January 6, 2025 • 18 mins
Meet SCORE Greater Cincinnati’s new Chapter Co-Chair! Mike McCracken has served as a SCORE volunteer mentor since 2018, following his 26-year career at Procter & Gamble. When he retired, Mike was the U.S. national sales director for P&G’s Health Care Division. His extensive experience includes customer experience with the country’s largest retailers as well as business development and marketing.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hello.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
My name is Michael Dowson, your host of My SINSI
Small Business Stories. In this episode, I'll be talking with
Mike McCracken, co chair of SCORES Chapter thirty four serving
Greater Cincinnati, Northern Kentucky, Southeast Indiana. We'll find out more
about that, but first we'll be right back after this message.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
Did you know twice as many small businesses survive past
five years when they have the support from a mentor.
My sincey small business story is brought to you by
the volunteer mentors of SCORE Greater Cincinnati, a nonprofit organization
that helps launch hundreds of new small businesses and even
more jobs in Cincinnati, Northern Kentucky, and Indiana every year.
Our vision is to give every person the support they
(00:44):
need to thrive as a small business owner. Visit score
dot org slash Greater Cincinnati to request a free business
mentor or share your own expertise. You can also listen
and subscribe for more stories about overcoming challenges, clearing obstacles,
and owning a successful small business.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Welcome, Mike, how you doing today?
Speaker 1 (01:01):
Very good? Pleasure?
Speaker 2 (01:03):
Glad we're doing this good good. You've had a fairly
long career with P and G. What were your different
jobs there.
Speaker 4 (01:10):
I had a number of jobs. I mean, when you're
with P ANDNG for thirty five plus years, they move
you around quite a bit. As a matter of fact,
I like telling people that I actually relocated seven times
in ten years. So they change roles quite a bit,
you change organizations. That's one of the reasons why you
can stay with a company like P and G for
(01:32):
so long is they do give you the changing roles
and changing organizations and management, and it makes it exciting
and you meet new people in new cities. So yeah,
that was one of the highlights of my career at PNG,
was moving on to different roles, either external sales roles
with customers or internal work with our multifunctional teams at
(01:55):
P ANDNG. It's a great learning experience and I consider
myself very lucky.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
So how long have you been in a score mentor
how long have you been involved with Score?
Speaker 4 (02:05):
I started with Score about a little over six years ago.
It was after I retired from Procter and Gamble, and
so it's been a good ride. I've I've enjoyed it
a lot. It's it's it's all very new to me.
Considering my background with a very big corporation, the idea
(02:26):
of working with people who either want to start a
new business, new small business, or who are in business
and want advice on help and how to grow their business.
So it's been a it's been, it's it's to some
extent it's like starting over for me because it's it's
an experience that I never went through obviously with a
(02:46):
company like Procter and Gamble. So selfishly, I've learned a
lot and it's opened my eyes to a lot of
things in the greater Cincinnati area into small business in general.
But also I know the impact it had, and I
also have benefited from the relationships with other SCORE mentors
and being a part of that organization.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
How did you find out about SCORE?
Speaker 4 (03:09):
Well, that's a good question. I didn't know anything about
SCORE until a former neighbor of mine was with my
wife at one point and she said, would Mike ever
want to be a part of an organization and how
it helped small business?
Speaker 1 (03:25):
And she said, you're give him a call.
Speaker 4 (03:27):
So so it's a friend and neighbor of mine who's
a SCORE mentor today who called me and wrote me
in and then we ended up meeting with another score,
an experienced SCORE member at a local Starbucks, and we
sat down and talked about the what SCORE is all about,
and I signed up. So it was really through a friend,
(03:47):
That's how I found out about it. Didn't know anything
about SCORE before then, So I signed up and went
through the training program and got started up in mid
twenty and eighteen.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
Has it been rewarding for.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
You very much?
Speaker 4 (04:03):
I mentioned earlier about how everything was new to me.
