Sure, Khailing Neoh can make a sesame ball like nobody’s business, but learning how to make enough of them to make enough money to make her own business succeed is another skill altogether.
“I definitely knew I needed a business plan, but you could Google all day long and find bits and pieces—or pay for this or try and download that—and it’s kind of a scary process,” says Neoh, whose 2017 undergrad degrees include chemical and biomolecular engineering.
Entrepreneurship, if nothing else, is risky business, and most of what Neoh knows about the hospitality industry she learned from growing up around her grandparents’ Chinese restaurant.
Then . . . SCORE! That is, the Service Corps of Retired Executives.
“She’s kind of my pride and joy out there,” says Paul Hanson, Neoh’s mentor at Piedmont SCORE. There, Hanson is among more than 40 post-career professionals in the national network of 250-plus chapters with roughly 10,000 members nationwide.
Neoh’s engineering job brought her to Greenville in 2019. A year or so ago, she cooked up her plan to open a dim sum place here. The meal-as-snacks tradition, akin to Spanish tapas, dates back to tenth-century Canton—definitely not her native Canton in Ohio.
She found SCORE’s Upstate chapter and Hanson, whose career experience spanned 40-some years with such food service heavyweights as Panera Bread, Wendy’s, and KFC. Today, he counts Neoh among his 40 or so mentees, only about five of whom he considers active.
SCORE counselors help their charges navigate the complexities of small business ownership. They run them through the gauntlet of business plans, financial spreadsheets, and the like. And get this: SCORE’s counselors and resources are free.
Except that in business, nothing is free. That’s because planning to open a small business costs enormous amounts of time and requires intensive thinking, a process that typically weeds out the majority of would-be business owners, mentors say.
Hanson says many potential clients approach SCORE for seed capital—and SCORE provides almost everything but that. And so, Hanson says, “Many times, it’s just that first initial call, and they kind of drift away.”
Likewise for David Brush, who joined the Upstate chapter after moving here a few months ago from Massachusetts, where he had served in the Northeast Massachusetts chapter since 2018.
He has seen his share of “one-and-done” clients, he says: “They call, they don’t like what they hear because they walk in thinking they know more than we do: ‘I have a vision for this business and you old guys don’t know what you’re talking about,’ so they never come back.”
Bringing his last 32 years of experience in electronics manufacturing, he is also Piedmont SCORE’s newest counselor.
“He is our first ‘snowbird’ volunteer,” says Marjorie Luke, Piedmont SCORE’s chair. “His personal and professional experience and success as a mentor is evidence that South Carolina has a lot to offer retired snowbirds beyond golf and fishing.”
Brush and Hanson say their volunteer work consumes only a few hours a week—all of it rewarding. Most clients are in their 20s, Hanson says: “It’s inspiring to see how much passion some of these people come to the room with.”
Both encourage one-time C-suiters here to join SCORE to counsel, educate, guide, and inspire young business aspirants. As Brush says, “I’ve enjoyed the hell out of it. I’m really inspired by a lot of the clients who walk in the door and look for help.”
How to SCORE some free business mentorship
After wading through Google to find business advice, Khailing Neoh says of her search and, finally, her discovery of SCORE, “Sometimes you get resources that are kind of dead ends, but this one was a very thorough, vast one.”
Along with its SCORE’s national network, the local chapter, Piedmont SCORE, provides what could be argued as an MBA’s worth of learning opportunities. As the chapter’s website says, “Small business people confront many operating, legal, and tax questions daily. There are many resources to help solve your issues,” including:
Find a Mentor
Whether you’re just starting out in business or ready to sell and retire, confidential business advice is available from experts.
Take a Workshop
Piedmont SCORE offers business-related workshops throughout the Upstate.
Create a Business Plan
Piedmont SCORE mentors have the tools, techniques, and expertise to help create a business plan.
Take a Live or Recorded Webinar.
Recorded webinars are available 24/7.
Browse the Library
SCORE’s plethora of resources includes business-plan templates, guides, blogs, and more.
Source: Piedmont SCORE
What’s SCORE?
Since launching in 1964, the Service Corps of Retired Executives has educated more than 11 million established and aspiring entrepreneurs across in 1,500 communities nationwide.
Prospective entrepreneurs with a mentor are five times more likely to start a business — and small business clients who receive three-plus hours of mentoring report higher revenues and increased business growth. In 2020, SCORE:
Served 143,651 clients
Provided 315,283 mentoring sessions
Welcomed 347,389 attendees across 10,816 local workshops, and 204,925 attendees through national workshops.
SCORE’s assistance helped start 45,027 new businesses, where:
74,535 non-owner jobs were created
119,562 total jobs were created
60% of SCORE’s clients were women
46% were minorities
9% were veterans.
SCORE is financed, in part, through a cooperative agreement with the U.S. Small Business Administration.
Source: SCORE
