Mo*Bee's Blog #4: It's For F-r-e-e!

 Mo*Bee's Blog #4:  It's For F-r-e-e!

Upon further research, for this Mo*Bee's Class Finder adventure, I came upon two of the craziest things ever: The North Carolina Small Business Center and the Western North Carolina Score Program, which are both said to be free. When I first heard about these programs, I thought, they can't really be free. Maybe free depending on your income. Then I also thought, well they could be free. But I'm one who believes you get what you pay for. So okay maybe they're free, but they're going to be crappy. Okay some more crazy, crazy, crazy. Are you ready for this… Not only are they for real free! No matter how low or how high your income. They are also really, really good.

I was just as shocked as she is

The North Carolina Small Business Center is a place where anyone can go and take business classes. They have all kinds of classes. Classes like using your smart phone or iPad for business, marketing your small business with pinterest, website building workshops, learn how to correctly monitor the financial aspects of your business, how to sell on eBay.

It's absolutely crazy how many different kinds of classes they have going on. Not only that, but if there's something you want to learn about for your business you can tell the director and they will try and find a qualified person to teach a class on that specific topic. Oh yeah, here's another crazy cool thing about it…Once again, It's free! I know you're saying to me right now”shut up you lie”but I'm really not. The state has these small business centers set up inside North Carolina community colleges and tech schools. It's pretty smart of North Carolina to do this, also a little tricky at the same time. Here's how I see it. The state of North Carolina pays instructors to teach me whatever I need to know in order to run a successful business. If North Carolina pays one instructor to teach 20 business owners how to run their business bigger, better, faster, in return those 20 business owners go out and do just that. They get bigger, they get better, they get faster. oh yeah and... they make a lot more money. Now come tax time North Carolina has made a huge profit on their investment. I get it North Carolina, I see what you do. I really am okay with paying you (NC) more in taxes because you helped me make more income. It's a good deal North Carolina; count me in.

I also learned about the Western North Carolina Score program. Score is counselors to America's small businesses. What score does is give you a mentor. Someone who has business knowledge in the areas that you are starting to go into. Here again folks, this one is free. I'm not kidding there's no trick. I've worked with both programs long enough now that if they were going to charge me, then anyone who had any business sense at all, would have already sent me a bill way before now. Had I have had to pay for the services that they have provided me, my bill would have been many, many, many thousands of dollars by now. North Carolina really is committed to its business owners.

I took my first class at the Rutherford County Small Business Center, located inside Isothermal Community College. I went by the Rutherford County Small Business Center first, just to check into it more and find out what I could about it. I met and spoke with Faye Bishop who is the director there. She told me all about the Small Business Center. How it works. How they do get paid. Which by the way is as I thought, through the state.

NC Small Business Center

I was so amazed at how much time Faye spent with me. I remember being there over two hours. Interrogating her about her program. In my mind thinking ”her program can't be all that because she's not in a hurry to get rid of me at all. If her program was all that she would be real busy and would push me out the door so she could get important work done. She would have put a stop to this annoying lady who keeps asking her all these questions.” But she didn’t. We actually had a really nice talk that day. She patiently answered each and every one of my questions. All the while she weaved in stories about things going on around her, like the horses that live near her house or her little dog. She gave me tidbits of advice that helped me take those few next steps into my new business adventure.

I've gotten to know Faye Bishop pretty good now throughout this whole ordeal, also her assistant Dee Spurlin. Through this I have learned first and foremost that I owe Ms. Faye a huge apology for taking up so much of her time that day. The small business center is crazy busy. There's not a doubt in my mind, knowing what I know now, that Faye Bishop was given the job of director of the Small Business Center in Rutherford County because in the midst of chaos, she can welcome a total stranger into her office, visit with her, and answer all her stupid questions and make her feel like the director has absolutely nothing better to do than spend two hours with her.

While I'm sure she had to stay way past her quitting time that day, she never complained to me about it once. Faye Bishop, I am sending you my sincere apology for wasting such a large part of your day. Just take comfort in knowing that the time spent with you did help me to know some of the next steps I would need to take.

After that meeting with Faye, I was sufficiently impressed, so I attended the very next class put on by the North Carolina Small Business Center in Rutherford County. After that first one, I took another one. Then another one, and then one more. I absolutely could not believe that these classes were completely free. While they have good attendance at each class I have taken there, it blows my mind to think that they don't have so many people that they have to turn people away because the fire marshal won't allow that many people in the building at one time. No kidding, the classes they hold really are that good. They're not only packed full of all kinds of helpful information, they are entertaining. Let's not forget our statistic from early on, 99% of the time I have the attention span of a three-month-old Labrador retriever puppy. When you can make a three-hour business class seem like it only took 30 minutes, and you handed me notes on the class so I didn't have to take my own, wow, what else could a person ask for. To anyone who lives anywhere in North Carolina and is in business or is thinking about going into business, if you do not take advantage of this huge gift given to us by our state, then you are too stupid to be in business or start a business, so just go ahead and quit now and save yourself a lot of money and trouble. I've got a lot more to tell you about Faye and Dee and the small business center, but for now I'm going to jump back to score. 



Score

I found my Score mentor at a local business Expo. I stopped at their booth and spoke with two gentlemen there. I told them what I was looking to do and asked if they had a mentor who might be willing to help me out. Bruce Hunt was one of the men I spoke with that day and he said he would be happy to help me. Bruce told me that he had retired from the banking industry and that banking really was his area of expertise but he would try to help me the best he could. While it may be that Bruce is not a computer programmer, he is a contact man. Bruce Hunt knows everybody who's anybody in business. Not only does he know them but he can get you a meeting with them. This is a prime example of what I was talking about earlier, each of us has our strong points and our weak points.

