As life begins to take on a sense of normalcy after the pandemic, there are those who think it is time to get that business idea that they hatched during quarantine off the ground. The Tennessee Small Business Development Center (TSBDC) was designed to do just that. There are locations all over the state, with the Murfreesboro Branch being located on the second floor of the Rutherford County Chamber of Commerce building on Medical Center Parkway. They offer services to all sizes of for-profit businesses to get them started, help them grow, help them sustain, and if someone is retiring and they wish to close out the business, they can help with that, too.
There is virtually no cost for their services. Funding is provided by the National Small Business Administration, the State of Tennessee, and Murfreesboro’s host institution Middle Tennessee State University. While mentoring by one of their business consultants is free, there are fees associated with some of their classes.
During the pandemic, the Tennessee Small Business Development Centers in the state helped almost 5,000 clients and provided more than 10,000 counseling hours. Their services for start-ups include business plan development, financial planning assistance, marketing research and marketing plan development, human resources, finding sources of capital, finding a bank and social media guidance. For those businesses that are already up and running, they can help with all of the previous activities, as well as growth planning, capital infusion, government contract guidance, cash flow management, and international trade guidance. The Murfreesboro Center covers 14 counties, including Rutherford, Bedford, Cannon, Coffee, Giles, Hickman, Lawrence, Lewis, Lincoln, Marshall, Maury, Moore, Perry and Wayne.
Government COVID-19 Government Response Funds administered through the TSBDC amounted to $47 million dollars. They were able to help many small businesses with the necessary paperwork, including pulling together many of the reports needed to be approved to receive the funds. Paperwork many very small business owners usually don’t produce.
A vast majority of the businesses they help are service companies, followed by retail. But they also work with manufacturing, construction and wholesale. While they advise more females than males, it is not by much. Most people think the TSBDC primarily helps start-up businesses, they actually help slightly more people who are already in business. They also help a lot of veterans start a business, including a little over 35% of whom are disabled.
Most of their clients come to them for one-on-one personal consulting interactions dealing directly with development and maintenance of business action, however the organization also offers a significant number of classes, including many on use of Social Media as a means for growing your business.
“We are here to help our clients get their business going,” said the Murfreesboro Center’s new director, Amanda Bozeman. “Working with a TSBDC consultant improves chances for success. On average, TSBDC clients achieve higher sales and employment growth rates than the typical Tennessee business.”
Tennessee Small Business Development Center
Murfreesboro Branch
Rutherford County Chamber of Commerce, Second Floor
3050 Medical Center Parkway, Suite 232
Murfreesboro, Tennessee
(615) 898-2745
Website: https://tsbdc.org/center/murfreesboro/
Hours: Monday through Friday, 8:00 a.m. until 4:30 p.m.
Please Join Our FREE Newsletter!
