SUNBURY – Ever have that great business idea? Maybe it’s a product, a restaurant or a service you’d like to provide to the masses, but you just don’t know how to get started. Mike McManus, Director at the Small Business Assistance Network, says they are here to help, “We wanted to make sure that individuals who aren’t exactly sure who to talk too and where to go to start their business had a point of contact that’s reliable and trustworthy.”
The Small Business Assistance Network is a fairly new office within the Department of Community and Economic Development, established in 2013 under a different name, and McManus says, it serves many useful functions like being an initial point of contact, a knowledge base for starting your business and even state registration help, “We can provide registration assistance resources. So we provide individuals a step by step process that they need to go through to get properly registered with the state of Pennsylvania.”
McManus says that there is a lot of information to go through to start a business, and that an office like his can be very helpful, “We also can provide a vast amount of information on the hundreds of programs that the state offers. So we want to ensure that individuals are getting a comprehensive view of the resources that are available for them to start their business.”
For more information on how to get your business started, contact the Small Business Assistance Network at 1-800-280-3801, or you can email them at sban@pa.gov, or just visit their site at dced.pa.gov/sban. (Christopher Elio)