Getting Business Done in Nebraska
NBDC provides statewide support for entrepreneurs
looking to launch, grow and maintain a business
As the only dually licensed therapist within 90 miles of Sidney, Nebraska, who provides counseling for both mental health issues and addictions, Nichole Peralta knows her specialized skills are in high demand in the southern panhandle.
So when the Cheyenne County Board of Commissioners voted earlier this year to close the doors to the Panhandle Mental Health Center, the organization where she’d been employed for the past eight years, she knew she wanted to continue serving clients. Without the support of a parent organization, however, that meant hanging her own shingle and starting a private practice — from scratch.
A master’s degree in counseling prepared Peralta for helping clients through mental-health challenges. It didn’t prepare her, though, for the headaches of launching and operating a small business.
“When it comes to business, I’m clueless,” Peralta says. “It’s not what I went to school for.
“Owning my own business wasn’t in the cards ever. When I started looking into it, there were phone lines and fax lines, software and liability insurance. You have to put all this money down before you can start making money. I don’t know how people do it.”
For many prospective business owners throughout Nebraska — including Peralta — help has come time and again from UNO’s Nebraska Business Development Center.
Peralta began working with NBDC’s Scottsbluff office director Margaret Akin soon after it was announced the Panhandle Mental Health Center would close. This summer, less than half a year later, she opened Karuna Counseling.
Standing up for Sidney
At the same time Peralta was pondering how to get her private practice up and running, the city of Sidney was contemplating its own economic future. Since the 1960s, the city had been home to the corporate headquarters of Cabela’s, a multibillion dollar specialty retailer that employed 2,000 people in the community of 7,000. But earlier this year, Cabela’s was purchased by longtime rival Bass Pro Shops, which moved the bulk of the community’s top-paying jobs to its headquarters in Springfield, Missouri.
To help the struggling community revitalize its devastated economy, a group of organizations that included NBDC, a department of UNO’s College of Business Administration, joined forces to create new employment opportunities.
Akin and NBDC have worked closely with the Sidney campus of Western Nebraska Community College (WNCC) to provide an array of services for entrepreneurs looking to start new businesses there. Akin, who has a background as a CPA, is providing free business counseling on topics including how to develop a business plan, legal issues, hiring, taxes and bookkeeping. WNCC is providing free use of campus space and resources for up to two years to serve as an incubator for new businesses trying to gain a foothold. It’s where Peralta opened Karuna Counseling.
Once the startups are off and running, the city of Sidney will provide owners six months of free rent in a downtown location. In addition, businesses in Sidney are qualified to receive additional funding under legislative bill 840, which allows cities to put together a plan to siphon off a portion of their sales tax money and put it toward economic development. The effort to revitalize Sidney and its surrounding communities started simply but has spread like a prairie fire across the high plains region.
“We started out with just a meeting,” Akin says. “People started taking advantage of the resources and it’s still happening. The word kind of spread and we started going into some of the outlying communities that have been impacted by what’s happening at Cabela’s. We’ve had a meeting in Kimball, we’ve had two in Chappell. We’ve kind of spread out that way, and more people are requesting them. It’s become a successful way to reach out to people.”
Resource meetings like those held in Sidney are often hosted by a Chamber of Commerce, community colleges and Centers for Economic Development. Such meetings can bring financial and consulting resources to as many as 35 businesses at a time. Each meeting closes with networking when business owners can reach out to colleagues and support organizations to build strategic partnerships.
With hundreds of miles of rural highways separating her from the rural communities she serves, Akin has grown accustomed to spending many hours a week on the road. Growing demands in Sidney and the southern panhandle have increased the amount of time she spends there. As a result, she hopes to establish a satellite office on the WNCC campus located on the town’s east side.
Having easy access to NBDC’s resources and Akin’s expertise provided Peralta a much-appreciated measure of relief.
