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It wasn't a difficult choice for Sarah Byrne Ducharme to start her own business. Running her own business--well, sure, that was a challenge. But the decision itself was a no-brainer.

Ducharme had been working at a company that leased office equipment. It had gone through four downsizings in recent years. She'd had enough. "I just decided I wouldn't let anyone else decide my own future," Ducharme recalls. "The only way to do that was to run a business myself."

So began Ducharme's road to small-business success. Her first company, Complete Communications Inc., was a one-woman outfit selling computers to college students. Several incarnations later, she's president of New England Network Group Inc., installing and running computer networks for more than 200 clients.

Today NENG has 20 employees, nearly $5 million in annual revenue and healthy growth prospects.

Ducharme credits her employees for their diligent work, plus the U.S. Small Business Administration and the Center for Women & Enterprise for steering her in the right direction just when she needed help. The CWE is one of the Women's Business Centers across the country funded by the SBA and matching grants. The centers provide business counseling and training to women.

Ducharme's inflection point came in February 1999. Several months earlier she had expanded Complete Communications, hired a systems engineer, acquired a customer list, and shifted from leasing computers to college students ("You don't really make a lot of money off college kids," she quips) to providing network design and administration to small businesses. Suddenly she had 60 customers and more than $400,000 in revenue.

"Things started to grow, but it was still very tough," Ducharme says. She lived on a diet of macaroni and cheese. She house-sat for friends to save money on rent. At one point, she lived in an apartment so small she had to wash the dishes in her shower.

Of course, all that is standard fare for the small-business owner, but Ducharme had a more serious challenge: "I'd never had any formal education about a business."

So she enrolled in FastTrack, an immersion program run by the Center for Women & Enterprise in Boston to teach aspiring businesswomen the nuts and bolts of cash flow, marketing, operations management and more.

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"Sarah was so strong technically, but didn't have much business experience," says Andrea Silbert, CWE chief executive. "We just saw someone with tremendous potential."

"It was like a toolbox," Ducharme says. "I just got a really clear idea of where I wanted to go."

One lesson Ducharme learned at the boot camp was that she needed an infusion of capital to keep her company growing.

By late 1999, revenues were approaching $1 million. She had approached her personal bank for a business loan. It offered an $8,000 line of credit, far less than what she wanted.

And so Ducharme debated whether to take on private investors or continue her search for a bank loan. She chose the latter, in part because of what she didn't want to surrender control to outside investors.

CWE steered her to Enterprise Bank & Trust of Lowell, where she qualified for an SBA-backed loan of $150,000. That amount was more than Ducharme had expected.

Despite the bank's location an hour away by car, she quickly came to lean on it for financial support. "They've been a tremendous partner for me," she says.

Richard Chavez, an Enterprise Bank loan officer who has worked with Ducharme, praises her dedication to fundamentals, such as keeping debt low. Also, Ducharme did not hesitate to re-invent the company as a networking services business once she saw margins on hardware leasing start to fall.

"We were impressed with her from the very beginning," Chavez says. "We saw her fire."

The loan helped NENG find its footing and grow despite the recession that landed on Massachusetts with a vengeance in 2001. Ducharme stuck with a simple strategy of only accepting financially solid customers. One is a reseller of plastic resins; one sells truck caps. Others are medical offices and a YWCA.

"We're very unsexy here," she jokes.

Sexy or not, business has hummed along. The company is profitable. Growth in 2002 was nearly 20 percent. That number dipped to 8 percent last year, but Ducharme attributes that to her giving more attention to internal controls in anticipation of opening a branch office in New York this year. She expects revenue growth of 15 to 20 percent.

Ducharme did begin negotiations with one outside investor in 2001, who wanted to roll up Complete Communications with another network administration company. That investor bailed out in October 2001, but Ducharme proceeded with the merger and formed today's NENG. She acquired the whole business in March 2003.

And Ducharme remains involved with CWE as well. She is a founding member of its Entrepreneurs Fund, where each member donates $1,000 per year and offers mentoring services to new students.

NEW ENGLAND NETWORK GROUP INC.

Sarah Byrne Ducharme

1935 Revere Beach Parkway, Everett, Mass. 02149

(781) 397-0990

www.nengroup.com

Year founded: 1996

Annual revenue: Approaching $5 million

Number of employees: 20

SBA loan: $150,000

SBA loan terms: Seven-year term; adjustable interest rate 2 points above prime

RELATED ARTICLE: About these programs ...

In 2003, SBA's Women's Business Centers network helped 102,500 people. The women who use these centers come from many backgrounds and experience levels. Some may be thinking about a startup, while some may want to give their 20-year-old company a jump start. (A list of centers is at www.sba.gov.)

SBA Small Business Development Centers and SCORE, Counselors to America's Small Business, mentioned elsewhere in this section, offer an array of services for entrepreneurs at every skill and experience level.

Loans: SBA has increased the number of loans it backs for women. In 2003, it guaranteed more than 15,000 loans to women entrepreneurs in its 7(a) and 504 loan programs, a 37% increase over 2002.

Web sites: The U.S. Department of Labor has developed the Women's Entrepreneurship in the 21st Century Web site, which lists federal sources of loans, grants and capital for women (www.women-21.gov/capital.asp). An online tutorial for women interested in learning how to find and apply for federal contracts is available at www.womenbiz.gov/.

SBA has partnered with Hewlett Packard Co. to create Business Matchmaking, a program that helps small businesses compete for federal contracts. Matchmaking events, held across the country, include scheduled, one-on-one meetings between business owners and buyers. For more information, visit www.businessmatchmaking.com.

--Story by Matt Kelly