Since 1979, our next guest’s organization has been busy helping entrepreneurs and business owners start and grow their companies through free consulting and low-cost seminars. And now they have a new program designed to help companies meet their exit goals. Mike Switzer interviews Marquise Jackson, the state director for the South Carolina Small Business Development Centers.
TRANSCRIPT:
Switzer: Hello and welcome to another edition of the South Carolina Business Review. This is Mike Switzer. Since 1979, our next guests organization has been busy helping entrepreneurs and business owners start and grow their companies through free consulting and low cost seminars. And now they have a new program designed to help companies meet their exit goals. Marquis Jackson is the state Director for the South Carolina Small Business Development Centers. He joins us now by phone from his office in Columbia. Marquis, welcome to the program.
Jackson: Thank you for having me.
Switzer: Now tell us first of all about your, your organization and its presence here in our state.
Jackson: Yeah. The South Carolina Small Business Development center is a 47 year old consortium based economic development program and it's a partnership between four universities, University of South Carolina, Clemson, Winthrop and South Carolina State. And essentially what we do is we provide businesses with one on one confidential counseling to help them move through their business issues from, you know, how do I get a piece of equipment to grow my business? You know, how do I implement a, marketing and sales strategy? We also do a lot of workshops and connections with resources. We have about 20 locations throughout the state serving all 46 counties.
Switzer: All right, now tell us about this new program that you guys have developed.
Jackson: Elevate sc. It's really a growth program for businesses. The program was built on the thought that's captured in a hopefully, very well known book, Walk into Destiny. As business owners operate, they usually are thinking about their day to day operations and you know, how do I increase my sales or how do I increase value, how do I serve more customers. But the book kind of laid out a real path of how do I think about where my business transitions to and what does that look like. And then as I think about exiting my business and it could be two years, it could be 20 years, it could be, you know, two months. How do I build value in my business right now to improve, what the exit picture looks like when I've implemented all these things. So we've designed a program to really help existing businesses here in South Carolina bring value to their business to help them as they're growing, in preparation for their eventual sale or transition to their kids or to the next employee or when they sell it. We're looking for businesses who've been in business for about three or more years and they've been profitable. You know, they actually have documented financials. A lot of businesses don't have a great bookkeeping and accounting systems, but we're looking for that. and they want to place a priority on strategically growing their business. So Businesses that fit into that category. What the Elevate SC program is is we'll sit down with the business and do a multi point assessment on them using a tool called Quist, which is quite in the private world, business owners would pay, I believe, between 5 and 7,000 for this report and we're giving it to them for free. So we'll have them take a survey of sorts to answer a lot of questions about their business. Once we get all of that data, we put it into the quiz system and it gives a lot of factors that benchmarks them against businesses in their industry and of their size and compares them with businesses that are like them and kind of points to things that they can do to create additional value. And we sit down with them, one on one and coach them through each of those areas to help them actualize that value. So this program is, is newly launched. We've been doing it, I'll say for about six months already. This was a huge investment in the SBDC program by the Department of Commerce. So shout out to the Department of Commerce, thank you guys for all that you do for us. And so we hope to take a number of existing businesses here in South Carolina through this assessment process, help them build value and eventually help them bring lots of actual dollar value to their business so they could transition it in the future.
Switzer: All right, and so how long is this program? How many weeks or months does it consist of?
Jackson: Well, you'll probably be in the growth program for about a couple months. So in the beginning, you know, we'll take an hour, orient you on the program and then have you complete the assessment. Then we come back another week and take you through that assessment and then the coaching begins. So I'll say about two months, but it could go faster, you know, if somebody's really studious, but we want them to be thorough and take their time and implement this.
Switzer: Well, Marquis, thanks so much for sharing.
Jackson: Thanks Mike, for having me on. Really appreciate it.
Switzer: Marquis Jackson is the state Director for the South Carolina Small Business Development center and he joined us by phone from his office in Columbia. We will have a link to the organization posted at our webpage so you can learn more. South Carolina Public Radio where you can hear this show again. And remember, you can find us wherever you find podcasts with the South Carolina Business Review. This is Mike Switzerland.
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