June 4: You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know – the SBA visits

On June 4, 2019, Kasie and Shennice visited with the SBA of South Carolina. Here are the show notes:

Introductions:

Kasie Whitener, Clemson Road Consulting, DMSB

Shennice Cleckley, Smart Cookie Coaching

Angela Brewer, Business Opportunity Specialist, SBA South Carolina

Savannah Wilburn, Lender Relations Specialist & Public Relations, SBA South Carolina

Theme for day:

Entrepreneur is not a job and other Small Business Hard-Learned Lessons

Agenda review:

• Get to know Angela Brewer and the S.C. SBA
• Entrepreneurship defined
• The Gig Economy vs Sustainable Business

Segment 1:

The first week of May was Small Business week and it got us thinking about how we haven’t had the SBA on the program to talk about how they support small businesses, start ups, and would-be entrepreneurs.

Coincidently, the SBA is offering a new women’s business owner program so we thought we’d invite Angela Brewer, one of the S.C. SBA’s business opportunity specialists here to tell us about what the SBA offers and what this new program is specifically.

So, what does the SBA in S.C. do for small businesses?

What is this new program and why are you launching it?

How can our listeners take advantage of SBA programs and services?

You’re here to promote the SC Business Collaborative for Women-Owned Businesses program “Scaling Up: You Don’t Know What Don’t Know, What You Don’t Know!”

• A one-day event for women-owned start-ups to learn about what it takes to start/grow your business, how to develop an action plan for your business and one-on-one meetings with local resources that can help you with your marketing and sales strategy, business certifications, business financing and more.
• Thursday, June 13, 2019 – 9:00am EDT @ Benedict College Swinton Center

Register here

Segment 2:

We’ve had the conversation before about the difference between entrepreneurship and business ownership. The first, entrepreneurship, is about pursuing an idea, trying to solve a problem, and possibly building a business around that solution.

The second is the actual construction of a business to meet customers’ needs. And then the running of that business. We’ve talked before about three types of start-up firms:

• Salary-Substitute (like a dry cleaning service, a medical practice, or a fast food franchise)
• Lifestyle firm (like a consulting practice, an artistic product, or a retail store)
• Entrepreneurial firms (those companies that seize a trend or an opportunity in the marketplace — think Uber, AirBNB, Square)

We’ve talked about the entrepreneurial process:

• Decide to become an entrepreneur
• Develop a business idea
• Move from an idea to establishing the actual business
• Manage and grow the business

We’ve talked about the difference between fast growth, high-venture-capital interest companies and slow-growth, roots-down companies.

Segment 3:

We’ve talked about some of the common myths about entrepreneurs such as:

• They are born, not made
• They are gamblers and risk-takers
• They are motivated by money
• They are young and energetic
• They love the spotlight.

What is true of entrepreneurs is that:

• They have a passion for business
• They have a product and customer focus
• They have tenacity which helps them persist despite failure
• They have an intelligence related to howto do things — Execution.

Segment 4:

We have also talked in recent weeks about disruptive business models and standard business models. Let’s revisit some of those definitions for our listeners:

• Standard:  Standard business models depict existing plans or recipes firms can use

to determine how they will create, deliver and capture value for their shareholders.

• Disruptive:  which are rare, are ones that do not fit the profile of a standard

business model and are impactful enough that they disrupt or change the way

business is conducted in an industry or an important niche within an industry.

Some of our disruptive business model guests included

• Caroline Guitar Company who used crowdsourcing to finance growth.
• Kentbury.com which is a platform where writers can advertise their projects for agents and publishers to show interest in them.
• Raegan Teller visited with us about being an Authorpreneur in this rapidly changing publishing industry.

We’ve also visited this spring with:

• ConverSpace to discuss the coworking revolution and how to develop “inventory” out of space-for-rent operations.
• Midlands School of Cheer & Dance to talk about Caribbean-inspired dance opportunities and getting a new studio off the ground.
• Flex Chiropractic to talk about volume-based versus value-based healthcare, preventative care, and the upfront investment involved when setting up a medical practice.

Clemson Road Creative and Smart Cookie Coaching are both consultancies. We talk a lot about scalability in services businesses on this show. How can you itemize your work? How can you outsource non-revenue tasks? When do you know when it’s time to hire someone to help?

We had a series on key relationships for women entrepreneurs that featured the Office of Business Opportunities’ new Mentor Match-Up program. This upcoming event with the SBA seems to have a similar purpose: enable and empower women business owners.

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