and myself who started the company initially, and then along the way we did some leasing. we leased a unit, we sold a unit and kind of that boot strapping we would call it. fasten to bring cash in for today. trying to spin the opportunity to the next sale. you've all been there. you've felt it and understood it. but those are areas and ways and means we can do things. i was interviewed on msnbc maybe six months ago and they talked about -- they thought i had a unique story because in part, we had a period of time when people were not paid for some of their time with a the company. this is when we were a little smaller. and they said how do you get away with that? how do you get people to literally work for free? and so the way they do the interview is they interviewed me and then they had a panel discussion afterwards, but i had no chance to respond. one of the comments was that two

of the panelists were very impressed and flattered by the fact that i was able to keep the company alive and thriving by getting creative solutions. the third panelist said that's taking advantage of those people. what i didn't get to share was that we didn't ignore the value of what those participants put into the company. we offered them additional bonuses when we had the funds and we covered more than whatever their shortfall was. we offered stock in addition. so we did things that made a difference to them. thoughts, darlene, on that? starting off and how to kind of launch forward maybe with and without all the capital? >> i obviously didn't have the capital when i first started -- or went into the business. i wanted to buy 45% of it. and i went to a bank.

a bank president i met once and said, i desperately need money. how can i get an sba loan? and really, add administrator mills mentioned, having a mentor and a friend. he became that and actually helped me get that first sba loan. walked me through the entire process, help immediate with my business plan, and if if weren't for that loan and him, i wouldn't be here today, and then in 2008, when we decided to double our space again, and we started from the very small 8,000 square foot, we're now about 34,000 square feet, the sba came forth and i was able to get another business loan. so reaching out, finding that mentor and that friend and then utilizing the services that are out there and asking a lot of questions is really key. >> okay. anything else to sharp with that? >> one point is that all of you in this room have been successful.

you know. you're the winners, but we want to make sure all throughout this country that entrepreneurs have access and opportunity. that's why this combination of loan guarantees, micro-loans and mentorship counseling and assistance is so critical. because, as you know, in the early days you don't know what you don't know. sometimes we have found -- i don't know if al is here with our small business development centers, but when you walk in, we have small business development centers that in the depths of the credit crunch we're able to take 70% of the people who were unable to get a loan, sit down with them and we think their business plans and cash needs and to do their presentations and get them bankable. that was in north carolina. once again, use all the cs.

>> thank you. kathy, i'm wondering from your perspective, and two, folks that would have interest in maybe wanting to reach out and get some information on your program. how do we do that? >> well, first is we should stop by our area outside here. we have a number of brochures that really are about applications that can help you run your business more effectively. we can do everything like a cell phone, which, of course, all of you have access to and use. we have found very successful in small businesses is technical support. many times you don't anticipate the growth of your business and don't do everything you need to do with technology. we provide technical support resources. another area of importance is hosting applications. we talked about the roefrs. that was the only site for the business and they have no backup and the data was not maintained. so we talk about hosting applications and making sure you have a redundancy plan so the application is in the cloud as opposed to just in the hardware

in your pc ware. those are areas we talk a lot, the small business customer, of course, with all of our technical discussions. people should have an account representative. you may not know who yours is. we're happy to make that person available to you. give me your cards. there's several colleagues here today. we make sure we have account teams follow up with you depending where you're located. you can call us 24/7. e can e-mail us. we have online communication. you can check out website and portal app and brochures available to you. we try to position ourselves as the trusted adviser to help you run your business, and we've learned a lot over the years. finance service customers are different than professional services, and we try to make sure our sales teams are focused ledge of expertese to provide the best level of support to help you make sure your business is growing. >> thank you. please, if there are questions from the audience, we're looking to receive those. we have a list of things we can certainly share, happy it to

share, but it's really your questions and comments that are important. yes. >> [ inaudible ]. >> could you -- pick it up so -- live feed going to other folks. if you wouldn't mind stepping to the mike and -- >> thank you, sir. can you state your name. >> sure. i'm bob mchugh, consulting engineer. i bought a consulting engineering firm 15 years ago, and i've been running it since. but now i find that i've got less employees than five years ago and three years ago. i recently had to dumb down the health insurance plan, because the plan i liked and the plan we've had for years just got too expensive. none of the tax credits apply to us, because all our employees make more than $25,000 a year.

