It’s tough starting a new business. There’s drafting the business plan, securing loans, acquainting oneself with various legal issues, managing advertising and networking. There are matters of taxes, trade, finances, insurance and technology to worry about. But none of these things is most important.

“You have to have a dream,” said Peter J. Murphy, keynote speaker at Temple University Small Business Development Center (TUSBDC) Entrepreneurship Conference and Expo. “You have to have a goal in mind for what you’d like to accomplish with your business.”

Once you have that dream, the TUSBDC can help you with all the rest of the details—after all, the center has specialized in helping launch and support small businesses in the Greater Philadelphia region since 1983.

The conference kicked off TUSBDC’s 20th anniversary year with workshops and speakers to help regional entrepreneurs get their businesses off the ground and keep them there. Conference seminars mirrored those offered by the center throughout the year.

“The SBDC has evolved a lot over the years,” said Eustace Kangaju, SBDC director. “We have immensely increased our capacity to deliver technical assistance to entrepreneurs in the Philadelphia business community based on client needs.”

The center offers tools and advice for growing their respective businesses, and covers such topics as strategic business planning, funding research, legal and tax issues, strategic marketing, insurance and sales.

The Small Business Development Center was established as a department of the Fox School of Business and Management. In its first year, the center consulted with 124 companies and conducted four training workshops.

Since then, the SBDC has consulted with more than 8,000 companies in the Philadelphia region, offering 523 training workshops and seminars that have been attended by thousands of entrepreneurs, according to Kangaju.

“The activities of the center contribute toward improving the growth of the local economy by providing entrepreneurs with the resources they need to develop and prosper,” Kangaju said. “We are delighted to be celebrating 20 years of providing service to the Philadelphia community.

“In that time, we have helped author many success stories by providing free one-on-one consulting and nominally priced business training to aspiring entrepreneurs and small business owners in Philadelphia, Montgomery and Bucks counties,” he added.

The center experienced most of its growth during the last five years, consulting with 3,345 companies. During that time, the SBDC assisted companies in getting some $41.2 million in financing and helped secure $172 million in government contracts for small business owners.

Today, the center consults with more than 700 companies and trains more than 1,000 entrepreneurs annually.

For more information about services offered by the center, contact TUSBDC at 215-204-3856.

— Helen H. Thompson, Temple Times