So rewarding for me personally, yes, because I've never started
a small business outside of my grass cutting business when
I was a teenager. But you know, so a lot
of the principles, a lot of the business practices that
(04:24):
I learned at P ANDNG were very helpful. But again
I had the benefit of a large company and a
lot of resources and support. But this is different. This
is starting from scratch and using your own capital and
your own ideas and your own friends and relatives to
get started. So it's been very rewarding for me to
(04:47):
be a part of that and learn from it and
to help people and see how they grow. Not everybody
gets started out, you know, and there's a certain level
number of failures or I shouldn't call them fairs, learning
opportunities where people move on and try something different. But
it's been rewarding to meet these people from all across
(05:08):
the Greater Cincinnati area help them where I can keep
the relationships going, so personally and professionally, it's been a
great way of giving back to the community and having
a productive retirement.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Speaking of giving back to the community, you volunteer for
several things beyond SCORE. Would you like to talk a
little bit about that.
Speaker 4 (05:32):
I do volunteer for a number of things. In fact,
I've had to drop a couple things since I joined
SCORE because I've gotten busier with SCORE than I expected.
But I've been very active in our community in other ways.
I won't go into details of the mall, but it
really got started with my kids growing up in our
community and volunteering to be a part of organizations through
(05:56):
the local school, the local recreation as. I'm still involved
with my college, so I visit my college quite a bit,
with the university where I graduated from, and it's just
very satisfying to be a part of leading a community
or supporting people who need parent help or other volunteers
(06:21):
in the community, and you get a lot out of it,
So no, I really enjoy it. I'm actually I tell
some people I'm a little busier now than I was
when I was working full time. I just don't have
to get dressed up all the time, but I enjoy it.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
In your new position as co chair, what would you
like to see happened at SCORE?
Speaker 4 (06:45):
Well, that's a good question, and fortunately since I started
back in October, I've had the benefit of the other
co chairs, Kelly and Greg, who have stayed on really
to help me through the transition. During this first three
or four months, we've created a very, very successful large
(07:07):
SCORE chapter. As you know, there are over one hundred
and fifty chapters around the country and Cincinnati has been
one of the leaders among all the SCORE chapters in
the country in terms of size and activity. So I'm
taking on a task that frankly is pretty straightforward. It's
(07:28):
well organized group, well respected among SCORE national and it's
just a matter of picking up and taking the reins.
I mean, SCORE is going through a number of changes
over the year, positive changes where the support system has
been very good and it's given us the ability us,
meaning mentors in the greater Cincinnati area, the ability to
(07:51):
focus all of their time on serving clients and helping
them with their business plans and helping them through educational
program that we have, and connecting with the community in
other ways, for example being a part of being having
partnerships with the chambers and the banks and a number
of groups in the Greater Cincinnati. So that's well established.
(08:14):
I would say my task over the next six months
is to get to know more of the SCORE mentors
in the chapter. I know many of them now, but
there are many I don't know, and to get them
more engaged so volunteer engagement. We have about one hundred
mentors in Greater Cincinnati, and some are heavy mentors. They
(08:35):
see a lot of clients and others are not as
busy with it, and that's to be expected. And that's
one of the beauties of being a SCORE mentor is
you can meter your time against you know how much
time you want.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
To volunteer throughout the year.
Speaker 4 (08:48):
But you know, for me, trying to get more of
them engaged in our SCORE activity on a regular basis
is something that I want to do and emphasize recognition
of all of these SCORE volunteers. You are operating on
your own for the most part working with clients across
(09:09):
the city. You don't go into an office, so it's
sort of a sort of a lonely job, if you will.
You're not a part of an organization every day. We
do have chapter meetings almost every month. That's a chance
for everybody to get together and we communicate with each other.
We do a lot of co mentoring, so we work
with we work together with some clients. Just the level
(09:31):
of the amount of time that many people in the
organization put up against SCORE is something that I want
to recognize publicly see if we can do a better
job of that, because it's it's not really you get
recognition from your client, and in many cases for our mentors.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
That's enough getting that recognition.
