Mike Fish of the Carroll County SBDC Economic Development Office lead a very intersting discussion on various aspects of being a consultant as well as those services available to the small entrepreneur from his group. Since the group was small, there was active discussion during the dinner hour and this continued on into the main meeting. There were many interesting points of discussion. For example: As a consultant do you know what your client can ask of you before the IRS gets involved? Mike mentioned a list of twenty quetions that define when a consultant actually becomes an employee! It's good to know the limits!
A key item of interest to this group is the Pre-Business Seminar that is provided by Mike's group on the last Tuesday of each month from 9:00 to 11:00 AM. (Note that my previous statement of the fourth Tuesday was in error.) This seminar is provided at no charge and covers various aspects of setting up your own business. These include allocating your resources (time and money), performing a break-even analysis, preparing business plans, performing financial assessments, developing marketing plans, advertising campaigns, and more! To learn more about this excellent opportunity, call his office at (410)386-2820.
As I said, the discussion covered a wide range of topics. For example, if you're looking for commercial space for an office or lab, who could you call? By now you know the answer, call his group at (410)386-2070 and talk with them. If they don't know the answer, they will know someone who does! It was a great session.
You can find out more about Mike's group by visiting the Maryland web site. This is an effort supported by the Small Business Administration.
The next meeting will be on October 26th at the regularly scheduled time. Due to a scheduling conflict, we will be meeting in lounge area instead of the banquet room. The lounge area is just in front of the banquet room.
There were a total of five atendees, three of them are IEEE members.