A Tribute to SCORE's 50th Anniversary

Hello, I'm SBA administrator Maria Contrera. Sweet. I want to take this opportunity to congratulate Score on its 50th anniversary. That's half a century of volunteer mentors donating their time, knowledge, and passion to helping over 10 million of America's small businesses start and grow. On behalf of the entire staff of the U.S. small Business Administration, I would like to say how proud we are to support SCORE as part of our resource partner network that counsels and trains entrepreneurs across the country. I'd also like to thank the hundreds of thousands of SCORE mentors over the years that have helped to achieve this incredible milestone. As a SCORE mentor, your contributions have assisted so many in following their dreams and making the American economy the best in the world.

I wanted to start a business because when I retired, I was looking for something to do. I couldn't sing, I couldn't dance, and I can't paint. I established this business to take seniors on tours and help them set their events. I came over to score. I was assigned a mentor. My mentor is Kimberly Lewis. She gave me her name, phone number, email, and offered any assistance that I may need at any time. One of the major hurdles was all of the legal work that you have to have done, and you just need to let the government know that you are a real person and a thriving business. And that's what she's helped me to do.

SCORE has helped over 10 million companies in the last 50 years. It's a huge resource to be able to just go in and talk to somebody that was an expert in that industry and have their mentorship.

They provide help not only from the traditional sense of bookkeeping, writing a business plan, but now they also help them with how to grow a high tech company.

A resource partner is an organization that we work with, that work directly with the businesses, so they provide workshops or technical assistance so that we're able to reach more small businesses. I refer SBA clients to their local SCORE office and also to the national website when they're in the pre business phase, when they're kind of still trying to figure out exactly what kind of business they want to do and where they want to take it.

SCORE stood for Service Corps of Retired Executives. But we've eliminated that because it gives the impression that all of our members are retired and maybe even out of touch. Our motto now is for the life of your business, whatever that entails, to make your business better. People that have retired are often doing a lot of other things. They are actually still working, and we have a Lot of young, active people volunteering to help small businesses. We are very much engaged. I think what we try to do here in our office is to try to customize, if you will, that match between the client and the SCORE mentor. It positions that business owner on a road to success. A SCORE mentor comes in all sizes and shapes. We are people who have been in business, people that really want to give back to their community and usually have lots of great business experience. People that in fact have started small businesses, maybe even people that have run large corporate organizations, are all going to be successful mentors. And we've learned a lot. We've made a lot of mistakes. The goal now is to pass that information on to new businesses, and we hope to let them avoid mistakes that we've made in our careers. Score's mission is building small businesses across America one at a time. We help entrepreneurs get started. We help small businesses take their business to another level. And we're very committed to that mission.

We'd been in the brewing business about 20 years when we moved to Anaheim, and we realized that there was not a tavern or a gathering spot. And so we decided to open our own brewery.

The first challenge that we faced when we opened the business was trying to communicate our brewer's plan with other people.

So I did research on the Small Business Administration, and then I also found the SCORE website and set up an appointment. And just talking face to face with the mentor helped me really put together a solid financials in order to present to the bank. And we were approved the very first time.

There was a reason I actually went to school to actually help me out the balance myself. Going to the marketing meetings, figuring out the fabrics and 24 hours was not enough.

The highlight of my experience working with.

Small businesses is just the fact that.

I get to meet some amazing people with unbelievable ideas.

Terry was my SCORE mentor. She is my older sister.

We would meet often, usually every two weeks, discuss what she had planned and how could we make a difference.

Even my CPA at the time thought I was crazy.

We had fabulous people with financial backgrounds, one that I knew well. So I introduced them, and away she.

Went with that person.

I always called us the unconscious incompetent. I didn't know what I didn't know and kind of had to learn along the way from people who did know.

Well, here we're filming. Dog is good. A great personal story here. SCORE helped our business in a number of ways, really honing what our brand message was.

When we met with our SCORE mentor, we were discussing where the brand was going. And he began to ask a lot of the right questions. What is our message going to be? And once we were able to grasp what our message was, we knew we kind of. We had it. We had taken the right fork in the road and we were on our way.

Because this is why we joined score. You could just smile and say, gee, I really helped them there. Because none of us are paid. We totally volunteer our time. We only have the reward of seeing the people we help succeed themselves.

Thanks Score. What a wonderful 50 years.

Thank you everyone who helped me.

I'd like to congratulate score score on 50 years of service.

For without them, I don't think we would be exactly where we are today.

Thank you for 50 years of service of the SCORE organization.

And I am so happy to have found them for us old people like me that want a second career. Thank you.

So again, congratulations to score on its 50th anniversary. Here's to another 50 years of helping small businesses start and grow. Thank you.