America's SBDC Blog

Tom Kindred  00:01

This is Small Biz Florida, the podcast and broadcast that’s all things business across the state of Florida. And there is no bigger small business event, or no more important small business event than the one that small biz Florida is working, attending and covering right now. It is the 46th annual ASBDC Training Event. It’s all taking place right here in Orlando, Florida. 1400 SBDC consultants state directors from across the country are here to be introduced to the latest in technology, small business tools and resources and to receive training that they will take back to their states to help their small business community. And we have two gentlemen who are experts in that field and can speak directly to all that America’s SBDC is doing to help small business across our country. We have Byron Hicks, who serves as the current president of the America’s SBDC board of directors, and he also serves as state director for North Carolina’s Small Business Technical Development Center. Byron, welcome to Small Biz Florida.

Byron Hicks  01:20

Great. Tom, thank you for having me.

Tom Kindred  01:21

Absolutely and we have back with us. Mr. Tee Rowe, who serves as president and CEO of America’s SBDC, welcome back, Mr. Rowe,

Tee Rowe  01:31

Thank you. Good to be back, Tom.

Tom Kindred  01:33

So gentlemen, listen incredible event here. 1400 SBDC consultants from across the country have gathered here today, over the next couple of days, to receive training, certifications, all kinds of small business work going on here for the next couple of days. Let’s start, as we always do, maybe just a very quick overview and pathway to your current roles. Then I want to get right into this, this whole event, we’ll start with you. Byron.

Byron Hicks  02:04

Great, thank you. Well, started out in banking, so, you know, in North Carolina, that’s what a lot of people do coming out of college. So I started out with Wachovia, did that for several years, then got into only my own land development company, water and sewer development, and then started working with SBDTC as a business counselor. So had clients, did all the great work that we do. Then moved up to regional center director. I was deputy state director, and then five years ago, got the state director position. So what else does an ex bank or ex contractor do? He comes to work for the SBTDC?

Tom Kindred  02:39

I love it. Listen, a lot of valuable experience on your pathway to your current role and Tee again, just a little bit of your background.

Tee Rowe  02:48

Yeah. Well, like I said before, I came from a family of small business owner lawyers, got out of law school, ended up working on Capitol Hill for the Committee on Small Business, then working for President George W. Bush as the head of congressional at SBA, and at the end of his term, ended up going with America’s SBDC. That’s been the last 15 years now.

Tom Kindred  03:17

Wow. So let’s talk about the event, 46th annual, wow, is all I can say there going on for a very long time, and just sort of like you Byron, I mean, I come at this whole SBDC thing from the business ownership side. I owned and operated a rather large multi store retail operation for about 20 years, and then started another small business. And my favorite question to ask the consultants in our center is, where were you people when I was in business.

Byron Hicks  03:55

I’ve asked that myself.

Tom Kindred  03:57

Yeah, I struggled every day in small business. It was a battle every day. And I could have used every single service that the SBDC offers, and you know, to bring everyone together to see the power of this program for small business owners is impressive here in Orlando. So again, both of you serve with America’s Small Business Development Center, organization, association, talk about this event.

Tee Rowe  04:25

Well, where do I begin? I mean, a lot of it is working with our sponsors, particularly now we’ve got this great AI U program that we’re doing with Google, and that’s part of the whole nexus of what we do. That is our AI, you know, artificial intelligence AI is the cutting edge, and that’s what our training events are all about, bringing our counselors to that cutting edge. A few years ago, we started our cybersecurity program North Star. You know, again, we’re always trying to be trying to get ahead of things for small business.

Tom Kindred  05:08

Byron, your thoughts on it?

Byron Hicks  05:09

Oh, I think it’s a wonderful event. The continuing professional development aspect of what SBDCs and SBTDCs does is what keeps us relevant to those small business clients. Things are changing all the time. We’re all hosted, for the most part, at universities, so we have also access to that. But this event itself brings, like you said, 1400 people here from all over the country to share best practices. A lot of these 200-plus breakout sessions, and a lot of those are taught by peer groups. So we’re learning from one another constantly, and it just keeps us in tune with what small businesses need, but also keeps us sharing the best practices.

