Business counseling shifts to existing owners

Groups that provide free counseling to business owners have seen a modest uptick in calls for help as the economy has weakened.

Counseling groups suspect, however, that they're hearing from only a small portion of the business owners that need assistance.

"The ones we are seeing now I wish we could have gotten hold of them six months ago," says Rod Jorgensen, director of business counseling at the Nevada Small Business Development Center in Reno.

And six months from now, Jorgensen said, he expects the center's counselors will be even more aware that early intervention might have saved some troubled businesses.

The overall client load at the Nevada Small Business Development Center hasn't changed much in recent months "We've always been a high-volume center," Jorgensen says but the mix of clients has shifted toward owners of existing business.

Far more rare these days, he says, are folks who want advice on how to start a business.

That's a shift from past economic downturns, when people who lost their jobs through layoffs would decide to become entrepreneurs, says Judy Haar, chair of the Service Corps of Retired Executives chapter in Reno.

Typically, she says more than half the clients seen by the retired executives who mentor businesses are owners of start-ups.

But this time around, Haar says SCORE counselors are seeing a growing number of owners of existing businesses who realize they need help to survive.

"We're right in the middle of that shift," she says.

They're seeing enough experienced business owners, in fact, that SCORE is working with other business groups to develop a two-day small business survival workshop at the University of Nevada, Reno, on Feb. 20-21.

The uptick in requests for counseling hasn't affected all business assistance groups in the region.

The Management Assistant Partnership, the industrial outreach program of the state's university system, has seen steady but largely unchanged activity as it works to build companies' global competitiveness.

Jeff Leonard, MAP's operations manager in Reno, says the group's public workshops and events have drawn better in recent months.

"I don't know I can tie that to anything economic," he says. "The market is a little tight right now, but we continue to get leads and inquiries on a regular basis."