Small Business Support Archives

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From Hotel Employee to CEO: How Topline Revenue Management Grew with SBDC Help

August 27, 2024

Connor Vanderholm began working in the hotel industry as soon as he finished his business degree at BYUI in 2016. His BYUI mentor helped him discover he wanted to be a revenue manager, but he had to start in operations, learning the business basics first.

His first job was working at the front office for the Marriott conference center in Norman, OK. After a year in Oklahoma, he became a revenue management trainee at Hilton in Dallas, TX. Although it was exhausting work, he was prepared to continue until he got laid off at the start of COVID in March 2020. He and several newly-unemployed colleagues started Topline in May 2020.

Grease Monkey Expands Rapidly with SBDC Guidance (Eastern Idaho)

August 13, 2024

Tyson started out working for a competitor before bootstrapping and putting everything he and his wife Angela had into purchasing four Grease Monkey stores in Idaho for $1.4M in 2014. Even when his credit accounts were briefly frozen, he was able to leverage his relationship with strategic suppliers who helped with the down payment and credit lines.

5 Powerful Steps to High-Impact Financial Coaching for SBDC Advisors

July 19, 2024

By Barbara Nuss, CPA
Founder, Profit Soup

Some SBDC advisors are confident supporting clients with operational issues, marketing and brand strategies but struggle with conversations about financial goals and KPIs. Like the clients they support, not all advisors have strong financial backgrounds. But armed with a structured approach and some basic foundational knowledge, all SBDC Advisors can positively influence financial discipline and results.

The best financial coaching leads advisors and clients to collaboratively create insights, goals, and action plans that improve financial performance.

An SBDC advisor who has a solid framework, a curious mind, and collaborative spirit can outperform one who relies on subject matter expertise to solve problems for their clients. When the measure of success is improved financial performance, it’s the process, not the advice, that influences results.

Here is a 5-step coaching framework that works for any problem-solving process, including financial coaching. The key is to have a robust supply of thought-provoking, open-ended questions that guide the client to discover issues and solutions.

Find Diverse Businesses Easier with DBEsearch.com – A Success Story

April 25, 2024

In 1983, the first Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE) provision was enacted by Congress, requiring the U.S. Department of Transportation to ensure that small disadvantaged businesses must be included as suppliers on federal, state, and local infrastructure contracts. Since then, the policy of helping socially and economically disadvantaged minority, woman, veteran, and disabled owned businesses has expanded.

A 2017 Transportation Act made it a requirement for any government contractor to spend a certain percentage of dollars on diverse suppliers for road, railroad, and other infrastructure projects.

It was this requirement that essentially sent Matthew Reed, President of JCR Construction on the path to create DBEsearch.com. JCR Construction is a utility contractor who builds power lines for various utility companies in the Northeast.