August 7, 2006
Been there, done that | The volunteer counselors of the Service Corps of Retired Executives give entrepreneurs one-on-one business development advice based on their long careers
By Samantha Depoy
Custom cabinetmaker Cynthia Hamilton can construct a piece worthy of placing in the most authentic colonial home, but the Kennebunk craftswoman didn't feel confident she had the tools to build a business plan that a bank would fund. Like most creative types, Hamilton could imagine an expansion of her Route 1 antiques shop and furniture business, the Americana Workshop, but the steps needed to make her vision viable weren't as clear. "I wanted to build furniture, not run a business," Hamilton explains. "This was my lifelong goal and I had in my mind exactly what I wanted to do. But to get it from your mind onto paper and then into real life, you need somebody to help you out."
So, over the past decade, she has continuously sought advice and assistance from the experts from the Portland chapter of the Service Corps of Retired Executives, better known as SCORE, a nationwide nonprofit network of more than 10,000 volunteers who provide free counseling and workshops through nearly 400 chapters across the country, including eight in Maine. SCORE is a resource partner with the U.S. Small Business Administration and is dedicated to entrepreneur education and the formation, growth and success of small businesses, like Hamilton's. But among the plethora of small-business training programs out there, SCORE offers something that clients in Maine say you can't find in a seminar: a one-to-one approach that gives entrepreneurs case-specific advice from a team of experienced volunteers. Those sessions also can lead to long-term relationships between entrepreneurs and SCORE counselors.
During the 2005 fiscal year, the 150 or so volunteers at Maine's seven SCORE chapters conducted 1,800 counseling sessions, said Skip Orem, who serves as district director for the state's SCORE program. Volunteers' business backgrounds are as varied as their clients' questions ˆ Portland SCORE members, for example, range from retired CEOs to former college administrators. But they share an enthusiasm for educating rookie entrepreneurs, and enough business experience to be effective in that pursuit. "The value of SCORE is that we can directly target an inquiry to a specific expert," says Bonnie Erickson, public information officer for Maine's Small Business Administration. "When someone calls me who wants to start a bed and breakfast, I know there is a SCORE volunteer over in Oxford Hills who owns a bed and breakfast who I can refer them to."
Asking the tough questions
Volunteers, some of whom are in their 80s, pledge a minimum of three half-days of service to clients per month. The only qualification to join is previous involvement in the business community, but John Thron, chair of the Portland SCORE chapter, says most volunteers have been high-level managers or founders and owners of a business. Thron, for example, worked as a software engineer for Honeywell International before co-founding software company Programart in Cambridge, Mass., in 1969. He says he began volunteering with SCORE because of his own success-through-struggle story: His software business eventually flourished after initial failures.
A client in a counseling session can expect the undivided attention and expertise of a duo of such volunteers, who take on the roles of confidant, cheerleader and disciplinarian. "There is a large percentage of people who know their business, just not business in general," says Bill Murray, a longtime volunteer and membership director at Portland SCORE. "In a lot of cases, we're not like counselors but reference librarians."
Whether the client is a family-owned operation that sells bottled gas, a woman who plans to import home furnishings from Africa to sell in a Portland shop, or someone like Hamilton, who wanted to expand her country antiques and colonial home accessories shop, the counseling usually starts with the same advice: Focus, focus, focus. Thron explains that many clients have so many ideas that they can't settle on one business concept that will succeed at the loan officer's desk, let alone in the marketplace. "I think ˆ and this is part of SCORE's mantra ˆ that having a written business plan is the key to getting your arms around the business," he explains. "The importance of writing a business plan can't be overstated. It really forces them into focus mode."
In the process of writing that plan, clients are forced to hone in on exactly what they want their business to be. And when they dodge a tough question, such as "Is there a market for this business?" the SCORE counselors are quick to probe. "There were a lot of things I didn't think about, or I didn't want to think about," says Americana Workshop owner Hamilton, who admits she didn't anticipate the size of the loan she would need to take out to expand the business. "They are good about asking the tough questions. It got a little bigger than I thought and he's helped me find a way to best manage that."
One of the concerns with this counseling approach, agree SCORE volunteers, is that clients might not come back for another session. Sometimes, it's because the initial session revealed the business was a no-go. But even those cases shouldn't be perceived as failures, says Orem. "We call that session a success in that we helped save them from a costly investment, whether it be time or financial," he explains.
