Six days a week, Holleen Lawrence welcomes customers into the Breakroom Cyber Café in Des Moines, pouring coffee, preparing food and providing career advice.

he restaurateur, who became blind due to macular degeneration, said that a year and a half into her business enterprise, she’s still terrified every day, but she loves every minute of it. And she thanks a small state program for helping to her make her dream of business ownership become a reality.

Entrepreneurs with Disabilities is in its 10th year helping Iowans like Lawrence enter the business world through technical and financial assistance.

“The Americans With Disabilities Act guarantees that people with disabilities will be treated equally, but sometimes in our state that’s not true,” said Patti Lind, director of Entrepreneurs with Disabilities.

In 1995, advocates for the disabled, along with a state public policy group, the Iowa Division of Vocational Rehabilitation Services and the Iowa Department for the Blind, began brainstorming what the state of Iowa could do to help disabled people become economically self-sufficient.

“While employment was somewhat possible, nothing was out there for people who wanted to be self-employed,” Lind said.

Legislation was drafted that year to create the program, which was funded through the Iowa Department of Economic Development. With an annual budget of $400,000-$500,000, Entrepreneurs with Disabilities, based in Centerville, has helped approximately 260 disabled Iowans open businesses in 89 counties.

“We do a lot with a little,” Lind said of the program’s four-person staff.

Lawrence can attest to that.

With a master’s degree in rehabilitation counseling and job placement, she wanted to put a new spin on her career in personal consulting and provide an employment resource in a welcoming environment. She teamed up with her daughter, Rebecca Hodges, to make it all happen.

“I saw the need to combine a fun, positive environment for people who are seeking jobs and need help while they are doing resume development,” she said.

Lawrence sought technical assistance through the Iowa Department for the Blind and learned of Entrepreneurs with Disabilities’ financial assistance program, which provides clients with up to $10,000 in equity grants.

“Equity grants replace the equity the client doesn’t have and they help the client leverage other funds,” Lind said.

Potential clients are referred to the agency through their rehabilitation counselors and begin the process with a group training session, Exploring Entrepreneurship, that allows them to learn about what it’s like to be a business owner in Iowa. The staff at EWD assists the client in first conducting a feasibility study, and then, assuming the results of the study are positive, they work through and formulate a business plan.

“It was a lot of work,” Lawrence said. “And even with my level of education, I still had to write a business plan.”

Lind said EWD focuses its business planning “at the kitchen table,” tailoring its services to the needs of each individual client.

“It’s not always a quick plan, but it’s always a discovery process,” Lind said. “I’ve never worked with someone who didn’t learn something that was significant to their business.”

When their funds have been pulled together and their business plan approved, the clients are sent off to start up their businesses, and EWD monitors their progress for two years, a service that Lind is extremely proud of, often assisting the client with post-start-up services, such as hiring an accountant.

Lawrence was able to use the program’s resources to learn business writing, connect with business owners in other areas of the state who operate similar businesses and receive assistance with marketing and research.

“They really, truly want you to be successful,” she said of EWD.

Through the Iowa Department for the Blind and EWD, Lawrence said, she learned the “simple, silly things” about her business, such as listening for a change in pitch when warming milk to know when it’s reached the proper temperature, counting the clicks on the coffee grinder and counting while pouring coffee at a certain angle to prevent over- or under-filling the cup.

“They were there to make sure that I had the alternative training so I could serve a cup of coffee and serve a sandwich in the quickest way possible.

The Breakroom Cyber Café opened in March 2003, becoming one of EWD’s many success stories. Lind said EWD has an 80 percent success rate, far exceeding the national average.

“It is phenomenally difficult and you have to be good at identifying resources around you to be successful,” she said. “We want them to be their own best resource and not have to continually look around and look for help. Sometimes they hardly look at us from any place but their rear-view mirror.”

Lawrence expected the Breakroom, like other businesses, to start supporting itself in a year and a half. But it only took her six months.

“My mission was not to make lots of money,” she said. “If my goal was to make lots of money, we would have shut down. The potential to pay salaries is there, but it’s going to be a slow, methodical process.”

Lind said that EWD’s goal is to help clients become self-sufficient, replacing not only the cash benefits of Social Security, but the health-care program as well.

“Self-sufficiency is really a guiding light,” she said.

Lind and her three-person staff have seen the program grow over the years to a point where sector specialties are becoming more of a need. They hope to develop their ability to provide technical assistance in the food service industry, where 20 percent of their clients operate, and the field of technology, as companies become increasingly dependent upon an online presence to be successful.

Seeing clients such as Lawrence succeed makes the work worth it for Lind, who has been with the program from the start.

“There is nothing better for me than to go into a mechanic’s garage and figure out their bookkeeping or go into a rural café and listen to a client talk about how they’re penetrating the market,” she said. “I love it when we close a client file, because they’re successful.”