Recently, one of SCORE's clients in the Boston area sent a letter to Kim Janey, Acting Mayor of Boston, welcoming her to the role. Within her note, this client spent a sizable portion praising SCORE Boston, with special thanks to Phil Crutchfield, for the amazing support they provided her in her business. Please take a minute to read the full note below, and join us in recognizing Phil and SCORE Boston for their impactful work:
"To Mayor Janey,
I am thrilled to welcome you as our new Boston Mayor. Your role, weighted with an extraordinary amount of challenges also sees a city filled with resilience and brilliance. I wanted to share a story to highlight one aspect of the Boston community that makes it great to live and work here.
When I opened my business in Boston in 2005, I sought mentorship from SCORE, an organization which "fosters vibrant small business communities with mentorship and education" in order to help create a foundation from which to build my craft into a business. My background as a textile artist includes making fine and functional textiles, often in the form of limited edition clothing as well as teaching and guest lecturing. Since working with SCORE, I have hired graduates and interns from MassArt, participated in trade shows near and far, and have won numerous awards including at the Smithsonian Craft Show, Philadelphia Museum Craft Show, and CraftBoston.
The pandemic has been devastating for many businesses, but I am grateful to now see business coming back, slowly but surely, with a greater focus on online sales and teaching. It took a great amount of time to navigate the complexities of pivoting to online sales, running a business when supply chains and stores were closed, business funding, tax audits and so much more. I, again, reached out to SCORE and am grateful for assistance in moving forward through the current landscape.
I would like to recognize SCORE Boston for its approach in working with the business community, and specifically would like to thank the most recent team (it takes a village) of Tina Astore, William Hulsey, Phil Crutchfield, and Fred Eustis. This entire team has been enormously helpful in answering questions and offering new perspectives. I showed up with a great deal of confusion about legal issues, accounting issues, tax issues all related to the pandemic and to the ongoing complexities of running a small business. I am thankful to this entire team for helping me to move forward and would like to give special thanks to Phil Crutchfield for giving me a great deal of hope through his incredible sense of discernment and forward-thinking. His ability to guide me to understand better how to ask hard questions that would serve me to find the most effective answers was incredibly skillful. This ability is a skill built over a lifetime, and Phil, through his own skill and mentoring qualities, was able to help me through trauma that was stopping me from moving forward. In just a few conversations, he helped to unpack a great deal of pandemic problems and their potential solutions with patience and focus.
This is what good leadership and partnership does - guiding us in ways that are not just about money but are about relationships and wellbeing all around. This is the core of my work and, I'm discovering, it is what we all want and need. The incredible dedication of SCORE is exactly the kind of work that helps the entire country move forward. I would like to see these individuals, as well as the Boston chapter be recognized for their incredible service. SCORE, a partner of the SBA, is invaluable to the Boston community."
