Jane Sawyer has been on the staff of the U.S. Small Business Administration in Hawaii since 1993, which has given her a good vantage point from which to assess business trends in the state.
In 2009 she became its Hawaii district director, the first woman to be named to that post, succeeding Andrew "Andy" Poepoe, who had been at the job since 1991.
Like Poepoe, Sawyer got the lead job as a result of applying for it.
"It’s a typical process," she said Monday. "Apply for the position, go through a series of interviews and evaluations. They made the final selection after national posting in November 2009."
She said some people seemed surprised that she was chosen, perhaps because she was a woman, but she did have "the local knowledge and diversified experience in the office," having started with the agency as a volunteer, then in 1993 becoming its assistant director for business development.
As district director, Sawyer oversees a staff of eight people on Oahu and two on Guam. That’s down from 22 people overall when Poepoe was at the helm, but Sawyer says the staff who remain have mostly been with the agency for years, and "that means we have some great technical expertise."
Also, she added, "SBA has gotten a lot better in marketing and delivery of its services, in trying to find efficiencies and streamlining. … Also, a lot of it has gone online, so we’re really able to reach more businesses a little more effectively."
Sawyer is a graduate of Bear Creek High School, in Morrison, Colo., and has a bachelor’s degree in fine arts and educationfrom the University of Colorado at Boulder. She was a middle school teacher for a few years in Littleton, Colo., then started doing sales and marketing as a way to help pay for graduate school. She had intended to earn a master’s degree, but romance intervened and she ended up coming to Hawaii with her prospective husband, who intended to start a business here. That didn’t pan out, however, and the marriage never happened either.
"I didn’t settle down and get married," she said. "I ended up staying and he left."
These days she lives in Kailua, where, she said, "I go sailing, play in my garden, ride my bike when I can, and just keep working with small businesses."
QUESTION: What is the mission of the Small Business Administration?
ANSWER: It’s really to assist small business, counsel, protect their interests and help them grow, so we can preserve competitive enterprise and strengthen the economy.
Q: How does the agency do that?
A: We work through an extensive network of partners to help us deliver the three C’s. That’s capital, contracting and consulting, for small businesses, to help them start, grow and prosper.
Q: Almost 10 years ago to this day I spoke with then-district director Andy Poepoe and at that time he said the SBA in the Hawaii district had about 500 outstanding loans, worth about $63 million. Where do those figures stand now?
A: Well, our finance performance is now recorded on an annual basis by loan-approval numbers, and the total loan portfolio now is reviewed on a national basis. But on an annual basis, this year we’ve got some remarkable stuff going on with lending because there’s a waiver of the borrower fee for our smaller loans, up to $150,000, so it’s a savings to the small business. This year, we’ve made 320 loans, for $42.4 million, as of the end of April. … In (fiscal) 2012, we did $64.4 million. In 2013 we did $72.9 million. So this year we definitely could be hitting a record in number of loans, and in dollar volume.
Q: Are those to only new businesses?
A: All types of businesses. There’s a place for an SBA loan probably at any stage in the business life cycle. We have some smaller businesses who are in that beginner’s stage, in the first three years. They’ll get a smaller working capital loan. But we also see businesses who are getting long-term, fixed-asset loans to, say, buy a property or build a facility. That can be a share of the project up to $5 million.
Q: What kinds of business are the main borrowers these days?
A: It really is a wide variety. We’ll see wholesale production, retail, a lot of restaurants, because we provide capital to small businesses when they can’t find reasonable terms in another place.
Q: And yet your default rate is only marginally higher than regular banks?
A: Yeah. Our default rate might be 2.5 to 3 percent … And one of the things people don’t understand … is that we aren’t lending taxpayer money. It’s the borrower fees that pay for the program. So the majority of the loans are made good and the businesses will go on and potentially even borrow from SBA again during the terms of their business.
Q: Poepoe said back then that the agency had counseled about 21,000 individuals the previous year (2003). What is the number for 2013, and what do you counsel people about?
A: SBA has changed its goals and metrics to support more outcomes versus outputs, but these days I would say it’s more like 9,000 to 10,000, if we include presentations, forums and trainings.
Our counseling — delivered through a network of partners, as well as my business specialists here in the office — is about how to get federal contracts, financing packages, where to go to get your business started. … SBA has a couple of critical partners where we fund resource programs; our primary ones are the Small Business Development Centers, SCORE, the Women’s Business Centers and the Emerging Leaders Initiative, and my district includes Hawaii, the territories of American Samoa and Guam, and the insular affiliated Pacific islands.
Q: How is business doing in those areas?
A: Well, the recession had its impact there, as fewer people traveled and government spending contracted a little. We know that the buildup that a lot of people were expecting to happen in Guam was delayed, so some of their growth has been a little less than expected. But we are seeing that start to come back as plans come back on the table for who and when will relocate …
Q: You’re talking about the military?
A: Yes, the military there. And we have some investment and attention coming to our area with the Pacific pivot. Our federal work here is still pretty strong, due to our 8A (socially and economically disadvantaged business program) certifications and our HUBZone (Historically Underutilized Business Zones) certifications, and things along that line.
