<p>Diane Moca:<br />Millions of people have started businesses during the pandemic, more than ever before in the same time period. But a lot of them are kind of fumbling around, not really sure what to do or how to make money. And I know that feeling because when I started a side hustle, I didn't even know I was supposed to create an LLC. A mentor told me and boy was that mentor expensive. And then later I found out that I could have gotten a free mentor from SCORE and I thought, "Well, that sounds too good to be true." And I found out it's really not too good to be true. And I'm with Larry Bussow and he is the chapter chair of the Fox Valley SCORE organization. And that is an organization that provides free mentors. So Larry, how do you do that? Welcome.<br /><br />Larry Bussow:<br />Hello, thank you for having me in to talk a little bit about SCORE and how we help entrepreneurs in the area. Just a little background, SCORE as a national organization. They've got about 10,000 volunteers, like myself, in 250 different chapters across the country. And basically what we do at Fox Valley is provide advising services, educational programs, whether it be webinars or discussion groups to entrepreneurs that want assistance in their business. But all of us are volunteers because we've been pretty successful in our business life. And it's about time to give back, and that's really what we do is give back through our advising and our educational events.<br /><br />Diane Moca:<br />That's wonderful. And I understand your core or volunteers actually increased substantially during the pandemic. Not only did the amount of volunteers increase, but the amount of people seeking services and the amount of people that you provided services to, especially with events. So instead of an in-person event, which couldn't be done for a long time during the pandemic, you were giving virtual events. You learned how to adapt and pivot like businesses have to do and you ended up reaching more people. Is that correct?<br /><br />Larry Bussow:<br />Well we really did. Last year, we ran about 200 differing events, whether it be webinars or discussion groups and or whatever, with a little over 4,000 people attending those. Along with that, we did about 3,300 live Zoom meetings as advisors with our clientele. So we've learned to adapt to something that really grew our services base. Last year, we grew about 30% over the previous year. And it was basically because we were using our client's time and our time to a better advantage that we didn't even know or realize it existed.<br /><br />Diane Moca:<br />I understand from the research that I did that a business is more likely to survive five years from when it begins if there is a mentor involved with the business owner, helping to guide them, twice as likely as those business owners who don't have them. Why do you think that's true?<br /><br />Larry Bussow:<br />We try to have this a one-to-one relationship. And sometimes it's more than one. A lot of times people will come to us and I've worked with a particular client and I'll bring in a lawyer. I'll bring in a CPA. I handle the real estate side. Somebody else do the social media side. So we've got all these experts that we can bring in for multiple sessions.<br /><br />Diane Moca:<br />So whether you just have an idea and you want to find out what to do with it, or you have a business and you really want some expertise on how to grow it, SCORE's a great place to check out. For Talking Cities Aurora, I'm Diane Moca.</p>