Count Ted James as one of the folks who wasn’t exactly thrilled when LSU and Southern University announced plans in 2020 to play a football game in 2022.

“I didn’t want it to just be about football,” said James, a regional administrator for the Small Business Administration, a former state legislator and a Southern alumnus.

But James’ worries were more than assuaged this week, with the two universities holding a variety of events to signify their continued collaboration ahead of their first-ever matchup Saturday in Tiger Stadium.

Those interconnected events were punctuated Friday with the SUxLSU Entrepreneurship Conference, a business networking event at the Capitol Park Museum downtown for LSU, Southern and high school students hoping to kick start their business ideas. Officials from both universities hope the event can continue on an annual basis.

“As we have gone through this week, I am just extremely proud of the leadership of Louisiana state University and the Southern University,” James said, adding emphasis on “the” before “Southern.”

“Folks are not even worried about the football game,” James joked.

Panelists at the conference included representatives from both universities as well as successful local business owners, headlined by Raising Cane’s founder Todd Graves and Sevetri Wilson, who has founded two companies, including a New Orleans tech firm called Resilia.

They offered advice for the 65 students and aspiring entrepreneurs and noted the resources available to help them get their ideas off the ground.

Graves — whose story of perseverance with Raising Cane’s is widely known — told the audience to be ready for hard work, but to never give up on their dreams.

“I continue to see too many things or great ideas people have, their dream, and they could have done so much for our community, so much for our planet, that they give up because it’s so hard to see it to fruition,” Graves said.

James told attendees about four key categories of resources with the SBA: counseling services, loans, federal certifications for government contracts and crisis funds in the form of disaster assistance loans.

He noted that many small business owners are a “chief everything officer” who handle anything from bookkeeping to janitorial work. He encouraged the entrepreneurs to take advantage of as many external resources as possible.

“If you don’t do that, you’re not going to be in that small number of businesses who are getting contracts from the federal government,” James said.

Andrew Maas, associate vice president for research at LSU’s Office of Innovation and Ecosystem Development, also told attendees to “take free advice as much as possible” from the universities. He also called for the students and universities to advocate for required entrepreneurship courses.

“If every student has to be taught how to think like an entrepreneur, that’s going to benefit all of us in the long run,” he said.

Charletta Fortson, director of the Southern University Law Center Minority Business Development Center, said aspiring entrepreneurs can come to her organization for needs ranging from identifying necessary office equipment to finding space to lease. The center also maintains a database of potential contracting opportunities with the state.

“We’re more like brokers,” she said.

Derrick Warren, associate dean at Southern’s College of Business, said the university can help create a social media and web presence for new businesses.

“You’d be surprised how many entrepreneurs do not have a presence on social media,” Warren said.

Wilson, the CEO of Resilia, outlined her journey from mass communication student at LSU to owner of a tech firm that launched in 2016 and helps nonprofits and other organizations incorporate.

She originally founded Solid Ground Innovations, a strategic communications and management firm, in 2009. The company worked with both corporate clients and charities, and over time she began to realize that those charities needed help, particularly with software solutions to help them with incorporation and fundraising. Resilia was born.

Wilson said the journey from communications to tech was difficult, to say the least. She raised $400,000 from local investors for Resilia but struggled to find funds when she widened her search to across the country.

She lost a pitch competition in New Orleans, but one of the judges was an investor at TPG Capital, a private equity firm with offices around the globe. Wilson stayed in touch with the judge and eventually met him for lunch in San Francisco. He wrote her a $25,000 check shortly thereafter, which gave Resilia enough credibility to pull in $50 million so far from investors.

“Don’t give up,” Wilson said.