Jim Mladenovic, Business Reference Librarian at the Central Library with IndyPL, shares Small Business Resources at Central Library.
Jim is part of the Small Business Team at Central Library, and deals specifically with patrons who own or are looking to start a small business. For anyone who is interested in starting a new business, Jim offers a one-hour meeting, one-on-one, during which you cover all the major topics involved in that. There are dozens of resources which Jim can offer specifically tailored to their business, and they also maintain relationships with all the major business agencies in the county – SBA, SCORE, Chamber, etc. Jim is a business owner with over 30 years experience, and over the last 6 years has conducted over 900 meetings for library patrons.
And don’t forget to check out IndyPL’s Business Services.
Here is the transcript from the presentation:
Ryan: So, alright, everyone, so, now I’d like to turn it over to Jim with the Indianapolis Public Library, and Jim is going to share with us some of the resources that are available to us small business owners just by having a library card.
Ryan: So, everyone, let’s give Jim a hand.
Jim: So, alright, so, I’m the business librarian here at Central Public Library. I mentioned earlier, we’ve got 25 branches and I work at the main one, which is Central. I’ve been a business librarian for about 6 years now.
Jim: I actually started the business program here. Up until about six years ago, if someone wanted to start a new business, and as you all know, it can be very daunting process, with lots of parts and, and, and factors to it could be very overwhelming. And people come in and, you know, request help with that.
Jim: Before I took this on, the library was getting about, between 20 and 30 referrals a year for help with business and what that basically consisted of was, OK, so the business books are over there. The databases are over here, good luck. And, I’ve always been a person who, I, I, whenever I take something out, I was jumping with it into it with both feet, and I wanted to offer a lot more to people, being a business person myself.
Jim: So, I developed this program to give them a lot of really solid resources they could use to get up and running and making it make it a not so daunting process.
Jim: So, like I said, I came up with a program. What I do is I have hour long, and actually, tell you what, let me, let me back up a little bit. I’ll give you the overall view and then I’ll get back to what I do.
Jim: So, here at Central, and all, most of our business resources are here at, at Central Library. We’ve got about 30,000 business books. We’ve got a little over 120 databases, about 20 of those, I guess you could consider, business related databases. And in terms of help we have myself and two other people.
Jim: Ryan Donnelly is in charge of patents and trademarks. And, one thing we’re really proud of, there are 82 registered Patent and Trademark facilities around the United States. We are one of those, and so Ryan does that. He helps people who either have patent ideas or want to actually register their patents. Now he does not actually help them with that, but it gives them all the resources they need to, to move forward on that. He also helps them with the paperwork on doing trademarks and, and so forth.
Jim: Leah Kim is our nonprofits person, and she helps people, obviously, who are looking or starting a 501(c)3. Again, she doesn’t directly help with that. We’re not allowed to help people with their paperwork. We are all allowed to give them the information. And she sets up a bunch of workshops throughout the year.
Jim: Typically, you will do, anything, anywhere from 12 to 18 workshops. And those could be just one-hour workshops. We often have workshops that run for one or two full days, so there there’s a lot of information there as well.
Jim: Our another resource that we have is our computer lab. It’s staffed by 6 people. We’re all very competent computer people. They offer about 20 different classes in various areas. They cover most of the Microsoft products like Word, Excel, PowerPoint and so forth. They do the wide range of computer-related classes. Everything from how to use a mouse and a keyboard all the way up to how to do basic coding. So, they, they do that as well.
Jim: Let’s see, what I’m missing something?
Jim: So, that that’s basically the, that, and then there’s myself who does the small business.
Jim: So, basically what happens is when somebody wants to start a, a new business, as I said, it could be very overwhelming for them with all the paperwork to have to fill out, and people they need to meet and, and different things they need to, to do to get that up and running. And I try to bring that all together and make it as cohesive and simplified as possible.
Jim: So, they set up an appointment with me, whether it’s by e-mail or by phone call. We set up a date and time that’s convenient for them. And during the week that will include from 10:00 AM till 6:00 PM. And then I also work here alternate Saturdays.
Jim: We’re open seven days a week, so I also work on weekends as well, and we try to set up a time that’s convenient for them. We will meet either face to face or on Zoom. The meeting takes about an hour and during that hour we will cover all of the major topics of running a business.
Jim: We’ll start off by talking about how to do the business plan, how to set up a website, there’s, we’ll cover topics such as networking, online marketing. We’ll talk a little bit about taxes and a bunch of other topics as well.
Jim: So, during that meeting, I’ll have a bunch of questions for them. They’ll have a bunch of questions for me as well, and well. And, what I tell them, too, is I’ve got my own little pad and pen and, and just tell them, sit back, you know, if you have any questions, go ahead and ask them. I will take care of all the notes, alright. And one thing, too, that I pride myself on, is that I really try to make every single meeting geared specifically to their needs.