my bank told me that they were under pressure from federal banking regulators writing down loans, and my loan was suspect, even though it's been there for 15 years. just a credit line. the 401(k) plan is getting more expensive every day, and now we have personal liability as business owners. and the question is, is that worth keeping? my great fear is not that the government will come to some other program and help us, but one day soon my wife of 37 years is going to roll over in the morning and whisper in my ear, you know, honey, i'm not going to sign for that bank loan anymore because we need to keep something for our retirement. you're getting older. maybe we can't wait out this recession. that's the reality that i see as a small business owner and entrepreneur.

maybe the panel could give me some advice on that front. >> this is a story that i've heard from small business owners all across the country, especially in the beginning of this recession when we really had a lot of bank lines and credit lines that were just pulled. and as you just described, we have done -- let me take a couple of pieces of the concerns you mentioned. because they've really been universal voices, and we've been able to bring some of these forward as concerns of small businesses. so, first of all, in this access to credit, are the regulators paying attention to making sure that guidance that's done at the top of the regulators is transferred all the way down to the regional regulators so that small businesses, banks serving

small businesses don't get -- the pendulum doesn't go too far the other way? i will tell you that we are having constant conversations with our colleagues in the regulatory bodies here to make sure that they are focused on the needs of small business. that they do not get caught in undue regulation or make sure that their banking regulation that comes down is properly -- the guidance is communicated, and fdic was very, very helpful in this, making sure that local and regional regulators understood what the guidance was to make sure small business loans didn't get classified that shouldn't. that's an ongoing process, and i pledge to you, and to lots of small businesses that we're going to continue to have those

conversations making sure that small banks, community banks and everybody is in the room with the regulators. that's something that across the administration we were very focused on. access to capital is critical. just quickly on health care for a second. i want to make sure that everybody knows some of the benefits that are available. you mentioned a tax credit you didn't qualify for, but everybody else should take a look and see if they qualify for the health care tax credit. the other piece is that with the health care legislation in 2014 in there are actually going to be marketplaces where insurance companies are bidding on the business of small businesses creating more opportunity for you to find a plan and a desire that works for you, but running a small business as you just described is an ongoing challenge and we want to be there whether it's for retirement planning. i think having a counselor look

at your business, work with you maybe in the score worlds, ken, if you're here, somebody who has faced a retirement situation in a business, to help you navigate those things, because i know you have a terrific business, and we need to make it successful. >> hi. i'm neal kimball with the kimball companies and we're an entrepreneurial success reward recipient in the southeast. yesterday i was at boston university. my daughter graduated, and my wife and i tandem drove after all the festivities at 9:00 to be here this morning, and we're excited about being here. it's great that she graduated and we have two out of the nest now. but eric smith, google executive chairman, i think he hit all -- not only the students on the nose, but he hit all the business people and the other practitioners in the audience.

there were 20,000 people. he talked about technology as a tool, and technology as a tool, you have to be brilliant and innovative and he said these young people are going to teach us more than we know, as people that are not as digitally native. i wanted to throw this out assist a question and potentially a challenge and an opportunity for the sba. is there a way that we could get people that are doing amazing things -- i know we have a social media that will tweet up tomorrow, but i think it's going to be even more important that we get people that are really passionate about getting onboard with technology as it relates not only to generation, but marketing, p.r., all the different things that are going to really transform not only our businesses but society. is there a way that the sba can convene a group where we can collaborate and talk and share best practices? i mean, i'm a serial entrepreneur in three advisory

ceo groups. i think if we had something online with great, young thinkers and maybe some of us old people, to come up with great ideas, could be very valuable. i'm throwing this out to the sba to do something creative like that. >> absolutely. it's a great idea. up know, all of this, we're going to be talking about it today. we've got our sba community on sba.gov, which would be a perfect forum. there is activities actually already in this area, but what i want to put sap isay is -- all social media is very, very good news for small business. right? levels the playing field, allows us access and opportunity to very big markets in very targeted ways, how they're cost-effective. you just need to find the way that's right for you, and it's all exploding so fast that it's hard to keep up.

