After decades of success in business and finance, Bob Hanson and Roger Martin are passing along the lessons they learned to the newest generation of Western Colorado entrepreneurs.
Hanson and Martin are volunteer counselors at the Business Incubator Center in Grand Junction, providing guidance and advice to fledgling businesses. The Incubator Center works with about a thousand “hopeful entrepreneurs” each year, says Julie Morey, director of the Grand Junction Small Business Development Center, and the four volunteer counselors on staff are an important resource.
“We would not be able to handle that volume without our volunteer counselors,” Morey says.
As much as the counselors’ work benefits the Incubator Center and its clients, those efforts also reward the counselors with a strong sense of satisfaction.
“If you can help somebody – and really help them – you get a lot of satisfaction,” says Hanson, former owner of Hanson Equipment in Grand Junction. Hanson has been a volunteer at the Incubator Center for about 10 years and counsels prospective businesses about twice a week.
A banking veteran of more than 30 years of service, Martin worked in commercial lending for U.S. Bank in Grand Junction and the Bank of Grand Junction. During that time, he worked with countless small businesses and became familiar with the issues they faced.
“It was a very good experience to work for small (financial) institutions, and you could talk to your customer face-to-face and make decisions locally,” Martin says.
Small-business counselors at the Incubator Center hear a wide variety of ideas from potential entrepreneurs. Counselors such as Hanson and Martin sit down with their clients and help them sort out the issues and roadblocks they might face in making their business desires become reality.
Martin says many prospective businesspeople bring strong technical knowledge to the table, but they don’t have the legal or financial expertise to properly start and operate a business. That’s where the counselors can provide advice and suggest resources to help them put their plan together.
“If they’re really serious, we ask them to do a business plan,” Martin says. “Some of the people are a little lazy, and they don’t want to do that.”
“We can tell almost every time after talking to these people for an hour whether they’re going to make it,” Martin says.
For those entrepreneurs who appear serious about their ideas, counselors help keep them on track for a successful business launch.
“I always try to be positive and point them in a direction,” Hanson says. He often refers clients to the Incubator Center’s Leading Edge program, an intensive 12-session course that trains business owners how to plan all aspects of their operation, from finance to personnel to marketing.
“Somebody going through that program has a better chance of success,” Hanson says.
“It’s the satisfaction we get from helping somebody. One of our main jobs is to encourage them,” Martin says. “There’s nothing more fulfilling than seeing prospective business owners with their ducks in a row.”
Sometimes, Hanson says, a client will do all the footwork to assemble revenue and expense projections, only to find the business idea isn’t viable. It can be a difficult realization, but helping someone see that the “big picture” isn’t as rosy as it first seemed can save them from sinking time and money into an ill-fated venture.
Morey says the Incubator Center is always looking for new volunteer business counselors. Applicants are asked to submit a resume, and if they are accepted, they are asked to become “certified business counselors” through Colorado Small Business Development Centers.
Volunteers are sought from the ranks of business owners and professionals in the community who have worked in fields where entrepreneurs need help, such as accounting, finance, banking, marketing, production operations, and legal.
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