Small Business Support Specialist
Guide

We envision a world where entrepreneurship support is accessible, actionable, and built for real-world success - that every business owner has access to the tools, knowledge, and strategic support needed to thrive.

We believe technical assistance shouldn't be a privilege - it should be the standard.
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EQALL exists to evolve how entrepreneurship support is designed and delivered.

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Founder - Focused

We stay grounded in what founders truly need. Our solutions are designed to meet them where they are and move them forward - with clarity, care and impact. 
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Radical Transparency

We don't gatekeep - we share what we know with honesty, clarity, and purpose, because knowledge should be a bridge, not a barrier. That means we don't use acronyms without context - we always explain the root, so no one is left behind. 
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Business EQ

We believe success requires both strategy and self-awareness. We equip leaders with the tools to make smart decisions - and the business intelligence to lead with intention. 
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Real-World Solutions

No fluff. No filler. Just actionable, founder-centered tools that work in real time and in real life. 
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Partnership & Collaborations

We build with, not for. Collaboration is at the core of everything we do - because lasting impact is a team sport.
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Clarity & Accessibility

We make complex systems simple. Our work breaks down barriers and builds pathways that founders and ESOs can actually follow.

We believe entrepreneurial success is not luck - it's framework.

One part expertise, one part experience, one part education, one part execution - all parts equal. 

Serving entrepreneurship support organizations (ESOs), municipalities, and university-led programs, we work behind the scenes to empower the spaces that serve entrepreneurs. Our strategic partnership approach ensures that program leaders have the infrastructure, insights, and support to help business owners not only start, but scale.

Quality is not an act, it is a habit.

Change happens from the inside.

The work we do opens the doors for entrepreneurs of all gender identities, colors and backgrounds to build wealth and create change.  

Welcome to the EQALL team!

#Share | #Watch | #Listen | #Improve

We are so glad to have you join us.
The Small Business Specialist has a crucial role focused on providing early-stage business owners with one-on-one coaching and resource support to scale them to growth stage.
Most of what is presented in this Guide will be thoroughly covered during your onboarding and orientation process.
Consider this document as a reference and support
document.
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Onboarding Check List

You should have received your email login via email to your personal email.
  • Access your @eqall.co email address: https://outlook.office.com
  • Check out the Team Page: www.eqall.co/team
  • Work through the onboarding course at your own pace, use the invite in your inbox to access: www.eqall.info
  • Get ready to get paid! Set up email will arrive from Relay Bank
  • Tech Check! We'll do one last quick call to make sure that your systems are ready to go
  • Shadow Sessions: We'll turn on booking for coaching sessions where we'll be there for support
Ready. Set. Go!
  • Booking will kick-off

Expectations

You will work directly with end users of our programs to deliver a high-quality experience.
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The Business Advisor’s primary responsibilities include:

  • Manage your calendar availability to allow for autonomous booking.
  • Monitor your EQALL.co email for calendar invites and other updates. 
  • Use established EQALL data tracking tools and report each 1:1 session.
  • Maintain a working knowledge of small business opportunities and resources.
  • Assist with deliverables as needed for founders in one of our programs.
  • Connect clients to professional resources in their community to meet business needs and facilitate professional relationships.
 Pro Tip: Set you EQALL email to forward to your preferred email account for ease.

You will not be responsible for:

  • Completing work on behalf of the business owner. Your role is to guide, question and direct the work that the business owner must do for their own business.
  • Managing relationships with customer organizations (typically a nonprofit, EDC, or NGO) who hire EQALL to deliver programming
  • Business strategy for EQALL, sales, or backend development (unless otherwise contracted as a speaker, etc.)

Information Management

You will be provided with an EQALL.co email address and login information for our team
website, Teams, Calendly, & Zoom.

All communications on behalf of EQALL must be managed through these platforms.