In other cases, the tough questioning and subsequent business plan development gives an entrepreneur confidence to launch their operation, says Thron, and leads to ongoing counseling relationships that can, in the case of Nancy Pugh and Rob Evans, owners of Portland eateries Hugo's and Duckfat, last upwards of five years and span more than 50 counseling sessions. For many clients like Pugh and Evans, SCORE is the training wheel in the transition between employee and employer.
When Pugh and Evans moved to Maine in 2000, they were planning to find jobs in Portland's restaurant business, an industry they had worked in ˆ he as a chef, she in the front of the house ˆ their entire lives. Within a week of their arrival, though, the owner of Hugo's Restaurant called them to sell. As eager as they were to jump on the offer, Pugh admits the couple had "no idea what we were doing."
Through Portland's Resource Hub, the duo was directed to SCORE and matched with mentor Craig Foster. It's a relationship that Pugh says led to a close friendship and the success of both Hugo's and Duckfat, the couple's newer takeout spot that opened in early 2005. What made the counseling so beneficial, according to Pugh, was that Foster didn't just point out potential problems, but offered solutions as well. "We had this fantasy that we'd get a character loan," Pugh says, referring to a loan based on the reputation or personal credit history of a borrower rather than business merit or collateral. The couple say "it was a rude awakening" when SCORE explained that even though character loans are occasionally granted to businesses, a safer strategy would be developing a solid business plan to take to the bank. "They were realists without being discouraging," Pugh explains.
Foster's most meaningful message, says Pugh, was "to budget your time smart and put your passions first." At Hugo's, that meant hiring someone to handle the finances, which Pugh admits was a weakness, and focusing on what the couple knew best ˆ being in the kitchen and interacting with customers. "That guidance of what to let go of and what to pay attention to was critical," Pugh explains. "You still want to see everything, but you don't need to touch everything."
The call for volunteers
As a nonprofit with bills to pay and clients to entice, SCORE relies on its partnerships with financial institutions and the U.S. Small Business Administration to sustain itself, says Thron. Some chapters receive office space from the Small Business Administration while others find reduced-rate accommodations within private companies or other training agencies. For example, the Western Mountains chapter is located in the Oxford Federal Credit Union in Mexico.
Regional banks, explains Thron, are some of SCORE's strongest supporters in Maine. Loan officers often recommend commercial loan applicants use SCORE as a resource. Meanwhile, SCORE sends clients who are ready to make their pitch for a loan to their banking allies.
But getting the word out about SCORE is a big expense. Thron says the Portland chapter typically spends about $10,000 a year on advertising its services in local newspapers. The money to pay those costs is raised through the fees clients pay to attend regular workshops. (For more on this, see "Business 101," this page.)
While the stream of clients is steady, say SCORE volunteers, they're always eager to help more. That's why recruiting new members ˆ particularly women ˆ is always a focus. (Because SCORE's volunteers are mostly retirees, there is a natural attrition through illness or death. Murray says two members of Portland's chapter have passed away in as many months.) Only about 15% of SCORE's volunteers in Maine are women, says Orem, though more than half of the program's clients are. Some chapters, like the one in Caribou, are split 50-50. The newest chapter, in Bangor, also has a woman as one of its two members.
Yet the state's largest chapter, Portland, boasts only three women out of its 55 members. (Theories on the shortage of women vary, but some believe the pool of female volunteers will grow once baby boomers start retiring, since women of the baby boom generation have taken on more positions of power within the workplace.)
Lois Carlson is one of Portland's three female volunteers. In 1998, as a board member for the Portland Conservatory of Music, she came to SCORE as a client seeking ways for the organization to become more financially harmonious. While she doesn't recall the specific advice SCORE mentors gave her ˆ she says it centered around running the nonprofit more like a business ˆ Carlson does remember asking them if they ever invited women to join the ranks, a query that she says initially confounded the counselors because they'd never heard it before. "I was so intrigued by what they offered that I wanted to join the organization," Carlson says.
A retired college administrator ˆ most recently in the development office at St. Joseph's College in Standish ˆ Carlson, who has since served as Portland's chapter chair, says her work has made her golden years more fulfilling. "It's just very satisfying when you meet someone with a good idea and know when they walk out the door, you've given them good suggestions that they can really use," she says. "I think people feel more secure bouncing their ideas off a professional and having some just validate their ideas. The satisfaction of talking with people who are truly interested and are really listening to your advice is very rewarding."
