SBA Administrator Visits NH

SBA Administrator Linda McMahon, left, and Greta Johansson, district director of the NH district office of the U.S. SBA. Photo by Christine Carignan.

Linda McMahon, administrator of the Small Business Administration (SBA), spent her first official visit to NH on Monday, Nov. 13 by visiting the NH School for Mechanical Trades and holding a roundtable with 19 NH business owners and executives to hear their concerns and learn how the SBA can better meet their needs.

“I really like being on the ground,” she says hearing first hand what is on the minds of small business owners. McMahon, co-founder and former CEO of WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment), is visiting all 68SBA district offices for her Ignite Tour. The Granite State is her 26^th stop and her second official visit to a New England state after Connecticut, where the WWE is based.

During the business roundtable with NH executives, MacMahon says participants touched on concerns about health care, the opioid crisis and tax reform, but most of the conversation centered around the lack of skilled workers to fill open positions.

“We have 6 million jobs in the country and we can’t fill them,” McMahon says during an interview at the offices of Business NH Magazine.” She says as a member of the President’s Cabinet, she is working with other departments to make sure there are coordinated efforts for addressing the workforce issue and that the SBA is working with other agencies using the tools it has at its disposal.

“It’s a mission of mine that the SBA is not the best kept secret,” she says, explaining many people think of its loan programs, but are not as familiar with its key partners that offer business counseling services, including the Small Business Development Center, the Women’s Business Center and SCORE.

She also stresses the SBA offers loan programs that benefit startups as well as established businesses looking to grow and helps companies with their export efforts.

McMahon says she is seeing optimism among business owners and believes current efforts at tax reform will help small businesses and is hopeful health care reform will happen as well. “We see entrepreneurs who want to take the next step. If we do not move these forward, we may see that enthusiasm wane,” MacMahon warns. “If they had more capital to invest from tax cuts, they would reinvest back into their businesses. We want more businesses to grow and more businesses to start.”

McMahon is hopeful her outreach effort will shine a spotlight on the services and loan programs available through the SBA and bring new clients to its doors. To that end, the SBA is “reimagining” its social media efforts to reach more businesses. “We want the SBA to be better well known and operate as efficiently as we can,” she says. That includes upgrading technology to simplify loan processing.