Speaker 4 (09:51):
But I also want everybody in the organization to feel
like they're valued and recognize their contributions. So that's an
important priority of mine in my early stage.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
So what do you see as a challenge for the
coming years. Is it getting volunteers or is it getting
people who are starting a business to recognize and use
scores what they have to offer.
Speaker 4 (10:19):
Yeah, so you've mentioned a couple of things. Getting more volunteers. Frankly,
we've done over the years.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
As a chapter, a very.
Speaker 4 (10:28):
Good job of getting new blood into the organization. In fact,
I just in the last couple of weeks, we've graduated
three new mentors just over the last couple of weeks.
So if we can pull in ten to fifteen new
mentors every year, that's great, and we have done that
over the years, so we got to keep doing that,
(10:50):
keep recruiting. It's actually something that we've done well as
a chapter over the years. In terms of client management,
I would say one of the areas, as I mentioned earlier,
is seeing if we can get some of our volunteers
to be more active in the process. You know, we
will many people will take up to four new clients
a month, which is a pretty pretty ambitious schedule, and
(11:14):
we have others who will take on one or two
every six months. And again, you know, it's it's a
volunteer job. You you decide how much you want to
put into it. I'd like to see some of our
mentors a little more active in the process, and so
we're going to focus on that. In terms of clients,
I haven't seen a lot of change over the my
(11:36):
six years and their their attitude and approach on wanting
to start a business. For me personally, people have a
dream they want to start a new business, either while
they're in their twenties or some in some cases while
they're in their forties and fifties. They want to retire
(11:56):
from their current job and start something new. So that
hasn't really change. I think that's been pretty much the
case for decades. I don't see today's conditions as being
any more challenging than it has been in the past,
given what it takes to start a new business.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
So if I wanted to become a Score mentor, what
does it take to do.
Speaker 4 (12:17):
That, Well, it takes signing up really and going to
score dot org. And simply you could see right on
the very front page of score you can either click
on find a mentor, which is what you know most
of what we do, and then we also have an
area that says, you know, I want to be a
mentor and you click on that or I want to
(12:39):
explore it.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
So it's as simple as that.
Speaker 4 (12:41):
If you don't get contacted from a friend or neighbor
or relative about like I did, it's easy to get
on site and make a request and then you go
through a process where you meet with a bunch of
SCORE mentors, You learn about SCORE, what they do, you
decide if that's for you. We like it out is
this is this is how we do it. You go
(13:03):
through a program of about i'd say roughly three months
of training and it's not too rigorous. It's it's simply
going through some training modules online for the most part,
and then going on some calls with clients with established mentors,
doing that two or three times, and if you stick
(13:24):
with it again, you go through this period of training
which is very important and for i say three months
or so, and then you can become a mentor and
you're in the system and you can start taking clients.
So it's pretty straightforward. You could jump in and make
a request and we'll sit down with you and you'll
(13:44):
talk to a number of mentors to tell you what
it's all about. And it's really up to you if
you want to sign up and be a volunteer.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
Do I have to be retired?
Speaker 1 (13:54):
You don't have to be retired.
Speaker 4 (13:56):
As a matter of fact, in our after I'd say
about forty percent of our mentors are fully employed and
this is this is just one of their this is
something they wanted to volunteer to do, and they they
this is their volunteer job, among other things. I'm sure
(14:17):
I just read nationally that it's about fifty to fifty
Fifty percent of the volunteers are employed and fifty are retired.
So the whole startup of SCORE back in the sixties
was actually almost predominantly retired folks. But that's changed. I
can't tell you how fast it changed, but today a
(14:41):
good percentage of our volunteers are fully employed and this
is their way of volunteering and giving back to the community.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
Does it matter what your background is, as long as
it's a business background, I mean it's an accountant, marketing, sales,
and administra things like that.