For clients, the reward can be even more tangible. Despite Evans being named one of Food & Wine's Best New Chefs in 2004 and Hugo's and Duckfat receiving rave reviews in publications like Travel + Leisure and Gourmet magazine, the Portland couple still meet with their SCORE counselor monthly. "He's been a huge player in how we run our business and part of me wonders if we ever would have gotten through the past five years without him," Pugh says. "These guys are there to be on your side and give you that experienced, insider advice. It's genuine, and you can't pay for that."
So, over the past decade, she has continuously sought advice and assistance from the experts from the Portland chapter of the Service Corps of Retired Executives, better known as SCORE, a nationwide nonprofit network of more than 10,000 volunteers who provide free counseling and workshops through nearly 400 chapters across the country, including eight in Maine. SCORE is a resource partner with the U.S. Small Business Administration and is dedicated to entrepreneur education and the formation, growth and success of small businesses, like Hamilton's. But among the plethora of small-business training programs out there, SCORE offers something that clients in Maine say you can't find in a seminar: a one-to-one approach that gives entrepreneurs case-specific advice from a team of experienced volunteers. Those sessions also can lead to long-term relationships between entrepreneurs and SCORE counselors.
During the 2005 fiscal year, the 150 or so volunteers at Maine's seven SCORE chapters conducted 1,800 counseling sessions, said Skip Orem, who serves as district director for the state's SCORE program. Volunteers' business backgrounds are as varied as their clients' questions ˆ Portland SCORE members, for example, range from retired CEOs to former college administrators. But they share an enthusiasm for educating rookie entrepreneurs, and enough business experience to be effective in that pursuit. "The value of SCORE is that we can directly target an inquiry to a specific expert," says Bonnie Erickson, public information officer for Maine's Small Business Administration. "When someone calls me who wants to start a bed and breakfast, I know there is a SCORE volunteer over in Oxford Hills who owns a bed and breakfast who I can refer them to."
Asking the tough questions
Volunteers, some of whom are in their 80s, pledge a minimum of three half-days of service to clients per month. The only qualification to join is previous involvement in the business community, but John Thron, chair of the Portland SCORE chapter, says most volunteers have been high-level managers or founders and owners of a business. Thron, for example, worked as a software engineer for Honeywell International before co-founding software company Programart in Cambridge, Mass., in 1969. He says he began volunteering with SCORE because of his own success-through-struggle story: His software business eventually flourished after initial failures.
A client in a counseling session can expect the undivided attention and expertise of a duo of such volunteers, who take on the roles of confidant, cheerleader and disciplinarian. "There is a large percentage of people who know their business, just not business in general," says Bill Murray, a longtime volunteer and membership director at Portland SCORE. "In a lot of cases, we're not like counselors but reference librarians."
Whether the client is a family-owned operation that sells bottled gas, a woman who plans to import home furnishings from Africa to sell in a Portland shop, or someone like Hamilton, who wanted to expand her country antiques and colonial home accessories shop, the counseling usually starts with the same advice: Focus, focus, focus. Thron explains that many clients have so many ideas that they can't settle on one business concept that will succeed at the loan officer's desk, let alone in the marketplace. "I think ˆ and this is part of SCORE's mantra ˆ that having a written business plan is the key to getting your arms around the business," he explains. "The importance of writing a business plan can't be overstated. It really forces them into focus mode."
In the process of writing that plan, clients are forced to hone in on exactly what they want their business to be. And when they dodge a tough question, such as "Is there a market for this business?" the SCORE counselors are quick to probe. "There were a lot of things I didn't think about, or I didn't want to think about," says Americana Workshop owner Hamilton, who admits she didn't anticipate the size of the loan she would need to take out to expand the business. "They are good about asking the tough questions. It got a little bigger than I thought and he's helped me find a way to best manage that."
One of the concerns with this counseling approach, agree SCORE volunteers, is that clients might not come back for another session. Sometimes, it's because the initial session revealed the business was a no-go. But even those cases shouldn't be perceived as failures, says Orem. "We call that session a success in that we helped save them from a costly investment, whether it be time or financial," he explains.
In other cases, the tough questioning and subsequent business plan development gives an entrepreneur confidence to launch their operation, says Thron, and leads to ongoing counseling relationships that can, in the case of Nancy Pugh and Rob Evans, owners of Portland eateries Hugo's and Duckfat, last upwards of five years and span more than 50 counseling sessions. For many clients like Pugh and Evans, SCORE is the training wheel in the transition between employee and employer.
