Small Businesses- The Backbone of America

“Small businesses continue to be the accelerator of the American economy.” – Deputy Chief Counsel Chip Bishop, SBA

We hear a lot about big manufacturing firms creating jobs in Georgia and America. However, many large US firms are contracting and/or moving overseas. Or, converting many functions to Artificial Intelligence… resulting in the reduction of existing positions.

If any Georgia county really wants to create jobs, it will look to small companies. The Small Business Administration (SBA) has determined that small businesses are creating 90% of new jobs nationally. Our small businesses, all 36 million of them, create almost half of the USA’s private sector jobs.

In Georgia, our 1.4 million small businesses account for 43% of all private sector employees. However, the picture is not all rosy. For example, in a recent 12-month period, 41,761 Georgia businesses opened…but  37,392 closed. Which is why mentoring is so important for smaller enterprises.

Coming from a family of immigrant entrepreneurs, I know that it is not easy to succeed as a small business. Even with hard work and the best of intentions, four out of five start-ups still fail. Therefore, solid mentoring is one key to the success of a budding enterprise.

Decades ago, I got tired of travelling across the nation every week as SVP/VP for several national corporations. When I retired to rural Jackson Lake, I researched where I could best volunteer to help Georgia’s small businesses to grow and succeed. I found out about SCORE and have been one of its most active Georgia members ever since, mentoring hundreds of small businesses in the Metro Atlanta area and beyond.

SCORE (formerly the Service Corps of Retired Executives) is a national not-for-profit organization which has been around for over 60 years and has more than 10,000 volunteers nationally. As a resource partner of the federal government’s SBA (Small Business Administration), SCORE has been assisting small businesses to grow and prosper via confidential, free mentoring. Plus, professional workshops (both on-line and locally) are offered, either free or at minimal cost.

SCORE has several very active chapters in the greater Atlanta area (see website below). There are 100+ SCORE mentors in the Atlanta MSA alone. All are unpaid… and mentoring sessions are 100 percent free.

Mentors have assisted people to either enter or increase profitability in a wide range of very different industries. Plus, SCORE attempts to match a budding entrepreneur with someone who knows the industry he or she is interested in (for example- I get many mentees who are in healthcare or government related small enterprises).

Workshops are taught by volunteers and cover numerous programmatic areas such as business planning, marketing, funding and finance. If you would like to register for a seminar, current workshops can be found on the website.

If you are interested in learning either how to start a small business or how to grow your existing business, SCORE is the organization that can help you succeed. Simply go to the website, which contains a wealth of information about the organization’s services, and ask for a free mentoring session. You have nothing to lose and very much to gain.