This is essential to ensure accurate reporting.
Our clients choose EQALL for quality programming, but a key differentiator is that we provide accurate data for their teams, sponsors, fundraisers, etc. This is why it is so important to stay up to date on EQALL policies, updates, platforms, software upgrades, etc. Measuring metrics for reporting is essential!

Any conversations, sessions, or time spent with founders outside of our platforms will NOT be eligible for invoicing and may lead to termination of contract.
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MSFT 365

We'll provide your email, Teams and OneDrive access.
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Zoom

Video chat as an alternative to Teams.
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Calendly

Link your personal calendars to your booking tool. The more information you give Calendly, the better your experience.
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Internal Webpages

Your GO-TO place to find answers, resources and more.
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Setting Up Calendly

 Setting up calendar availability is one of the MOST important
tasks for a small business specialist.
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Log in to your Calendly account using your EQALL.co email and the temporary password
provided. The navigation menu will be on the left side of your screen.
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Event types
From the Event types tab you can view all booking pages.

Each tile represents a different event type managed by our team.

This is how we manage and track advising hours for our clients.
Event types with this symbol are admin managed, meaning edits to certain sections will not be allowed. Founders must receive the link directly from EQALL to book any of these sessions.
All EQALL event types are set up with video conferencing enabled and will sync with your EQALL Outlook calendar. 
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Link to other calendars
Calendly can sync with other calendars to avoid double-booking. Supported platforms include Google, Office 365, Exchange, and iCloud.

Any calendar linked to your Calendly account will not be visible to EQALL staff, but will ensure you never have a scheduling issue.
To update your synced calendars, click on "Availability" in the left navigation panel then select "Calendar Settings".

Once in "Calendar Settings", click "+ Connect calendar account" and select the platform you want to connect and follow the prompts. You will need your email address and password for each account you want to sync.

EQALL will have no visibility into your other calendars. This connection process allows Calendly to “shop” your other calendars for availability and will guarantee that there will never be a double booking.

All meetings will land on your EQALL account calendar. However, you may set up auto-forwarding from your EQALL account to an account of your choosing for ease. Whatever option you choose should ensure you never miss a scheduled meeting. 
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Schedule working hours
You should set custom availability for EQALL business advising. Choose Availability from the Calendly main menu, which will take you to the Schedules tab. Here you can easily toggle between List and Calendar views to set recurring or custom working hours.
Choose date-specific hours to override your recurring schedule (such as when traveling or taking a break).
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Select the Holidays tab to toggle on standard American holidays. This will automatically set your Calendly to “Unavailable” on those days.
If you have any problems setting up or syncing your calendars, please contact taylor@EQALL.co with “Calendly help” in the subject line.
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Check Meeting "Location" Setup
Each meeting type requires that one of the pre-determined meeting location be selected. We will set this up when creating meeting types for your account, but it is a good idea to confirm a meeting location is set prior to bookings.

If no location is set, any new meetings will be booked with NO LOCATION. 
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Edit the meeting by clicking the tile in the white space.
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On the left side of the screen select the Event Details section to open.
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Select Zoom.

Select Microsoft Teams.

Click Save and Close.
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You are responsible for monitoring and managing your schedule and availability.

Missed meetings will not be tolerated.
More than one missed meeting will result in bookings be rerouted to another advisor and availability being turned off.

You're ready to start meeting!

Meet the EQALL Advisors’ Platform

Everything you need to provide coaching for eqALL can be found in one place:
https://eqall.co/advisors

Please bookmark this page for your reference.

This is a “hidden” page that requires login; you will not be able navigate here from eqall.co.

This is your one-stop shop for session reporting, founder resources, the parameters for
each program we manage, and more.
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Advising Intake Form

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Near the top of your Advisor page, find the link to report your session.

This link will open a new tab in your browser with a form to collect all the information we need for reporting.

  • Complete a separate form for each session.
  • Please report your coaching session as soon as possible and within one business day.
  • Your submission notifies our admin to complete backend tasks and send follow-up emails (which you will be copied on).


