Emily Criste ’11Journal #1
My first month at NYC Small Business Services flew by. I am working for the NYC Business Solutions team, which oversees six centers across the five boroughs that focus on helping businesses start, operate, and expand. These centers provide a suite of services at no cost to entrepreneurs in the city, including business courses, access to financial and legal services, help with licensing and permits, and employee recruitment and training.
This summer, I have been assigned a variety of financing initiatives. My first deliverable was to create and administer a survey interview to small business owners who have been struggling to repay their debt in the economic downturn. The survey was used to assess what cash management challenges small business owners faced before and after loan award in order to identify what additional resources the city could provide to improve their chances of obtaining and successfully managing a loan.
This week, I interviewed two small business owners, one who recently opened a European-style café in East Harlem and another who has been operating a women’s fashion boutique in Brooklyn. It was very inspiring to hear these women’s stories of starting businesses from scratch and the process and dedication involved. What started as just a dream became a reality for these business owners after a year’s preparation before opening their doors. However, the past year posed a difficult environment for the retail and restaurant industries, so both owners have found themselves struggling to stay in business. We spoke about their major challenges, which included sales downturn, seasonality issues, and lack of financial management skills and formal accountings systems. Insufficient cash management skills is a key theme among young entrepreneurs as they often lack a bookkeeping system or knowledge of how to review their revenues and expenses to make informed managerial decisions on pricing and ordering inventory. As a takeaway from my interviews so far, my next step is to design a cash management and accounting course for small business owners so they can better manage their business operations.
In addition to this project, I am beginning a full scale process of review of what specific services our center account managers offer as part of the access to finance service and how this varies by lender.
More to come, but so far I am learning a lot at SBS. It is a very unique government division that helps spur economic development and support entrepreneurs. This year alone, our centers are on track to help over 700 small business owners finance their businesses. This is especially impressive given the tighter credit markets and it is encouraging to help these small business owners pursue their goals.
Journal #2
This month, I conducted a full scale process of review of what specific services our center account managers offer as part of the access to finance service and how this varies by lender. As background, the city partners with more than 35 different lenders to help entrepreneurs receive financing for startups or operating businesses. Because of the large variety of credit histories, business structures and experience, and industries, many small business owners need to explore financing options outside of traditional bank term loans, such as microfinance loans or loans from local credit unions.
This year, 43 percent of the small businesses that SBS worked with received financing from microfinance lenders, while 27 percent of the loans came from traditional banks, 20 percent from credit unions, and the remaining 10 percent from friends and family members or investors.
My task was to outline how each borough’s Small Business Solutions Center is helping customers prepare and apply for loans and how this varies by lender. After spending time with each team in each borough, I found the process and service offering varied substantially as some lenders preferred customers to just be referred directly to them, where other lenders wanted the Centers to work with the customers to fully prepare the application materials and submit a complete application together.
After collecting my findings, I gave 10 recommendations to senior management on how SBS NYC Business Solutions could improve existing operations to help both the customer and the lender through the financing process on a more consistent basis. I also suggested additional training resources for our employees to increase their knowledge base in business plan writing, financial statement analysis, the underwriting process, and general sales and communication skills.
As a final step of this process review, I introduced a revised free-of-cost course intended for business owners to learn about credit and financing opportunities. Whether they are just starting up or expanding an existing business, this course will give insight on what lenders are looking for in the current credit environment so they can be best prepared when applying for financing.
I enjoyed working on these projects as I was able to learn a lot about the current credit environment for small businesses and how the availability of products differs depending on business stage and type. Additionally, it was interesting to see how the city assists and helps lenders free up capacity by working with customers before they submit an application to ensure the required materials are robust and complete.
Journal #3
It’s now the last week of my 13 weeks spent at SBS. I feel I accomplished a lot during my time here as today I reviewed my eight main projects with a few additional ad hoc tasks.
Most of my responsibilities revolved around small business financing, but I also worked on few other initiatives to broaden the scope of my internship. One such recent project involved measuring the success and impact of networking events the city sponsors for entrepreneurs. To begin, I researched the benefits of networking for entrepreneurs and created a handout outlining the benefits of networking and tips and tricks for doing it successfully before, during and after a networking event. Additionally, I built a framework to measure the success and quantify outcomes of the various networking events held for alumni of certain city sponsored programs. This is a simple example of how the city pushes to measure the effectiveness of its funded programs by quantifiable results. The goal is to determine how networking helped entrepreneurs generate sales via additional customers or reduce expenses through meeting new partners and suppliers. SBS will use the ongoing results of the survey I developed to determine if these events truly lead to improving existing business operations, and if not, how government funding can be best directed elsewhere.
On another note, this internship allowed me to gain exposure to other groups and services outside of the scope of my team and project. We had several internship events and speaker series throughout the summer. Some of the highlights included:
- Touring the Flatiron Business Improvement District to learn how the city partners with local businesses, urban planners, and other officials to revitalize a local neighborhood and spur economic development using an innovative business model
- Attending a speaking event on the changing face of NYC’s neighborhoods and their relative demographics
- Learning about other divisions of SBS, such as Workforce Development, which focuses on helping NYC residents find new employment opportunities and obtain professional training
In all, I found this internship to be a very positive experience and introduction to work in the public sector. The variety of public/private partnerships the city has created to help small businesses start, operate and expand in NYC is extremely robust and one of a kind in its model. I felt I was able to put a lot of my business school skills to work, as I used both hard skills acquired (such as my accounting knowledge) and general project management and communication skills needed to successfully complete my deliverables.