so we're going to take your recommendations on this forum, and we'll get people together in our community and i see marie nodding on this, and we're going to put it together with some of the things late other than that are already occurring and really try to focus on this, because it's so good for small business. >> i think years ago when i think back, this was health care specific when they were talking about technology and how they change the way health care is delivered using, for example, the smartphone and great activity between you and your provider. it was a fascinating lecture, and i was there as far as the mobile health side, because the question was asked by the ceo of a large health care entity and said, what happens in ten years from now if 50% of all the work that we perform inside of a hospital is done outside of the hospital? things like, different ways of

you communicating having your heart monitor with you at all times through the smartphone, through home dialysis and things starting to happen through even the needs like things like mobile technology, mobile health, mobile surgery that suddenly the dynamics have shifted, and how do you respond to that? that's the entrepreneurial activity to look at the market segment. clearly, technology becomes a major driver in all of those scenarios. >> thank you. >> i'm christie arselon. with the national association for the self-employed and my husband and i just recently launch add business this month. gourmet popcorn company here, and i have to say, we received invaluable support from the washington, d.c. small business development center in helping us put our business plan together and launch our business. the counselor there worked with us for over a year in the process. so it's a wonderful program that we support. i'd love to hear a little bit more. one of the big issues we've been having is so much has been talked about access to capital, and we've seen the administration do a lot of

things to help business owners, particularly find access to capital. but one of the things not talked about is credit, and even those there's a lot of opportunity out there or you hear about a lot of money being flowed through to banks or credit unions or even sba programs, one of the things not discussed is how your credit comes into play. so a lot of our members are finding they hear about all this money out there, but that can't access it because of all the credit requirements. so i'd love to maybe learn a little bit more about how someone's credit score or credit comes into play with an sba loan and maybe hear from the business owners about how they kind of manage the process in terms of their personal credit history and accessing a loan. >> i think this is a question that we get quite a bit. rather than take our time here, because i know you want to get to the other two on a long credit strikes explanation. i'm going to success that or cap access team get together with you, and you can tweet it out

for the organization as well. there's a lot of discussion about creating a more robust look at credit than just a credit score, and we're actively participating in that. >> my name is jonathan from interactive achievement out of roanoke, virginia. first, let me first say, the sba has what was a blessing and helped us from that ten-employee to 20-employee, and just got that rolling, and my question kind of doesn't quite piggyback off of her question, but it kind of does. because of what happened, and god bless us all for making it up through the worst recession ever. let's start there. that alone. but what's happened -- i don't know if everybody else is facing this.

it's not just a credit score. it's you have to have assets, and i mean fully paid off assets bringing them to the bank before they're even going to talk to you. whether the sba is involved with that or not. what the sba has done is extend those loans beyond those assets to give you even more capital, which was wonderful. it was wonderful for us. i know in our region which we're involved, and we have a wonderful region down's in virginia. there are so many businesses that are proving growth. they're proving it time after time, hiring employees, revenues are growing, and those don't mean anything anymore to a bank unless it's an asset. unless you have a asset to bring and put onto the table. my question is, is the sba looking toward or looking in the future of becoming that asset for those young businesses that have proved growth over three years, four years, five years, and they're going to be the asset on top of what that small

business has already created. >> i think the answer is yes, it's a very good point. in the case of intellectual property, we have a lot of discussions with the patent office about how we can get small companies in their earlier stages started when all they have is intellectual property. that intellectual property is very valuable. our role is to become the backstop when it is that the bank sees you as a young, growing, successful business, but just can't quite get there on the record that you have. we step in. we provide that kind of wind at your back so that you can get that first set of loans and then hopefully as in my story of

taylor gourmet, you grow to be marketable credit and we go on to the next small business entrepreneur. >> and i think part of that answer is there are other institutions and people that take greater risks in some of the sbic impact funds combined with some of the private funds. sbic-backed funds combined with some of the private funds, there are ways to be creative, but we could spend a day just on the banking side for sure and on the credit side. one more question, and i think that's all we've got time for. >> hi. my name is donovan, and our company is avasor incorporated. i wanted to just make a comment about the emphasis, the issues that i think are affecting us as a small business and i think many others. i know that you're doing a tremendous amount with access to capital, and i just want to share one more perspective about the health care issue. i view my ability to provide health care to my employees as basically the most important

issue after access to capital. once you get past that access to capitalish oar or at least think you're past it and you're operating a profitable business, you feel that your growth is really tied to your ability to provide a really nice safety net for your staff. and one of the things that we're finding over the last -- well, since we've been in business is the percentage increases that we're seeing annually, you know, from the options that we have to provide medical insurance to to our employees. they're large, the percentage increases are large. it's not unusual to have the 15% increase, sadly. one of the things that a lot of small businesses find themselves having to do is they are trying to make choices can i provide both, you know, medical care and short and long-term disability insurance and a 401(k) and you start to look at package, and i want to provide all of that.