“I know I have the support I need. I can just walk down the hall and say, ‘Help. I’m stuck,’” Peralta says. “Even when I’m done at the college, I know I can still go back and get help. That’s a huge relief. Opening a private practice is scary. But they’ve made it less daunting. Anytime I come to a roadblock, they say, ‘It’s okay, let’s reach out to this person for help.’”
A history of help
NBDC has been providing such help for more than four decades. It began in 1977 when UNO was awarded one of seven federal contracts to operate a University Business Development Center (UBDC). In 1980, President Carter signed the Small Business Development Center Act, transforming the UBDC project into today’s SBDC program that is active in all 50 states. In 1981, UNO helped lead the effort to create the Association of Small Business Development Centers, the professional development and advocacy organization for the small business development center movement.
In 2011, the university received its accreditation by ASBDC and SBA as a Small Business and Technology Center — just the eighth program to earn this national distinction. Today, Nebraska’s NBDC programs include the Small Business Development Centers, the Procurement Technical Assistance program, the Pollution Prevention Resource Information Center, Technology Commercialization and Professional and Organizational Development. Funding is provided by the U.S. Small Business Administration, the Defense Logistics Agency (U.S. Department of Defense), the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the State of Nebraska and First National Bank of Omaha. Through the University of Nebraska, the organization leverages one dollar of state support to receive two dollars of federal funds.
“This braided funding forms the basis by which we provide different kinds of services depending on the need of a business here in Nebraska,” says NBDC State Director Catherine Lang.
NBDC employs 27 consultants and maintains offices in Omaha, Lincoln, Wayne, Norfolk, Grand Island, Kearney, North Platte, McCook, Scottsbluff and Chadron. It also partners with University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the University of Nebraska at Kearney, Wayne State College and Chadron State College, which leverage their funding to support NBDC efforts. According to information released in its 2017 annual report, Nebraska’s NBDC clients created or saved 1,858 jobs, invested $46.4 million in their operations and increased their sales, including government contracts, by $221.7 million. All that created an economic impact to Nebraska of $496.5 million.
Successes
Among NBDC successes outside Omaha is White River Feed in Chadron. In 2012, Cody Brooks and then-business partner Craig Hoffman turned to NBDC’s Chadron office for help writing a business plan in order to purchase White River Feed & Trailer Sales. The business duo also signed a waiver allowing NBDC to work directly Security First Bank in Chadron, expediting the loan process.
“We wound up with a good, solid business plan,” Brooks says. “It got us the loan. We kept referring back to it. It gave us a three-year plan that served as a way to gauge our progress and where we needed to be.”
The duo discontinued trailer sales and changed the business name to White River Feed. Brooks and his wife (left) later bought Hoffman’s share of the business — and turned again to NBDC for help securing three government contracting awards in 2015. White River Feed, which has five employees, has increased sales every year since 2012.
“For a young person, or for anyone just starting out in business, they’re a good resource to have, and they’re right here in our hometown,” he says. “I’d darn sure recommend them to anybody who needs business advice and assistance.”
Those sentiments are echoed by Martin and Patricia Bremmer of Venango, a village of 164 people in Perkins County on the Nebraska-Colorado border. The couple turned to NBDC for help getting their GrainGoat invention and production company off the ground. The hand-held GrainGoat measures moisture content in grain. That can be a big deal considering a 2,000-acre wheat crop can lose $2,600 in value per day if the grain is not harvested at optimal moisture.
Full-sized harvest equipment moves slowly and often has to cover fields many miles apart. Six hours of harvesting for testing costs approximately $800 in equipment value and fuel. GrainGoat saves money and time.
The Bremmers connected with Odee Ingersoll at NBDC’s Kearney office. They founded their company, Windcall Manufacturing, and since have received two rounds of private investment funding and one round of state funding.
Bremmer says Ingersool “was instrumental in providing us guidelines, pointers and milestones we needed to meet.”
