IG Live: Free Small Business Resources
Here is a quick chat about some great county and regional resources that support the development and growth of small businesses.
Before we talk about growth- are you new to business?
My suggestion: Go to the county clerk: ask to register a new DBA business (doing business as). For example, my business was: Linda D’Arco doing business as “Little Farmhouse Flowers” — that’s how I started. Then you can go to the bank and set up a separate DBA checking account for your business.
After a couple years, I felt ready to establish a Limited Liability Company. I didn’t want my personal assets to be at risk in case a crazy wedding client came after my business. So I separated my personal assets from my work by setting up that LLC.
Now that my company is growing and profitable, we will transition to an S-corp.
A lawyer can help you make these changes, but so can a good accountant. And what I learned is that getting help from an accountant who may be helping you with your bookkeeping or taxes etc later is a really good thing to do. This way, they understand your business formation from the start. So that’s not free — but I strongly recommend it.
Here is the primary topic at hand this month:
Looking to expand and needing help: I’m talking about land, buildings, machinery, etc. —It could be your first farm. It could be deciding you want to build a wedding venue on your property. It could be getting help to add a garden center to your work.
Town Supervisor meeting: First went to town supervisor about some town-owned properties that we though might be coming on the market, also to explain our business, our staffing, our growth and our desire to stay in the area.
He couldn’t be of much help regarding the properties we are interested in and actually we learned a lot about some drama around those properties in our town, but he did take our situation to the next meeting with regional development representatives. That is a meeting of the various town supervisors and representatives with the development agencies for the various counties surrounding us.
From there- representatives from our county’s IDA (Industrial Development Agency) reached out to offer their services. This agency is responsible for helping to keep local businesses in the county and helping new/growing businesses to develop in the county. They manage and distributing county funds for worthy projects, and work to help local businesses earn state and federal incentives like grants and loans to bolster the county’s business opportunities.
In your state they may be called a “county development authority” or a “county industrial development authority”
Their whole purpose is to help businesses grow and thrive.
I took a zoom meeting with representaives from our IDA and explained the ways in which we would like to grow our business. Our challenges (cost of land, accessibility to trucks, rural location) and they right away started to come with lists of ways that they might be able to help us.
They are the kinds of people who know about parcels of land that have been set as incentives to new/growing businesses to stay in the area.
They have knowlege of properties they’ve worked on that are available in the area.
They know which towns are eager to have new businesses and the incentives they are willing to offer.
So I met with them by zoom and also in person. At both appointments— there were a ton— I mean a TON of acronyms through around. It almost felt like they were speaking a different language to me.
And there were some things they needed that I didn’t have the capacity or time to put together. Like: a detailed business plan with an analysis of past present and projected future sales. Information like: how will the proposed growth of your business increase your sales and how will those sales compare to your increased costs for a new mortgage, untilities, insurance, etc.
For this, they referred me to the local chapter of the SBDC (Small Business Development Center) at SUNY Canton (the State University of New York in Canton, NY).
I thought initially— how can they possibly help me and understand my business. I thought: I’m not even sure what to ask them for. I filled out a simple online form
So I approached my first meeting with skepticism. But what I learned was that the person I’d work with is incredibly professional and helpful. She’s become my sort of “free business therapist.” — that’s how I think of her, anyways.
She helped me to start collecting the things I’d need to take to a bank or investor. And then she put them into the spreadsheets and ran the projects that are “bank language.” She confirmed that my own written business plan is on target and impressive and that it, in combination with the spreadsheets will represent our case well.
(I’ll share my written business plan template with you when it is complete.) I can also share the row and column headings for the spreadsheet with the numbers. We’re not done yet — but that will give you a sense for the kind of info you’ll need.
Her experience in working with other businesses that are getting started or looking to grow has been the most valuable: because she is my sounding board. I can ask her plainly: is this feasible? Is this something the banks will be interested in? Am I on to something here?
Some of the most challenging work for me is trying to forecast how the company will grow and change and plateau, etc. She is able to chime in with reasonable data and rates of change based on our past growth and my intuition. She helps me come up with numbers that are both conservative (don’t want to over promise the banks) and appealing at the same time (don’t want to under value our growth).
I meet weekly with my counselor. She is paid by the government to work for me. Amazing. She is as easy to get ahold of as sending an email. We zoom weekly. She moves at my pace. Sometimes I have more or less time to accomplish the “homework” she assigns me. To which her mantra is just “I’m here to help you.”
She also helps me decode the language from the IDA people AND when they offer or suggest something to me that seems a bit off— she advises me on the benefits or pitfalls of certain grant programs, etc.