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Small business is the chamber’s big mission How chamber programs can drive community growth ______

Ron Lederer, former founder of Avis Rent-A-Car, surprised an audience of chamber execs, and their small business members, with these opening remarks, “Don’t talk to me about how tough your job is. Or how hard it is to motivate people. Tell me you meet payroll every Friday, and you’ll have my sympathy. You know what real fear is.”

Only a small business owner knows what it takes to risk everything—day after day—to provide a product or service to the community. And only a chamber of commerce can offer the kind of support those businesses need. For over a century, chambers have been providing small businesses with the help they need to grow and prosper. And now, more than ever, they need to give all they’ve got.

Watching out for small businesses According to a recent ACCE poll, almost 70 percent of our chamber members use 50 or fewer employees to define a small business. But regardless of the size of the chamber or what they use as a classification, small businesses make up anywhere from 75 percent to a high of 95 percent of a chamber’s membership.

While most organizations operate under the premise that you get most of your rewards from the top twenty percent of your customer base, chambers have never ignored the critical importance of the largest segment of their membership. “Small businesses are the backbone of our organization [so we] help them in their marketing and help them grow.” states Rick Hemmingsen, president of the Independence (MO) Chamber of Commerce. “Our hope is that one day these small businesses will be bigger.”

Where do small businesses fit in? Across the board, chambers know only too well that small business is the heart of the economy and their community. Without a prospering small business environment, the entire community suffers.

Small businesses represent ninety-nine percent of all American employers. They provide eighty percent of new jobs, generate over fifty percent of the private sector output and represent ninety-six percent of all exporters of goods. Clearly, the small business arena is a powerful group of smaller players that keep the wheels of our economy moving.

As big business moves in and a community grows, an environment is created for smaller businesses to thrive. But what happens when the big players break up, move out or collapse? More often than not, the small businesses are the ones that keep the community together. And the chamber knows it.

“Small businesses are a catalyst for job creation and community development,” explains Chris Nystrom, Director of Business Assistance, Eugene Area (OR) Chamber of Commerce. “As they grow, they add jobs, pay more taxes, make larger contributions, and provide community leadership. They are far too important to be ignored.”

It’s not the same old playing field But today the small business is operating in an increasingly fast-paced, information-packed world. As the economy remains uncertain, the small business owner has tougher and tougher decisions to make. Most chambers see this happening and have stepped up to the plate with the kind of learning opportunities and training programs that small businesses need right now to secure their success.

1 Chambers across the country are working diligently to give their small businesses the most competitively priced programs they can create—often ones that are not available through any other source. That’s because chambers typically sustain a network of the best in their fields and can draw on this expertise for insightful and up-to the-minute management training and workforce development programs.

Some chambers go a step further with specialized programs tailored to meet their small business members’ unique needs. They look at their menu of offerings to make sure that all their small businesses are being served. “One of the most important things for any chamber to do is to segment their small business membership,” advises Wendy Gramza, Executive Vice President, Toledo (OH) Chamber of Commerce. “You need to know if you are doing enough for all of your business segments, including women-owned, minority-owned, retailers, construction or the service industry. We identify how they are similar and how they are different to be able to meet their immediate needs.”

Money isn’t everything. It’s the only thing. The major challenge facing small business members, according an ACCE Quick Poll, is financial. “The biggest concern for our businesses is the bottom line,” states Nicole Christian, Vice President of Business Development, Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce. “We run leads and purchasing groups, help businesses work with financiers and work with them to identify capital funding sources.”

Although some chambers offer loan programs, chambers typically aren’t lenders; they go as far as they can to help a small business get the money they need. According to Nystrom of the Eugene Chamber, “We see our small business members facing greater competition from larger competitors. In the process, these businesses are frequently strapped for cash.”

With over 1000 of their 1200 membership in small business, Eugene has developed a broad range of programs to serve their needs. “First and foremost, we do a lot of listening,” adds Nystrom. “Then we respond.” By listening carefully, Eugene has instituted highly successful programs including The Eugene Entrepreneurs Forum, which promotes the development of fast growth entrepreneurs, and the Lane Venture Forum, which provides opportunities for entrepreneurs with quality business plans to meet with qualified local investors. In the past 18 months, two new ventures were funded as a result of these well-designed programs.

Pointing the way to success Some chambers serve their small business member best by being the conduit for all the business information the business needs. These chambers consider themselves “touch points,” because they serve as a point of entry for a small business looking for a particular area of assistance, whether it be securing capital, connections to government contacts or general education.. This allows a chamber without the staff to support the intense needs of a small business to make sure that their members are put in touch with the best in the field.

