Economy tough on small business Blaine House conference offers Maine’s moms and pops tips on survival

AUGUSTA – As some of the state’s biggest companies slow down their expansion projects because of a softening in the national economy, small-business owners gathered Wednesday to collect tips on how to keep from putting on the brakes themselves.

Many who attended the Blaine House Conference on Small Business, held annually at the Augusta Civic Center, were encouraged to be creative in product development and marketing, to think globally for new marketplaces, and to train employees in new skills or hire highly skilled workers from other states to keep up with a faster, ever-changing workplace environment.

But one man, sitting at a session on the status of the state’s economy, was frustrated with what he was hearing. The economic picture is not allowing for new dynamics, he said.

“From what I’m hearing [at this conference], it’s a chicken and egg thing,” said the unidentified man, noting that businesses need skilled, educated workers for better-paying, professional jobs. But, he said, when prospective employees compare the lower wages they would be earning here with the cost of living in Maine, they go elsewhere.

Laurie Lachance, the state’s economist with the State Planning Office, agreed with the man’s assessment. Maine faces a hodgepodge of economic factors that make it difficult not only to attract new workers and businesses, but to bring income growth to those who are here.

Of all the issues, the dynamics of the workplace is the most frustrating.

Unemployment, Lachance said, is lower than the national average. But 8 percent of the workers are holding down more than one job, compared with 5.8 percent nationally. Plus, she said, the younger workers are leaving the state while the rest of the work force is aging. And population growth is stagnant.

“It’s hard to grow at 5 to 6 percent a year when your population disappears,” said Lachance, mentioning there has been an 11 percent decline in the state’s working population.

“In the next two decades, the elderly population will grow 50 percent, whereas the population will grow 10 percent.”

Businesses and the state, she said, need to come up with strategies in the next few years to deal with changes in the work force or the economy will suffer.

“These changes are so huge, they’re absolutely touching everyone in the state,” Lachance said.

From where he sits at the State House, changes in the national economy are affecting Maine, said Steve Levesque, commissioner of the state Department of Economic and Community Development.

“There’s a number of things [business expansion projects] on hold right now because of the national economy,” Levesque said.

“We’re softening, but we’re not slowing down.”

On Wednesday, the department’s focus was on the state’s small businesses and the impact they have on the economy and the work force. About 36,000 of Maine’s 40,000 businesses employ fewer than 20 workers, Levesque said.

“Of the state’s 100,000 net new jobs in the last two decades, we [DECD] can account for 25,000 of them,” he said. “The rest are by small businesses.”

At the event’s keynote address, Jim Wilfong gave tips on how small businesses should distinguish themselves from others, and to set their goals to include growth beyond the state’s borders.

Wilfong, senior vice president for international affairs at eScout, a business-to-business Web site, said entrepreneurs should stay focused on the basics of business success: write a business plan, commit to integrity before profits, hire or contract with people smarter than yourself, invest constantly in marketing, gain market share, particularly in a down economy, and never undervalue the product being sold.

A global economy grows by the positive efforts made by individual small-business owners who focus on their own communities.

The ancient inventor “Archimedes said, ‘Give me a place to stand and I can move the world,'” Wilfong told the group. “Start in your own communities, do a good job in your own communities and make it a good place to live.”