September ‘Out of the Blue’ features Tennessee Small Business Development Center [+VIDEO]

Kayla Miller, associate director of the statewide network of centers under the Tennessee Small Business Development Center, was a guest on the September edition of the “Out of the Blue,” the television magazine program of Middle Tennessee State University. (MTSU photo illustration by Joe Poe)

MURFREESBORO, Tenn. — For the September edition of “Out of the Blue,” the television magazine program for Middle Tennessee State University, viewers get a closer look at the myriad services offered by the Tennessee Small Business Development Center, a longtime partner of the Jones College of Business.

Kayla Miller, associate director of the statewide network of centers, sat down with program host Andrew Oppmann, vice president for marketing and communications at MTSU, to discuss the support the center offices across the region and state provides to small business owners and prospective entrepreneurs.

Watch the full segment below:

MTSU oversees 15 offices statewide of the Tennessee Small Business Development Center — including a Murfreesboro office inside the Rutherford County Chamber of Commerce — in partnership with the U.S. Small Business Association. It offers no-cost business consultation and training services to entrepreneurs, with the Murfreesboro center office, hosted by Jones College, serving Rutherford and 13 other counties in the region.

Miller said the TSBDC assists a variety of clients through its 14 different service centers across the state, in urban and rural areas, through partnerships with other four-year and two-year higher education institutions in Tennessee.

“… About half of our clients come in with an idea, or they’ve kind of started, and they maybe need some funding or need to write a business plan,” Miller said. “And then the other half are those existing businesses that either need some additional funding — they want to grow — (or) maybe they are having a specific issue with human resources, or they want to start exporting. So it really does vary based on whatever the need is.”

Celebrating its 40^th anniversary this year, TSBDC has served almost 140,000 clients, including 40,000 minority-owned businesses, 56,000 women-owned businesses and over 7,500 veteran-owned businesses.

“So we looked back at all of our annual summaries over the past 40 years and found out that we have helped quite a number of people, over 300,000 individuals, and we’ve helped people access over $2 billion in capital over our 40 years,” Miller said.

Miller added Jones College faculty and staff serve as key resources that the centers can tap for their expertise as well as training and internship opportunities. Learn more at tsbdc.org.

Andrew Oppmann, vice president of marketing and communications — Andrew Oppmann

“Out of the Blue” is available anytime on the university’s YouTube channel, the True Blue TV channel, Roku, Apple TV and Amazon Fire TV. It also airs on Murfreesboro cable Channel 9 daily at 6 and 11 a.m. and 1:30 p.m.; NewsChannel5+ at 6:30 p.m. Sundays; via streaming on MTSU’s Jazz Network on WMOT HD2 and through WMOT.org at 7 a.m. on the first Sunday of each month; and on other cable outlets in Middle Tennessee, so check local listings.

It is also available as a podcast on iTunes and Google Play and as individual interview segments on Spotify at https://spoti.fi/453hxg3.

Watch previous episodes of “Out of the Blue” at https://mtsunews.com/out-of-the-blue.

— Jimmy Hart (Jimmy.Hart@mtsu.edu)