Continuing education college loan

Back to class

The point of returning to the class room to learn new or improved business skills is putting all of it in practice in the workplace.

That is just what three regional managers from Mesa Airlines did after attending a marketing class at the Small Business Development Center at Albuquerque Technical-Vocational Institute.

"They all thought the class was beneficial," said Sarah Sproul, vice president of marketing for Mesa Airlines," and are going to put what they learned to use in their regional offices where they will develop individual plans for their own markets." Each manager oversees a different state--Wyoming, Colorado and New Mexico.

Recently, at a United States Senate Productivity Awards function, which U.S. Sen. Jeff Bingaman attended, five awards were given in the small business category. Two were clients of the Small Business Development Center.

Winner in the manufacturing category was Prototype Technology of New Mexico out of Silver City. Winner in the non-manufacturing category was Industrial Gas Sales Inc., out of Roswell.

What is the Small Business Development Center and why can't you find it in the phone book?

SBDC, housed and operated by Santa Fe Community College, is a network of 17 assistance centers located at 16 two-year colleges and Western New Mexico University.

Although Santa Fe Community College is the lead center and acts as the program's fiscal agent, SBDC is an official project of the New Mexico Association of Community, Junior and Technical Colleges. Incidentally, if you are trying to reach New Mexico Small Business Development Center, you do it by calling Santa Fe Community College.

Since its inception 18 months ago, SBDC has counseled 3,633 clients and offered 279 training sessions, which were attended by 4,270 individuals. Counseling is free of charge, while sessions are offered for a nominal fee.

Randy Grissom, state director of SBDC, says his office recently conducted an informal survey of the 1,000 clients served by SBDC in 1990. Five hundred of the 1,000 clients had not yet started a business. Of the 500, 164 had started new businesses and 139 had decided not to start a business.

Grissom says atypically he is proudest of the last statistic.

These people looked into starting a business, but after studying the market decided it was not feasible, Grissom said. The importance of this statistic is that these people decided not to invest their life savings in something they thought might not work, and they didn't borrow money and have to default on a loan, either, Grissom says.

Jack Ward, SBDC and Business Education coordinator at Dona Ana Branch Community College, cites several examples of how SBDC helps small businessmen in and around Dona Ana County.

He helped a businessman calculate how much his product cost him to produce. He needed this analysis before deciding whether to go nationwide with his product.

Or there was the client who sold a soil-conditioning product. He needed some highly technical information, so Ward researched the subject for him here in New Mexico and at the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Besides one-on-one counseling, SBDC also offers classes or workshops. T-VI, for instance, offers four: How to develop a market plan; How to use advertising and public relations to improve moral; How to write a business plan to get start-up or expansion financing; How to achieve success in your new or ongoing business.

Ruth Tangman, vice president for Continuing Education in Developmental Studies at T-VI, says that if any employer is interested in training his employees, T-VI will modify the workshops for his business and provide on-site tailored training for his staff. "This works well for businessmen who find that our workshop schedules are not convenient," Tangman said.

The Dona Ana branch of the SBDC is co-sponsoring some upcoming workshops with AT&T and the Small Business Administration and local lenders in Las Cruces and Alamogordo. The workshop with AT&T will address the growing field of telecommunications.

The workshop with SBA and local lenders will address how to access capital through business loans, SBA-backed loans, and venture capital.

If SBDC cannot help a small businessmen through its counseling, its workshops, or its resource materials, it helps by serving as a referral center.

For instance, Dona Ana branch has formed a Business Assistance Provider Group, an informal group of agencies that have the resources to help a small businessman. Representatives in the group come from Las Cruces, Los Alamos and El Paso.

"We are not experts," says Ward. What SBDC has is the means for small businessmen to get information they need in order to make smart decisions, Ward says.

SBDC can research a business through its connection with New Mexico Technet, for example. Then there is the "SBDC Connection," which is part of a database out of the University of Georgia.

Access to this kind of information can be expensive, but SBDC makes it feasible for a businessman to get a bibliography of books and articles on just about any subject he wants.

"Essentially, we are not limited in any way in what kind of help we can give a businessman," says Ward.

Arlene Cinelli Odenwald is a free lance writer based in Albuquerque.