Jim: So, let’s say for example, one day I have a meeting with somebody in the morning, whose going to start opening up a bakery and, the afternoon I’ve got somebody who’s opening up a, a dog grooming business. Those two meetings will be fairly different from each other, and I, I think I pretty much talk to anybody about any kind of business. Like I said, I’ve been doing this six years now, and I’ve had right around 900 meetings. So, it’s, it’s kept me pretty busy.
Jim: And, I, I’ve, we’ve done everything from the basic stuff like opening up a restaurant or a hair salon or jewelry shop all the way up to, I’ve had chemists from major corporations come in here asking for specific types of research. I’ve had people who were looking to patent a particular process or particular item and, obviously, like I said, Ryan helps with the, the, the patenting, and then I helped them with getting the business up and running.
Jim: Probably my, my biggest success, and I can’t really call it my success because it was them doing the work. I had a mother and son team come in here a couple of years ago. And, they were doing a healthy biscuit dog food type of, of dog treat, and they started off by selling these dog biscuits at the local Ace Hardware in Greenwood and over a period of about 8 months, they actually got connected to, oh, I can’t think of it right now, the, oh, the farm supply place, oh, uh, Rural King.
Jim: They got connected to Rural Kings, signed a contract with them, and last year they moved down to somewhere near Memphis, TN, started up their own processing facility, and they’re now supplying these dog biscuits to all 1800 Rural King facilities, or stores, I should say.
Jim: So, during our discussion, like I said, we cover all types of topics specifically designed for them.
Jim: One thing, I also make sure, and if, if the issue comes up, I, I will give them my spiel on it. I will always be honest with people who come in. I won’t just, you know, if they come up with some kind of crazy idea, I would say, ohh hey, that’s great, you know, you go for it. I just, I feel, if I’m gonna lie to ’em, I’m not helping ’em. In fact, I’m hurting ’em, so I will always be honest with people and so I’ll give you a specific example.
Jim: I had one lady come in. She was looking to start four different businesses, all at the same time. Plus, she was going to be starting school in about three months. And, I gave her my spiel about, you know, hey, I’m not helping you if, if I’m not telling you the truth. And I said, if you start more than one business right now, I almost guarantee you will fail, because it takes a lot of time and effort, and especially if you don’t know what it involves, you know, if you’ve never done it before, you will overwhelm yourself very quickly.
Jim: And she took it well. She did go and start the one business, and just to make it more, more helpful for her, I did explain to her how, you know, several months from now or maybe a year down the road, once you’re establishing that one business, then we can start talking about getting that second business open.
Jim: So, and then, that, that’s another thing, too. When folks come in, and make sure they know this isn’t just a one-off meeting, that I tell ‘em, I want you to consider me a tool in your tool belt, so anytime you have any questions or you want to learn about something else, please contact me. I’ll be glad to help.
Jim: So, it could be something as simple as shooting him, shooting me an e-mail with a couple of questions and I could just, you know, type it up and send it back to him or let’s say, you know, four or five months from now, things are going fairly well, but they want to expand. They want to learn something about marketing techniques and strategies. We set up another appointment. They come in and we spend a whole hour talking about nothing but marketing strategies.
Jim: So, so, anyway, so that’s, that’s pretty much how the meeting goes. Once we’re done, I take a couple of days to do my homework, and I get all those questions answered that they had, and I will sell them what I call, send them what I call a resources report. And it’s basically three to five pages of nothing but online links to people, agencies, articles, YouTube videos, book recommendations, and so forth.
Jim: And, I told them to make sure that they understand this isn’t something you’re going to get done in a couple of weeks. This is your game plan for the coming year. And so, I send them their, that resources report, and I also send them about four to six business plans within their industry.
Jim: So, again, if somebody starting a bakery, I will send them four to six bakery business plans. And I’ve, I’ve also got a philosophy on, on that as well and that is to most people, a business plan is this horrible, boring thing to have to put together to get a bank loan, and I see them as completely different, which is why I will send them four to six business plans. And, what I tell them is that a business plan is this document that somebody’s taking a lot of time and effort to put together, so that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel.
Jim: And I tell them, you know, once they get these business plans, obviously it’s going to help them as a model for their own business plan, but most more importantly, I tell them what I want you to do is sit down when you’ve got about, you know, a couple of hours with pen and paper, maybe a highlighter, read through all those business plans because you’re going to find all kinds of golden nuggets in there about how to run your business, how to avoid problems, you may not have thought of what certain things will cost, and so on and so forth.
