Author: Laura DeMarco

Cheryl Perez's vision is forward-thinking and inclusive

“I am beyond excited about what’s to come,” enthused entrepreneur Cheryl Perez as she stepped into her new role as COSE Board Chair last month.  

 “I step into this role with a commitment to all of you to constantly be on the pulse of what is most important and needed.” 

Perez, president of Cheryl C Perez Brand of Companies, a brand that provides operations & capacity building consulting & coaching experiences, and online training programs to entrepreneurs, joined COSE a decade ago. She took a seat on the board of directors in 2018, served as COSE’s vice chair in 2023 and assumed her role as chair in January.  She is also a member of the GCP Board of Directors and GCP’s executive committee, representing the voice of small business. 

Perez, the first Black female chair in the organization’s 52-year history, is ready to lead COSE into the future. 

She recently took the time to sit down to discuss her vision for COSE, her fascinating background as a serial entrepreneur since her playground days – and the invaluable community that COSE provides. 

What led you to start your first business? 

I can't remember a time before I was an entrepreneur. I always tell people my very first business was in the 7th grade. I used to sell Now and Laters on the playground of my Catholic school, where we weren't allowed to even have candy. I’d buy them for $0.10 a pack and sell them for $.25 to make a profit. 
I officially started my first business right after graduate school. I lived in Kenya for two years and I did contract work with USAID, working with small nonprofit organizations. I did that for two years, traveling all over Africa and Europe.  

What happened when you returned to the U.S.? 

When I came back home, I began working in nonprofit sales and operations. I did a lot of work around fundraising, development work, membership, raising money, grant writing, all that. Then I went into healthcare. 
I thought that I wanted to do something that was entrenched in that because of my family: my mom was a nurse. Her mom was a nurse and I thought, well, ‘I can't do patient care, but I should do something with healthcare.’ I began working for a major health insurance company. I really began to learn about insurance agencies, how they were structured, how they worked, worked with a lot of brokers and was kind of trying to fight my way up …  as a woman in a corporate environment, it was difficult. 

What inspired you to start your first business?

Working for other people. I've always had this entrepreneurial bug, but what really prompted me to take the plunge was I had a very successful sales year at the insurance company. I was the top new business coordinator in the country. And it was time to have my performance review and start talking about raises and opportunities. I was speaking with my VP, and during our review, he went on and on and on about how awesome I had done. 
And then when it was time to kind of talk about this additional opportunity and additional money, it was crickets. After that conversation, it was so clear that,  ‘I’m going to go and start my own insurance agency.’ And I did. 

Could you talk about the evolution of your business ownership? 

I am definitely a serial entrepreneur.  I've always made decisions around the businesses I start based around my skill set,  but also where the market was saying there could be some opportunity. 
I think that's what a lot of entrepreneurs struggle with, especially when they're trying to pick a perfect business idea. They're like, ‘alright, what does the market need?’ 

And things change. For example, when I was in the insurance business, the Affordable Care Act changed the game and we adjusted,  adding full-fledged consulting around that and then eventually selling that agency when health insurance really became a not very profitable kind of venture. 

What first led you to join COSE? 

I joined COSE because I was at a crossroads in my insurance agency when the ACA changed the game for us from a revenue perspective. I needed to shift. 
I was looking for a community of other people that were also losing sleep. I was one of the most stressful times in my life -- we had built that insurance agency to multiple seven figures, and all of a sudden, overnight, I woke up and 40% of our revenue was gone. I was grasping to talk to someone who was experiencing similar things.  

Ten years later, you are the COSE Board Chair.  What made you want to take on this role? 

What I've come to realize about myself is that I truly feel like we're all here to do something big and to make an impact for others. We're not here just to kind of live our lives and make our own money and raise our own families and then move on. 
About five years ago, I went through an introspective journey because I was dealing with cancer. That really changed my mindset around finding a purpose. 

I determined that my ‘why’ was really to help people grow. 

And so when (previous Board Chair Kevin Johnson) came to me and said ‘I think that you might be a great fit,’ I thought really long and hard. And I decided that COSE would be the perfect organization for me to really continue to live out that purpose,  helping small businesses and entrepreneurs get to that next level. 

You mentioned in your remarks at the COSE Annual Event that you are the first African American female chair of COSE. How does your background inform your priorities and vision? 

My background and experience --  as a Black woman and dealing with being from a community where we don’t typically have entrepreneurship in our bloodline -- definitely shapes my goals for COSE.  

COSE is not just an organization that can provide you with resources and tools in order to make sure that you can get to that next level of freedom that you deserve and desire, but also can be an organization that can give you that same sense of community that I was craving.  

My priority is making sure that everyone realizes that COSE can be that place where you can sit in a room of like-minded folks who come from the same place as you, who've experienced the same thing as you and can give you that support that you need. 

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