The journey to becoming a successful venture is often rocky, and never linear – this program provides a team of mentors to alleviate the confusion and guide the entrepreneur to success through team mentoring sessions and office hours with Mentor Specialists.

NAV is a service provided by the Cherokee Office of Economic Development, through it’s Fresh Start Cherokee initiative, that is principled and based off of MIT VMS. This personalized program provides entrepreneurs with a mentoring team that will assist ventures in various stages.
Through hands-on mentoring, entrepreneurs will learn how to perfect their products and services, identify markets, build business organizations, seek funding, and grow as strong entrepreneurial leaders. The team mentoring approach provides a unique coaching experience to help ventures make informed decisions while being able to consider multiple perspectives from successful businessmen and women with different backgrounds. The success of this program is not only measured by starting and growing a profitable company but in providing a valuable learning process for entrepreneurs to gain the skills they need to be successful in the long run.

Once accepted into the program,  New ventures will pitch to the entire mentor base giving the mentors a chance to hear about the new businesses and their needs. The NAV Team then matches a team of mentors to the new ventures based on the needs of the entrepreneurs as well as the interests and expertise of available NAV Mentors.