I have a friend who is always telling me how lucky I am. She and I used to work together. She always made me laugh because of the ways that she would tell me I was lucky. She would say things like “Dee you beat all I've ever seen. You can get into trouble at work and the boss could say 'Dee go outside and pick up any dog poop you see on the property,' and I'd be damned if you don't come back showing everybody a big gold nugget you found on the ground next to one of those piles of poop.” (That never happened by the way).

Sometimes I'm as lucky as the person who shot this arrow.

I will agree that I do tend to be lucky. There's a reason for that though, and here it is. Always remember this, every single person that you meet in your life has something to offer. Here again it's our differences that make us each great. No matter who the person is that you meet, they have a gift, a talent, a knowledge that you don't have. Who knows what it is but every person has something that they can help you with. You just have to figure out what their gift is.

We all have a little bit of special lucky powers.

I don't know all of Bruce Hunt's gifts but I know one of them is networking. The day I met Bruce, when he told me he was not a computer programmer, I could have thought, “ oh well there's not really anything he can help me with, so I'll just move on." I would have never called Bruce after he gave me his business card that day. I would have never given him a second thought. But that's not what I did. What I thought when Bruce told me that he was not a computer programmer was this...” Okay so you're not a computer programmer. Lets just sit down with Bruce and see what his special lucky powers are.

I called Bruce and set up a meeting so I could show him what all I was doing. On the day of the meeting I told Bruce about my website and how it worked and then I shut up and listened. Bruce had brought another man from score with him named Bill Kerns.

As soon as I stopped talking, Bruce started telling Bill the names of all these people that he should have me talk to, people like so-and-so who worked for years in marketing for companies like Sealy Posturepedic and Kimberly-Clark. Oh yeah and their is so-and-so who is an attorney for large companies, oh yea I can't forget to get you in to see so and so he is on the board of such and such school. Also "Mrs blank blank" works for the newspaper and may want to do a story about this.(To those of us in the know, that means FREE advertising). And just that quick, I got meetings set up with these people. Bruce got these people to agree to meet with me, sit down with me, advise me, and let me pick their brains. To be able to sit down and have a discussion with a business attorney and a sitting board member of a School(who I want to meet with and see about them putting their continuing education classes on Mo*Bee's) plus a marketing executive. There's no telling the cost had I had to hire these people to advise me. The caliber of these people and their knowledge was priceless. Wow, how cool is that. And best of all it was free!

So anytime you hear me say” as luck would have it,”what I'm really saying is “hey I met this person and they are the fill in the blank - how lucky is that!”

After seeing how I got lucky and found out that Rutherford County had a small business center, I did some checking and got lucky and found out Henderson County has one too. The director for the Henderson County Small Business Center's name is Gary Heisey. Sometimes the Henderson County Small Business Center has all day workshops to help teach you how to grow your business. These are unbelievably informative and fun to attend. And if you're lucky you can get to attend one of these too.

I'm not trying to give away all my secrets, but the people who work in these small business centers have a few contacts of their own. I'm just saying.They not only help you by providing these classes for you, they also support your business. I am very pleased to say that the North Carolina Small Business Center in Rutherfordton, North Carolina was the very first to post real classes on Mo*Bee's Class Finder! I made an appointment with Faye and Dee so they could list the small business center's classes on Mo*Bee's. I wanted to be there for a few reasons. First and foremost my small team of ants and I had spent the last few months posting fake classes on Mo*Bee's. Hey that reminds me, if for some reason while on Mo*Bee's you run across the class called “teach your chicken how to dance”that would be a fake one that we missed taking off before the launch. Maybe I shouldn't be so quick to say that. Somebody out there may really have a class where you can teach your chicken how to dance. If I ever find that there is a teach your chicken how to dance class, I'm probably going to have to go out and buy me a chicken. Just saying. (Go away lab puppy, go away!)

Anyway, being there to watch a real person, who didn't work for me, list a real class. Wow, it's the same as wanting to be there to watch your baby take her first steps. Okay, maybe it's not that big. But it's still something you want to be there for.Next I wanted to be there so I could watch someone who had never been on Mo*Bee's and see how easily they navigated the website. I wanted to see their reactions to things. I wanted to see if anything caused them any confusion. And last but not least I wanted to get a picture so I could share it on my blog.

Dee Spurlin With NC SBC and Kelly entering the first real classes on Mo*Bee's

 I took Kelly along as my tech person. This worked out great. Well, great for me and Faye. Kelly and Dee Spurlin got to work on listing the upcoming small business center's classes. Meanwhile, Faye and I sat behind them and chatted, and laughed, pretty much just enjoying the fact that all our hard work was getting close to being set loose in the world. Dee did a great job listing their classes. I'm going to have to find someone else who has not been on Mo*Bee's website to see if it is confusing to them. Dee is really smart and it's nearly impossible to trip her up, much less get her confused.

Again I can't thank you all enough. Faye, Dee, Bruce and Gary for all your hard work and most of all the tremendous amount of support you have not only shown in my business, but also in me. I should be the poster child for all of you. We can have my picture on it, and it can say “ if we can help Her start a website, we can help anyone start any kind of business!”

Until next time...
Dee
a.k.a. Mo*Bee


By the way Faye, perhaps I could interest you in this super cute dog that they have at Foothills Humane Society. I'm just saying.

Boots available for adoption at Foothills Humane Society 

Talk to you readers again in a few weeks.





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