“Since then, Odee has always been there for us. The expanse of his background is pretty phenomenal. We have never thrown a salvo of questions at him that he couldn’t answer.”
Also in Chadron is Russ Finch, who created a greenhouse design in which the indoor climate is warmed in the winter and cooled in the summer by using the Earth’s natural temperature eight feet underground. The only energy used to maintain the temperature is a 10-inch wheel blower that circulates air, using a geothermal concept that conserves energy and reduces production costs.
With NBDC’s help his company, Greenhouse in the Snow, sells detailed instructions for building the greenhouses, along with frames and Lexan Polycarbonate glazing in six-foot modules. To date, he has sold his greenhouses in six states, 90 percent of which are being used for commercial plant production.
Other examples of NBDC successes:
• Annette and Bruce Wiles, co-owners of Midwest Hop Producers in Plattsmouth, partnered with NBDC to receive accurate market analysis as they looked to expand sales of their uniquely Nebraska-grown hops to new markets, including China.
• Leanne Ruskamp, the owner of Dawg’s Hut, a Beatrice retailer that sells custom screen-printed and embroidered team apparel, used NBDC certified business valuation services and met with NBDC consultants to learn about operational and inventory management tools.
• Carla and Tim Schuster, owners of Schuster’s Outdoor & RV in Beatrice, worked with NBDC consultants to provide strategic planning and financial analysis as they expanded their business to include camper and RV repair.
• NBDC consultants provided Dennis Rosene, owner of Rosene Machine, a full-service machine shop in Firth, manufacturing analysis and financial consulting for growth during an intensive business development program.
From assisting a smalltown startup in the panhandle to developing a business plan for an expansion in the Omaha or Lincoln metro areas, the key to serving the diverse communities spread across Nebraska is to have consultants in place who understand the unique business climate each presents, Lang says.
“Certainly, each business presents unique opportunities and challenges, and areas present unique opportunities and challenges for a business to start and grow in,” Lang says. “That’s the benefit of having people who are regionally placed. They understand those nuances and can help the business navigate in the area they’re going to start to grow.”
Looking ahead
As NBDC looks to immediate and long-term future of small business across the state, the organization’s primary goal is to strengthen its status as a trusted partner with all the entities that form Nebraska’s complex business ecosystem. Nebraska commercial lenders and banks is just one group NBDC has targeted in this effort, Lang says.
“A lot of people go to their banks first and say. ‘I’ve got the greatest idea for a business and it’s written on a napkin.’ What happens consistently is the banks will say, ‘We cannot wait to work with you and serve you, but we want you to go to the NBDC. They can help you get that into a form that we can then consider for financing,’” Lang says.
Lang also cited NBDC’s involvement with Blueprint Nebraska as the type of partnership she hopes the organization will contribute to in the years to come. Launched in May, Blueprint Nebraska is a statewide coalition that comprises a group of Nebraska leaders representing business, agriculture, government and higher education. Its aim is to develop a plan for economic growth, competitiveness and prosperity as Nebraska looks to its next 150 years and beyond. The Blueprint Nebraska Steering Committee will oversee an analysis of 15 areas key to Nebraska’s long-term economic success and quality of life, including: agriculture; healthcare; education attainment; workforce, taxation and incentives; housing; community vitality; and technology and innovation. The coalition will then develop an action plan based on extensive research and results of a statewide road tour this fall that will engage Nebraskans in charting a plan for growth.
“The university is very engaged in Blueprint Nebraska. (University) President (Hank) Bounds is intimately involved with Blueprint Nebraska. NBDC has been asked to help provide program management and support to Blueprint Nebraska. While we have our main programs across the state, we’re also proud to be called upon by the university to engage in other business and economic development opportunities to support the university and the state of Nebraska,” Lang says.
“We’re excited about these additional opportunities that we can participate in, and we’re honored to be considered as a partner in those conversations about making Nebraska a successful place to start and grow a business.”