Trump trumped: Business training is back after Olympia, Lacey fill gap left by feds

A Thurston County business training program, one of several around the country that fell out of favor with the Trump Administration, is back after the city of Lacey decided to join the city of Olympia in funding the program.

The new program is called the ScaleUp Training Series, and it kicks off Jan. 18. The series consists of three four-session courses called Business TuneUp, Build Your Market and Financial Mastery. All of it is offered through the Thurston Economic Development Council Center for Business & Innovation, which operates out of the Lacey campus of South Puget Sound Community College.

The previous program was simply known as ScaleUp and it received $200,000 from the U.S. Small Business Administration. But over the summer, the Trump Administration had a change of heart.

“The program was under review by the Trump Administration and the decision was made to let the program expire in its entirety at the end of September,” said Melanie Norton, a spokeswoman for the SBA’s Northwest region.

That decision came as a shock locally, because the two-year-old program had produced some strong results for a number of business owners. After participating in ScaleUp in 2016, Kevin Leneker of Olympia-based Single Handed Consulting said his revenue grew 57 percent and he increased his staff to 25 from 10.

The city of Olympia, via a community development block grant, was already providing $25,000 for the TuneUp course, so that program was folded into the ScaleUp series. Then, the city of Lacey added $40,000, said Celia Nightingale, director of the center.

Because Olympia and Lacey have made financial contributions, most of that money will be used to pay tuition for business owners from those two cities. Otherwise, tuition for the entire ScaleUp series is $795, while TuneUp alone is $395.

Some of the city funding also will be spent on marketing the program in Olympia and Lacey.

Nightingale said they have also tried to make the program more flexible for business owners by removing some of the restrictions set by the old ScaleUp program, such as requiring a certain amount of revenue and years in business. Participants also can take the entire series or just one or two courses, she said.

“The results were so positive,” Nightingale said. “We just needed to figure out how to make it work.”

For more information, or to register for the program, go to www.scaleupthurston.org.

This story was originally published December 16, 2017 at 7:00 AM with the headline "Trump trumped: Business training is back after Olympia, Lacey fill gap left by feds."