Helping Business Owners

By Theresa Witham

My father is a doctor who has owned his own practice for almost 30 years. He’s a very successful doctor but has faced challenges related to the business side vs. the healing side of his work. He’s been lucky to have my mother, who studied accounting in college, helping to run the business. My dad is a good example of a business owner who is passionate about his work but not necessarily about business.

I think this is true for many small business owners. They have a deep passion for their product or service but don’t know much about building a business. As an avid knitter, I spend a lot of time in small, local yarn shops. It’s all too apparent that many of the store owners have a passion for knitting, yarn and creating beautiful objects with their hands but don’t know how to run a successful store. Inconvenient, 9-5 hours and truly awful customer service are very common.

Once again, I think credit unions could provide a service that many of their small business members truly need. Recently, I wrote about a seminar for Baltimore’s creative workforce and asked how CUs provide education to their business members.  Rita R. Johnson, PHR, training and development coordinator at Fort Knox Federal Credit Union, Radcliff, Ky., responded, sharing that her CU offered a small business human resources seminar. What a great idea! The HR side of business is often the trickiest, especially for those who have no experience supervising and leading employees.

Johnson shared the outline from the seminar, which had five attendees, including a crafting business, cleaning business and a contractor:

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