Action, Abundance, Achievement: Lessons from Pitch Your Hustle Winners

photography credit: Pamela J. Peters

It took weeks of preparation and some missed lunch breaks but when Samatha Molina was declared the winner of the Business Pitch category of the Pitch Your Hustle event she was ecstatic.

“I’m so, so grateful,” she said about winning the award money. “It’s supplementing the need I had to go full time with my mobile vending trailer.”

Pitch Your Hustle is a five-minute pitch competition hosted by Change Labs, where business owners present their business to the community and a panel of judges. The challenge is to stay on track and get all the important details out in time.

Molina, a member of the Hopi tribe, is the owner of Lolly’s Lemonade & More, a business that offers lemonades, espresso, teas, dirty sodas and posole.

Before Molina went full time with her business she worked as a general manager for KUYI Hopi Public Radio and the Hopi Foundation for 15 years where she happily served her community. As she got a little older she decided it was time invest in herself.

“Because we’re a little community here, I am trying hard to provide access. That’s the impact that I’m going to have, I’m going to be able to provide a social space,” she said “I’m going to be able to help grow my local economy and contribute to that economy. I’m going to work to be a place where I can provide job opportunities, because that’s the goal, to get big enough to where I can just have hired employees.”

When Molina first heard about Pitch Your Hustle, she declared she would be the winner and then she got to work. With the support of her husband, Paul Molina and her kids, she attended Change Labs training, webinars and even did outside research on how to craft the perfect business pitch.

“If you are thinking about applying for Pitch Your Hustle or even adventuring to run your own business full time, you have to have the mindset of abundance and blessing,” she said. “You got to put action behind it. So once you have that confidence and the ability to really believe in yourself and then show up for yourself, everything is there for you.”

The Pitch Your Hustle event had 14 contestants and two different competition categories, the Business Pitch and the Creative Pitch. The top prize was $6,000.00, followed by $4,000 for second place, $3,000 for third place, $2,000 for fourth place and an Audience Choice Award worth $3,000. On the top of that, all the entrepreneurs who didn’t place, also went home with a minimum of $1,000 for taking time to participate.

Tami Dugi, Navajo, the owner of Navajo Education Creations, took first place in the Creative Pitch category. She creates learning tools and resources for teachers with a focus on the Navajo language or Dine Bizaad. With he winnings she’s purchased Adobe programming to help her build learning materials.

Dugi, a teacher for the last 10 years, is working to expand her learning materials to include more subjects. While she isn’t fluent in Dine Bizaad, she’s been getting help from teachers around her since she started her business in 2020. When she heard about Pitch Your Hustle from her sister, Crystal Dugi, she almost didn’t apply because she was nervous.

“I’m still in the early forms of establishing my business but I really like that it (Pitch Your Hustle) was creating a door and opportunities for people in my position, who really don’t have the resources and need the direction and the opportunity to move forward in your business,” Tami Dugi said. “I really liked that I was able to talk and network with people who were very like minded. We have these big dreams and goals, it was nice to be able to share that with people who had the same interests as me.”

To prepare for the event, Dugi utilized Change Labs resources, researched business pitches and studied other businesses like hers with included reading their blogs, watching their YouTube content and social media pages.

“I felt like I didn’t really have anything to sell but an idea and the goal,” she said, adding she realized that’s all she needed. “I’m a teacher and everything I’m doing is for my students and that’s an easy thing for me to sell. Also, I’m very passionate about revitalizing the Navajo language.”

Pitch Your Hustle took her out of her comfort zone and she’s thankful because she was able to network with other women business owners and community members.

“It really showed me there’s people within our community who believe in small businesses, believe in creators and who just wanted to create this environment where business owners can thrive, can network and can share their stories,” she said, adding she plans to do Pitch Your Hustle again next year.

One of the top and largest sponsors making the event possible was OneAZ credit Union who provided a Legacy Grant to Change Labs through their OneAZ Community Foundation, along with SBi Giving Foundation and other tier sponsors including Square, who provided an in-kind donation of hardware. There were also volunteers from Valley Leadership and Grand Canyon Trust.

