🔒Maine Small Business Development Centers are providing big-time support

Michael Stiggle had been successfully running his restaurant Timberwolves in Mars Hill for about three years when the pandemic hit.

“It was like being bombed,” he says. “We were not prepared. We needed to run for shelter.”

He immediately closed the Aroostook County barbeque restaurant that he runs with his wife, Bobbie Jo and nephew, Chandler Dixon.

“We didn’t know what the outcomes would be, and we had to come up with some ideas,” he says.

In Abbott, Pauline Eldredge was trying to figure out how to keep things afloat at her business, Trailside Gardens. She uses the same bomb imagery as Stiggle when she looks back at March 2020.

“Everything just exploded,” she says.

Eldredge was about to apply for a loan to build a greenhouse at her Piscataquis County nursery so she could store plants. By the end of March, she needed a new plan.

In Orland, Joe Brown’s livestock farm, Longshot Revival Homestead, needed a plan, too. He raises Mangalista pigs, turkeys and chickens, and most of the profit at his Hancock County farm was from processing pork. When the pandemic hit, it changed the market.

The three were among nearly 3,000 small-business owners who turned to the Maine Small Business Development Centers for free business advising and resources in 2020, twice the number who had sought help in 2019.

The Maine SBDC is part of the U.S. Small Business Administration and is administered by the University of Southern Maine in cooperation with the Maine Department of Economic and Community Development. The Maine SBDC operates service centers across Maine in partnerships with Androscoggin Valley Council of Governments, CEI and Northern Maine Development Commission. Much of the program is centered around its advisors, who are certified by the New England Professional Development Group. 

Maine SBDC’s immediate priority was to connect with established clients, says Mark Delisle, Maine SBDC director.

Maine SBDC was already set up for virtual meetings, and the organization, including its 19 advisors, pivoted in a week to being able to connect online one-on-one with clients.

“It was a huge change, and we did it on purpose,” Delisle says. “We immediately reached out to our existing clients, not that we didn’t want new ones, but we said, ‘Let’s get to the existing businesses.’”

Before other aid was available, within a week of the pandemic being declared, SBDC was advising clients about forgivable SBA Economic Injury Disaster Loans, which are usually used after things like hurricanes and fires.

“It was clear this was going to be a 50-state disaster,” Delisle says.

Pandemic relief

By the end of 2020, Maine SBDC had helped 507 small-business owners access $17.9 million in pandemic relief grants and loans. It also supported 93 new business starts, saved or created 504 jobs and helped business owners access $38.3 million in capital. More than half, 1,549 of them, were, like Eldredge, women. Some 8.2%, including Stiggle, are BIPOC business owners, and 6.3%, like Brown, are veterans.

It also created the Recovery & Relaunch Resource Center and, over the course of the year, held 63 webinars that brought in 2,214 attendees. Delisle says the staff of nine also fielded countless phone calls from business owners looking for answers.

The virtual aspect was key, he says, reaching clients in the far corners of the state who normally wouldn’t have been able to easily connect with an advisor or program. When the organization broke down the 2020 numbers by congressional district, they saw the result.

“You think of greater Portland when you think of jobs created,” he says. But in 2020, more than half of the 504 jobs created and saved were in rural District 2. 

Sustaining for the future

After Stiggle closed the restaurant, he, his nephew and wife decided to create a line of barbeque sauces. The sauce enterprise had a lot of moving parts, and there was also a bigger picture — the restaurant, where he and his family had built a welcoming community atmosphere. They weren’t going to give up on it.

“We had to come up with ideas and solutions for viability, so we could sustain the restaurant for the future,” he says.

A restaurant customer, Brandon McDonald, had recently become the Aroostook County area SBDC advisor through the Northern Maine Development Commission. Stiggle reached out.

“He was professional, kind and really knowledgeable,” Stiggle says. McDonald helped figure out what they had to do to get the sauce business going, as well as helped Stiggle navigate loans and grants. Advice covered not only the application process, but also how to use the money in a way that was best for the business.

Selling barbeque sauce involved more than just cooking it up and putting it in jars. They connected with the University of Maine food science lab on content for labeling, the state for certification; as well as figuring out branding, marketing and more.

“It was a lot,” Stiggle says.

A seed is planted

Eldredge had been operating her garden nursery for seven years when in February 2020 she contacted Maine SBDC for help with a loan to build a greenhouse. She’d been storing plants outside, and knew indoor space would help the business.

