The Business sCOOP – SEED Corporation and Resources for Businesses II
Allyson Brainson: Welcome to the Business Scoop I’m Allyson Brainson and I’m here with Angie Laperriere from SEED. Welcome, Angie!
Angie Laperriere: Thank you so much for having me!
Allyson Brainson: What other small business services are available from SEED and other resources?
Angie Laperriere: So for SEED Corporation, in addition to financing which is really the main thing that we are providing to our small businesses, we also offer small business workshops. These workshops are held on a monthly basis and they’re held throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. They are always the same material so there’s a two-part session so it would be held in two separate days. The first session is going to be talking about obtaining capital and so what the bank looks for what SEED looks for so we can tell the difference between the two and understanding the basics of what goes into the fundamentals of starting a business so we actually have our own business plan template and we’ll go through the first 12 pages of the business plan and just give an overview to the small business owners or entrepreneurs to let them know you know really what goes into starting a business some information on legal structures and so forth so it’s a really great workshop it is free of charge currently we’re holding them virtually so they’re all through zoom and you can go right onto our website to sign up for the workshops and they’ll be listed under events for every month coming up and the second workshop session is actually talking about understanding the basics of financial statements which is really helpful for small businesses a lot of times we find that businesses are really great at what they do and they’re just not so comfortable with the business side of it so our goal within this workshop session is to let them understand what the financial statements are and really what goes into them so we talk about the cash flow statement the personal financial statement the balance sheet and the profit and loss statement or the income statement for the business so it’s a really great introduction to allow them to know what these statements are and what they’re about so they can work on them for their business the second section is typically taught by one of our resource partners the small business development center so we have multiple advisors there and I’ll talk a little bit about what they provide but for our business assistants outside of the inquiries that we’re talking with clients looking for financing is holding these workshops on a monthly basis and they again they’re all the same material you can register on the website at seedcorp.com it’s a really great event or even if you’re an existing business it’s a great refresher course to kind of get you to understand you know you know refresher on financial statements or understanding the process of maybe you’ve never applied for financing but you’d like to know what the banks and what seed would be looking for and to prepare yourself for financing talking a little bit about other resources so in addition to the group session there’s resources available some of our resource partners under the small business administration and they provide one-on-one business assistance to small businesses again both startup and existing and they’re really great service to take advantage of it’s all free of charge there’s different advisors that cover various areas down on the cape through Massachusetts southeastern mass up through Boston and western mass as well and through Rhode Island so really wherever you are there’s resources there that can help you and they provide the free one-on-one assistance to sit down with you and really work through the business plan and formulate financial projections because it can be really overwhelming process if you haven’t done it before don’t really know where to start or what goes into a business plan so they have some templates you can work with we have a template on our website that’s really great it’s a question answer format so you can use it as a guide to really get your business going so the one-on-one assistance is something that’s really vital and they can help you not only to get started but they can act as a mentor for you through the life of your business which is really great so this Massachusetts small business development center provides those services in addition to score which is another SBA resource that provides ultimately the same type of services for small business owners in both umbrella under the SBA with these resource partners there’s other organizations in called the center for women in enterprise the veteran business outreach center they all help with providing one-on-one assistance for different businesses depending on what industry you’re in they can connect you with the appropriate advisor but keep in mind that these resource partners they also provide group sessions as well they have different workshops that are held monthly on more specific topics like could be potentially legal advice or understanding social media so there’s a lot of group sessions that you can sign up for most of them are free as well so if you sign up on there to get their newsletters for all of these organizations or just through the SBA website directly you’ll get notifications of all the upcoming events for their group sessions but their one-on-one sessions are really great and we always encourage business owners to take advantage of that and to have a second set of eyes when they are putting together a business plan or maybe they’re looking to expand their business or just need somebody to take a look at their financials as an existing business owner to understand them a little bit better.
Allyson Brainson: Thank you for joining us today, Angie and thank you for watching the Business Scoop, brought to you by The Cooperative Bank of Cape Cod.