Tom Kindred  05:48

you know. And I love the fact you point 200 workshops. I mean, that’s incredible. If we didn’t do anything else, that’s incredible. And you know, kind of being the podcast guy here, I spend a little time here in the exhibit hall. So I got to say, what always impresses me is the amount of tools and resources. And these aren’t just, you know, just tools that just are kind of out there. These are real hands-on technology, you know, web-based tools that clients have access and that can help change the projection of their business. I mean, it really is incredible. This offering right behind us here at the podcast table of all of those tools and resources, and a lot of those folks are providing presentations on their tools. And you know, majority of the SBDC centers across the country utilize and leverage these tools. Talk about this resource right here in this exhibit hall, all these resources.

Byron Hicks  06:49

Well, the resources are one of the things that set us apart from other resource partners out there. We have access to so many tools, a lot of research tools, Vertical IQ. One thing we have is a buying power of 63 networks across to get a license with Vertical IQ. But how many small businesses are sitting there wondering about their market, trying to understand their industry? They don’t have access to a several thousand dollar research tool? We do, right? And that’s what you get with a counselor. You sit down and get access, as a small business owner, to all these tools, whether it’s Growth Wheel to help them grow the business, ProfitCents to help you do a better cash flow analysis. And that’s something that this event really helps us get to know, also our vendors, but the new offerings that Vertical IQ just released, right?

Tom Kindred  07:35

And you know, you’re, you’re, you nailed it when you said, you know, thousands of dollars. I tell clients all the time when, especially when I give them a Vertical IQ report, you know, you’re basically looking at something that would cost you, as a small business owner, a couple of thousands of dollars to access, right? As a client of the SBDC, you have access to these kinds of resources at no cost.

Byron Hicks  07:59

Correct.

Tom Kindred  07:59

And that really is a fundamental, you know, part of the SBDC program, right? No cost, credentialed business consulting, right?

Tee Rowe  08:11

Absolutely. And we’re always trying to grow it, always trying to make every counselor a little bit better every year. And as Byron said, you know, the interaction between the counselors in the session sometimes it’s incredible because if you think you’ve seen it all, I guarantee you somebody else has seen something else.

Tee Rowe  08:32

Exactly. And you bring up that silver tsunami, people wanting to get out. And actually, we have a working group that specializes in employee stock options, ESOPs, so that basically, you’re turning the business over to the people who are the backbone of your business, your employees, right? So we’re, we’re always at the SBDCs, we’re always looking forward to that. And we just had a general session. And you know, some folks from Visa, one of our major sponsor, titanium sponsor, they were talking about Gen X and content creation, and the whole different way that that generation does business right. And how do we get ahead of that? How do we work with them and understand, okay, not all of our counselors are Gen X counselors. Some of us are more experienced, let’s say, how do we reach out to them? And how do we work with them?

Tom Kindred  08:32

Right. Yeah, very good point. I’m sure that’s exactly, I’m sure happens all the time. You know, when we think about small business, a lot of times, we really do think about the smaller business. We think about entrepreneurs who really can truly leverage and utilize the SBDC program. But you know, when I think about those more established businesses, maybe legacy businesses, you know, I think about that old saying, you know, you don’t know what you don’t know. And I just wonder, too, if a lot of those types of businesses wouldn’t benefit from, from at least, just engaging in some way with an SBDC, you know, taking advantage of some of those, some of those tools and resources. And as we kind of look at where small businesses today, we’ve got, you know what we talk about, being the silver tsunami. You know, all of these 65 year old individuals that own these small businesses that are looking for exit strategies. How do I get out of this business? You know, my children don’t want it. What do I do? So I mean, again, resources for everyone, from startup to those looking to sell and exit the business, right?

Tom Kindred  08:46

And that’s one thing about this conference. We get that exciting new perspective on things. But then back to your original statement, in North Carolina, one of our focuses is more existing small businesses. And we can be up to 500 employee company that we’re working with. And you think about the small business owner that started out, in my case, you talk about construction and grading. He started out running and ended up having a multi-million dollar company. He has a good accountant that keeps him from paying taxes, and a good lawyer keeps him out of jail. But who’s really helping him take that to the next level as a business, right? And, like you said, for no cost, he can get a dedicated counselor that can work with him to take him through that next growth strategy that next, get a contract with the local or federal government. I know I tried to get a contract one time to do some grading in a municipality, and you can’t do that stuff very easily.

