… Dedication for center’s new office facility set for Feb. 15
In today’s economy, small business owners are facing numerous challenges, from lack of sales to evolving technologies. The Mississippi Small Business Development Center assists small businesses with issues like these and guides them to success.
“The Small Business Development Center is designed to provide one-on-one, free, confidential counseling and then training for small business owners,” said Doug Gurley, MSBDC chief executive officer. “The counseling covers a broad spectrum including management, technical, cash flow, accounting, day-to-day operations, hiring, firing and policies.”
The MSBDC also provides counseling and workshops to existing, pre-venture and start-up small business clients. The program’s counselors have many years of experience in the business world. They teach their clients how to develop a detailed business plan for their entities.
“We don’t do the work for them, we teach them how to put together a comprehensive business plan,” said Robert Forster, the center’s chief operations officer. “If they are seeking financing, they can then take that to a banker when requesting a loan.”
Recently, MSBDC’s state office moved into a state-of-the-art building on the Ole Miss campus. Built to meet requirements for Silver certification under Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design standards, the building contains classrooms suitable for holding workshops and seminars and can be used as a disaster command center. The new location will be dedicated at 11 a.m. Feb. 15.
One unique factor about the average small business owner is that they are responsible for all aspects of their business.
“Even if you go to a business school, what you are taught is to work in the corporate world and not in small business,” Gurley said. “You fit into an accounting department or a marketing department. But the small business owner does everything, so it’s a different kind of thinking. That’s why we are needed.”
The program began in 1981 as part of a nationwide network that all receive partial funding through a grant from the U.S. Small Business Administration and the universities and community colleges where MSBDC offices are located. They have nine locations around the state where they offer both individual counseling and workshops. MSBDC helps create or retain 1,500 to 1,800 jobs each year.
“Our focus is to create jobs and equally as important, to retain jobs,” Forster said. “The state helps fund us through the institutions that we contract with, plus some direct funding. We want to more than earn our keep. By creating jobs and by retaining jobs, we are saving the state millions of dollars per year in unemployment compensation that they would otherwise have to spend.”
One reason that the organization has been so successful is their commitment to excellence. All the offices follow FranklinCovey principles. These standards are designed to create transformational leadership through training, consulting and principle-based programs. The standards emphasize trust, effectiveness and reaching organizational goals. In a FranklinCovey organizational survey designed to measure execution and effectiveness in the workplace, MSDBC received the highest score ever attained.
Gurley believes that these practices will influence the organizations they work with, including their client base.
“Through adopting the FranklinCovey standards, as with a parent and a child, the child will emulate the parents,” he said. “So if we do this as an organization, it becomes part of our internal mechanism. People pick up on that, and they will start doing the same and becoming much more effective.”
In addition to FranklinCovey, MSBDC also follows the “Baldrige Performance Excellence Standards Program,” a public-private partnership. Baldrige’s mission is to improve the competitiveness and performance of U.S. organizations for the benefit of all U.S. residents. Baldrige gives awards at the state and national levels annually, and the MSBDC plans to apply for both within the next few years.
For more information, visit the MSBDC or call 662-915-5001.