Community Futures Development Corporation of the Sunshine Coast (CFSC) is leading the charge to ensure business succession planning in our area. An unveiling of a new plan to connect buyers and sellers, Venture Connect, was the highlight of CFSC's annual general meeting held Oct. 26 at the Sunshine Coast Golf and Country Club.
Billed as the 2011 Celebration of Success, the AGM brought the audience up to date on CFSC's accomplishments of the past two years.
To date 30 new jobs have been created and maintained on the Coast this year and almost 1,000 hours have been donated by the volunteer board to achieving the organization's goals.
The meeting, which attracted many hopeful political candidates from all areas of the Coast, heard from founding director Barrie Wilbee, current board chair Dawn Miller and general manager Sharon Anderchek that there have been some interesting challenges in the past couple of years.
Last year, Wilbee said, was one of corporate rationalization, of finding ways to make CFSC more cost effective. The changes included some downsizing and the relocation of the office to just above Wheatberries in Sechelt. Along with the Venture Connect initiative, another big focus has been on attracting, retaining and engaging the young demographic on the Coast.
Building on the findings of the 2009 Vital Signs that pointed to dearth of young adults on the Coast, a group called VOICE was created, which CFSC has supported with both money and expertise. Spearheaded by young professionals including Silas White, who created a strategic plan as part of his master's thesis, and JM Boyd, who devised a web application that can aggregate information into one place, VOICE has become an important resource for both informing and listening to the younger population of the Coast.
Two of CFSC's clients, Inside Passage School of Fine Woodworking and West Coast Wilderness Lodge, made presentations at the meeting.
Inside Passage operates in Roberts Creek and trains 17 students each year in the finer points of cabinetry. Robert Van Norman, owner and instructor at the school, told the audience about his company's experiences with Community Futures. Conventional financial institutions had turned down the school, which attracts students from all over the world, so Van Norman approached CFSC. There he quickly learned from Anderchek that it wasn't enough for him to be a teacher and craftsman; Van Norman also needed to be a businessman.
And the first thing he needed to do was make a business plan. With staff help, Van Norman put together a successful business plan, and thanks to financial support from Community Futures, his own hard work and some stellar students, the school is making a name for itself.
Paul Hansen, owner of West Coast Wilderness Lodge, approached CFSC when he had a tight timeline to build the lodge. After a career spent teaching environmental science (you get to a certain age in life where you hate kids, he joked), Hansen was visiting Egmont when he came across the property where the lodge is now. He praised the CFSC people for being so easy to deal with. Because of Hansen's strong belief in tourism being a natural fit with the Coast, he plans to expand the business over the next several years.
"[Tourism] is a great economic resource to the Sunshine Coast. It's not just rearranging the existing economic pie," he said.
The Venture Connect is a partnership of six Community Futures, Island Coast Economic Trust, B.C.'s Small Business Roundtable and the Ministry of Jobs, Tourism and Innovation.
This amalgamation addresses perhaps the most crucial business concern on the Coast - the retirement of Boomer-age proprietors. According to a Community Futures' survey conducted in 2010-11 in Gibsons and Sechelt, 80 per cent of business owners who will be of retirement age within the next five years (an estimated one-fifth of all proprietors in these areas) have not begun to search for a successor.
Venture Connect's mandate is to maintain small business with their important employment opportunities and tax bases in rural communities. It will also bring business buyers and sellers together via the Internet and networking. For business owners with a short exit timeline, an asking price of $300,000 and need for assistance, this program appears to be a godsend.
Potential buyers also benefit from having financial and personal resources that support entry and investment. If you're between 25 and 45 years and looking for a business to buy, this could be an important step in owning your own business.
For more information about this or any CFSC program, call 604-885-1959.