Q: The Star-Advertiser recently published a commentary noting that Americans established 27 percent fewer businesses in 2011 than in the five years prior, and since 2008, more businesses have exited the market than entered it. Have you noticed that here?
A: I can’t say that I have. I think we have a very entrepreneurial community, and I think perhaps that as there haven’t been as many jobs coming up on the mainland, people have shifted their thinking and looked for alternative employment experiences here. … I know people who have three or four different businesses running. One may be their primary thing, … but they’re also interested in, say, creating another product or service, so we see them being smaller businesses and very entrepreneurial.
Q: What would you say are the main obstacles or challenges to running a business these days?
A: I think it is the cost of doing business, which includes responding to regulations, having to pay taxes, you know, just the cost of actually having a physical business today, or storefront, particularly in Hawaii where the cost of real estate is high. The cost of actually having full-time employees can also be high, both for wages and benefits. All those kinds of things just automatically roll into what it costs a business owner to actually run a business.
Q: Do you think the higher minimum wage just signed into law is going to help?
A: I think it may have less effect than some people might think on how small businesses design their work force. … I (also) think minimum-wage jobs here are far fewer than we think. I’m not necessarily in favor of mandating a wage — but there are economic pressures that require you to pay your employees a decent wage.
Q: Are you hearing any feedback on the Affordable Care Act?
A: I think there’s a lot of concern about it, and what we’ve been encouraging small businesses to do is understand their responsibilities under the law.
I think there’s more impact with Affordable Care Act on the self-employed, who now can get health care at a better rate than what might have been available to them before. …
Small businesses need to take the time they’ve been granted … to really look at what they’re responsibilities are and get their reporting in place.
Q: Have you been counseling businesses on that?
A: Generally what we do is free workshops, where we work with insurers and bring in an accountant or a CPA to talk about how to look at some of those different things, like the tax credits that are available, or you count up and measure where you might qualify, and just to get the right IRS or HHS (Department of Health and Human Services) or Department of Labor forms, those kinds of things.
Q: Do you think Hawaii’s Prepaid Health Care Act skews businesses to hire people at less than 20 hours a week, to avoid health care costs?
Q: I think that is something they evaluate, so you may see a retail store that does schedule people under 20 hours a week.
Q: Where are the growth areas right now? Is government contracting still a large field for that?
A: I think we’re still seeing a lot of strength in that, and then with construction coming up and rail coming in, we’re seeing different pockets that will start developing. We’re still seeing new retail development. We’re seeing development in information services and IT, in transportation, some of those kinds of things. And then it tends to be cyclical, changing a new food service or restaurant. …
Q: You offer workshops on how to get government contracts, right?
A: Yes. We help people with government contracting: what you need to do; how to identify if your product or service is something Uncle Sam is ready to buy; how do you respond to a bid, how do you write a bid, how to do your capability statements, how to market yourself to the contracting officers and small business utilization officers. We have what we call our business development series, that we offer with some of our local partners. … We have a procurement technical assistant center here that we work with, and they do one-on-one assistance with businesses who are looking for certification, to get their first government contract.
Q: What kinds of businesses have grown up around that in Hawaii?
A: A lot have come up through construction and the trades; we have got some architecture, some engineering; we’ve got some information services technology; there’s base services — we’ve done a lot of building with hangars and military housing. We help those people with becoming prime contractors as well as subcontractors. We have demolition services, environmental remediation. Some of these companies through their federal contracts have even expanded beyond Hawaii and are building offices, say, in Texas, Maryland, Virginia … you know, taking on contracts. …
Q: What are you expecting for small businesses around here in the years ahead? Looking good or what?
A: Well, it still is the mainstay of our economy, and I think we’re going to be still growing and be committed to getting the best tools out there so they can grow and prosper and create jobs.
Q: When you say mainstay, is that in terms of size or of sector? Tourism, for example, people would say that’s a mainstay.
A: Well, I think that if you look at tourism, you’ve got the big players in there and the big developers and things like that. But if you look at how services are actually delivered, whether we’re talking about most of the tour drivers, or we’re looking at the restaurants, the hospitality that makes this experience what it is, it’s delivered by small businesses.
Q: Why would anyone want to be a small business person, considering all the headaches?
A: I think there are any number of reasons. The sense of independence and self-determination; the sense that, you know, we all think that we can do something better than the next guy. Or we have a different way we want to do it. Or we want to set our own hours. …
I think a lot of people do find out that sometimes they feel the business owns them, and it’s not all about just being able to go surf when you want to, particularly as that business grows.
But it could start out just wanting to be your own boss, or you need some extra income so that, you know, you can buy a new house, or send the kids to the school that you want to. … Anything can motivate you. It is oftentimes fulfilling some dream. And employment isn’t what it used to be.
Q: Well, I would imagine entrepreneurship isn’t what it used to be either.
A: Yeah, sometimes it was just a matter of necessity, and now I think there are more choices, more options and more paths to follow. And we (at the SBA) just try to make sure the people have the tools to make good decisions and make those things become real.
