NORWICH – After 11 years of determining her clients’ benefits and health insurance needs, Faye Anderson, of the Anderson Consulting Agency, hit another milestone this fall when she announced the sale of her company to the Bay Ridge Group of Endwell.

Before starting her own agency, Anderson worked for years with businesses at NBT Bank and began to realize a need for benefit consulting.

“I recognized that small businesses didn’t have the support they needed. There was a niche in the small business market,” Anderson said.

Since she had been actively involved with the Chenango County Chamber of Commerce, Anderson exercised her options, and found help in the Small Business Incubator program, funded and sponsored by the Chenango County Area Corporation. The program provided free office space for six months, the chance to purchase secondhand office furniture and office equipment, entrepreneur education and access to one-on-one coaching sessions.

“When I started the business, I had a typewriter, whiteout and manilla folders,” Anderson said, “but the timing was right. I had all my licenses in place, a lot of contacts, and I had been listening to customers.”

“Martha Brower, owner of Brower Communications Inc., and I started our businesses the same year. We used to talk about how nice it would be to find a check in the mail for at least $50 to cover our phone bill. Ironically, in the past few years, we complained about not having enough time to deposit the checks in the bank.”