A helping hand to local business owners

C&S Business Services owner Paula Benne takes time once a month to bounce business ideas off people who don't even work in her industry. But to her, their input is invaluable.

If you're curious how they got together in the first place, it's because they went to school together.

The Small Business Academy, a joint effort of the University of Missouri Extension's Cole County Small Business and Technology Development Center and the Jefferson City Area Chamber of Commerce, has offered a helping hand to owners of local businesses ready to grow since 2009.

Benne participated in the academy that first year, and in addition to fine-tuning her skills after 20 years in business, she left the program with a trusted group of peer-advisers.

"The networking of it is great," she said. "We still meet on a monthly basis, so if you bring a problem to the group and bounce it off of them - whether it's signage on your building or you're going to change your name - you've got feedback from people who know your business and took a class with you."

Those who participate are typically business owners who are looking to grow, both personally and professionally.

"It's for a business that is trying to make the next step," said Chris Thompson, business development specialist at the Cole County Extension who coordinates the annual academy.

The 11-week program uses the Kauffman Foundation's FastTrac GrowthVenture textbook as its primary resource, along with input from local experts like attorneys, accountants, lenders and human resources specialists. Participants meet weekly for three hours at the chamber office, making the Small Business Academy a minimum 32-hour time commitment. The cost is $450, which includes the FastTrac manual.

The course begins by helping participants create a vision and destination for their business, Thompson said. "Then the last seven sessions are all about figuring out how to get there."

"Getting there" might mean deciding how many new employees to hire and in what roles, rethinking the way a business keeps the books, or ironing out any number of other growing pains.

"As a business grows, the role of the business owner ... is going to change," Thompson said. "The business owner who thinks that they can manage anything and everything is the business owner that's going to have a hard time growing, because part of growing a business is learning how to delegate to other employees, how to create that structure."

For John Smallwood, owner of Smallwood Technologies, the Small Business Academy's guidance on monetizing services was key.

"The majority of us start companies because we really enjoy what we're doing, not to run a company. ... It opened my eyes up to a lot of parts of the business side that I was not aware of and that I was not actively following," Smallwood said. "The biggest one that I picked out of it was pricing our services properly to be fair to our customers and to still be profitable. ... I figured out that we would be able to still be competitive at a higher hourly rate and do better for ourselves as a company, which in the end really helps our customers because we're able to afford better talent."

It worked, too. Smallwood Technologies has added eight staff members and more customers for them to serve since Smallwood participated in the course in 2009.

Tan Club owner Monica Hoy - a special case for the Small Business Academy, as she began the program just before opening her West Edgewood tanning salon - used the program as a way to plan for future growth from the outset. The program's typical requirement that participants have been in business at least a year was waived because her business plan was so well developed at the time.

"My goal is to have multiple locations, so I went into it knowing that I was going to learn a lot, but I also wanted to learn: how do I look at expansion, and when do I look at expansion?" Hoy said. "It helped me build a very competitive business going into it."

Hoy was able to incorporate elements of the course as well as input from its other participants as she built her business - and, according to her, both sources were equally beneficial.

"Everybody else in the class had been in business for a while," Hoy said. "What I learned was real-life examples. I learned just as much from the other individuals taking the class with me as I did from the lectures and the books and the research, because it was real-world advice."

To many Small Business Academy alumni, the relationships they form with other business owners prove to be the most lasting aspect of the program.

"The flow of conversation between participants as we got to know each other was very good. Probably three of the people I took that class with I still talk to about business issues," Smallwood added.

Thompson, despite being the person who teaches the class, agrees the networking may be its most important outcome.

"When you get the actual business owner in there and they share their experiences, people hear another idea, they hear how the book learning could have been applied in the real world, and then they realize that they're not alone, that the problems or challenges they have are something that every other business is facing," he said.

The 2015 Small Business Academy runs Sept. 16 through Nov. 25. Applications are due by Aug. 17. For more information, contact Thompson at 634-2824.