Bonnie Barnes, with the Small Business Development Center at FIU, joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about the organization.
The SBDC is part of a national organization to help businesses.
Barnes said the group assists “anybody in business, start a business, grow their business, get access to capital, help you with making a business plan, marketing, whatever it is that you need. I’m part of the Miami office, but there are now four of us in Monroe County that live in Monroe County that are available to provide consulting advice with anybody who would like it at no cost.”
Florida International University also provides a lot of resources.
Barnes said, “One of (the SBDC members) currently still owns a business here in the Florida Keys, a very well known business. She’s out of Marathon, Ana Cisneros, and she is also multilingual. Then we have Christine who is out of Key West who has owned two retail businesses and worked at the backside of in the wholesaling. So she knows distribution. She just did a workshop a week or two ago on how to manage theft and inventory in your business. That’s a webinar that’s available for people. Nancy Hull is a financial genius out of Islamorada. So she’s great with financial projections. I myself have owned several businesses and of course been in nonprofit and managed for profit businesses, but my background is full rounded. I’ve done business plans, most of my life for clients, I do marketing. So we have a wealth of experience, I would say. We also have specialists in Miami that can assist. So if you need international trade, if you need access to government contracts, we have the people that can help you. We can help you learn how to use your QuickBooks. Those who have never started a business, don’t know how we help them with getting their federal identification number, their licensing, anything that they need. We are there to assist them.”
It’s not just for new startup businesses.
Barnes said, “There’s a hardware store in Key West that we helped with an acquisition. I’m working on an acquisition in Marathon right now. We’ve had people who they were a private caterer and they wanted to get a food truck. So we helped get them financed for that, all of these kinds of things. If you want to have a loan at a bank, you have to have a business plan, you have to be able to show three years of financial projections, you have to be able to show them that you can pay back that loan. We assist people who really don’t have that expertise in getting it all put together and preparing a proper package for our local banks.”
What is the top question people have when starting a business?
Barnes said, “I think the most prevalent is just how to start a business because everybody’s got an idea, everybody wants to do and be their own boss someday. So we work with them on it. Some are unrealistic, a sushi restaurant where you’ve got $50,000 in capital, and you need to buy a million dollar building, that’s not going to happen. But there are a lot that we can help them figure it out how to get started. You can start with a food truck, and you can grow into a restaurant, if you do it right. There’s lots of opportunities.”
What is the success rate of SBDC?
Barnes said, “We keep statistics on all of that. It’s really amazing the amount of assistance and growth that we’ve been able to do here in the Florida Keys. We are doing workshops, we have one in espanol for how to start a business at the Marathon library that will be on Wednesday, this next Wednesday, the 24th. I’m teaching how to do a planned giving program at the Key Largo library from 10 to noon on the 29th. Anybody is welcome to come to that. We especially want board members, but also the one in Marathon will be six to seven at their library. In the state of Florida alone, we have nine regional centers and 40 offices. So all small business development centers are attached to universities throughout the United States. The Miami office, just this last year, actually won the business center of the year for the entire United States.”
The addition of the four consultants in the Keys will be a real help to the area.
Barnes said, “Some of the statistics just in the Keys between October and the end of 2022 without counting the latest is 4,800 hours of consulting, 446 businesses assisted, 21 new businesses launched. Again, that’s not recent because that’s all I happened to pull. $39 million in capital assessed here in the Florida Keys. $9.5 million in government contracts, $25 million in increased sales and revenue, and then 2,500 new jobs just here in the Florida Keys.”
Where can the help be found?
Barnes said, “We are available anytime in person or virtual, but we wanted office hours where you could come in and engage with us and find out if we could actually help you and help sign you up or help with some new business problem that you may have. There’s an act that all businesses have to do some compliance on this year. The Key West library is Thursdays from one to five. The Marathon library is Wednesdays nine to one. And the Islamorada library is Tuesdays nine to one. The Key Largo library is Tuesdays. It is two to five. I’ll mention another couple of workshops. Some of the different ones are how to build your business credit that’s coming via retail rock star. We’re doing marketing one on one, how to make your business bankable and disaster resiliency. So there’s all kinds of business topics that we offer and then we have regular YouTube videos of them online once we’ve done them, so they’re available anytime at your time scheduled as well.”
For more information, click here: https://business.fiu.edu/faculty-and-research/centers-institutes/sbdc/