This follow-up is our unique value proposition to the business owner.


o Deliverables are action items based on your call.

o Resources (from the resource library) are to be chosen based on your call.

o The follow-up email will come from our support team and you will be CC’d.

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Advising Intake Form

Each founder enrolled in an eqALL-managed program completes an intake form with basic information about them and their business.

The Business Owner Directory contains all the information captured at intake and is sortable/ searchable by advisors.

For example, you could filter by Entrepreneur Name to find information about a business you will be coaching for the first time.

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Resource Library

When submitting your intake form, you will have the opportunity to include resources to be added to the founder’s follow-up email, based on your discussion with them.

Only approved resources can be shared.
When you submit our team will review prior to resources being shared through the library. 

Please familiarize yourself with this database, which can also be sorted or searched. 

Don’t see what you need?

Have a great resource to share?

Tell us about it!

Scroll below the Resource Library and click to access our form:
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Session Scripts

In this section, you will find general messaging for eqALL as well as for each of our contracted clients. Each of the programs we manage has its own requirements and parameters. 

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Never feel obligated to quote from these scripts directly.

Be yourself!

View this section as a guide for interacting with the founders during your coaching
sessions.
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Session Log

The third database on your Advisor landing page that you should be aware of is the Session Log.
Every time an Advising Intake Form is submitted, it lands here. 

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As with other bases, you can search or sort by:

  • Name
  • Business
  • Date



This is a great tool to familiarize yourself with a founder that you have not coached before (or in a long time).
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Submitting an Invoice

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At the bottom of the Advisor landing page, you will find a link to submit your invoices.

Whatever method you may already use for generating invoices is acceptable.

  • If you need a bookkeeping solution we suggest utilizing Wave Accounting, a no cost bookkeeping solution.
  • If you need to establish a format for invoicing that is not software based, feel free to reference this template.
  • If you use a Google Form like this, you can simply copy the top 18 rows to a new sheet for each invoice and download a PDF of the current sheet to submit in the form. You will need to sort the data by client (program) to provide totals for each, as well as total amount due.


For guidance or questions, contact taylor@eqALL.co with “Advisor Invoicing” in the subject line.

Please submit your invoices no less than once per month for our accounting purposes.

Weekly or bi-monthly is also acceptable. 

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For a first time, on-boarding session you are not required to do any preparation.

  • If you would like to research the business' website and /or social presence, please limit this to a quick 5–10-minute review.
  • An on-boarding session should bill at ~1 Hour including the submission of the intake form.
  • For follow up sessions a business owner may send a business plan, financials or ask for you to review their LivePlan - please limit the review to 15-minute increments.
  • Any review over 30 minutes may be questioned, it is allowed but most work product from the business owners requires review, not personal work from an advisor.

Remember that our goal is to direct and guide, not to do the work for the business owner.

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No Show Business Owner

No one likes it, but it happens.

When you have a meeting booked with a business owner we ask that you wait 15 minutes before ending the session and submitting the intake form as a "no-show".

Business owners are allowed to reschedule up to two times before they are disallowed and reported back to the organization that is sponsoring their time with us.

*Hint* If you prepare the intake form when the timer hits 10 minutes you can just end the session at 15 minutes and move on with your day.

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Coaching Sessions

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The Basics
We use both Zoom and Teams for virtual coaching sessions. 

Founders will book using Calendly, which has separate event types for each of our
programs. This is important because we track coaching hours by program for billing
purposes.

Your calendar invite will show the founder’s name, business, and the program they are
participating in.

If it is a first-time session, it may also include other information about the help they are
seeking. If not, you can find this information in the Business Owner Directory and
Session Log databases.
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The Process
1. Session is booked by the business owner after receiving an email from our team.