Jim: So, I really do see those as valuable documents and, you know, I, I really have seen them help people out a lot in terms of some of the resources I share with them.
Jim: One of them is a database called Data Axle. I don’t know if any of you’ve ever heard that, it’s, used to be called Reference USA, and I have no idea why they changed their names, because that’s all they did. The database is still the same. The look is still the same, so I think they just gave themselves extra work by have to rebrand themselves, and, and still have the same service.
Jim: So, for those of you who are not familiar, Data, Data Axle is a massive database of every business in the United States, from little one person operations all the way up to multinational corporations. And, it has a wealth of information about those companies, how long they’ve been in business, contact information, annual revenues, well, contact people with phone numbers and their e-mail addresses and a bunch of other stuff.
Jim: And what’s nice is if you have a Marion County Public Library library card, you can actually access it from home. That’s probably the most helpful resource. In fact, I’ve had people come in, who do B2B type stuff, and they often will build up their whole client base just by using Data Axel.
Jim: So, let’s see, what else? Yeah, I think that basically covers what I do. Like I said, I, I do about 150 meetings a year. And, I’d say, about 60% of the people I meet with will come back for a second and maybe sometimes even a third meeting.
Jim: And one guy a couple of years ago, he would show up every two weeks for a meeting. And, I, I don’t think he ever got a business started. I think it was just to make himself feel better that he was doing something, but I don’t mind. I love talking about this stuff.
Jim: And you know, I, I like helping other people, you know, see their, their dream come true, in terms of starting a business. And, I try to do my best to help them get up and running successfully. I’ve also got a network myself of a lot of the other agencies here in town, my, SCORE, in, in fact SCORE sends me probably about 78% of the people I meet with. They’ll send me typically about 100 people a year, and is-
Jim: Does everybody know who SCORE is? OK, OK, I saw, I saw a couple of heads shaking. OK, so SCORE stands for the Service Corps of Retired Executives. And, as the name suggests, these are all people, they’ve got about 70 or 80 people at any one given time, who, as the name suggests, are retired executives, and they volunteer their time several hours a week to be mentors to new business owners.
Jim: And so, the, the process there is, let’s say, have somebody come in they haven’t met with SCORE or I tell them, pull them up, set up an appointment, they’ll do a detailed meeting, where they find out exactly what this person wants to do in terms of a business, and they will try as closely as possible to match them up with a mentor who is it, who has a background in that field.
Jim: So again, we’ll use the bakery example, if somebody is starting a bakery, they will find somebody who is in the food service business. They’ve got somebody who worked in a major industrial bakery, even better, but they, they try to match them up as closely as possible and all, all these services are absolutely free. What I do is free, what SCORE does is free.
Jim: And uh oh, that’s another thing as well. One thing I pride myself on is finding tons and tons of resources that are either free or low cost. A lot of people, when they get started, they think they have to spend a lot of money on things and that, that’s really not the case, you know.
Jim: I think over the, these last few years, I’ve saved people quite a bit of money, showing them stuff that they could do for free, that they would have paid somebody $800 to $8000 to do for them. It’s just a matter of having a little bit of confidence in themselves, and one thing, too, is anything I recommend to people is always stuff that I either am using, have used. I will never recommend anything that maybe I just read about. Anything I recommend to folks is something I’ve got a lot of experience with and that I know works, so there’s that.
Jim: So, I think, that’, pretty much covers, covers all the services we do here. So, I send them out after the meeting, I send them out the, the resource report, the business plans, and then they have an opportunity to get back to me and, you know, with other questions, if they have, or maybe I said, down the road they might have with additional meetings.
Jim: And we just kind of go from there, but it’s, it’s been fairly successful, and I, I have a blast doing it, so, all right.
Ryan: Does anyone- oh, go ahead, Kim.
Kim: Well, Jim, thanks for the definition of SCORE.
Kim: I’ve known Bill Hammond and Mike Crumbo, who are SCOREmentors for, I don’t know, seven or eight years and I’ve never known what SCORE stood for ever.
Jim: Oh, OK.
Kim: Bill, shame on you. Uh, he’s going to defend himself.
Bill: No, I just, actually, what Jim said, that’s, that’s history from, like, 60, from 1965, when it first started. It’s early today. Most people don’t even know that it’s for retired, and of executives, anymore. It’s, and then frankly, some of the mentors now are not really retired.
Jim: Yeah, that’s true.
Kim: OK.
Bill: We just, we just use SCORE now, and it’s, it’s most of, most of, when you go on the website that information that Jim just mentioned, a lot it’s, it’s hardly, you hardly ever find it. It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s just called SCORE, whether it’s, whether you go through SBA and get to it or you go to, straight to SCORE.org, that definition or that history just isn’t there that much. So, well.
