August 6, 2007

Business center expands reach
Strategic partnerships help program serve more of Orange County.

Jan Norman

When California suddenly dropped its financial and administrative support for the state's 30 Small Business Development Centers in the 2003 budget crisis, the future for this training and counseling program seemed dim.

The U.S. Small Business Administration, which created the nationwide SBDC network, scrambled to find another way to fund California's centers. Locally, Cal State Fullerton and Rancho Santiago Community College District stepped in to keep the Orange County Small Business Development Center alive.

Four years later, the center is thriving and expanding its reach, thanks to private and public partnerships and the creative management of the center's director, Leila Mozaffari.

Q. How is the SBDC structured?

A. We are under the Lead SBDC at Cal State Fullerton and receive funding from the SBA, the state Community College Chancellor's Office and Rancho Santiago Community College District.

As of July 1, Rancho has created a new economic development program for its programs that build jobs and businesses.

Q. Who does the SBDC serve?

A. In 2006, we provided one-on-one counseling for 1,250 clients and had 2,413 attendees at 57 training events.

Fifty-one percent of those we help are women; 67 percent are minorities. Most own micro-businesses (with just one or two employees or even none) within the first five years of existence.

Our mission is to serve all Orange County, and in a county of 3 million residents, if 10 percent are entrepreneurs, that's 300,000 potential clients. We're just scratching the surface.

Q. What kind of assistance do small-business owners receive from the SBDC?

A. Our workshops include the essential steps to starting a successful business, beginning QuickBooks (financial software), customer service excellence and government contracting.

Our counselors work with business owners on marketing and loan assistance, and some specialize in government contracting and technology.

Q. How do you know if you're successful?

A. SBDCs are measured on their economic impact. From client letters, we can verify that, in 2006, 24 new businesses were started, 138 jobs were created and another 95 jobs were retained (firm didn't have to eliminate jobs). Clients of our center reported an increase in sales of more than $13 million, and they obtained loans totaling almost $5.9 million.

Q. You mention the importance of teaming up with other organizations to leverage your resources. What are some examples?

A. We're tiny, so we need to partner with others to serve the county's small-business needs.

A $100,000 two-year grant from Wells Fargo Bank is funding the SBDC's Vietnamese-American Technical Assistance Program in Orange County's Vietnamese community.

The city of Mission Viejo is helping us expand in south Orange County. Our counseling office is opening this week in the city library.

We're in discussions with the city of Garden Grove to offer training programs. That's how we started with Mission Viejo. We offered some workshops, and it grew from there.

We co-sponsored the seventh annual Spanish Small Business Fair with the state Employment Development Department, Santa Ana College and the city of Santa Ana. More than 300 people attended from as far away as Oxnard and Palm Springs, and we even received e-mails about it from people in Peru and New Jersey.

We have a partnership with the Santa Ana Chamber of Commerce to do quarterly training for members. Aug. 15 is the next one.

Southern California Edison and the city of Anaheim co-sponsor seminars with us. And we co-sponsored a franchise showcase with Entrepreneur's Source (a franchise broker).

Q. What is most important for people to know about starting and running a small business?

A. Some people come in here to get advice and then put off doing it. We remind them the business owner has to do the work. We try to focus them on the things that will get them to success, but only they can do it.

We hear from business owners that competition continues to be a challenge in Orange County. They struggle with differentiating themselves from their competition.

And they say operating in a high-cost county with low unemployment is a challenge.