Speaker 4 (15:01):
It really doesn't matter. I mean, we have people from
all walks of life who become SCORE mentors. We have
people who are experts in various areas of business management, finance,
people from product research, product design, somebody like myself, I
came mostly from sales and customer business development, which means
(15:23):
that I knew I know a little bit about everything,
but not a lot about one thing. We really do
have people from all walks of life, people that manage restaurants,
people who were research and development fellows at big companies,
folks who were you know, marketing experts. And one of
our most active mentor leadership mentors is was an expert
(15:46):
in design, store design and store layout. But you know,
she admit, readily admits that she didn't have a background
in business startups and business management outside of the design world.
But she's learned a lot over the last eight years
and she's one of our most productive mentors. And so know,
(16:08):
the quick answer is, it doesn't matter where you come from.
All that matters is that you want to help people
and be a part of helping them sort out. And
in many cases, as I mentioned, we do co mentor.
If you're mentoring a new client, you spend time with
them and you realize that they have some very specific
help that you can't give them. You have one hundred
(16:31):
other mentors in the Cincinnati area who you can take
advantage of. I mentioned restaurant managers. I have a client
who manages a restaurant. I have very little knowledge of
the restaurant business, but after a couple of meetings, I
told him, I said, hey, we have somebody in our
group who has extensive decades in the food service business.
Let me pull him into our next meeting. He said, great,
(16:53):
and it's been one of the best things I've ever done.
Is we have a lot of people who are subject
matter X, but then just a lot of mentors who
have special skills in certain areas and we can take
advantage of those people.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
Mike, thanks for coming to the podcast. So, if I
wanted to become a mentor, if I needed a or
if I'm a client starting a business, what was that
website again?
Speaker 1 (17:19):
Score dot org Very good.
Speaker 4 (17:22):
That's simple and if you fill it out and they'll
figure out where you live and they'll contact us and
we'll go from there.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
If you would like to sign up with a mentor,
or you would like to become a mentor, go to
score dot org and link on the appropriate link. Please
subscribe to this broadcast and share the link. Mike, thanks
for being on the show. Mike McCracken is the co
chair of SCORE Chapter thirty four serving Greater Cincinnati, Northern Kentucky,
(17:51):
and Southeast Indiana. Thanks again for being here.
Hello.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
My name is Michael Dowson, your host of My SINSI
Small Business Stories. In this episode, I'll be talking with
Mike McCracken, co chair of SCORES Chapter thirty four serving
Greater Cincinnati, Northern Kentucky, Southeast Indiana. We'll find out more
about that, but first we'll be right back after this message.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
Did you know twice as many small businesses survive past
five years when they have the support from a mentor.
My sincey small business story is brought to you by
the volunteer mentors of SCORE Greater Cincinnati, a nonprofit organization
that helps launch hundreds of new small businesses and even
more jobs in Cincinnati, Northern Kentucky, and Indiana every year.
Our vision is to give every person the support they
(00:44):
need to thrive as a small business owner. Visit score
dot org slash Greater Cincinnati to request a free business
mentor or share your own expertise. You can also listen
and subscribe for more stories about overcoming challenges, clearing obstacles,
and owning a successful small business.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Welcome, Mike, how you doing today?
Speaker 1 (01:01):
Very good? Pleasure?
Speaker 2 (01:03):
Glad we're doing this good good. You've had a fairly
long career with P and G. What were your different
jobs there.
Speaker 4 (01:10):
I had a number of jobs. I mean, when you're
with P ANDNG for thirty five plus years, they move
you around quite a bit. As a matter of fact,
I like telling people that I actually relocated seven times
in ten years. So they change roles quite a bit,
you change organizations. That's one of the reasons why you
can stay with a company like P and G for
(01:32):
so long is they do give you the changing roles
and changing organizations and management, and it makes it exciting
and you meet new people in new cities. So yeah,
that was one of the highlights of my career at PNG,
was moving on to different roles, either external sales roles
with customers or internal work with our multifunctional teams at
(01:55):
P ANDNG. It's a great learning experience and I consider
myself very lucky.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
So how long have you been in a score mentor
how long have you been involved with Score?
