YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio — Seven years ago, Mara Cunningham left her corporate job and started Yo! Crash, a mobile rage room in Youngstown. The rage room started in a brick and mortar, but the COVID pandemic forced the business to close.

By making it past five years, Yo! Crash has already surpassed 50% of businesses.

“If we cannot have them come to us, we need to figure out a way to get to them,” said Mara Cunningham, the owner of Yo! Crash. “So, from there, we’ve transitioned mobile into mobile ever since.”

According to federal reserve data, more than a million small businesses closed during 2020. Cunningham said when her business closed, it forced her to think outside of a brick and mortar for it to be successful.

“One of our largest challenges was educating the community on what exactly we are,” said Cunningham. “Rage rooms have been around since 2009. They were introduced in Japan and then came over here.”

Cunningham recently hit a milestone for her business; earlier this year she graduated from the Goldman Sachs’ One Million Black Women Black In Business Cohort Nine. It’s a free 12-week business education program for Black women entrepreneurs and business owners.

“The resilience that we required to have, how we have cultivated culture, how we have built a lot of the things that people have made a lot of money off of and it is now our time and our right and our duty to seize all of those things that belong to us,” said Cunningham.

Regional Director Tanisha Wheeler from the Minority Business Assistance Center at YBI, formerly known as the Youngstown Business Incubator, works with Cunningham. Wheeler has assisted more than a hundred small businesses while at YBI. She said the services they provide to small businesses give them exposure, opportunities and access to people who can help with their business.

“We’re helping you with that business plan to access capital,” said Wheeler. “We’re definitely exposing you to lending opportunities, banks, state funding opportunities and then for procurement, we’re putting you in contact with those big box opportunities doing business with other businesses.”

Wheeler serves seven counties in the lake to river region: Mahoning, Trumbull, Columbiana, Ashtabula, Monroe, Jefferson and Belmont counties.

She said Black women have become the top percentage of entrepreneurs in the country. Since the Goldman Sachs’ cohort experience, Wheeler said Cunningham can continue to show the importance of not only Yo! Crash but all small businesses in Youngstown while the area continues to grow.

“We’re seeing an advance in different industries,” said Wheeler. “We’re seeing businesses move back; we’re seeing just a surge in businesses wanting to do business in this area.”

Cunningham said after the Goldman Sachs’ cohort experience, she now takes pride in where she has been and where she and Yo! Crash are going. While also remembering she is not alone, and her community needs her just as much as she needs them.

The Goldman Sachs’ One Million Black Women Black in Business started in 2022 and since then has served close to 2,000 solopreneurs from across the U.S.

There are two cohorts a year that host around 600 small business owners.

Cohort Nine graduated in July 2026, representing 306 small business owners.