SBA 504 loan proceeds can go toward opening new locations for your practice, upgrading your equipment, or hiring new employees. It can also be terrifying. Perhaps the most prominent difficulty in ownership for me is the heightening of my personal sense of loneliness, in that no one sees how much Ive risked or how hard it can be, simply by virtue of the fact that they arent owners. However, the maximum a student could receive for the 2022-2023 school year was $6,895. Collectively, students articulated that they benefited from the conversational and practical tone of the class, profited from developing a business plan in their interest area regardless of whether the student was a second-year masters student or a seasoned counselor and desired a more robust bridge to connect business-related information to their plans. Knaup, A., & Piazza, M. (2007). Monthly Labor Review, 130, 310. Become a member today so you can begin growing your business. But networking is about more than just letting someone know youre opening an office. As one student stated, people were comfortable enough to throw out honest feedback. As a result of sharing their business plans throughout the semester in an informal atmosphere, students reported gaining more perspective and clearer visions in developing a high quality business proposal. Getting quality, professional-looking business cards. The first two weeks of the course were dedicated to students thinking about and sharing their broad counseling practice ideas and narrowing these ideas into vision and mission statements that required the development of clarity as to the nature and scope of their proposed practice, including constituents served and market niche. The loans are intended to help businesses keep employees on the payroll, can range up to $10 million per loan, and can become grants. The challenge in teaching this course was not assisting students in gaining mastery over the content; rather, the difficulty lies in helping students apply the content to their unique situation. Federal Grants for Counseling There is federal funding available for student loans and for counseling services in many settings. Thus, the standards encourage students to gain an understanding of the technical aspects of professional counseling that can include an understanding of developing and maintaining a successful counseling practice. One student said, Once you are clear, then you know what to ask for and when you can ask for it; then you are open to getting that. In a similar way, another student noted, Because of the course I was able to strip away all the extraneous things and focus on kind of the core of what I want my business to be. This course impacted students level of confidence and clarity in not only the kinds of practices they wanted to develop, but also what they wanted their identities to be as professional counselors. You could be a student finding that unforeseen difficulties are threatening your ability to finish your degree.