Speaker 4 (02:05):
I started with Score about a little over six years ago.
It was after I retired from Procter and Gamble, and
so it's been a good ride. I've I've enjoyed it
a lot. It's it's it's all very new to me.
Considering my background with a very big corporation, the idea
(02:26):
of working with people who either want to start a
new business, new small business, or who are in business
and want advice on help and how to grow their business.
So it's been a it's been, it's it's to some
extent it's like starting over for me because it's it's
an experience that I never went through obviously with a
(02:46):
company like Procter and Gamble. So selfishly, I've learned a
lot and it's opened my eyes to a lot of
things in the greater Cincinnati area into small business in general.
But also I know the impact it had, and I
also have benefited from the relationships with other SCORE mentors
and being a part of that organization.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
How did you find out about SCORE?
Speaker 4 (03:09):
Well, that's a good question. I didn't know anything about
SCORE until a former neighbor of mine was with my
wife at one point and she said, would Mike ever
want to be a part of an organization and how
it helped small business?
Speaker 1 (03:25):
And she said, you're give him a call.
Speaker 4 (03:27):
So so it's a friend and neighbor of mine who's
a SCORE mentor today who called me and wrote me
in and then we ended up meeting with another score,
an experienced SCORE member at a local Starbucks, and we
sat down and talked about the what SCORE is all about,
and I signed up. So it was really through a friend,
(03:47):
That's how I found out about it. Didn't know anything
about SCORE before then, So I signed up and went
through the training program and got started up in mid
twenty and eighteen.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
Has it been rewarding for.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
You very much?
Speaker 4 (04:03):
I mentioned earlier about how everything was new to me.
So rewarding for me personally, yes, because I've never started
a small business outside of my grass cutting business when
I was a teenager. But you know, so a lot
of the principles, a lot of the business practices that
(04:24):
I learned at P ANDNG were very helpful. But again
I had the benefit of a large company and a
lot of resources and support. But this is different. This
is starting from scratch and using your own capital and
your own ideas and your own friends and relatives to
get started. So it's been very rewarding for me to
(04:47):
be a part of that and learn from it and
to help people and see how they grow. Not everybody
gets started out, you know, and there's a certain level
number of failures or I shouldn't call them fairs, learning
opportunities where people move on and try something different. But
it's been rewarding to meet these people from all across
(05:08):
the Greater Cincinnati area help them where I can keep
the relationships going, so personally and professionally, it's been a
great way of giving back to the community and having
a productive retirement.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Speaking of giving back to the community, you volunteer for
several things beyond SCORE. Would you like to talk a
little bit about that.
Speaker 4 (05:32):
I do volunteer for a number of things. In fact,
I've had to drop a couple things since I joined
SCORE because I've gotten busier with SCORE than I expected.
But I've been very active in our community in other ways.
I won't go into details of the mall, but it
really got started with my kids growing up in our
community and volunteering to be a part of organizations through
(05:56):
the local school, the local recreation as. I'm still involved
with my college, so I visit my college quite a bit,
with the university where I graduated from, and it's just
very satisfying to be a part of leading a community
or supporting people who need parent help or other volunteers
(06:21):
in the community, and you get a lot out of it,
So no, I really enjoy it. I'm actually I tell
some people I'm a little busier now than I was
when I was working full time. I just don't have
to get dressed up all the time, but I enjoy it.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
In your new position as co chair, what would you
like to see happened at SCORE?
Speaker 4 (06:45):
Well, that's a good question, and fortunately since I started
back in October, I've had the benefit of the other
co chairs, Kelly and Greg, who have stayed on really
to help me through the transition. During this first three
or four months, we've created a very, very successful large
(07:07):
SCORE chapter. As you know, there are over one hundred
and fifty chapters around the country and Cincinnati has been
one of the leaders among all the SCORE chapters in
the country in terms of size and activity. So I'm
taking on a task that frankly is pretty straightforward. It's
(07:28):
well organized group, well respected among SCORE national and it's
just a matter of picking up and taking the reins.
