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Greg Hakanson, 20, used to “sign” (an informal term for standing on corner and holding and advertising sign for a local business or service) for a nutritional supplement company. About a year ago, he heard about AArrow Advertising, a firm that teaches people tricks to spin and flip signs, and started coming to weekly practices to “be the best.”

“It’s more like our little culture, sign spinning,” Hakanson said. “Everyone outside of sign spinning are like, ‘Whoa, those guys are really serious about sign spinning.’ And it’s kind of something ridiculous to get paid for so we love every second of it.”

Started in Ocean Beach by college students in 2002, AArrow Advertising grew in the mid-2000s, became a franchise last year and has expanded to nearly 30 cities nationwide, as well as Canada, Puerto Rico and South Korea.

Today, more than 500 Americans and 750 people worldwide spin the 6-foot signs for AArrow, mostly men between the ages of 18 and 25, who, along with AArrow, claim the talent necessary to spin a sign is actually a sport.

The economic downturn hit the young company particularly hard, since 85 percent of their advertising sales were to real estate developers, said company spokeswoman Sarah Frye.

“When the real estate market declined, so did we,” she said. “We really had to shift our focus towards sports and entertainment.”

AArrow has since rebounded, with franchises set to open in the next two weeks in Dallas, Chicago and Cincinnati. The company was recently nominated by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce as one of the top small businesses in the western United States.

The business is run like a sports league, Frye said, where pay — starting at $10 an hour — is based on performance to spur competition between spinners and give them the chance to be a “spinstructor” in emerging markets.

As the company has grown, so too have its regional and national competitions. This year was the first for international competition, with Ray Rivera of Washington, D.C., taking home first place.

AArow claims more than 450 tricks or combinations can be made up, all part of the company’s “tricktionary.”

Sport or not, many of the best are here in the company’s hometown. Spinners compare their job to skateboarding, because of the number of tricks and combinations possible, and many are in fact named after skating tricks.

Robert Sizemore, who placed sixth at the national championships held Super Bowl weekend in Miami, runs a weekly practice at Northmont Park in La Mesa along with Teddy Hale, the 2009 national champion. Both were raised in the East County and have been spinning since they were 14.

“It’s just like any other sport. If you’re going to be a soccer player, you start in AYSO (American Youth Soccer Association),” said John Bowerman, 18, a spinner who also grew up in the East County.

Training is unpaid, and at least two practices are necessary to get started. It took Bowerman three months to be a sufficient sign spinner, he said. He now spends more than 40 hours a week spinning, some on the corner and some practicing behind his apartment building in Santee. He says it’s definitely a sport because of the amount of physical ability required. Bowerman added he plans to be doing it when he’s 50.

“Best sign spinner around… oldest,” he said.

Hakanson plans on spinning the next five years or until he gets out of college.

“I’ve worked food services, construction, manual labor, I’ve worked office jobs and nothing compares to just going out on a corner and expressing yourself eight hours a day,” he said.

As part of hired spinning campaigns and teaching others how to spin, Hakanson has made trips to Dallas, Las Vegas and, within the past two weeks, Canada and the Bay Area.

Though San Diego spinners are sent out to teach across the country, so are other top spinners, and new talent and distinct styles are emerging in different regions.

“They all spin the same, but they use a different set of tricks and a different set of swagger,” Hakanson said. “Like the east coast spins like Justin Brown and DiJon [Rice], but the west coast spins like Matt Doolan and Robert Sizemore.”

DiJon Rice is from Las Vegas but currently spins and teaches in the Washington D.C. Area, while Justin Brown is from Raleigh has appeared on “America’s Got Talent” and CNBC. Both Doolan and Sizemore are from San Diego.

All those interviewed agreed that if they weren’t sign spinning, they would likely be working minimum wage in retail or flipping burgers — and hating it. But depending on the gig, spinners make around $10 an hour. Even for arguably the world’s best like Teddy Hale, someone who claims to have created many sign spinning tricks and techniques, it’s not always enough to make a living.

“If I’m working full time, I would have more than enough to pay bills, but since I’m not working full-time it’s cutting right on the edge.”

AArrow Advertising has made appearances on late night television, at sporting events, and in TV commercials and music videos. Hale, the 2009 national champion, and four other spinners were in a music video for the band 311 last year. He has also done spinning gigs or training around the country, and hopes to spin in Australia or Europe someday or travel the world, which he feels is a certainty with the company’s plans of expansion.

Fun and carefree as Hakanson and Bowerman make it sound, there are a few drawbacks.

Aside from hecklers telling him to “get a real job,” Hakanson said there are injuries. Spinning can make the body and wrist tendons sore. He has torn muscles, and a few months ago broke his foot during practice.

“Spinjuries” are more common in East Coast winters or hot Phoenix or Las Vegas summers.

