Planning For Profit: Just what does a business facilitator do?

Published 5:00 pm Wednesday, August 1, 2007

In my July 19 column, I described the genesis of the Wallowa County Business Facilitation (“WCBF”) program. To understand the nature of the WCBF program as it exists today, you have to know something about my background. With that out of the way, I will then describe how a facilitator operates and what ho or she does.

Each program’s facilitator is hired locally, usually under the guidance of the Sirolli Institute. The facilitator may be male or female, young or old, local or transplant. I happen to be an old male refugee from the Puget Sound area who, like many before me, had fallen in love with Wallowa County.

Regardless of these characteristics, a strong emphasis is placed on one’s training, business experience and demonstrated ability to relate to a broad range of people in a positive, nurturing manner. Obviously, we each come with our own “tool kit,” assembled over our working careers. In my case, the box includes a master’s degree in accounting, a CPA certificate and 30-plus years of work experience that includes retailing, municipal government, college level teaching and public accounting. My lengthy retail career included positions as controller or chief financial officer at Costco Wholesale, Eagle Hardware and Garden and Garden Botanika. Naturally, my background drives my approach to business coaching, and since I am the public face of WCBF, it has defined the nature of the program since its inception. If the next facilitator comes from a marketing or operations background in some other industry, the nature of the program will inevitably change to reflect those differences.

Business facilitation is a client driven process, meaning that all the motivation and drive has to come from the person who wants to own his own business. As a result, facilitators don’t solicit business; we don’t try to motivate anyone to do anything; we don’t pass judgment on clients or their ideas; we don’t do clients’ work for them; and we don’t hand out money.

After six and a half years, WCBF is widely known in the community and people like you are a constant source of referrals. Based on these referrals and a limited amount of other publicity, people find me with their dreams and ideas – some very vague and others well defined. Working without a pre-defined “playbook,” my job is to get to know something about the clients, determine where they are trying to go and where they are along the road and then help them to objectively assess their passions and their ideas.

If the clients feel that the results of that assessment are positive, then I will support them in any way I can as they try to shape their dreams into operational Oregon businesses sitting on a sound foundation.

In my next column, I will talk a bit about motivation, passion and who does the work.

Myron Kirkpatrick provides free, confidential, locally based business coaching services for Wallowa County Business Facilitation, Inc. He may be reached at (541) 426-5858 or by e-mail at myronk@uci.net.