When Pugh and Evans moved to Maine in 2000, they were planning to find jobs in Portland's restaurant business, an industry they had worked in ˆ he as a chef, she in the front of the house ˆ their entire lives. Within a week of their arrival, though, the owner of Hugo's Restaurant called them to sell. As eager as they were to jump on the offer, Pugh admits the couple had "no idea what we were doing."
Through Portland's Resource Hub, the duo was directed to SCORE and matched with mentor Craig Foster. It's a relationship that Pugh says led to a close friendship and the success of both Hugo's and Duckfat, the couple's newer takeout spot that opened in early 2005. What made the counseling so beneficial, according to Pugh, was that Foster didn't just point out potential problems, but offered solutions as well. "We had this fantasy that we'd get a character loan," Pugh says, referring to a loan based on the reputation or personal credit history of a borrower rather than business merit or collateral. The couple say "it was a rude awakening" when SCORE explained that even though character loans are occasionally granted to businesses, a safer strategy would be developing a solid business plan to take to the bank. "They were realists without being discouraging," Pugh explains.
Foster's most meaningful message, says Pugh, was "to budget your time smart and put your passions first." At Hugo's, that meant hiring someone to handle the finances, which Pugh admits was a weakness, and focusing on what the couple knew best ˆ being in the kitchen and interacting with customers. "That guidance of what to let go of and what to pay attention to was critical," Pugh explains. "You still want to see everything, but you don't need to touch everything."
The call for volunteers
As a nonprofit with bills to pay and clients to entice, SCORE relies on its partnerships with financial institutions and the U.S. Small Business Administration to sustain itself, says Thron. Some chapters receive office space from the Small Business Administration while others find reduced-rate accommodations within private companies or other training agencies. For example, the Western Mountains chapter is located in the Oxford Federal Credit Union in Mexico.
Regional banks, explains Thron, are some of SCORE's strongest supporters in Maine. Loan officers often recommend commercial loan applicants use SCORE as a resource. Meanwhile, SCORE sends clients who are ready to make their pitch for a loan to their banking allies.
But getting the word out about SCORE is a big expense. Thron says the Portland chapter typically spends about $10,000 a year on advertising its services in local newspapers. The money to pay those costs is raised through the fees clients pay to attend regular workshops. (For more on this, see "Business 101," this page.)
While the stream of clients is steady, say SCORE volunteers, they're always eager to help more. That's why recruiting new members ˆ particularly women ˆ is always a focus. (Because SCORE's volunteers are mostly retirees, there is a natural attrition through illness or death. Murray says two members of Portland's chapter have passed away in as many months.) Only about 15% of SCORE's volunteers in Maine are women, says Orem, though more than half of the program's clients are. Some chapters, like the one in Caribou, are split 50-50. The newest chapter, in Bangor, also has a woman as one of its two members.
Yet the state's largest chapter, Portland, boasts only three women out of its 55 members. (Theories on the shortage of women vary, but some believe the pool of female volunteers will grow once baby boomers start retiring, since women of the baby boom generation have taken on more positions of power within the workplace.)
Lois Carlson is one of Portland's three female volunteers. In 1998, as a board member for the Portland Conservatory of Music, she came to SCORE as a client seeking ways for the organization to become more financially harmonious. While she doesn't recall the specific advice SCORE mentors gave her ˆ she says it centered around running the nonprofit more like a business ˆ Carlson does remember asking them if they ever invited women to join the ranks, a query that she says initially confounded the counselors because they'd never heard it before. "I was so intrigued by what they offered that I wanted to join the organization," Carlson says.
A retired college administrator ˆ most recently in the development office at St. Joseph's College in Standish ˆ Carlson, who has since served as Portland's chapter chair, says her work has made her golden years more fulfilling. "It's just very satisfying when you meet someone with a good idea and know when they walk out the door, you've given them good suggestions that they can really use," she says. "I think people feel more secure bouncing their ideas off a professional and having some just validate their ideas. The satisfaction of talking with people who are truly interested and are really listening to your advice is very rewarding."
For clients, the reward can be even more tangible. Despite Evans being named one of Food & Wine's Best New Chefs in 2004 and Hugo's and Duckfat receiving rave reviews in publications like Travel + Leisure and Gourmet magazine, the Portland couple still meet with their SCORE counselor monthly. "He's been a huge player in how we run our business and part of me wonders if we ever would have gotten through the past five years without him," Pugh says. "These guys are there to be on your side and give you that experienced, insider advice. It's genuine, and you can't pay for that."
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