Renton Small Business Development Center providing helping hand for new businesses

Now may be a difficult time to start a business, but according to Steve Burke, adviser for the Renton Small Business Development Center, there are some really good opportunities for the right entrepreneur.

He said entrepreneurs have to have value-based businesses, able to embrace technology and innovation and have the desire to study the business skills more than the technical skills of the kind of business they are passionate about.

The center at Renton Technical College is instrumental in advising start-up businesses in Renton and helping existing businesses with such things as business plans and training. It’s one of a number of such centers operated around the state by Washington State University.

Burke is the new adviser at the SBDC.

He has more than 20 years of experience. He’s managed the southern California region for Thousand Trails, the resort asset-management group. Burke’s also started his own property management company in Red Lodge, Mont. After he moved to Washington, he became the commercial property manager of the Pike Place Market. Then he moved up into managing the real estate for the Diamonds of Diamond Parking, after which he started his own business consulting firm.

Burke started at the Renton SBDC in April 2010.

So far it’s been good, he said.

In the last 10 months, he has seen more than 100 people and on average advises six to 12 people a week.

“I meet a lot of different people and hear their stories and try to give them some help,” he said.

One of the most common questions: “Is there any grant money?”

It’s a common misconception that there is grant money for small businesses, but there isn’t, he said.

“So I go through a process of trying to coach them, advise them on what it takes to be a successful small business owner,” Burke said. “Whether they have been in business and are struggling or whether or not they are somebody wanting to start a business. The very first thing that I feel they should understand is that 80 percent of all small businesses fail in the first five years.”

He said of those that make it, 80 percent of them fail in the next five years.

“So you’re really only looking at five percent that make it through 10 years,” Burke said.

The focus of the center is to work with start-ups and hardship cases, which make up about 80 percent of the clients Burke advises.

Through Dec. 31, the center was funded by the City of Renton, Renton Technical College, the Chamber of Commerce and matched in funds by the federal Small Business Association. As of Jan. 1, half of the center’s financing comes from Washington State University and the other half from the Small Business Association.

Burke believes that as long as Congress maintains funding for SBDCs then the Renton center will remain.

The primary focus of the center is to provide one-on-one advising; however they have had seminars in the past. Last year, there were two on how to utilize facebook as a successful marketing platform.

There were 423 new businesses that opened in 2010 and 395 that closed in Renton. In King County overall for 2010, there were 28,717 businesses that opened and 8,786 that closed.