RIDGWAY — Small businesses and burgeoning entrepreneurs are essential to our rural area. A PREP meeting was held on Feb. 28 at North Central Pennsylvania Regional Planning and Development Commission in Ridgway.
The goal was to open discussion with local stakeholders to find what gaps in resources exist for business owners within Jefferson, Cameron, Potter, Elk, Clearfield and McKean county.
The meeting was hosted by guests Ellen Harpel, Ph.D., founder and president of Business Development Advisors LLC as well as founder of Smart Incentives, and Erik Pages, Ph.D., president of Entreworks Consulting.
The conversation opened on the importance of small businesses, the amenities they provide, and how essential they were during the pandemic. In-home companies, Harpel and Pages explained, helped service communities during the COVID-19 era. They said, however, to the agreement of those in attendance, that business owners clearly lacked the comprehensive support they needed.
Some challenges brought up included the lack of easily accessible tech training to transition to an online marketplace, and the difficulty many business owners had in identifying financial services they were entitled to. It was said that while these problems persist, new ones sprung up after the height of the pandemic.
The funding provided to small businesses by The American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 is now unavailable. Jennifer Hibbard, a loan program director at North Central, mentioned that it can take months for business owners to acquire even microloans in an emergency. Along with this, Hibbard stated that a poor credit score can often keep someone from the bank financing they need.
A key objective became raising awareness of support systems business owners may not be familiar with. Small Business Development Centers were heavily cited as a great resource for entrepreneurs that have an interesting idea and need a plan to get started.
The Office of Economic and Community Development in Bradford is a local organization said to provide a wide variety of useful services. Along with this, ideas were raised regarding possible events at the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford.
They believed this could be an effective way to show future entrepreneurs what resources will be available for their own start-ups. Such programs, as well as the extensive discussion at the PREP meeting, provided a hopeful outlook for the small business climate in the region.
