Small businesses (under 500 employees) make up nearly all of Indians businesses and are at the heart of many small towns and communities across the state. Many individuals typically have great ideas and are intrigued about starting their own small business but often don’t know how to begin. That’s where the Indiana Small Business Development Center of West Central Indiana comes into play.

The Small Business Development Center serves seven counties including Putnam, Clay, Parke, Sullivan, Owen, Vermillion and Vigo and offers one-on-one business counseling services to individuals thinking of starting a business and existing business owners. The best part about these services is that they are 100% confidential and come at absolutely no cost.

Senior Rural Advisor, Dave Bittner recently sat down with the Banner Graphic to detail everything that they have to offer.

“The Indiana small Business Development Center, it was started 40 years ago or so,” Bittner said. “It's a grant funded organization by the SBA at the Federal level, state funding comes in, and then we get sponsored by universities that are in our territories. The purpose of what we do is at any stage of business, whether you have a crazy idea, you've been in business for years, you're looking to figure out how to grow again, have a widget or some product line that you think can be something new on the market, we have manufacturing support, we can help you work through it.

“We can help you develop a business plan, we can help you develop a sales forecast. We do a lot of business planning, written business plan development with clients. We can run all kinds of industry research for you, marketing strategies and all that kind of stuff.”

Another way that that the Small Business Development Center can help individuals is with getting funding. Starting out from scratch, Bittner says while plenty of people have a good idea on what product they want to see come to light, one of the biggest struggles by many start up small businesses is making sure they have the appropriate amount of funding.

“If you need funding, that's pretty scary for a lot of people to go get funding as they’re starting up,” he said. We’ll help you. While we don't go with you to pitch the business, but we help you prep and understand. We'll do financial analysis and we'll gently say, boy, I don't know if this is a good deal for you, right? Let's really consider this. And we do that by giving them a bunch of homework and then they generally come back in and say, you know what? I don't think it's time. You know, so, that's generally what we do there.”

The Small Business Development Center also puts on numerous workshops throughout the year to try and help out as many people as possible. One of their bigger workshops is centered around starting a business. One of the goals of those workshops is to allow those in attendance to really do a self reflection and ask the big important questions.

“Is it the right thing for me to do? What is an entrepreneur? What's the expectation? Those are all questions that we help you really decide on,” Bittner added.” We kind of walk them through what you know, your personality type, are you going to be successful or not? Again, all these various questions you can ask and get as deep as you want and then we can help them perform market research. You know, what's the what's the likelihood of success of a coffee shop in a town that has five coffee shops? Let's talk through that. Or, you know, maybe there's not one for quite some, you know, geography and, you know, it's a good one for you. ?“Continuing with market research, we help them identifying their customer. You know, what's your target customers, so we can help you really make sure you go right after them. Again, market research is everything because you really need to understand if there's a spot for the business.”

One of the only things that Bittner and his team do not offer is legal and tax advice. While they still can lead you in the right direction and refer you to people who might be able to help in that regard. Adding to long list of items that they continue to offer, the Small Business Development Center also sits down and talks with local officials to try and get a good scope on the communities that they serve.

“We work with local mayors, county council, city council, business leaders, economic development groups and chambers to really see how we can assist these communities and towns the best,” he said. “We like to ask them ‘Hey what are your goals this year’? In terms of economic development and support, what do you need and how can we help? We’re a vast organization across the state with about 120 folks so we try and reach as many communities as we can.”

Bittner knows what it means to be a small business owner himself and the impact that small businesses have on a community.

“Those are economic drivers of small towns,” he said. “To get all the buildings around the square filled up in every town, that’s what it’s all about. What I remember when I was running that small business, one, not only was it the employees that I touched as a business owner but it was all the services we gave to everybody in that area, and how important that was to their business. “On the other hand, what they touched in return was amazing. And so for us to make sure that the health of small businesses allow people to stay at the top of their game, we're a serving organization. You know, all of us have this really servant leadership type of mentality. So we focus on that.”

In his closing comments, Bittner did mention just a few things that he’s seen as troubling and some of the biggest problems he sees when people try and start their own business. While there’s so much to make sure that gets done, these are the top things to be aware of according to him.

“Right now, the importance of managing your online presence and having a consistent plan of attack on social media and the use of AI and your business,” he said. “If people aren't engaging in that and really getting them were every day, they''re showing a presence and you know, the next generation clearly is someone that's that's all they look at.

“I think the second thing is for a small business right now is the cost to do business are going up. You know, tariff concerns, all these other things that are. For a business that needs employees, that's probably the next thing is to get the right employees that are going to mirror your culture, that's going to mirror the type of business you want in that market. And then, honestly, just getting people to apply for a job. It's very, very difficult nowadays.”

Regardless if you’re looking to start a business, need some help or advice to get through the startup or even just wanting to see how you can continue to grow and impact the community you serve in a bigger capacity, Bitter and the Small Business Development Center of West Central Indiana is the perfect resource.

Once again the cost to you is nothing for their assistance and everything you share with them is completely confidential on a client by client basis. To learn more about what Bittner and his team can do for you, visit their website at ISBDC.org or give their main office in Terre Haute a call at 812-237-7676.
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