“It was a problem I was running into every year, every other nursery was opening earlier than I was,” she says.

Shortly after she connected with Ann McAlhaney, an advisor with SBDC through CEI, the pandemic hit.

“I wasn’t sure [about staying open],” Eldredge says. “But one thing everyone could do was go outside. I just had a gut feeling and I took a chance. I said, ‘I’m going to build this thing.’” 

Eldredge’s inventory came through a wholesaler, who cut back last spring because of overwhelming demand. That complicated Eldredge’s plans.

“I wasn’t planning on being my own grower,” she says. She was still getting some items from the wholesaler, but not others, like hanging baskets, a big seller.

“I had to say no to customers, it was very frustrating,” she says. “I had to rethink the purpose of the greenhouse.”

McAlhaney “made it doable, not overwhelming,” Eldredge says.

She helped Eldredge write a business plan and apply for a CEI Wicked Fast Loan, which she used to increase her inventory for the 2020 season. A second loan, also through CEI, paid for the greenhouse.

After a very busy summer, the 24-by-48 greenhouse was built in the fall, with most of it geared for production.

Small window, big money

Brown, of Longshot Revival Homestead, started his livestock farm in 2018 after 10 years with the Army National Guard. When he got a nice poke of Mangalitsa pigs from someone getting out of the business, he sought help on the farming side from Mark Baker, a Michigan farmer familiar with the pigs, known for their excellent bacon.

“But I realized I needed a business mentor, too,” Brown says. “I had this little business plan,” which he took to Shannon Byers, an SBDC and CEI advisor. Together, they wrote a new business plan that he used to apply for a Farm Services Agency loan. Brown has also made use of the Veteran’s Administration Veteran Readiness and Employment program, which offers loans and other resources.

Brown had been processing pork at the farm, which he runs with his wife, Haley, and kids Josie and Jack, 6 and 4. “When the pandemic hit, I decided butchering was going to be the thing.” 

Depending on the animal, it’s seasonal work, but it’s also hard to find a good butcher. “There’s a small window, but big money,” Brown says. Byers, who had experience in chicken processing, encouraged him.

The plan was to process chickens, until a game warden who was passing by asked if he’d take deer from the Maine Warden Service. Brown expanded his plan. Now deer from the warden service and hunters is a big part of what he processes.

A year of December snowstorms

Delisle, of Maine SBDC, says that the organization’s immediate challenge is to make sure businesses have support accessing current relief programs like the Restaurant Relief Fund and Shuttered Venues Operators Grant.

Long-term focus is on how to help people re-envision their business and how to position themselves for the future in a new world.

Delisle once owned a retail business where, if a Saturday in December was lost to a snowstorm, “you never got it back.” The pandemic was like a year of December snowstorms, and businesses have to regroup to make up what they’ve lost, he says.

The ultimate mission is for the SBDC to help businesses navigate what’s coming, keep relationships with clients strong and support startups. SBDC also strives to foster long-term relationships with clients, which the organization’s research shows helps build a foundation for sustainability.

“New businesses and jobs, that’s what helps improve the quality of life in Maine,” Delisle says.

‘As busy as I want to be’

In Mars Hill, Orland and Abbott, as well as other small towns across the state, business owners and communities are seeing that in action.

Stiggle, Eldredge and Brown say their businesses are in better shape now than they were before the pandemic.

Five varieties of Timberwolves barbeque sauces, as well as elderberry syrup, are being sold in northern Maine Hannaford supermarkets, as well as IGAs in Fort Fairfield and Mars Hill.

The restaurant opened back up in August. “We’re doing better than pre-COVID,” Stiggle says.

Brown plans to offer butchery classes this fall with his farming mentor, Baker. He hopes it catches on and loosens up a statewide meat processing bottleneck that deters many who want to start livestock farming. For now, he’s the regional go-to guy.

“This year is going to be as busy as I want it to be,” he says.

Eldredge opened two weeks earlier this year than she ever has before. It may not seem like much, but when gardeners are itching to plant after a long winter, it makes a difference. For the first time in nine years, she’s hired staff — two part-time employees.

Reworking her initial greenhouse plan of February 2020 was a game-changer that set other wheels in motion and now business is better than it’s ever been.

“It all just came together,” she says. “I have to take a minute sometimes and process how it all happened.”