SBA Head Looks Beyond Loans to Help Small Business
The SBA has grown significantly under Mills. It had shrunk under the Bush administration, with its work force falling to 2,000 employees from 2,800. There are now 3,000 employees under Mills. In January, the SBA regained its status as a Cabinet-level agencythat it lost during the Bush years.

Mills spoke with The Associated Press recently. Here are excerpts, edited for brevity and clarity.

What does the SBA see as the greatest challenges that small business owners face?

Over the past several years, the greatest challenge that small business owners faced was access to capital. Because in October 2008, credit markets froze and small businesses rely on banks for credit and the banks were not lending, particularly to small businesses.

At the Small Business Administration, we run a guarantee program in which we have a $90 billion portfolio of guaranteed loans. So we're one of the most important actors in giving access to capital to small businesses when the market is not functioning. And we were able to step into the market with enhanced loan guarantees. In the (American) Recovery (and Reinvestment) Act (of 2009), we raised our loan guarantees to 90 percent (of the amount of money borrowed, up from 75 percent to 85 percent) and we reduced or eliminated or the fees. Our (loan) volumes went up and the last fiscal year, we had a record year. We did $30 billion worth of loan guarantees and that is $30 billion into the hands of small businesses.

So, we are now back at above 2008 levels at the SBA in terms of loan volume. But loans are not the only thing that small businesses need. It turns out, if you give them the money without also some other tools, it is not as effective. So, a second critical aspect of what we do that small businesses benefit from is mentoring, advice and counseling. And we have data that shows that if you are small business who has a long-term counselor, you get better sales, you get more longevity, you hire more people.

We have a network across this country of small business counselors. We have over 800 Small Business Development Centers. We have 12,000 SCORE volunteers that provide one on one counseling and advice. We have 110 women's business centers and if you go on www.sba.gov and you put in your zip code, you will get the names and phone numbers and e-mails of our resource partners around the country who can provide this help and counseling. And the best news for small businesses is that it's free.

Do small business owners know what SBA offers? How do you get them to learn about your services?

One of our important focuses is outreach because small business owners are very busy and they may or may not know about resources that are in their vicinity and free that they can take advantage of. So we spend an enormous amount of time doing things like going out in social media, working with our revised website, which has now quite a sharp improvement, increase in reach. We are one of the most vibrant government websites in terms of activity because small businesses have now discovered it. And we over the last several years have completely redone the website. So now it's much easier to navigate. We're on a track to take that even to the next level and incorporate small business information from all federal agencies in one place, in business.usa.gov.

Small businesses like a dry cleaner on Main Street have very different needs than a high-growth entrepreneurial company that aspires to double and triple (their revenue). We have help for mainstream small businesses -- whether they need an equipment loan to expand or buy the building next door or whether they need advice and counseling. And we have different kinds of capital and advice and mentoring for our high-growth entrepreneurs.

We're still hearing that many banks are wary about lending to small businesses? What is your sense of the lending climate?

In the last several years, we've brought over a thousand community banks back to SBA lending who had not made a loan since 2007. In addition, this year we went back to our bigger banks, our 13 largest lenders and each of them has stepped up and committed a total of $20 billion in incremental small business lending over the next three years. So we have increased activity from both community banks and our larger banks because they realize that the pendulum swung too far and they are refocusing on getting capital into the hands of small businesses. Our largest two banks are JPMorgan and Wells Fargo and they are participating as well as USBancorp , Sovereign Bank, Key Bank , Bank of America , PNC , M&T , Huntington .

What advice do you have for an owner who's having a hard time getting a loan?