The Hawaii Small Business Development Center Network (SBDC) is funded by the US Small Business Administration and by the State of Hawaii, both of whom are understandably interested in tracking outcomes. The statistics for 2016 are in, and I think the outcomes are impressive.
One thing that is tracked is the amount of money that SBDC assists in injecting into the local economy through the clients with whom we work. This comes in the form of funding from banks and other financial institutions, owner investment, grants, and private loans and investments. For 2016, that total amount statewide was just shy of $20 million. Here on the Island of Hawaii, that total was approximately $2.5 million, which is slightly less than our 2015 percentage of the state total, but still pretty impressive.
Another “metric” that is looked at is the number of businesses that were started up and assisted by our efforts. For the state that number was 78, and here on the Big Island we hit 36, well above expectation relative to by our percentage of the state population.
New job growth is highly important for our local economy and, obviously, even more so for those employees being hired into those newly created jobs. Working with us, our clients added 305 jobs throughout the state and 111 here on Hawaii Island.
When we take on a new client we tell them that since we are a service provided at no cost to them, the tradeoff for that is their cooperation with us on reporting sales increases they experience after working with us. In 2016 our clients reported close to $18.5 million in sales increases statewide; for us here on the Big Island that increase was almost $6 million, again way above what one would expect given our share of the state population.
Lastly, we look at how much time is spent in direct work on client projects. Statewide our Business Advisors spent close to 6,500 hours working on client projects and here on the Big Island we spent almost 3,000 hours. That’s a chunk of time.
I tell you all this not necessarily to blow our own horn (OK, OK, a little), but to let potential and existing entrepreneurs know the scale of professional business advising services available in the community at no cost to them.
We work with would-be entrepreneurs with an idea for a business who want to see that idea come to fruition in a startup. For them we help with refining the idea in a business plan document, with financial projections, and in securing financing.
We work with existing businesses wanting to expand to larger or more functional sites. In addition to working on the operational details associated with an expansion or relocation, we assist on pretty much the same tasks as with startups, but here we have an actual history of operation to use in projecting the future.
Some existing businesses want to develop marketing plans. They’ve relied on word of mouth or existing customers to date and want to take their approach to a new level and to expand it into one that is more planned and professional. They also want to explore different platforms for their marketing efforts: newspapers, radio, social media, a web presence, offering training events, whatever. We work on all these fronts to help companies grow their businesses.
We also train business owners (there is a minor cost for that), do feasibility studies for grant and other proposals (also a fee for that), work on staffing and employee retention issues, navigate licensing and other regulatory gauntlets with our clients, and just about every other business related task you can think of. The business owner provides the subject matter expertise; we provide a structured context to put that in and a format to focus on business problem solution.
I relate a statistic I got from the State to attendees in the classes we offer: there are over 3,000 businesses with employees on the Big Island and an even greater number of sole proprietor enterprises. These people all did it; they took a risk and turned their dreams into realities. They’re not all raving successes, we know life doesn’t work that way. But they are successes in formulating a business idea and taking the chance on acting on it. These people did it; you can too. And you don’t have to be alone on that journey.
Please join us for our April workshops: “How to Start a Business in Hawaii” on Saturday, April 1; “Understanding Financial Statements” on Thursday, April 13; and by popular demand, a repeat of our sold-out January workshop, “Introduction to Bookkeeping” on Thursday, April 27. Registration and additional details for all of these available on our website: www.hisbdc.org
Dennis Boyd is the director of the West Hawaii Small Business Development Center. Hawaii SBDC Network is funded in part through Cooperative Agreement with the U.S. Small Business Administration and the University of Hawaii at Hilo.
