SBDC helps businesses grow

Bill Jhung’s business is to know other people’s business.

He doesn’t deal in the celebrity-gossip type of personal business so often splashed across the covers of countless periodicals and dominating the airwaves. Rather, he deals with the personal well-being of the many small businesses throughout North Idaho.

As director of Idaho’s Small Business Development Center in Post Falls, Jhung’s job is to help local small businesses thrive and up-and-coming entrepreneurs create opportunities.

With 50 percent of small businesses failing in their first year and 90 percent disappearing within five years, Jhung, 49, aims to help local businesses avoid many of the problems and pitfalls that can cripple a start-up company.

The SBDC’s goal in this community “is to help facilitate economic momentum,” Jhung said. He added that he and the center’s five other employees are here, “in a sense, to create jobs and create wealth in the community.”

Though the center has been in the area for more than 15 years – just one of six locations spread across Idaho – it wasn’t until the past few years when Jhung joined as director that the center has made a name for itself among many small businesses in the five counties it serves in North Idaho.

“There was a presence,” Jhung said regarding the center’s history in the area. “Every leader brings a different vision and different skill set.”

Through its office in Post Falls, the North Idaho College-affiliated development center helped more than 300 small businesses last year, taught nearly 650 individuals through training workshops and, consequently, pumped an additional $7.8 million into Idaho’s economy.

Those are impressive numbers considering that the SBDC actually is a small business itself.

“We have a great team,” Jhung said. And as a small business that receives all its funding in three equal parts from NIC, the state of Idaho and the U.S. Small Business Administration, “we have to be incredibly entrepreneurial ourselves,” he said.

The move for Jhung into the world of small business came after a radical departure from the career path he had started on with a chemical engineering degree from the University of Michigan. Jhung went to work at a small-business development center in Philadelphia to help pay for school but ended up becoming immersed in his job.

“That really opened the door to understand the vibrant world of entrepreneurs,” he said.

After several years working as a consultant to Fortune 500 companies, Jhung, with a new two-year degree in hand from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School for business and a new career in mind, became owner of a small manufacturing company near Seattle for more than eight years.

“I loved that work,” he said, but “I really wanted to do things beyond serving me. … I decided what I wanted to do was invest in entrepreneurs.”

Now, with more than a year of experience under his belt at Post Falls’ Small Business Development Center, Jhung is well into his pursuit of helping businesses grow.

However, he said, there are some hurdles for the area’s economy that need to be overcome.

“The challenge of this area is a 2-D economy,” he said, in which real estate and tourism are the main dimensions driving the market. “That doesn’t necessarily create sustainable industry. We need to grow a third leg of the industry.”

By adding manufacturing, distributing and other facets of industry, SBDC is promoting a robust economy in which small businesses can flourish.

Some of the support that the university-based organization provides includes free and low-cost information to educate and support Idaho small-business owners, managers and investors, its Web site says.

Most of the businesses that approach the development center are existing companies, while the rest are start-ups. And although the approach to helping each business is different, the need is similar, Jhung said.

The business owners often stay in touch because, he added, “in order to have a sustainable business, we need to have a sustainable relationship.”

Darrel Peterson is just one of the small-business owners around Post Falls who came to Jhung for help. Peterson, owner of the 7-year-old hot-rod-building business Gunner Productions, went to the development center several years ago before Jhung arrived, but “it was just a quick meeting and it wasn’t a huge help.”

Now, however, Peterson said, much of his company’s success stems from what he has learned from Jhung and the rest of the center’s staff. “It was just a night-and-day difference,” Peterson said.

From cash-flow issues to money-saving tips, he has learned to identify potential pitfalls before they become detrimental to his business. “To make a long story short, (Jhung) just helps you build the tools to build a business. … He’s a savior, I’d say.”

And one of the best parts is that it hasn’t cost him one dime, Peterson said, adding that Jhung’s “job is to make sure small businesses develop.”

That success is music to Jhung’s ears.

“We want the small fish in the small pond to become a bigger fish,” he said.