Let’s say you want to be your own boss. You’ve got an idea for a business, something you feel can help you kick your feet up, set your own meetings and deadlines, call the shots and make a boatload of money.
Sounds like the modern American dream, right?
Dozens of people believe they’re capable of doing exactly that when it comes to running a business. However, 20. percent of businesses fail within their first year. Roughly 50 percent cease to exist within five years, while more than 6 percent won’t make it to the next decade, according to 2024 data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
While those numbers may sound more encouraging than the popular saying that “half of all businesses fail in the first year,” opening a small business still raises countless questions about where to even begin.
Enter Sampson Community College’s Small Business Center.
The Center aims to help answer many of those questions. Created in 1991, the business center operates within the college’s Division of Workforce Development and Continuing Education, and regularly hosts seminars and offers one-on-one counseling to help those looking to start — or already operating — small businesses.
Last Tuesday night, the Small Business Center partnered with Sampson County’s NC Cooperative Extension to host the “Pass the Bread and the Business Ideas: A Table for Every Dream” seminar. The dinner seminar focused on offering advice to small business owners and entrepreneurs while also creating opportunities to share ideas and insights.
“We have a three-pronged approach to help people start and grow their businesses,” Bart Rice, director of the Small Business Center, said. “One of those is putting on seminars and webinars, which we’re doing tonight. (They discuss) various topics from marketing to anything that has to do with QuickBooks, taxes, where to find your customers, how to finance your business and all kinds of stuff. Then we do referrals. If we don’t know or they need an attorney or something like that, we can refer them to a banker, an attorney, a certified public accountant (CPA), to help them out with a business. We also do confidential one-on-one counseling too.”
Rice emphasized that if new business owners want to be successful, they need a plan.
“In my past experiences, almost no one in business has a business plan,” he explained. “That’s where we start. It takes a lot of work and a lot of effort. But when you finish a plan, you have a solid foundation. You’ll know if you’re going to be successful or not, or if you have a viable idea or not.”
Rice also revealed the number one thing most people ask the Small Business Center.
“‘Where can I get financing? I need money,’” Rice recalled with a laugh. “Or, ‘Are there any grants?’ Which there are, but they’re few and far between. Both of these ladies here (guest speakers Roxanne Reed and Janice Wright) are contracting counselors with my center. Reed handles most of what I call creative financing. She uses a plethora of different places — community development financial institutions (CDFIs), Kiva loans and crowdfunding — to get you money to start your business. They find donors and can put together packages up to (potentially) $10,000. Most of your normal banks, until you’ve been in business for about two years, you’re not gonna get a business loan right off the bat. You can go to the Carolina Small Business Development Fund, or the NC Rural Center will help fund small businesses that are just starting out and can’t get traditional funding.”
The biggest tip Rice offered to those interested in starting a business was to start slowly.
“People want to chop off too much at one time versus starting off small,” he emphasized. “Start a home-based business. Have a hobby that you’re making money on the side, and then grow into getting something, rather than signing a lease for $3,000 a month and you can’t pay that. You have two bad months and next thing you know, you’re out and back to square one again. Start off slow, have a good plan, build a solid thing. Come to these networking events and meet people who can help you along the way, who (might) have gone through the same thing.”
Rice encouraged those looking to start a business to reach out to the Small Business Center.
“Call the Small Business Center. It floors me, every day I hear people say, ‘I didn’t know you were there (at the college),’” Rice said. “Any community college — there are 58 Small Business Centers, so there’s one in every community college in North Carolina. Call us, we’re there for you, and if we don’t know, we know somebody who does. That’s the biggest thing, we’re here to help.”
North Carolina Cooperative Extension agent Eileen Coite was also present during the seminar, hearing small business owners share stories about the businesses they operate and how they came together.
“I feel really good that we are supporting our community,” she said about the seminar. “Community development is part of what we do, along with partnerships. Everything is built on partnerships. While we don’t have a person that wears the hat in this office that teaches business-type classes, we can partner with the Small Business Center. We can partner with folks like Roxanne Reed, Farm School on Wheels, and Janice Wright and bring all those skills together. So it’s a great opportunity for us to bridge those gaps in the areas that may not be our specialty.”