NC Secretary of State Marshall talks business with biz owners

North Carolina Secretary of State Elaine F. Marshall said the surprising amount of unexpected growth in new businesses over the last four years has ushered in what is now referred to as the “new era of entrepreneurship.”

Marshall was addressing several local small businesses owners during a roundtable discussion at College of The Albemarle, Monday.

The business owners discussed with Marshall the circumstances that led to them creating their own businesses and the local resources that assisted them during that process. The Small Business Center at COA and Elizabeth City State University’s Small Business Technology Development Center were among the agencies and organizations acknowledged for their assistance.

Marshall, the secretary of state since 1997, also gave a presentation on a state small business initiative known as Rural RISE NC, or Resources for Innovators, Start-ups and Entrepreneurs.

In mid-2020, the SoS office starting seeing “explosive growth” in new business creation, something Marshall said was not expected. After all, the COVID-19 pandemic had only just begun.

“We closed down in March, and beginning April, May, June, all of sudden we saw the number of businesses being formed going up, up and up,” she said. “I’m talking about corporations, LLCs and nonprofits.”

The majority of the new business startups were LLCs, or limited liability companies, Marshall said.

“Our data show that in the last three years North Carolina has been a hotbed for new business,” the secretary said. “Since 2021, hold on to your seats, we have been creating between 650-700 new businesses every business day we’re open.”

In 2023, North Carolina saw its second-highest number of new businesses created with 172,000, she said.

Marshall, who is a former small business owner herself, said her office wanted to know more about the entrepreneurs behind the unexpected growth in new businesses. Through a survey of about 4,000 business owners, the state discovered a “significant gap in awareness of the resources that are available to them,” she said.

RISE is composed of key information gleaned from the surveys to compile a county-by-county list of resources available to new and existing small businesses.

One small business owner who spoke was Malenie Stroman, owner of Stuck With You, an LLC dedicated to providing educational awareness of juvenile diabetes. Stroman said she has two children, including a 7-year-old daughter who at age 2 was discovered to have Type 1 diabetes. She started her company, and a nonprofit of the same name, because Elizabeth City does not offer many resources to help raise a child with Type 1 diabetes.

“No daycare would touch my daughter in this area, unless I had to go and administer her insulin myself,” Stroman said.

The mother talked about some of the challenges involved in starting her company.

“Some of the obstacles of getting started were finances,” she said. “Single mom. I had to pull all of my 401(k). That should never occur, but I was glad it was there as a safety net.”

Stroman pointed to Brandy Ballard, a small business counselor at ECSU’s SBTDC, and recognized her for her assistance in helping to get her business running.

Stroman described Ballard as “another safety net”

“She believed in me mor than I believe in myself when I walked in the door,” Stroman said. “To have that support. We text, we talk all the time. She has become a friend more than a business associate.”

Also speaking was Hanna Davey, owner of Simply State Boutique in Edenton. The East Carolina University graduate said she operated her business online for about two years before she found the opportunity to open a brick-and-mortar location in Edenton.

“It’s been great for my business,” Davey said of the physical storefront.

Davey said she enjoys the sense of community of downtown Edenton. She said she had looked at other locations but they were in strip malls and in areas with several chain retail outlets.

The Edenton Chamber of Commerce and other business officials helped her to open her downtown shop at 318 S. Broad Street, she said.

For more information about the RISE initiative, visit its webpage at www.sosnc/rural_rise. At the page, enter a specific county to learn more about the many programs available in that area to assist small business owners.

Juanita Krause, the membership director for the Currituck Chamber of Commerce, was seated in the audience. She spoke briefly about a federal regulation she says she is finding many small businesses are not aware of. It’s called the federal Corporate Transparency Act, which was designed to prevent money laundering, tax fraud and other illegal financial activity and could require business owners to submit financial information.

“I encourage businesses to become familiar with that,” Krause said. “It’s not hard to register your business, but come Jan. 1, 2025, a lot of our new businesses are not going to be happy because there are severe penalties with that Corporate Transparency Act.”

The CTA is enforced by the U.S Department Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network and went into effect in January. The act requires all businesses created before 2024 to submit a completed Beneficial Owner Information form by January 2025, according to FinCEN. Businesses created after Jan. 1, 2024, and prior to 2025 have 90 days from start-up to submit BOI.

For more information about the BOI application process, visit the U.S. Treasury Department at home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy1974. Within the press release is a link to the BOI application page.