Q & A with Wayne Flippen, director of the Roanoke Regional Small Business Development Center.

| Wayne Flippen

BY ANNIE JOHNSON | BRBJ

(540) 981-3229 l annie.johnson@bizjournal.com

Wayne Flippen became director of the Roanoke Regional Small Business Development Center in December.

Flippen, a Virginia Tech graduate with a degree in industrial engineering and operations research, most recently was general manager at John C. Nordt Co. In his new role, he counsels new and established small businesses and offers training to small business owners.

He talked recently about the challenges of helping small businesses when financing is tight.

What do you see as the role of a small business development center in a down economy? Do people want to start their own business?

The business activity has actually significantly increased for us because we work on several different levels.

One, we do have a strong group of business startups. ... And in a down economy, there are people who have lost their jobs or their salaries have been reduced. So one of the things that they do is say, 'I want to explore this hobby or business idea that I have.' ... Unfortunately a lot of their thoughts are not carried through to where they're really ready to start a business, so we help them explore those possibilities, explore whether they have a true business potential. And if they do we will help them prepare a business plan. ...

We also have existing businesses, and right now there are, unfortunately, a lot of businesses that are in distress, so we help them a number of different ways.

Right now we can help them look at getting a loan, although the credit market is extremely tight. But we can help them if they need to sell the business, if they need to liquidate assets. ...

If they started four or five years ago, they didn't really have to concentrate on cash management.

They didn't have to concentrate on keeping their credit low. They were able to get easy access to things, so now that they've hit the rough times, their cash flow is dried up, their credit cards have been reduced, their rates have gone up. So now we help them either, unfortunately, liquidate their business, or determine how they can run it at a different level.

What kinds of training have you recently offered?

We help individual clients with cash management. It's not so easy to do general classes on that, so most of the cash management and trying to help people look at their financial statements and how to do that, most of that unusually comes one-on-one. But what we can do with the general classes is marketing. Social media. Web sites. Increasing your sales through the Internet. Because a lot of small businesses don't have those skills.

How has your business background prepared you for this role?

I am an engineer by trade, and I have over 35 years of every kind of functional management that you can imagine that has to do with operations of any kind of unit. And that's from engineering to quality to inventory, materials management to marketing to purchasing to direct staff and line management. ... I have worked for a large company, but I have also worked for major small companies, so I've been able to be involved with all steps of it from the start to planning to the details of how to operate a process. ... So a passion for making small business work, to make free enterprise work and a general broad-based operation knowledge, that's what we try to bring to the table.

What do you see for 2010?

I think 2010 is going to continue to be a very challenging year for the small business owner.

There are a couple of things that I think will hopefully be positives from this. The small business owner needs to be educated. In the past ... they didn't have to have a good business plan, they didn't have to have a cash management system. So I think one of the things that these correction modes that we're in now do is they allow us to go out and educate people better. ...

There are a bunch of people in this area who are excited about the entrepreneurial spirit in this area. ... We'd like to get people excited about bubbling that up. Now in order to make that happen, we need to be able to have some support services both in the credit market and also in mentors. ... So we're going to be much more proactive at growing the entrepreneurial spirit and helping those who have survived to get through 2010 and be prepared so when business pops back up, they'll be ready for it.

How do you get people excited?

You have to convince them that there's a place that they can go for help. They are not in this alone. We provide resources for them, professional resources, and we have access to other resources. ... We're a good clearinghouse for information. So, you're not in this alone, there are people who want to make this work.

The second thing is working with leaders of the banks and the credit institutions to try to get them to open up some of these things that are so restrictive -- lines of credit. ...

We tend to talk about the credit market and talk about the business being down, and so we as leaders have to be positive about the things that are happening -- and there are some good things happening.

And we have to get out in the public and make sure people hear both sides of it, not just the down side.