Volunteer Shares Insight With Rookies

Clifford Brown is tall, courtly, articulate. A classy dresser. Razor sharp.

He looks like he belongs in a TV commercial about your hometown friendly banker.

Brown will be 75 next month.

He has been retired for 20 years.

But one day of every week, he dons a business suit and tie to become duty officer of the Spokane Area Business Information Center (BIC), where he makes his knowledge and long experience as a successful business owner available to others. Free. Without pay.

“Why?” I ask.

Well, the BIC is a partnership between the U.S. Small Business Administration, the Spokane Area Chamber of Commerce, private-sector businesses, and SCORE the Service Corps of Retired Executives. SCORE volunteers offer their services to start-ups and existing small businesses without charge.

It’s a way to give something back to the business sector, which has been good to them.

That’s one answer. The stock answer. The one I expected.

But when I suggested that, Cliff Brown says, “No. It’s not for others that I do this - it’s for me.”

He enjoys meeting and solving problems for strangers. He always has, and he is loath to give it up entirely. So he spends one day a week overseeing operations of the BIC at the Chamber of Commerce building, and other days he can often be found counseling entrepreneurs out in the field.

Brown is not, however, the retired hometown banker that he looks. Instead he’s your retired hometown hardware man. For many years he operated hardware stores in Lewiston, Idaho - until real estate investments made him affluent enough to retire.

But the attributes that make the ideal hardware man - a desire to help strangers solve problems - also make the perfect SCORE counselor.

What is the greatest service he can render?

It’s stopping a person from going into business when they should not.

“If they are not equipped to make a go of it, and I can keep them from a fatal mistake,” says the seasoned veteran, “then, I feel I have done a real service.”

It’s a service he performs almost daily.

Take the two young would-be entrepreneurs who came in the day before my visit to the BIC. “They wanted to start an indoor golf and miniature sports recreation center,” Brown recalls. They are stationed here in the military. They were convinced a shortage of this type of recreational opportunity exists in the vicinity of Fairchild Air Force Base.

“They had done a limited amount of research,” Brown says. “They probably had a good idea. But what they were talking about is a multimillion-dollar project. And they have no money.

“So, I took them into our library at the BIC and showed them how to research dozens of little part-time businesses that they as servicemen with a little extra time on their hands and no money could get into. That library is a gold mine of good ideas for would-be entrepreneurs,” Brown says.

There has never been a greater need for good ideas and sound advice on starting or not starting a business.

A record number of new businesses are gearing up in the wake of continued downsizing by American companies. Many of America’s most experienced - and higher paid - employees are being pressured into early retirement in a frenzy of payroll cutting.

As a result, a large number of older Baby Boomers are joining the ranks of seniors who, financially and psychologically unprepared for sudden retirement, are scrambling to secure work - even if they have to create it themselves.

So, next to keeping hordes of would-be fledgling business owners from going broke, what’s the BIC’s second-most-valuable service? “The importance of developing a sound business plan cannot be over-emphasized,” says Brown.

“Depending on how thorough a job you do on your business plan,” he says, “you ought to have a pretty fair idea of whether or not to take the plunge.”

(This is the first in a series of columns on starting up a new business.)

, DataTimes MEMO: Associate Editor Frank Bartel writes on retirement issues each Sunday. He can be reached with ideas for future columns at 459-5467 or fax 459-5482.

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Frank Bartel The Spokesman-Review