AIKEN – When Hetal Acharekar, owner of PerformanceAbove in Aiken, and Eva Watkins, owner of Impressions of the South in North Augusta, needed mentors to help them start their businesses, SCORE, a non-profit business mentoring organization, was there to help.
“When I would work for somebody else, there was a backup…They would tell if you were going wrong or if you were going right,” said Acharekar, a physical therapist who uses that background to help her clients improve their golf game. Her focus is on “3D biomechanics of your body.”
“If you are an entrepreneur or small business owner, you are in an open arena. You do not know what direction to go. If you are going in the right direction, you do not even know if it is the right direction. You need those backups,” she said.
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Backups for entrepreneurs are SCORE mentors.
Acharekar received her tax ID for PerformanceAbove in 2020 and, with the assistance of SCORE along the way, and in July 2021, she started her brick and mortar location at 928 Houndslake Drive in Aiken, an area known for its proximity to golf courses.
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According to the national brochure, SCORE helps businesses build, grow, and thrive and provides free and confidential business mentoring, local workshops on business and online expert resources to those who wish to start a business.
Watkins also received help from the SCORE office through the North Augusta Chamber of Commerce.
“They help businesses get started… They made us do our homework and provided mentors and advice, and they strongly encouraged us to do a business plan,” Watkins said.
She sought them out when she ran into some challenges as she started to open her location.
“I went to get a small business loan to establish credit. No one would give me a loan at first because I was retired,” she said.
Locally, SCORE works with local chambers of commerce and has helped small business owners start and grow their businesses in the Aiken, North Augusta and Augusta area.
There is a process for those who wish to initiate getting a mentor through SCORE.
“SCORE is affiliated with the Small Business Administration. We are a non-profit affiliated group. The organization that has the most small business data in the United States is the I.R.S. (Most of the) data the government has on small businesses is the EIN numbers,” said John Gregg, CSRA Aiken chairman and mentor with SCORE.
He brings 23 years of business experience to the table. He owned a True Value Hardware store in Massachusetts.
Gregg next said those who wish to start a small business apply for a tax I.D. or EIN number online, and when they do that, part of the application process tells them to go to SBA.gov.
During the past two years, 10 million people have applied for EIN numbers online. Some of them have then gone to SBA.gov and have applied for a mentor through SCORE. These applications are funneled to the correct geographical locations.
Besides Gregg, other local SCORE counselors include Cynthia Rhodes, who runs the business development and management firm Rhodes-Porter in Augusta, and Dave Keck, owner of Bubba’s Fudge and Nuts in Augusta.
Rhodes said the average age of those who pursue having a small business is around 30, that the median age is 45, that they are mostly women and that the regional SCORE chapter averages around 600 requests a year for mentors.
“Once we decide where clients are in their business, they are assigned to mentors,” she said.
Keck said that people do not often know what it takes to start a business when they have the ambition to start one and that SCORE informs them about what it takes.
“It’s also a matter of talking to the client and deciding what they need for their business and then deciding who can help them further,” Rhodes said.
Gregg said the majority of entrepreneurs all need the same things, including business skills.
“The person that wants to start a landscaping business is not much different than the person who wants to start a high-tech widget company,” he said.
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It’s their level of business acumen that is often different.
“If they went to Harvard Business School, they know how to write a business plan,” he said. “However, the typical client we have is someone who has decided they want to strike out on their own. They have high risk tolerance and have no plan or employees.”
The local chapter does numerous workshops on various aspects of business throughout the year in addition to the one-on-one mentoring.
“The workshops are the strongest thing we do,” Gregg said.
Workshops topics and training seminars from the best practices on how to start a business to specific primers on social media marketing. Other topics have included financial management and securing government contracts. To learn more, visit www.GreaterAiken.score.org.
Those who are gauged as not being immediately ready to start a business may be referred to some of these workshops and seminars, but they are open to all who need them and register.
Acharekar said Rhodes helped her find her mentor Kirk McGowan.
“Kirk was there to guide me through the first steps,” Acharekar said.
Acharekar had all the knowledge and experience in her subject area, but she needed help with the business aspects.
“I needed help with the technical areas of a business. I needed to determine what would be a legal issue or not,” she said.
That’s where her SCORE mentor stepped in to help and also helped with her business plan.
“Before I met with a mentor, I tried to fill out the SCORE business plan (template). I was not successful,” Acharekar said.
Acharekar said she did not finish her business plan, but she said it is now an on-going work in progress with help from her SCORE mentor Kirk McGowan.
She said she started her business with her own capital so did not need a completed business plan before starting it. Gregg said to any who might pursue a small business loan from a bank, ”If you need a loan, you are going to have to have a completed, traditional business plan.”
Acharekar said McGowan helped her network and guided her in many ways.
“Kirk introduced me to a lot of people at the Chamber,” she said.
Also, Acharekar said McGowan helped her forge a connection with First Tee of Aiken, a non-profit which helps young golfers, and she checked to see if they could collaborate together.
She said she wanted to reach a much younger demographic because most of her target demographic is aged 60 or above.
“When you help your client make a small change, you can see that effect sooner with a younger client,” she said.
SCORE mentor McGowan also invited Acharekar as a guest at the Aiken Rotary Club, and Acharekar said she was able to network there.
McGowan has provided on-going guidance for her besides networking. Acharekar said, “When I have two choices to decide between, Kirk gives me the pros and cons of each choice and then has me make the decision.”
PerformanceAbove is by appointment only and may be reached at (803) 716-8750 or at hetal@performanceabove.com. For more information, visit https://www.performanceabove.com.
Eva Watkins’ business, Impressions of the South, is open seasonally from September through December but will reopen for third Thursday, a monthly downtown event in North Augusta, Feb. 17, 2022 from 5 p.m. – 8 p.m. and every month for third Thursday only thereafter until September 2022 when it will return to its seasonal schedule.
For more information on SCORE, go to https://GreaterAiken.SCORE.org.
Ron Baxley Jr. is a correspondent for The Augusta Press.