but when the medical plans go through these significant increases, it's challenging to do all that. i had an experience last year where a senior employee in our company had a stroke. it was unexpected. and it came out of nowhere. our long-term disability insurance was able to provide a solution for her, thank god. that was tremendous. but the year before we had had this difficult debate internally as to whether we would be able to keep these things, so while she will actually never be able to return to work, she has an able to receive 60% of her salary until she's age 65, and that's wonderful that we were able to provide that, but there's tremendous pressures every year to do that. so one of the things that i wanted to mention to you is that i feel that the sba needs to be radically more vocal on this issue as to -- in some ways i feel that our government fails if they allow insurance companies to discriminate

against us when one of our employees is the loser in the genetic roulette of their health. this whole issue of pre-existing conditions, but more importantly the ability for an insurance company to look individually at a company's claims and if they've had a few employees that have been sick, hospitalized, had a stroke or something like that, they can find themselves facing in the coming year 100% increase or more, basically an insurance company trying to get them out of the plan. i'd like to see a lot more from the sba. if you have any comment, that would be great. >> i would like to say from my side as an entrepreneur and a small business owner, we know the pains you struggle with there. health care is a major issue, and it's debated in the national levels and debated at state levels, but what can i do today in my business? what can i do to help my marketing, to help my sales, to help my other areas?

i know i can make a difference and those are where we put as much emphasis as we can. i know that may seem simplistic, but that's a reality while some of this other debate takes place, and i'm sure that the sba will do everything they can to mitigate those kinds of challenges. >> i will say that your story, once again, is something we heard from small business owners all around the country. small businesses pay 18% more for the same coverage than big business just because they're small, and they don't go in and the issues you described are very much a basis of the affordable care act. i will share with you that kathleen sebelius and i were out with small business owners very early on in this, and one said the same thing you said.

she said the day that i was able to provide health insurance for my employees is the day that i called my small business a success. so we're there to help make this happen for small businesses. >> i have a followup. >> i think maybe we have just one other question, and i am obliged to keep us on time, right? >> yes. >> i just so happened to have had a stroke. i only had a 100-word vocabulary and returned to run my business. obviously i suffered from short-term memory loss, couldn't drive, couldn't write, couldn't read. you know, fortunately we do have such good medical care in this country and such good research that i was able to put myself back together, and i'm -- and i'm happy to share my story with the woman that works for you because we can get well, and i'm a living example.

so i happen to be the maryland person of the year, and we developed a mobile app for amtrak. we were instrumental in developing this application for them. so we were the beneficiaries of the sba, the sbdc, the legislation, the ara legislation so we thank you. we're extremely grateful. you made a difference in our business. our business continued to grow. our revenues as well as our profit, we tighten things down. so our profit percent increased 190% year-over-year. and my question, because, you know, i think as small businesses we are very strong, and by the way my company's name is software consortium. we are the business person of the year, but what my question

is is from a -- we're looking beyond the recession and the global competition so as it relates to our business, what should we be doing looking at that global economy? what advice do you, have and who should we talk to? >> well, i'll just answer. i'm in the manufacturing, as i mentioned, and i think it's really important that -- i actually back in 2003 went over to china in my first trade mission and have been over there three times since, been to india and south america. we as small business owners have to grasp that we are a global economy and get educated as to what our challenges are? what things we can do better with us and what things we do better with them. i think we're all hearing there's a lot going on now with the industry coming back to the united states and that we all need to be prepared for that. really it's to educate yourself,

reach out to other international groups and find out where your expertise is, where you can blend in with their different programs. >> and come to the exporting forum this afternoon, a little plug for that. >> thank you. >> thank you all. you're doing a fabulous job. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> thank you all for attending. be sure to join us later today for more from "book-tv" live at 6:30 eastern. it's author timothy gay will discuss his book "assignment to hell" about american war reporting. that's at 6:30 p.m. eastern live on book-tv.org and another live hearing coming up tomorrow. it's a discussion of oceanic law and u.s. national security. secretary of state clinton, defense secretary panta and the chair of the joint chiefs of staff, martin dempsey, will take

part. watch that live starting at 10:00 a.m. eastern tomorrow here on c-span 3. also coming up tomorrow, the senate homeland security committee hears of an investigation of the secret service scandal in colombia involving prostitutes. that's on our companion network c-span, and coming up friday night a debate between the candidates running in wisconsin's recall election. republican scott walker is being challenged by democrat tom barrett. see that live friday at 9:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. >> both the house and senate are currently working on their own versions of a 2013 farm bill. the current five-year bill expires at the end of september. this past friday a house agriculture subcommittee took up sections of their bill dealing with energy-creating crops that are used as biofuels. they looked at the