sabina Serratos, executive director of Adelante, the Latino Resource Center in Toledo.

“You have to be able to serve those who have a language barrier,” she said.

Mark Urrutia, executive director of the Minority Business Assistance Center, also pointed out that being able to meet someone in a language they’re familiar with can help put them at ease and possibly prompt them to open up more. When they do that, he said, sometimes it can lead to more efficient service.

“They’re now comfortable giving you the whole story so you can better provide assistance,” he said.

As the coronavirus pandemic started causing shutdowns last March, Mr. LaRose said, new-business filings initially dropped, but they rebounded in April and kept rising thereafter. In October, he said, Ohio broke its annual record in new business filings, and by year’s end about 170,000 new businesses had started in the state.

That kind of momentum, he said, would be good to continue.

One specific initiative Mr. LaRose said he is working on is ensuring Minority Business Enterprise certificates are valid throughout Ohio rather than just the communities in which they’re issued, so minority business owners don’t have to keep filing certification paperwork.

Discussion also turned toward the need for high school students to be included in business and job readiness programs. Candace Bishop, grants administrator for the Lucas County Homelessness Board, made the point that many students are homeless and need to have their necessities taken care of before they can begin to think about a future in entrepreneurship.

“For us to get to a place where can even inspire them, they would have to have the basic needs met,” she said. “We have to get beyond the first barrier, which is housing stability.”

First Published February 9, 2021, 1:26 a.m.