Verge Mentors Brings Free Business Guidance to Good Afternoon Long Beach

What if a business owner didn’t have to white-knuckle every choice alone?

That was the through-line of the August 11 Good Afternoon Long Beach luncheon at Parker’s Lighthouse, where Danon and Camarillo introduced Verge Business Mentors to Chamber members. The pitch was simple and direct: Long Beach entrepreneurs deserve access to seasoned professionals who can help them think through real-world business problems — and the guidance should be free.

Turning Experience Into Mentorship

Danon spoke from years of hands-on work with SCORE, where she previously served as chapter chair. She described the satisfaction of helping an owner solve a problem and later seeing that business thrive.

“You’re doing something for somebody, and you run into them, and you go to their business, and you see how they thrive,” she said.

Verge aims to recreate that same dynamic locally pairing entrepreneurs with people who have already lived through the kinds of challenges small businesses face. The ask isn’t huge. Even a few hours a month can make a difference. The goal is a diverse bench of mentors who can be matched to owners based on the issue at hand.

Matching the Right Experience With the Right Business

Camarillo walked through the room through how the program is being built. Business owners will submit basic information about their company and the type of help they’re looking for. Verge will then match them with a mentor whose background fits the situation.

Mentors will go through onboarding, ethics training and co-mentoring sessions before working independently. The point isn’t to assemble a loose list of volunteers - it’s to create a consistent, reliable mentoring experience as the program grows.

For business owners, the process stays simple: identify the challenge, get paired with someone who has relevant experience, start the conversation.

Long Beach Gets Its First Verge Mentor

The speakers also introduced Gary Cole as the first Chamber member to step forward as a Verge mentor. Cole brings decades of experience in banking, business and education, including years teaching entrepreneurship, ethics and management.

His approach to mentoring reflects one of Verge’s core ideas: the mentor isn’t there to make decisions for the owner. Cole said he focuses on asking questions that help entrepreneurs think through their ideas.

“At the end of the day, because you’re the owner, you have to make the decisions,” he told the room.

That distinction matters. Sometimes a business owner needs expertise. Sometimes they need perspective. Sometimes they just need someone who has seen the problem before. The final call still belongs to the entrepreneur.

Building a Network of Long Beach Experience

Verge is still in development, but Danon and Camarillo said they are already accepting interest from both potential mentors and business owners seeking help. They also see the model as something that could eventually expand to other chambers.

For now, the focus is on building the network - and encouraging people to consider whether the experience they’ve accumulated over their careers could help another business owner move forward.

Sometimes, Danon said, an entrepreneur may be only “one or two questions away from success.”

Then the Microphone Went Around the Room

After the presentation, Good Afternoon Long Beach shifted into rapid-fire introductions. Attendees had about 30 seconds each to say who they were, what their business does and what kinds of clients or connections they were looking for.

The microphone moved through financial services, nonprofits, counseling, recruiting, healthcare, photography, payroll, banking, entertainment, senior living, public relations, food businesses and more - a real-time snapshot of the city’s business ecosystem.

It gave the mentoring presentation an immediate backdrop. The room was already full of people carrying different kinds of experience, and many were looking for answers of their own.

Before the luncheon wrapped, members were encouraged to stay, find someone they heard from and continue the conversation.

“Do some business together. Build those relationships,” attendees were told.

Verge Mentors is trying to take that same idea one step further - turning Long Beach’s collective business experience into a resource another entrepreneur can actually use.