2. At the scheduled time you will start the meeting virtually or ensure that you are ready to receive the call. Sessions are booked in 30 - 45-minute windows.
  • 45 Minute sessions are the "Onboarding Session" to allow us to learn more about the founder
  • 30 Minute sessions are for "Follow Up Session"

3. Always introduce yourself or remind them of your name at the start of each session, even if you have already worked with them. Please lean on the scripts to guide the tone of your conversations.

4. You will take notes and collect information on the Intake Form for each session.
  • This form is for Advisor Use and is not to be shared with the Business Owner.
  • The data that we collect for each unique contract has been negotiated prior to start, we must collect the information to ALL questions.
  • When selecting which topics to share resources about please select only 3-5; more than that creates a very overwhelming experience for the founder. Our goal is to help them prioritize what they should be focusing on. Sending too many resources deepens their stress by creating confusion about where to focus.

5. Select “Ready for Follow Up Email” from the final drop down on the form.

6. When you hit SUBMIT your session is complete. We’ll take care of the follow up and the next steps for the business owner.

7. The intake form needs to be submitted ASAP after the session end. The follow up from your call is our unique value proposition for the business owner.

 *Hint*  You can access the form on your phone, it may be easier to do the intake on your phone rather than your laptop.
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Expectations of You
Each coaching session is scheduled in Calendly, and you will receive a copy of the meeting invite. Sessions are booked in 30, 45, or 60-minute windows, depending on the program and whether this is a first-time or follow-up call.

In specific instances and for specific coaching topics founders may need a larger time block. This may look like coaching a founder on financial projections or working on their business plan in detail with them. You must request this type of time block booking when submitting your session so that we can send the link for the larger time block to the founder. These larger time blocks will never be sent without your knowledge.

You are never expected to do work on behalf of the business owner. In your role as a coach you should guide, question and direct the business owner toward the work that they must do for their own business. The business owners all agree to this boundary when they book time.

You choose when and how much to be available. We respect your time and want this to be a symbiotic relationship.

Many of the people you will be coaching are first-time founders. They are often educated and passionate, with many years of career experience, but have never started a business before. Others will be further along in their entrepreneurial journey and/or at the growth/scale phase, but they ALL are seeking help with the obstacles they are facing.

You have been selected for this Small Business Support Specialist role because the eqALL team sees your value and trusts you to give these founders the support they need.
  • Always be on camera.
    This is a requirement.
    Working face to face builds rapport and trust which is vital to the work that we do.
  • Introduce yourself at the start of your first few sessions, even if you have worked with them before.
  • Be sure that your transcription software is active and review the transcript to
    ensure that you are capturing everything needed on your Advising Intake form.
  • When selecting resources to share, please limit to 3-4 so as not to overwhelm the founder with information.
  • At least one deliverable is required. Up to 3 are acceptable. We want to hold the founders accountable for making progress on their business without creating undue burden. 
  • End the session on time. The founder will have an opportunity to reschedule with you for more guidance, but we want to teach them to respect boundaries.
    Often, we are helping to up-level the founders to a higher professional level.
    Enforcing meeting times doubles down on teaching respect for time and the power of a well-run meeting.
  • Complete the Advising Intake Form even if the founder does not show. (We need our partners to know if someone is not participating appropriately.)
  • Submit your Advising Intake form as soon as possible after your session. We’ll take
    it from there!
Save the Advisor page and/or Intake form in your bookmarks on all devices that you use.

It may be easier to submit via mobile, depending on your device.