Kim: Jim, seriously, you’re a wealth of information that is very impressive. The resources report, that is extremely impressive. I mean, I can’t imagine starting a business, coming in and sitting down with you and then you providing all that. I mean, that’s just all the links, and, and, you know, business plans for them to refer to. That’s, that’s wonderful.
Kim: My question today is this, I mean your, your competition is probably Google and, and Kindle, and all that, you know, all that but, what if I wanted to know, like, a list of people for a database to do a mailing? Would that be something that I could come to the library and find? Maybe, I don’t know. I don’t even know how I would search my customer, but a client. So, do you have ways of doing that?
Jim: Yeah, you can, well, yes and no. Yes, you can use a Data Axle if you’re going to do a business mailing, but we don’t have information on just, you know, people who live in Indianapolis or elsewhere. So, for, you know, the, the regular consumer, yeah, there’s resource that, but you gotta pay a ton of money for it in terms of the library, we can offer you the, the business databases, but they just have information for businesses. And so, yeah.
Kim: I understand.
Jim: In terms of competition? You know, when you mentioned like Google and, and so forth, it’s really not competition, because people don’t know what they don’t know.
Kim: Right.
Jim: And so, you know, I’m, I’m putting all that together for them on, on a, on one big plate and they could just feed off that and just kind of build up their knowledge base.
Kim: It’s wonderful. Thank you.
Jim: Thank you.
Jim: Ohh, one other thing I guess I didn’t finish it off. I go off on tangents all the time and I don’t finish my my thoughts. I mentioned that I’ve got a network here in Indianapolis, with the, SCORE was one of, that’s when I went off on a tangent. But also, the SBA, Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce, BOI, which is the Business Ownership Initiative, the Black Indy Chamber, and a bunch of other government agencies here in Indianapolis. And, we’ll kind of help each other out to, to 1 extent or another.
Jim: When I will refer people to them, SCORE, like I said, is the main one who refers, refers people my way.
Jim: So yeah, there’s, there’s lots and lots of resources available out there. It’s not just me offering what we have here at Central, I, I will refer them to other agencies as well.
Ellestancia: I have a question as well. First, why I didn’t realize that this was here and that like all these resources, it’s nice that you do this and that you enjoy it. So yeah, thank you. I was wondering if there is, like, a cost to meet up with you to set up the appointments?
Jim: It’s absolutely free. In fact, you don’t even need to have a library card. I have met with people as far as Chicago. I had one guy from Austin, TX, contacted him, who he had a friend in Indianapolis and, contact me said, hey, I’m starting a business out here, you know. What can you help me with? And I we just went through the routine and did it on Zoom.
Jim: So, yeah, it’s absolutely free of, free of charge and it, it, you know, like I said, you don’t even have to be a member of the library.
Ellestancia: Nice. Thank you.
Kelley: So, Jim, when people come to you and they’re in need of funding, do you have a resource of lenders that you already work with that you trust or have you developed relationships with lenders as well?
Jim: Government agency lenders, which would include SBA, SBDC, BOI, and others. I’ve got one specifically for women and minority owned businesses, and I’ve got a whole slew of resources for veterans as well.
Kelley: But, you can add one more to your tool belt now, so I’ll, I’ll stop over and see you and try to get to know you a little better so you’ll know what we can provide here. We work with those same individuals as well, like the minority owned business and veteran owned and women owned, [incomprehensible], as well.
Jim: Oh, great.
Kelley: But kind of new back to SBA lending. So, I need to, to get my name back out there again, so you’ll definitely hear from me both yourself, and, and Bill. So, I think it’s worth.
Jim: It’s great, Kelley.
Kelley: You seem very excited about the work you do there as well.
Jim: Ohh, I, I really enjoy it, it.
Kelley: Good, good.
Ryan: Does anyone else have any questions for Jim?
Jim: Are we ready for the essay part of the program?
Ryan: Well, Jim, so our quiz time for you because we’re recording this and it’ll be archived on our website for folks to watch later.
Ryan: Can you tell people how they would get a hold of you if they want to schedule an appointment?
Jim: OK, the main way I prefer is by e-mail, because otherwise, if they call, I’m not at my desk about 90% of times, we’ll be playing phone tag. So, my e-mail is jmladenovic@indypl.org, so that’s I-N-D-Y-P-L, for public library, .org.
Jim: And the phone number, and that’s my, this is my direct line, phone number is 317-275-4138.
Ryan: There you go. Well, everyone, let’s give Jim a big hand for his presentation today.
Jim: Well, thank you for the invitation. I really enjoyed it.
