Even while traveling and teaching full day classes, Tim continues to bring daily content.  Did you miss one? That’s ok, I’ve got you covered.

Is All Good Business Inherently Social Enterprise?

I liked the phrase social entrepreneurship instantly when I first heard it. It’s doing well by doing good, I assumed, building businesses that help people. A business doesn’t have to not make a profit to do good, so the idea of social entrepreneurship makes sense.

Never Do a Contract When a Letter Will Do

I admit I probably shouldn’t be posting this because I’m not an attorney, so I don’t give legal advice. This is just anecdotal, based on what I’ve seen in my business experience. Consult your attorney. I worked for years with a smart, honest business lawyer who — well, let me get to that later in this post.

Hired Guns Are for Cowboy Movies, not Business

During my class at the ASBDC, something that came up in discussion and generated total consensus in the group was that the business plan document written by an outsider isn’t useful. I referenced my worst-ever consulting engagement, one of my favorite posts on this blog. Everybody in the room agreed that business planning is something you do, not something you buy. It’s a process, not a finished document.

Do You Know The Single Most Powerful Word in Business Writing?

Whether it’s email, Twitter, Facebook, or — going back to the ancient days — even business letters and proposals, the single most powerful word in business writing is….

True Story: Flying Out of San Diego After the Outage

Yesterday at about 6 pm I was with a few dozen people in the terminal that United Air Lines uses in the San Diego airport. Things did not look good. We’d been without power for more than two hours, and, according to what we learned via mobile phones and iPads and such — there was no wireless, because there was no power — the power was out for at least 50 miles to the north, maybe 100 miles to the south, and all the way to New Mexico to the east.

Yesterday I had the pleasure of spending all day with about 90 people who teach and advise entrepreneurs and small business owners at various Small Business Development Centers (SBDCs) around the country. This was as part of the annual conference of Small Business Development Centers, starting today in San Diego.

The conference reminds me of something I say frequently in ask-the-expert emails and answering questions about entrepreneurship: when in doubt, if you live in the United States, and you want some help with your business like advice or classes or workshops, you should probably go first to your nearest SBDC.

The SBDCs are full of good people with real-world business experience, who are there to help startups and small business. They are funded in part by federal, state, and local money, and in part by the reasonable fees they charge for workshops and classes and counseling. I’m amazed at how many of the people I meet in the SBDC conference have been through it themselves, meaning that they tend to be veterans of their own small business experience.

How to start? Where to find financing? How to keep the right records, do the books? Marketing? Sales? Admin? Ask your nearest SBDC how they can help.

It’s a very good group and a very valuable resource for the starting entrepreneur. I’ve recommended them before but I don’t do this often enough. Today is a good day to do it.

(Image: Artur Gabrysiak/Shutterstock)

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted here about the value of the local Small Business Development Centers (SBDCs), a network of about 1,000 locations in the United States, generally a great place to go for frontline, street-level small-business advice.

The SBDCs offer classes and one-on-one counseling sessions on practical topics related to starting and growing a business. The details vary by state and specific office, but usually you’ll find a good selection of specific classes on topics such as bookkeeping and employee management, offered in a mix of evening classes over several weeks, workshops for half a day or less, one-on-one counseling and longer-term programs.

The SBDCs are financed by three mostly public sources: the federal government (through the SBA), state governments and local education. Details are slightly different from state to state. The fees charged are surprisingly low.

SBDCs are strongest when asked to provide hands-on, ground-level practical advice to people who want to start or grow local businesses. You don’t go to the SBDC for high-level advice on getting millions of dollars in venture capital; you do go to the SBDC for practical advice on dealing with banks, local investors, local regulations, regular business tasks, local marketing, bookkeeping and administration.

Where I live, in Eugene, Ore., a lot of small businesses have been through our SBDC’s two-year, comprehensive night school management courses. The alumni group raves about the results.

This comes to mind because I’m traveling this week to attend the annual conference of the Association of Small Business Development Centers (ASBDC) in San Antonio, Texas. I’ve been a regular at the conference since 1995.

