As some of my readers may know, I am a SCORE counselor. Briefly, SCORE is a national organization under the auspices of the Small Business Administration that offers free business advice to people who want to start a new business or who need advice on various business issues.

I emphasize free because, in my opinion, SCORE is one of the best-kept secrets in Santa Barbara. We wish more people knew about SCORE and used our services.

Many of my client sessions are with people who are sincerely interested in starting a business and are wise enough to ask for help and advice. Not all of them, however.

(To protect the client’s identity, I will alternate in using personal pronouns. Please bear with me.)

One time I accepted a new client who said she wanted to start a new consulting type business. We talked briefly on the phone and for our first meeting I asked him, as I do of almost all my new clients, to do what is called a SWOT analysis. It sounds technical and complicated, but it is simply a listing of your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. It’s a sort of reality check and also a checklist of the areas that might need work.

My client faithfully did her homework and arrived at our meeting with her completed SWOT analysis. Scanning it quickly I noticed that under Weaknesses he had put down, “Business is disgusting.” Apparently the irony of a person who thinks business is disgusting wanting to go into business and asking for business advice totally escaped him.

I had momentary thoughts that I might be violating the socio-economic values of this country if I were to give him any advice at all. But I repressed those feelings because I felt it was my responsibility to give this person the best advice I could. We continued our conversation.

Over the period of about an hour and a half, I tried to gradually change her ideas that all business is disgusting — or dirty or evil or mean. At one point I asked her who she thought would hire her as a consultant and how much they might pay her. He wasn’t sure. I asked for details of exactly what and how much consulting she would provide. Then when I estimated that he might be able to expect about $20,000 for what he proposed to do as a consultant, he replied, “Is that all?” (Do I detect some more irony here?)

The client somehow did not see any philosophical conflict when I asked whether the idea of being a person who expected to be paid for his consulting services — and paid well, by the way — wouldn’t immediately cause him to fall into the category of being in business that by its nature was “disgusting.”

I have no problem with people who are dedicated to making our planet a better, safer, cleaner, healthier, more beautiful place. I heartily agree with that idea. I can even support and encourage people who want to work toward those goals. I can even tolerate people who think that business is “disgusting.” They are entitled to their opinions.

But I wish those safer, cleaner, healthier idealists who want a more beautiful world would somehow learn that all of their wonderful, grandiose ideas take money, expertise (which needs to be paid for) and “disgusting” business acumen to accomplish.

— Paul Burri is an entrepreneur, inventor, columnist, engineer and iconoclast. He is not in the advertising business, but he is a small-business counselor with the Santa Barbara chapter of Counselors to America’s Small Business-SCORE. The opinions and comments in this column are his alone and do not represent the opinions or policies of any outside organization. He can be reached at pburri@west.net. Click here for previous Paul Burri columns. Follow Paul Burri on Twitter: @BronxPaul