Three Free Resources to Help Grow Your Business

Statistics show that most businesses fail after five years. The reasons can range from weak marketing to poor planning. Fortunately, there are some excellent resources available to help your business succeed and some of them are free of charge. Three of the best free resources are SCORE, SBA Small Business Development Centers and your local library.

SCORE stands for the Service Corps Of Retired Executives and, as the name implies, is made up of men and women who have excelled in the business world and now volunteer their time to help others with their businesses. SCORE offers two services: counseling and courses. Counseling is free and the courses have a nominal fee (usually well under $100).

SCORE counseling is mainly for people in the start-up phase but they can assist a venture in virtually any stage of development. Working with a SCORE counselor is very easy. You can either visit your local office or receive counseling via email. Each method has its advantages. Meeting face to face allows you to have an interactive dialogue, go over your product or business plan and connect with your counselor at a more personal level. Counseling via email allows you to have access to a wider array of counselors, doesn't require you to schedule a meeting and all the advice you receive is easily accessible from your email inbox.

It's advantageous to use both methods as the face to face meetings will help you connect with your local office which may additional resources. Email allows you to run ideas by a wider range of counselors and you can receive advice from a lot of different angles.

SCORE courses vary from chapter to chapter but typically include a full day program that covers the basics of starting a business. For example, one program covered marketing, financing and legal issues in the morning. Then in the afternoon, attendees were split into groups based on their industry (technology, restaurants, services, retail, etc...) and participated in a round table discussion with counselors that had expertise in those areas. For more information, visit SCORE.org.

If you've already started a business or are extremely close to starting a business, your local SBA Small Business Development Center is an excellent resource. Like SCORE, these centers also offer free counseling and inexpensive courses. The counselors for SBA however are paid employees who are still very active in their fields of expertise. Although they won't refuse to speak with you if you're still in the planning stage, they're most helpful when you've already started your business. They can help you with everything from selecting a legal structure for your business to tweaking your marketing plan.

The courses offered by SBA Small Business Development Centers are more in depth than those offered by SCORE so are an excellent follow up to the SCORE course. Courses cover everything from business financing to intellectual property protection to various management issues. Like the courses offered by SCORE, these courses are well put together and a great value. You can find your local SBA Small Business Development Center at SBA.gov.

The final free resource to help you with your business is your local library. Libraries are perhaps the best free resources for businesses because of the wealth of services they offer. Depending on the size of your local branch, your library could contain books, videos and audiobooks to help you start or grow your business; reference materials, periodicals and trade journals; free courses and programs to help businesses; and even on-line and in-home access to various electronic resources. And best of all, it's usually all free. The bigger the branch, the more materials you'll get access to so start with the main branch in your city or town. If your main (or only) branch is small, try the main branch in a neighboring city or town (preferably a larger one) or go directly to the main branch in your nearest major city.

Pay a visit to the reference librarian or stop by the information desk and introduce yourself. Librarians love to help people so tell them what you're looking for and they'll gladly show you around. If the library is part of a library network, they may be able to request materials from other branches for you. Some will even request materials from other parts of the country, again all free of charge.

Keep in mind that libraries are much more than books. Today's libraries also contain videos and DVDs that include both fiction and non-fiction titles that rival the selection at your local video store. Books on tape and CD are also available in addition to music. Although most newspapers offer an on-line edition, it's often limited and requires a subscription to access all articles. Libraries often have subscriptions to all the local papers as well as national and international periodicals and trade journals so you can read the entire issue. You can often find one year's worth of issues of magazines on any subject imaginable - again, the bigger the branch the wider selection. Another great resource of the library is high speed internet access (sometimes wireless is available), access to databases and retrieval sources such as Lexis/Nexis and periodicals on microfiche.

Larger branches will often offer a variety of courses or programs on everything from job search strategies to starting a business. But keep in mind that these courses are at an extremely high level. Some libraries may offer clipping services which can come in handy when you're doing research. So again, pay a visit to your local library and discover what they have to offer.

A lot of factors influence whether your business will succeed. Taking advantage of the three free resources will ensure that your business has the best chance at survival.