Tom Kindred  11:50

And listen, we could kind of the whole reason I started this, this platform, this podcast, Small Biz Florida, is because I had so many of those experiences and where I couldn’t do business, and had I had access to the SBDC I could have, I’ll never forget, a federal agency moved into our community. I was in the equipment business. That agency bought multiple pieces of equipment, they had to buy I was a block away from that facility, and could not sell them the equipment they bought it from Baltimore, Maryland, because I did not understand federal contracting. If I had had access to Scotty Wilson, our APEX specialist, I would have sold those pieces of equipment. It’s that simple. Just didn’t understand. So listen, no one knows the small business marketplace better than the two of you sitting here. Talk to us what, what is, what does small business look like today in this country? Where are we? What’s the marketplace look like?

Tom Kindred  13:00

Most of the in North Carolina, we see about 6000 small businesses a year, but as a huge network here, I believe it’s almost 300,000 small businesses a year, and what we can learn from that is listening to them that they are optimistically cautious, is a way I would say. There are opportunities out there. There’s a lot of growth opportunities. Reshoring is helping a bunch. There are so many things going on, but they need groups like us to help navigate through this, right? So I would say it’s very optimistic. They just want to understand as much as they can, right?

Tom Kindred  13:33

And that makes sense.

Tee Rowe  13:35

And we had, we had Michael Brown from Visa, he’s their chief economist, and gave a presentation, and he’s always really popular because he helps our counselors get sort of a macro view of how the economy is working for small business and what’s happening with things like interest rates and core inflation and how things are moving along. And one of the things he pointed out is a big part of inflation right now, that’s what’s been going down. But what’s still propping it up a bit is labor services. That section, the cost of, you go out to dinner and it’s costing five bucks more, and that’s because the restaurant owner has got to keep his good employees. And I think when small businesses out there, and he talked about the NFIB confidence, the NFIB confidence numbers are really good. Now, the things that small businesses are worried about, well, they’re all over the map.

Tee Rowe  14:37

One of the ones is taxes, which is odd, because you look at the Reconciliation Bill that Congress has passed and say, well, actually, no, the tax situation is static. Now, some people are looking at that and saying, Well, I think that may be tariff uncertainty. My personal opinion is there may be uncertainty about your state taxes too, right? Because you never know what you’re particularly, if you live in a blue state, you never know what they’re going to come up with next. So, like Byron said, I think it’s cautious optimism, but if we look at the numbers, we look at the core spending that’s continuing in the economy, the cost of goods, which has been, you know, has dipped, actually, it was in the negatives a year or so ago, and it’s still pretty low. I think all of that militates towards, you know, we’ll be doing some investment. Now that we know R&D expensing is solid and we’re safe, and actually they cleaned it up a little bit, so it’s easier. I think we’re going to see a lot more activity from small business in the coming months.

Tom Kindred  15:47

Yeah, if you don’t mind me jumping in, we always talk about capital, access to capital for small business. That’s always a challenge in the southeast, especially, I know you see in Florida, like we have hurricanes, we have issues like that. What we’ve got is small businesses that want to grow, that are carrying a debt load that won’t allow them to borrow to grow, so they have to look at other other ways to get that capital to grow. They’ve already got the recovery loans, and that’s a challenge right now. But I think interest rates dropped, some of the fee structure on SBA loans. There’s some great opportunities there. It’s just, you know, what does small business do they need money? But they don’t always want to borrow more.

Tom Kindred  16:26

Right. And you know, you would, since you brought up capital access and small business, I guess, you know, I’ll ask a question. Maybe there’s no answer to it. I don’t know. You know, what about those smallest of small businesses. It is, you know, if you’re, if you’re, if you’re a viable small business, you’re doing that half a million dollar to a million or more, and you need to borrow that half a million to a million to grow. That’s in the mainstream. What about the smallest of small businesses that need those, what we call micro loans? What is the status of of those of micro lending in our country? Do we see some, some movement where those small businesses can get access to that $50,000, $60,000, $100,000 loans? What’s going on in that space?

