Telegraph photo by DEAN SHALHOUP State Sen. Cindy Rosenwald, a Democrat who represents six of Nashua's wards, updates a group of local small business owners on state legislative affairs during a Chamber of Commerce-sponsored roundtable Tuesday. (Telegraph photo by DEAN SHALHOUP)

NASHUA – As did fellow local small-business owner Jitender Miglani a few minutes earlier, Joyce Goodwin jokingly cited a “midlife crisis” as the reason she decided to open a specialized child care center in Nashua.

She said she took her idea to Amy Basset, a regional administrator and district director at the New Hampshire Small Business Development Center, the go-to agency for answers to the plethora of questions small-business owners inevitably face, especially early on in their endeavors.

“I met Amy, and she helped me through” the process, Goodwin said Tuesday morning at a small-business roundtable organized by the Greater Nashua Chamber of Commerce and hosted by Rivier University.

Goodwin was well on her way. “But then,” she said, “the pandemic hit.”

Today, Goodwin’s Granite Start Early Learning Center has rebounded and is doing quite well at its new Perimeter Road facility, Goodwin told the dozen or so small-business owners, NH SBDC leaders and state Sens. Kevin Avard, whose district covers three Nashua wards and several area towns, and Cindy Rosenwald, who represents the Nashua’s other six wards.

Telegraph photo by DEAN SHALHOUP State Sen. Kevin Avard, a Republican who represents three Nashua wards and several area towns, discusses legislative issues during a Chamber of Commerce roundtable Tuesday. Listening are Paul Racioppi, co-owner with his wife of Elizabeth Grady salon, Small Business Development Center state director Liz Gray, and State Sen. Cindy Rosenwald, a Democrat who represents six Nashua wards. (Telegraph photo by DEAN SHALHOUP)

Goodwin and each of the small business men and women who shared their stories agreed that had it not been for the SBDC, their dreams of being among the scores of New Hampshire-based small business owners could very well be on life-support, if they were still around at all.

Liz Gray, the SBDC’s state director and the moderator of Tuesday’s roundtable, cautioned the participants at the outset that while the worst of the pandemic appears to have passed, “it is still very much an issue. The recovery period is going to take awhile,” she added.

Perhaps chief among the lingering pandemic-related problems is the owners’ inability to hire, and retain, good employees at a managable salary.

The dilemma is perhaps the most pressing issue for the Greater Nashua Chamber of Commerce’s member businesses, president and CEO Wendy Hunt said.

“Many of our members have come to us asking how to deal with the labor shortage,” she said. “And I have no answers.”

Telegraph photo by DEAN SHALHOUP Adria Bagshaw, vice president of several-generation Nashua specialty meanufactuiring company WH Bagshaw, makes a point while addressing a roundtable of fellow small business owners Tuesday. (Telegraph photo by DEAN SHALHOUP)

She said the organization “has been looking at job fairs” to try and drum up prospective employees.

The shortage of qualified employees is a statewide issue, said Hunt, who used a glaring statistic as an example: The number of social services employees working with disabled adults — such as Nashua’s PLUS Company and Gateways Community Services — is down 33 percent across the state.

Avard, the state senator, said he learned about the SBDC back when he had Gray, the state director, as a guest on his Access Nashua CTV show.

As a small businessman himself – the owner and operator of a carpet-cleaning business – Avard said he’s grateful he had Gray on his show.

“Now I know where to turn if I need help,” he told the group. “They do a lot for the small businesses of New Hampshire.”

Telegraph photo by DEAN SHALHOUP Liz Gray, state director of the New Hampshire Small Business Development Center, addresses a roundtable of local small business owners at Rivier University on Tuesday. Next to her are Paul Racioppi, a Nashua business owner, and State Sen. Kevin Avard, a Republican who represents three Nashua wards and several area towns. (Telegraph photo by DEAN SHALHOUP)

Statewide, the SBDC, which is based at the University of New Hampshire’s Peter T. Paul College of Business & Economics, is divided into six regions. The Merrimack Valley Region includes Greater Nashua.

There are roughly 1,000 SBDC service centers nationwide.

Each state SBDC, including New Hampshire, receives up to 50 percent of its funding from the federal Small Business Administration — provided the state centers match those dollars with funds from their respective state budgets or other sources.

That made for some anxious moments during the recent state budget season, center officials said, but the funding did eventually come through.

While that effort proved successful, Rosenwald said a push by some lawmakers to earmark some funding to help start-up businesses get off the ground fell short.

“We couldn’t get it over the finish line,” Rosenwald said of the legislation. “But there still may be an opportunity” to secure the funding, she added.

One of the business owners present Tuesday said he and his wife faced a rather unique funding issue: They were denied so-called “Main Street Rescue” funding and other local assistance because their store is part of a franchise.

“We were shut out, so we had to be more creative in order to compete with the much bigger businesses,” said Paul Racioppi, who, with his wife Liz, operate the Elizabeth Grady salon in Nashua.

Why that was a problem escapes Racioppi. “We couldn’t get an answer … just that we were (ineligible for funding) because we’re a franchise.

“So we just keep struggling along,” he added.

Michael Green, who runs Navigo Sports Tours, a travel agency that specializes in booking tours to sports-related destinations, was especially hard hit for obvious reasons.

“Basically there was zero travel going on in 2020, and people are still hesitant” to travel for leisure, he said. Add to that the “supply issues” Green has faced regarding far fewer available flights, and he’s in a position where “we’re just holding on, hoping to get to that boom,” he said.

Rosenwald, meanwhile, said she and allied legislators are hoping that some of the $47 million in discretionary funding the Department of Health and Human Services has received will be designated to help alleviate the labor shortage.

Charlene Carignan, a principal of Circuit Connect Inc., an electronics manufacturer based in Nashua, encouraged her fellow small-business owners to sign up for one or more seminars the SBDC has been putting together.

“Three of us took resiliency training, it was a wealth of information,” Carignan said, referring to one of the seminars.

With cyber-security issues on many people’s minds, largely as a result of the disruption caused by the pandemic, the center’s leadership has been working on putting together a seminar or program on the subject, Gray told the group.

Security issues “are affecting many people, and there will be more,” she added.

Dean Shalhoup may be reached at 594-1256 or dshalhoup@nashuatelegraph.com.

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