I mean, SCORE is going through a number of changes
over the year, positive changes where the support system has
been very good and it's given us the ability us,
meaning mentors in the greater Cincinnati area, the ability to
(07:51):
focus all of their time on serving clients and helping
them with their business plans and helping them through educational
program that we have, and connecting with the community in
other ways, for example being a part of being having
partnerships with the chambers and the banks and a number
of groups in the Greater Cincinnati. So that's well established.
(08:14):
I would say my task over the next six months
is to get to know more of the SCORE mentors
in the chapter. I know many of them now, but
there are many I don't know, and to get them
more engaged so volunteer engagement. We have about one hundred
mentors in Greater Cincinnati, and some are heavy mentors. They
(08:35):
see a lot of clients and others are not as
busy with it, and that's to be expected. And that's
one of the beauties of being a SCORE mentor is
you can meter your time against you know how much
time you want.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
To volunteer throughout the year.
Speaker 4 (08:48):
But you know, for me, trying to get more of
them engaged in our SCORE activity on a regular basis
is something that I want to do and emphasize recognition
of all of these SCORE volunteers. You are operating on
your own for the most part working with clients across
(09:09):
the city. You don't go into an office, so it's
sort of a sort of a lonely job, if you will.
You're not a part of an organization every day. We
do have chapter meetings almost every month. That's a chance
for everybody to get together and we communicate with each other.
We do a lot of co mentoring, so we work
with we work together with some clients. Just the level
(09:31):
of the amount of time that many people in the
organization put up against SCORE is something that I want
to recognize publicly see if we can do a better
job of that, because it's it's not really you get
recognition from your client, and in many cases for our mentors.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
That's enough getting that recognition.
Speaker 4 (09:51):
But I also want everybody in the organization to feel
like they're valued and recognize their contributions. So that's an
important priority of mine in my early stage.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
So what do you see as a challenge for the
coming years. Is it getting volunteers or is it getting
people who are starting a business to recognize and use
scores what they have to offer.
Speaker 4 (10:19):
Yeah, so you've mentioned a couple of things. Getting more volunteers. Frankly,
we've done over the years.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
As a chapter, a very.
Speaker 4 (10:28):
Good job of getting new blood into the organization. In fact,
I just in the last couple of weeks, we've graduated
three new mentors just over the last couple of weeks.
So if we can pull in ten to fifteen new
mentors every year, that's great, and we have done that
over the years, so we got to keep doing that,
(10:50):
keep recruiting. It's actually something that we've done well as
a chapter over the years. In terms of client management,
I would say one of the areas, as I mentioned earlier,
is seeing if we can get some of our volunteers
to be more active in the process. You know, we
will many people will take up to four new clients
a month, which is a pretty pretty ambitious schedule, and
(11:14):
we have others who will take on one or two
every six months. And again, you know, it's it's a
volunteer job. You you decide how much you want to
put into it. I'd like to see some of our
mentors a little more active in the process, and so
we're going to focus on that. In terms of clients,
I haven't seen a lot of change over the my
(11:36):
six years and their their attitude and approach on wanting
to start a business. For me personally, people have a
dream they want to start a new business, either while
they're in their twenties or some in some cases while
they're in their forties and fifties. They want to retire
(11:56):
from their current job and start something new. So that
hasn't really change. I think that's been pretty much the
case for decades. I don't see today's conditions as being
any more challenging than it has been in the past,
given what it takes to start a new business.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
So if I wanted to become a Score mentor, what
does it take to do.
Speaker 4 (12:17):
That, Well, it takes signing up really and going to
score dot org. And simply you could see right on
the very front page of score you can either click
on find a mentor, which is what you know most
of what we do, and then we also have an
area that says, you know, I want to be a
mentor and you click on that or I want to
(12:39):
explore it.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
So it's as simple as that.
