Economy pushes more Manatee business start-ups: Manasota SCORE offers pilot project

SARASOTA — Beth Hillard kept coming up empty in her job search.

Employers told her she was over qualified.

Then they told her she was under qualified.

“I thought for several months, ‘What was I going to do?’” Hillard said. “What was I good at?”

A former real estate agent, Hillard decided to start an online business that markets privately-owned vacation rental homes and provides concierge services to tourists.

The Sarasota resident knows she’s attempting the ultimate risk in this economy — starting a new business. However, she found herself in good company last week as she sat in an Argosy University classroom in Sarasota with 12 other aspiring entrepreneurs. All were attending the first installment in a series of five new workshops SCORE is testing at select chapters this year.

The Service Corps of Retired Executives gives small businesses advice with the help of 12,400 volunteers nationwide. It is a business resource partner with the Small Business Administration.

SCORE estimates it helps about 20,000 business startups a year and has helped businesses like Vera Bradley Designs and Jelly Belly Candy get off the ground.

Now, SCORE is taking a more aggressive approach to helping startups with QuickStart workshops.

Manasota SCORE — which serves Manatee and Sarasota counties — is one of 11 SCORE chapters nationwide to test the classes to determine whether they should be implemented at all 370 SCORE chapters nationally.

The workshops teach entrepreneurial rookies how to make their business ideas a reality. Better yet, it also covers the reality of running a business.

Class in session

As Manasota SCORE counselor Jon Stuart begins the Startup Basics class, the first of the five workshops, he starts with a review of the assumptions people have about business ownership.

“Myth No. 1,” Stuart says. “All I need is a good idea to be a successful entrepreneur.”

He then gives the reality.

“A good idea is a great start, but it takes hard work,” says Stuart, a retired marketing professor from the School of Business at Norfolk State University in Virginia.

“Myth No. 2,” Stuart recites. “You won’t have to work so hard or such long hours.”

He pauses.

“Wrong. You’re on the job 24-7, 365 days out of the year. This is your business. The only way it’s going to be successful is the drive and energy you put into it.”

His list goes on, and while it may sound discouraging, he’s giving students a brutally honest look at what it takes to launch and maintain a business.

The purpose of the five-part workshop series is to help aspiring business owners decide if they’re cut out to run a business.

Stuart says the classes will help people realize if their idea is feasible in this, or any, economy.

And it will help them calculate the financial investment their business plan may require.

“If some decide this is not what they want to do, I consider that a success,” Stuart says. “Because I probably saved that person thousands of dollars. Maybe their home.”