Rise Above

Many in the nationwide network of SCORE Association volunteers, more than 12,000 retired business leaders, like to boast about the long history of companies they helped start and jobs they helped create.

That success, including 20,000 new businesses counseled annually since 1964, doesn't only stem from helping would-be entrepreneurs with what to do. The group's volunteers, says CEO W. Kenneth Yancey, also excels at helping clients with what not to do.

That could mean advising someone to hold out for better financing terms. It could also mean talking a client out of opening a restaurant and into opening something with a better success rate. “Everybody who has access to the cash register,” in the restaurant business, quips Yancey, “is a partner.”