Speaker 4 (12:41):
If you don't get contacted from a friend or neighbor
or relative about like I did, it's easy to get
on site and make a request and then you go
through a process where you meet with a bunch of
SCORE mentors, You learn about SCORE, what they do, you
decide if that's for you. We like it out is
this is this is how we do it. You go
(13:03):
through a program of about i'd say roughly three months
of training and it's not too rigorous. It's it's simply
going through some training modules online for the most part,
and then going on some calls with clients with established mentors,
doing that two or three times, and if you stick
(13:24):
with it again, you go through this period of training
which is very important and for i say three months
or so, and then you can become a mentor and
you're in the system and you can start taking clients.
So it's pretty straightforward. You could jump in and make
a request and we'll sit down with you and you'll
(13:44):
talk to a number of mentors to tell you what
it's all about. And it's really up to you if
you want to sign up and be a volunteer.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
Do I have to be retired?
Speaker 1 (13:54):
You don't have to be retired.
Speaker 4 (13:56):
As a matter of fact, in our after I'd say
about forty percent of our mentors are fully employed and
this is this is just one of their this is
something they wanted to volunteer to do, and they they
this is their volunteer job, among other things. I'm sure
(14:17):
I just read nationally that it's about fifty to fifty
Fifty percent of the volunteers are employed and fifty are retired.
So the whole startup of SCORE back in the sixties
was actually almost predominantly retired folks. But that's changed. I
can't tell you how fast it changed, but today a
(14:41):
good percentage of our volunteers are fully employed and this
is their way of volunteering and giving back to the community.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
Does it matter what your background is, as long as
it's a business background, I mean it's an accountant, marketing, sales,
and administra things like that.
Speaker 4 (15:01):
It really doesn't matter. I mean, we have people from
all walks of life who become SCORE mentors. We have
people who are experts in various areas of business management, finance,
people from product research, product design, somebody like myself, I
came mostly from sales and customer business development, which means
(15:23):
that I knew I know a little bit about everything,
but not a lot about one thing. We really do
have people from all walks of life, people that manage restaurants,
people who were research and development fellows at big companies,
folks who were you know, marketing experts. And one of
our most active mentor leadership mentors is was an expert
(15:46):
in design, store design and store layout. But you know,
she admit, readily admits that she didn't have a background
in business startups and business management outside of the design world.
But she's learned a lot over the last eight years
and she's one of our most productive mentors. And so know,
(16:08):
the quick answer is, it doesn't matter where you come from.
All that matters is that you want to help people
and be a part of helping them sort out. And
in many cases, as I mentioned, we do co mentor.
If you're mentoring a new client, you spend time with
them and you realize that they have some very specific
help that you can't give them. You have one hundred
(16:31):
other mentors in the Cincinnati area who you can take
advantage of. I mentioned restaurant managers. I have a client
who manages a restaurant. I have very little knowledge of
the restaurant business, but after a couple of meetings, I
told him, I said, hey, we have somebody in our
group who has extensive decades in the food service business.
Let me pull him into our next meeting. He said, great,
(16:53):
and it's been one of the best things I've ever done.
Is we have a lot of people who are subject
matter X, but then just a lot of mentors who
have special skills in certain areas and we can take
advantage of those people.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
Mike, thanks for coming to the podcast. So, if I
wanted to become a mentor, if I needed a or
if I'm a client starting a business, what was that
website again?
Speaker 1 (17:19):
Score dot org Very good.
Speaker 4 (17:22):
That's simple and if you fill it out and they'll
figure out where you live and they'll contact us and
we'll go from there.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
If you would like to sign up with a mentor,
or you would like to become a mentor, go to
score dot org and link on the appropriate link. Please
subscribe to this broadcast and share the link. Mike, thanks
for being on the show. Mike McCracken is the co
chair of SCORE Chapter thirty four serving Greater Cincinnati, Northern Kentucky,
(17:51):
and Southeast Indiana. Thanks again for being here.
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