Robert Raygoza, Executive Director of the OneAZ Community Foundation, said the credit union invests in organizations like Change Labs because of their dedication to helping entrepreneurs and small businesses through their strategic programs.

“The work that Change Labs is doing to support Indigenous entrepreneurs goes hard in had with the work that we’re dong as an organization,” Raygoza said. “Pitch Your Hustle gives small entrepreneurs and small business owners the platform to share their story, talk about their business, and then get resources to help them grow their business.”

OneAZ Credit Union likes to be on the ground, meeting their members, Raygoza said events like Pitch Your Hustle are vital because they get an opportunity to connect with community members who are impacted by the Foundation’s investments.

“Regardless of the zip code or the area of the state you live in, individuals should have the same access to the resources to be able to be successful at the end of the day,” Raygoza said. “That’s our goal, to have a powerful impact by supporting nonprofits who are delivering the resources to their community that advance economic prosperity, financial empowerment, access to basic needs, and leadership development so individuals and families can thrive.”

Delivering resources was also the goal for Jennifer Gastelum, Valley Leadership Explore Program Manager, who bought volunteers to help with setting up the event and judging.

“The coolest part was knowing that every single entrepreneurs that put in that energy was going to be celebrated and acknowledged for it,” she said of Pitch Your Hustle. “And then to see how supportive everybody was of one another, they were all just kind of like each other’s cheerleaders.”

Gastelum said this type of event requires business owners to be quick thinking and also vulnerable, so she was proud to see the community support.

“I think it really creates this sense of closeness and community and belonging that’s just really unique to those types of spaces,” she said.

Gastelum said there is a clear cultural component to all the business tied to Change Labs, which is really unique.

“Regardless of the business, they’re talking about their tribe and their background and who they’re serving, it’s always connected to culture. I think that’s one of the beautiful things about visiting the Navajo Nation,” she said.

Providing access to opportunity is a main goal at Change Labs, especially to entrepreneurs trying to start and keeping their businesses going on the Navajo Nation and Hopi reservation.

“It’s seven times harder to start a business on the reservation. It’s two to three times more expensive to continue to run it and grow it. The stakes are so high that they (entrepreneurs) feel like their first draft at doing this, or their first go at it, is their final draft. And that’s not true, and that’s not true of any type of entrepreneurship,” Holly Patterson said.

Patterson is the Entrepreneurial Resources Manager & Strategic Capital Strategist with Change Labs and coordinator of Pitch Your Hustle. Her goal is to help entrepreneurs find their path forward.

“You’re not pitching for just money,” Patterson said of the event. “You’re pitching for the customers in the audience or collaboration or partners or people that can give you more than just money, support can look different.”

Patterson said she coaches entrepreneurs in Change Labs programs to learn as they go and remind them that they aren’t chasing perfection, they are working for consistency.

“I think the one unique thing about being a Native/Indigenous entrepreneur is that it’s a household conversation. The entrepreneurs I work with, they have their family members helping them, they have their network of friend buying form them, they’re selling in their communities, and most of the communities are made of generational households, that’s where the community impact is actually made,” she said. “Our entrepreneurs are resilient and also very grassroots and no matter the size of their operations, they’re going to hustle to make the opportunity for their business.”

This year the community not only heard what the business had to offer but they were also able to see it with different displays of products put together by the businesses.

“The audience could see exactly what they were referring to in their pitch,” Patterson said. “Sometimes it’s very hard when you know Native people are visual learners, we’re also speaking in a limited language of English, so to see what’s being talked about, I think it helped a lot of people understand the pricing of these products, the effort that goes within it, and also the quality these individuals are producing for people.”

Patterson hopes to bring in more partners for future Pitch Your Hustle events who can contribute larger cash prizes so they can have more than 14 participates with a goal to spread the wealth across many more entrepreneurs and remove barriers to access.

“I really hope this inspires other people to work on their pitch and just because they weren’t selected this time around, that they do it again. I highly encourage the winners of Pitch Your Hustle to apply for this once again, there’s always places of improvement. As entrepreneurs you are always seeking capital. So once they become a winner of this, that doesn’t exclude them from trying again and improving their pitch for a new ask.”