Business owners use experience to help others in SBANE’s Dialog program

The small-business owner had a problem.
He invested in the acquisition of a satellite operation that had nothing to do with his primary business and he was not sure what to do about the future of the ancillary company. Like many small-business owners, he did not know where to turn for advice. The people most likely to understand his dilemma would be other business owners, but the only ones he knew were his competitors – and he certainly couldn’t go to them for help.
So he joined the Dialog program offered by the Smaller Business Association of New England, a peer-to-peer advisory group of about 10 business owners or CEOs who meet on a monthly basis to critique the operation and management of each other’s companies in discussions that organizers say can be remarkably frank and candid.
Yvette L. Ullom, a former officer of the Rhode Island chapter of SBANE who informally manages the Dialog program, told this story to Providence Business News to illustrate how useful the Dialog program can be. For the businessman in question, his peers in Dialog told him the satellite company was draining him and he should sell it, Ullom related. It was the best decision he ever made, he said years later, according to Ullom.
Even though everyone thinks his or her business is exceptionally unique, Ullom suggested that business management at its core “is the same everywhere.”
Dialog gives business owners the opportunity “to reach out to a group of other business owners with tons of experience,” she said, “so you can get some real, fresh insights. People can point out things to you that you never thought of. It can be blunt, very blunt, but that is what it’s all about.” Ullom owns and operates her own accounting business, Bean Counters Inc. in Sterling, Conn.
Here is how Dialog works:
Let’s say 10 business owners sign up to take part for the next annual session that starts in September. They must be SBANE members and each is asked to pay a registration fee of $549. They meet once a month for 10 months, convening in a round-robin way at each other’s business so each has the chance to host a Dialog session.
“If it’s your turn to host, they [other Dialog participants] become your organization’s board of directors” for that day, according to Grafton “Cap” Willey IV, a longtime leader of the Rhode Island SBANE group and managing director of the Newport office of CBIZ Tofias and Mayer Hoffman McCann P.C. “You find out over the years that lots of businesses think they are unique, but they all have similar problems,” he said.
Willey said the meetings usually are held in the early evenings and last about three hours.
Topics that come up for discussion can be quite weighty. As examples, Ullom and Willey both mentioned such topics as closing a business, relocating, renovating, seeking the right kind of financing, coping with a partnership that is falling apart and terminating employees.
Ullom said that individual Dialog groups are organized carefully so that competitors are not enrolled in the same group. Last year’s Dialog group included owners of a phone-installation company, a gutter-and-window replacement business, a sales-training organization, a manufacturer and a document-destruction firm, Ullom said.
Ullom said she does not know yet if the September session will include more participants than usual because she has not seen the sign-up information yet. She noted, however, that the financial obstacles presented by the registration fee and SBANE membership could mean that some business owners may delay participation until the economy improves.
Increased participation has not been the case at the local chapter of the Service Corps of Retired Executives (SCORE), a group of retired business owners and managers who offer advice for free to small-business owners and work out of the Providence office of the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA).
Raymond S. McNeill, a former chairman who remains active in SCORE, said participation by small-business owners is down 10 to 15 percent for the year that ends Oct. 1. “Two or three years ago, we were seeing close to 1,000 clients a year,” he said, “but this year we’re going to be closer to 700 or 800.” McNeill said he and his colleagues can offer no reason for the drop.
As for SBANE’s Dialog, McNeill said he took part in the program about 10 years ago when he owned the former Columbia Labeling Machinery Co. and found it “very helpful.” As Ullom and Willey did, he issued a warning about the group’s frankness. “We were not kind,” he said of his Dialog group. “If we felt somebody could do a better job, we let them know it.” •