This year I’m going to present a three-hour workshop on teaching entrepreneurship using business planning, an introduction to a complete curriculum we’ve made available to teachers. That happens tomorrow at 2 p.m. at the conference in San Antonio.

I posted about Good Clean Love last month; it’s a local (Eugene, Ore.) company that won our angel investment contest. And I’ve been meaning to post about the national SBDC program ever since. Good Clean Love is one of several good local companies that have been through our SBDC’s business management program.

Do you know where your local SBDC is? If you’re serious about starting a business, growing a business that already exists or managing your business better, and you’re in the United States, then you ought to know where the nearest SBDC is. That stands for Small Business Development Center. There are about 1,000 of them in the United States. And they offer one-on-one counseling, workshops and classes–a lot of good front-lines resources to help real people manage real businesses.

For a class on bookkeeping, marketing, business planning, getting financed, call your nearest SBDC. You’ll find it offers excellent counseling and training at amazingly low prices. Our local SBDC, for example, has 29 workshops on its website, most of them two-or-three-hour workshops in essentials such as basic bookkeeping, QuickBooks, Quicken, Getting an SBA Loan, etc., for $49-$99. That’s typical. It also has a two-year once-a-month weeknight comprehensive program.

And about 100 miles north of us, near Portland, Clackamas SBDC director Tim Shea offers his Small Business Greenhouse class, three hours on Tuesday nights from September to February, including books and software.  I’ve been a guest speaker at that one several times; it gets great reviews. 

For a lot of ask-the-expert e-mails I receive, I send people straight to their local SBDC. That’s for questions about starting up, establishing ownership, finding financing, dealing with permits and legal requirements, even online marketing and search engine optimization. Because the SBDCs are funded in part by federal, state and local educational institutions, they tend to be a great deal in consulting and training.

Of course, as with any educational institution, a lot will depend on the actual class, the specific teacher or counselor and the situation of the state SBDC. Some states have better SBDCs than others. Some are linked to state colleges and universities, and some to community colleges. Some have more flexibility than others. Still, although you want to check things out, you should assume the SBDC near you is a great resource until proved otherwise.

Disclosure: I’ve been working with SBDCs since 1995, as part of what I do at Palo Alto Software. I do at least one workshop for the annual SBDC conference every year, and we give a lot of software to SBDC offices to help them help the public. I like these people. I have friends in the Oregon offices, and friends from other states I see every year at the annual conference.

And an additional comment: The SBA entrepreneurship development efforts don’t get enough credit. Whether you like the SBA guaranteed loan program or not (which seems to me to depend mostly on your politics), SBA contribution to entrepreneurship at the frontlines level is significant. That’s about SBDCs, SCORE, Microenterprise Centers, Women Business Centers and SBA information offices, comprehensive statistics and research, and more.

Are you teaching a class on starting a business? If you are, then I’d like you to be aware of course.bplans.com.

That’s where I’ve put up a full curriculum/syllabus including lesson plans, exercises and assignments, online videos, and more than a dozen PowerPoint slide presentations complete with slide-by-slide notes and distribution-friendly photos and graphics.

This is material I’ve worked on for years, originally just for my own use as I taught a course in starting a business for undergrads at the University of Oregon. I’m not going to be teaching that course this spring, after 11 years of it, because I’m more involved with angel investment via the Willamette Angel Conference. But I do want to make it available to others. Why not?

The whole curriculum is free to professors on that site. And, just so you understand the motivation, yes, the coursework requires Business Plan Pro, Guy Kawasaki’s The Art of the Start, and my books the Plan-As-You-Go Business Plan and 3 Weeks to Startup (co-authored with Sabrina Parsons). So my company, Palo Alto Software, does make money by selling those to your students. But we have academic pricing, so your students can get all three for less than the $130 average cost of an entrepreneurship textbook. I’d like to think everybody wins.

That’s at course.bplans.com. You’ll find instructions there to get your free registration as a teacher. This was done especially for SBDCs, members of the National Association for Community College Entrepreneurship, community colleges and undergrad business education classes. We’ve been a sponsor of the ASBDC network for 15 years now and of NACCE for two years; so we like to think we understand those needs.