Byron Hicks  16:27

That’s a real good question.

Tom Kindred  16:27

And I hope you have a real good answer.

Byron Hicks  16:27

We’ll see if it’s real good. Being an ex-banker, what most people forget about when you’re looking at Capital. All it is, is a risk mitigation or the interest rates, even we’re talking about lower end interest rates, all that is, is a cost of the risk for a bank. Well, unfortunately, the ones you’re describing are usually the riskiest opportunities. So there is capital there, but it’s not your traditional you’re not going to walk into one of your major banks and apply for a $10,000 or $15,000 loan. They’re going to look at that as a personal loan. And so the small business owner has to know that as they’re growing. And Visa there are opportunities to use credit card. When you need money, you need money. But the money’s got to be for a good purpose, to grow the business, and not all money’s the same.

Byron Hicks  16:27

And we really spend a lot of time with the small business owners, helping them understand how money’s different. It can be, is it investment from your family? What does that do to a cap table down the road if you want to go and sell the business, if you have all your aunts and uncles that own a share of it, you know, but can you get a regular loan? How can you prepare for that? Can you even tell your story with financial projections to back it up? So I guess I’m going off on this.

Tom Kindred  16:27

But I like, I like it.

Byron Hicks  16:27

It’s not just the access to loans, it’s the preparation and understanding. And one more thing on that people have got to understand too, that banks have portfolios, and they’re managing by their portfolio. So you might be in an industry that certain banks aren’t excited about right now, and it’s our job as SBTDC counselors to know in our communities which banks right now are loving craft breweries, which ones are bailing on them, and then we can put our clients in front of the right resource to help them have access.

Tom Kindred  16:30

That’s an excellent point, too. And again, back to the whole concept of, you know, the money’s out there. It’s, it’s where you get it from, and you’re so right, the smallest of small businesses may have to leverage that credit card money. Certainly have to use that bootstrapping, you know, concepts to get the money and then find themselves in a position to where they then they’re borrowing those, those dollar amounts that banks, you know, will have the conversation about. So it does, it makes sense.

Tee Rowe  19:32

Right. And if I can just toss in the congressional angle on this, in the recent appropriations bills, Congress put funds in CDFI, the Community Development Financial Institutions, but they were very specific that we want 70% of this money going to small businesses. So that’s that’s a big help. And those are those smaller loans, because CDFI lender have, you know, have got a different box, if you will.

Tom Kindred  20:03

And again, I think that, you know that is addresses the issue. You know, there is a recognition that there is some need out there for that micro lending, and it’s and folks are working on it. Okay, I like it. Listen, gentlemen, I cannot thank you both enough for your time here to explain the purpose and the mission behind this event, which is a powerful and needed mission and vision, because it’s an old cliche. Of course, everybody says it, but small business truly is the backbone of our country. I mean, when you look at the numbers, the data alone, data just doesn’t lie. I mean, most businesses out there are classified as small is that right?

Tee Rowe  20:51

You’re absolutely right.

Tom Kindred  20:52

And small businesses truly are the generators of all the really new jobs out in this country. So, you know, again, it’s easy for me. It’s so easy for me, and it’s, I’m sure, easy for Byron too. I could have used this program. I could have used every aspect of this program, and would have probably been a better manager, owner and operator, and would have probably made some more money.

Byron Hicks  21:17

Agree, 100%, yes.

Tom Kindred  21:19

Right. So again. Thank you for your time here. Thank you for your work with America’s SBDC. Tee, thank you for your leadership Byron, thank you for your leadership and commitment as the as the current board president. Thank you for your work in North Carolina as the state director of the SBDTC. Gentlemen, thanks again.

Tee Rowe  21:42

Thanks alot, Tom.

Tom Kindred  21:44

This is Small Biz Florida. It is all about small business here in Orlando at the 46th annual America’s SBDC Training Event. Stay tuned. Whole lot more to come. This is Small Biz Florida.