The Missouri Small Business Development Center is introducing an engagement effort to connect with Callaway County businesses.
The SBDC provides free counseling and can help businesses with business plans, market research and other tools.
"This engagement center is hopefully going to help us with outreach and reaching those businesses out in Callaway that maybe have never even heard of the Small Business Development Center," Missouri SBDC University of Missouri Director Mark Christian said Wednesday.
During a webinar with the Callaway Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday, members of the SBDC team spoke about the resources the center has for small businesses.
"The purpose of our center is to try to make calls to businesses who might not know about us and to offer services to those businesses," team leader Bob Schwartz said.
Through the engagement center, University of Missouri business students who have been researching Callaway County will reach out to local businesses and help connect them to those counselors and resources.
"We have students that we're working with who are in their final year of school with the university and they've been working hard doing a lot of desk research in the area, learning about the businesses, the business climate," team leader Jennifer Presberry said. "The goal is to help folks with a pathway to the Mizzou Center."
The team will focus on manufacturing, retail and restaurants, Callaway Chamber of Commerce Director Tamara Tateoisan said.
"Sometimes businesses don't realize they have a need until they start talking about it," she said.
In recent months, the Callaway Chamber of Commerce has been working to connect partners like SBDC with the community. The chamber also worked with SBDC to help local businesses secure paycheck protection program loans at the beginning of the pandemic.
"We like to pride ourselves in the partnerships we have," Tateoisan said. "We've been working for the last five years to grow our relationships to better help businesses in Callaway County."
The Wednesday webinar, which covered some of the ways the SBDC seeks to help businesses, can be viewed at bit.ly/3gL2mzN.