We are big fans of  SBDC’s across the nation here at Palo Alto Software. The SBDC network is dedicated to helping small businesses and entrepreneurs around the country realize their dream of starting, owning and growing their business. Something that we’re completely committed to as well. For any entrpreneuer, the SBDC is an invaluable resource, offering support, advice, resources, classes and dedicated counselors and staff all focused on giving you the best chance at succeeding in starting or growing your business.

Recently, I reached out to Mark Gregory, the new Associate State Director of the Oregon Small Business Development Center Network to ask if he’d be willing to share some of the OSBDCN’s stories of success and some information on the great work the OSBDCN is doing in Oregon:

Since its inception in 1983, the Oregon Small Business Development Center Network (OSBDCN) has provided one-on-one counseling to over 135,000 current and prospective businesses. Over 500,000 individuals have attended OSBDCN training activities.  Professional certified business counselors provide counseling at no direct cost to the business owners.

According to a study published in 2007 by the US Small Business Administration Office of Advocacy, small firm establishment births have a larger impact than any other factor examined on gross state product (GSP), state personal income (SPI), and total state employment.  The key finding suggests that economic growth will be faster when the net small firm establishment birth rate is positive.  They conclude that state efforts to promote small business formation are more fruitful for generating economic growth than virtually any other policy option.

In 2008 the OSBDCN counseled 5,782 clients statewide. 44% of these clients were pre-venture entrepreneurs working on their business plans and raising start-up capital. 56% (3,238) established their businesses; most of these firms (2,240) were in the 0-5 employee range. The balance of clients included 458 businesses with 5-50 employees, and 14 businesses with 50-500 employees.  In 2008 OSBDCN clients received a total of $48,156,140 in debt and equity financing, started 372 new businesses, and increased their sales by $44,280,331.

Our clients’ successes depend upon consistent, high-quality counseling throughout our Network.  Palo Alto Software has generously supported both the Oregon Small Business Development Center Network and our national Association of Small Business Development Centers with contributions of software and training.  These quality tools are substantial in assisting our success with clients.  In providing our thanks,  the following video link is intended to share in our mutual efforts to assist small business success and will be updated monthly to provide demonstration that together we can make a difference and achieve small business prosperity.

Mark Gregory
Associate State Director
Oregon Small Business Development Center Network

We’d like to thank Mark Gregory and the new State Director,  Mike Lainoff,  for the opportunity to share these Oregon success stories with you.

‘Chelle Parmele
Palo Alto Software

This is hard for me to post, because it–well, the headline, at least–seems so negative. Still, I’ve been dealing with a number of startups lately, and it seems like we all need a refresher reminder:

“I don’t know the secret to success, but I do know that the secret to failure is trying to please everybody.” – Bill Cosby

I watched John Jantsch’s Duct Tape Marketing workshop last week at the annual Small Business Development Center (SBDC) conference in Chicago [disclosure: Palo Alto Software publishes a Duct Tape Marketing-powered Marketing Plan Pro]. Much of what he does reminds me, brilliantly, of how important it is to understand . . .

1. Who is your target customer. In detail. Not just generalities and demographics, not even just psychographics, but who is this person, what drives her, what does she really want from you, what does she like to read, eat, watch? Where does he live, and with whom? What does he drive?
2. Who isn’t your customer. John had a great post on Duct Tape Marketing a couple of months ago, saying what to do in a recession is to focus down and more narrowly. This came up again in his workshop. Sometimes the secret to success is who isn’t your customer.

I was in a panel presentation not long ago alongside an expert in customer service. At one point, after she’d dizzied us with stories of Nordstrom retail clerks changing customers’ tires and taking as returns products that Nordstrom had never carried, somebody asked, with just a hint of exasperation,

“But how does a company stay in business like that? How do they make money? Who pays for all that?”

At which point, after a beautifully timed pause, the expert said:

“Yes, that is the question, isn’t it . . . and pay attention, because this is the most important thing I’ll say all night . . . you have to understand that not everybody is a customer.”

Which, at that moment, made everything else she’d said make sense.