Hale said he fractured his skull on the sidewalk trying to do a flip on a corner in Point Loma and spent two days in the hospital.

“I blacked out for a minute and woke up in an ambulance,” he said. But in true tough guy style, was back out on the corner within a week, he said.

Maybe these guys are athletes after all.

Also posted on allvoices.com as a contracted Provoices correspondent.

Osman Osman, 38, is a security guard who works 40 hours a week at construction sites, then cleans houses and businesses.

He took out a $10,000 loan to expand his company American Cleaning Expert, $7,000 for more carpet and window cleaning equipment.

Growing his business allowed him to quit delivering newspapers at 3 or 4 in the morning. With a few more contracts, he can quit the security jobs and provide more work to other refugees and asylum seekers.

“Someone comes from Africa and he cant speak English very good,” he said. “I can help those guys build their language and stuff and survive as a refugee also.”

By making small loans to entrepreneurs like Osman, the International Rescue Committee’s microenterprise program has helped create or expand 150 refugee small businesses and create at least 200 jobs since the program’s start 10 years ago, said Joel Chrisco who helps run the program.

Businesses created or expanded include artists, handymen, janitorial, childcare, catering and restaurants, limousine and taxi companies, used car and towing businesses.

In this video, hear the stories of two business owners.

Microenterprises are generally defined as businesses with five or fewer employees. It’s a form of lending generally seen in the developing world but also in “poverty pockets” in the general U.S. microfinance market, said Robert Gailey, an associate professor at Point Loma Nazarene University in charge of the college’s Center for International Development.

Loans from the IRC typically start as low as $100 to build credit in the separate financial education program. Microenterprise loans average $7,500 each and can be as large as $15,000 at an interest rate of 7.25 percent. Interest free loans are also offered to Muslim clients, the only institution to do so county wide, Chrisco said.

There’s always competition for the kind of jobs that don’t require much English or special skills in San Diego but especially now with the state of the economy and an already sizable immigrant population.

“The general concept of the American dream is often defined as start your own life and become a business owner and that’s leading a lot clients here,” Chrisco said.

“This incredibly competitive job market leaves a lot [of refugees] to consider microenterprise as a means to an end in San Diego.”

IRC San Diego’s microenterprise program, the only specifically for refugees in the county, has a repayment rate of 96 percent and about that or higher for other microlenders.

The concept of establishing institutions to hand out small or microloans is often tied to the Gramman Bank in Bangladesh.

The bank centers around the concept that the most effective way to end global poverty is to lend money to groups of poor women. For their efforts, the Gramman Bank and its founder Muhammad YunusMuhammad Yunus were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006.

San Diego’s IRC office, the largest of 22 branch offices in the nation, started their microenterprise program in 2000 centered around the same concept but for individual entrepreneurs and grew to include men and women. At the end of 2009, the program handed out a total 81 loans, half currently active, totaling more than $600,000.

A grant from the Office of Refugee Resettlement helped start the program. 16 others like it are operating under the grant in cities around the country, the ORR said.

Nationally, in the general microloan market, large microlenders include Accion USA, who focus on lending to immigrants, and since 20006 Gramman America, who have offices in New York City and Omaha, Neb. and are expected to expand to more cities.

The ability to repay loans is considered but having a job isn’t a prerequisite for receiving a loan, he said. Profitability and a good business model are what’s most most important. Still, it’s incredibly challenging, aimed at entrepreneurs and “not a one-size-fits-all kind of program,” Chrisco said.

All loans must be approved unanimously by a board of nine lending professionals from local banks and financial institutions.

San Diego has become the number one city in the world for resettling Iraqi refugees with 5,000 last year alone. 90 percent of refugees resettled by the IRC since 2007 are Iraqi. Yet only three businesses, a dentist’s office, pizza shop and barber shop, have started through the microenterprise program.

But each business has hired other Iraqi refugees to work, as have nearly all businesses interviewed for this article hired refugees from their country of origin.

Jobs here help people support themselves but also send money home to those less fortunate in their country of origin.

Each month, 40 percent to 60 percent of Sarah Sami’s earnings from her fashion and jewelry company 7th Wish go back to family and neighbors in Baghdad.

Sami has been around fashion her entire life, studying in Denmark, running her own company at one point in Iraq and as a child spent time in the family clothes factory.

“There men and women who have been killed, they have kids,” she said. “They don’t have somebody to support them. So we try, me, my brother, my sister, we try to send them money.”

More interest is expected in the future after people have a chance to get acclimated and find work, said Jason Jarvinen from the IRC’s financial education program.

“The first few years when you’re in the country, that’s a really hard time to start a business just because there are so many other kind of adjustments taking place.”

IRC San Diego officials predict 20 percent to 30 percent of all Iraqi refugees resettled were previously employed in a high-skilled profession like doctor, engineer or business owner. So more interest is anticipated in recertification programs as well.