The Colorado Springs chamber has come up with an exciting, innovative way to help all small businesses in their community. To start, they organized a focus group to find out what the chamber could do, in a sustainable fashion, for small businesses that would help them grow. Business leaders, small business members, city/county government officials, military personnel, SBDC representatives and University business professors convened. “The answer came through loud and clear,” says Dan Csintyan, Chief Operating Officer, Colorado Springs (CO) Chamber of Commerce. “We all do great things for small business, so why not combine our efforts.”

Early next year, Colorado Springs will offer a first of its kind “Small Business Network” website that will link every conceivable organization that supports or provides services to small businesses. The sources will be categorized under areas of direct interest, e.g. marketing, business planning, or generating business leads. 2 “I like to call it, figuratively, our ‘community quilt’ because resources are coming together to cover the needs of all small businesses in our area,” remarks Dan Csingtan of Colorado Springs. “ It’s unique, exciting and it’s virtually a volunteer-driven effort.”

Bringing it all under one roof Other chambers can do it all. They have the staff, contacts and resources to provide their membership with special programs, training and, even, one-on-one advice to help them grow.

“We have a remarkable number of programs, many of which are interest-based from construction to biotech and from international to high tech,” says Ken Hall, Vice President of Communications & Marketing, Memphis (TN) Regional Chamber of Commerce. The Memphis chamber has the small business market covered. The traditional affinity programs, business handbooks, breakfast forums, and networking sessions are augmented with unique offerings. They originated ACCE$$, which allows small business owners to make financing requests to area lenders, the Enterprise Process Series of workshops to give a small business all the tools they need to start and grow a new business, importing/exporting seminars, the Memphis Business Council, and the Mid South Quality Productivity Center, dedicated to quality improvement on the worksite.

Many chambers enhance their offerings by working jointly with service organizations such as SCORE (Service Corps of Retired Executives) and the SBA’s Small Business Development Centers (SBDC) which provide free training and consulting to thousands of businesses throughout the country. In Montgomery County, Maryland, the chamber has even provided space in their building for SCORE, the Center for Entrepreneurship, and the Montgomery County office of SBDC. “We have found that having all the resources at our location really helps our membership,” says David Bodde, Executive Vice President, Montgomery County (MD) Chamber of Commerce. “ We always use the bottom-up approach. We ask our members whom they sell to and what they want, and then we build a program to meet their needs.”

Making the most of the business life cycle At each stage of business, there is a new requirement. Chambers not only look at the differences among business types and products, but they respond to the four critical stages: start-up, emerging, mature and declining. If the chamber helps in the first three stages, there’s a good chance that stage four can be avoided.

“We offer start up and emerging companies everything from technical assistance and management training, to business planning and feasibility studies to help them grow their businesses,” states Wendy Gramza of the Toledo (OH) Chamber. “But we never ignore the CEO of the mature company. They have different needs such as succession planning, intellectual property issues, financial guidance, and strategic alliances. So we have a custom program, our CEO Institute, specifically for them.”

Business knows no boundaries For most of small businesses, competition goes far beyond a region’s borders. In fact, no one can escape the concept of “glocalization” which refers to the fact that most aspects of life and business are becoming global and local simultaneously. We see this with companies that sell internationally as well as customizing products for local markets.

As the latest technology creates an even smaller world, competition can come at any time, from anywhere. One mid-west chamber exec remarked that some of his members started using support services on the west coast—leaving their local vendors for competitive prices at comparable quality.

And even international trade is no longer for the largest companies or the select few. Chambers are gearing up to offer international trade programming to support this new trend. For some chambers, that hits pretty 3 close to home. When the U.S. Department of Commerce wanted to set up a local office specializing in international trade, the site they selected was the McAllen (TX) Chamber of Commerce.

The business of chambers is business “The resource most often overlooked by small businesses is their local chamber of commerce, says Steven Despain Wyoming District Director, SBA. “I encourage all small business to join and participate in their local chamber [where] they can network, share experiences and learn to solve problems.”

For small businesses, membership in their chamber can often make the difference between growth and decline. “Businesses join the chamber to grow,” reflects David Boddie, Executive Vice President, Montgomery County (MD) Chamber of Commerce and former SBA district director. “Chambers are the one stop shop for their business needs.”

Perhaps equally important for a small business is the encounter they will have with larger businesses. As one businessperson lamented, “I can only grow as much as I know.” A small business benefits from the experience of being with other companies that successfully encountered the same issues.

Kent Edmondson, owner of Kwik Kopy Printing in Blue Springs, Missouri, admitted that the chamber was one of the biggest factors in getting his business to grow. “We went to the chamber and said, we’re new and want to make some introductions. We started to attend events and it worked out perfectly. If you’re in school, you have a library…If you’re in business, what do you have? Organizations. The chamber is the library card. But it’s no good, if you don’t use it.”

—Susan Higginbotham