You can always access via: www.eqall.co/team
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We all struggle from time to time to stay focused and present.
If you have a client that is struggling to share enough information about their business with you ask questions to help prompt their conversation.
We learn what the business owner needs by LISTENING, not assuming.
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Expectations of the Founder
Most of the programs you will be coaching for provide 1:1 advising at no cost to the founder. As such, we expect a high level of participation from them. We all know what it’s like in startup mode, and understand the challenges, but we want YOUR time and expertise to be respected as well. So here are some general guidelines for founders you
will be meeting:
  • Founders must complete at least one deliverable from their previous session before
    booking another appointment with an advisor.
  • They are expected to be on camera.
  • We offer a 15-minute grace period (which you can bill for) but that does not extend
    the end time of the scheduled session.
  • Founder should come prepared, ask questions, and complete all deliverables.
  • You are empowered to cut the session short if the founder is unprepared.
If you are working with anyone who does not meet these criteria and/or respect your time and feedback, please let us know immediately. Contact support@eqALL.co with “Coaching Issue” in the subject line. We will do our best to identify the problem and create a solution, but we do not expect you to waste your time. 

Session Transcripts

You are REQUIRED to use transcription for every eqALL advising sessions.

Zoom

Zoom has an AI meeting assistant that takes notes and generates transcripts, screenshots, and action items. 
Click ... More for the menu to pop up.
Click AI Companion.
Click Turn On All
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Teams

Team has an AI meeting assistant that takes notes and generates transcripts, screenshots, and action items. 
Click ... More for the menu to pop up.
Select Record and Transcribe by clicking the arrow.
Click Start Transcription.
Confirm the primary language being spoken.
The transcription window will pop up on the right-hand side of your meeting window.
Let your advisee know that you re generating a transcript to be used for follow up purposes.

Having transcription running means that as an advisor your can fully focus on the real time conversation and not worry about taking notes.
At the end of the call your transcript will be in the "Chat" for the meeting.
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General Policies

Listen more than you speak.

We are guides to these startups on their entrepreneurial journey.

Ask questions, listen, and ask more questions to guide the
founder to their next step.

Never TELL the
business owner what they “should” do. 

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Feel free to pose “If I were in your position” statements.

One of our favorite ways to suggest something is to say:
“You may want to consider [...]

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We primarily work with underrepresented founders.
Founders of Color, Female Founders & LGBTQ Founders: that’s our jam.

We do this work with intentionality and an open heart. We request that you be willing to learn about other cultures/audiences to serve them best. Be aware of the nuances that are a part of each unique founder’s journey and how we might be able to support their needs.
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We DO NOT gate keep information, connections or access.
Our role is to open doors and open minds.

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Providing
Value

Much of the value that we provide to our partners is the data that we collect.
We must always remain conscious of this value creation as we add data to the intake.

You may consider taking a moment to read: Do No Harm Guide: Crafting Equitable Data Narratives
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Know Your Boundaries

We do not provide tax or legal advice to business owners.
If a business owner needs support in one of these areas, please ensure that you:
  • Request a referral to a tax professional for any tax-related questions.
  • Request a referral to a legal professional for any legal advice.
  • Utilize our resource library to provide clients with any of our existing resources that may help them. 
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Keep Growing

You may consider taking a moment to read: 
For those new to ecosystem building, an excellent resource is Startup Community Way by Brad
Feld, serial startup founder and an icon in the Boulder ecosystem.
There’s fantastic data to learn on GoDaddy’s Microbusiness Data Hub.
One final add to your reading list:

Community Connections
You are connected to the community that you live and work in and you are our best advocate to opportunities to grow what we do.


 


 

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If you have a community partner or organization that trusts your work and you would like to introduce them to how we support business owners through eqALL - We want to say thank you for the referral!
  • Any connection that you make an introduction to that ends in contracted support through eqALL means that you get paid TWICE.
  • You'll get to support them as an advisor and we'll optimize to make you the primary advisor for the contract if you would like that.
  • We'll share the win with you! Any connection that ends in a contract means that we'll share 10% of that win with you. (Example: Contract for $10,000 = $1,000 payment to you!)
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Here are a few items to help queue you up:

Quick Overview: What does eqALL do?
Diving Deeper: How does eqALL Support Entrepreneur Support Organizations?
Did I mention eqALL can help with Access to Capital education?
We know that the burning question is always cost, check out our pricing.
Reporting is our jam: See what I'm talking about.
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