As owner and operator of Expressions Learning Center in Holly Grove, Reynolds takes care of 40 children — mostly the offspring of commuters from Louisa, Hanover and Goochland counties. With a waiting list of about 20, the business has grown fivefold since she opened her doors in 1994.

"I had been looking for a way to stay at home with my 2-year-old," says Reynolds, who was commuting to work in Richmond at the time. "I had a friend who was taking care of children in her home, and she had a waiting list, and she suggested I consider it."

Today Expressions is among the few licensed day-care centers in Louisa County — a fact that did not go unnoticed by Virginia Community Bank in Louisa. Reynolds says she owes a great deal of her success to the bank, which financed her transition from home-based child care to a full-fledged business.

Reynolds started out caring for eight children in her home. Those slots filled quickly, as did Reynolds' waiting list. Then came a Virginia regulation limiting to five the number of children allowed in unlicensed home day care. That regulation, which went into effect in July 1996, pushed Reynolds and her husband into a major business decision. "We decided to get our license and go for it big time," Reynolds recalls.

The couple approached Virginia Community Bank with a plan: They would move from their home and turn it into a day-care center. With their home as collateral, the bank lent them $40,000 with backing from the U.S. Small Business Administration.

Reynolds went to the right place. Virginia Community Bank, and others featured in this story, are among those identified by the U.S. Small Business Administration as small-business friendly, based on 1998 lending. (See list on Page 16.) The good news is that while the exodus of Virginia's superregional banks may mean lost prestige, it's the smaller banks — principally those with less than $500 million in assets — that win the highest marks from the SBA when it comes to small-business lending. Lenders like Virginia Community Bank consider financing for day-care centers and other small ventures to be fairly routine. President Pierce Stone says his bank also has made loans for golf courses, sawmills, marinas, restaurants and country stores. Several years ago, the bank even financed a guide who leads fishing trips on nearby Lake Anna.

Starting with $500,000 in 1976, the bank has doubled its size about every six years. It now operates four branches with $20 million in total assets. The bank holds $40 million to $50 million in loans to small businesses — about 75 percent of its total loan portfolio.

So Reynold's $40,000 loan was a drop in the bucket — even for a small bank such as Virginia Community. But the money primed the pump at Expressions Learning. Children arrive each morning in time to help feed the animals — emus, goats, geese, exotic birds and fish. Hermie the rabbit roams freely around the campus, and if Reynolds has a new child who's frightened, she introduces him to Hermie first.

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Small-business owners say that relationships are the most important consideration in choosing a bank. Once they find the right banker, they'll follow him from bank to bank because they need someone who understands their businesses.

Even as small businesses grow, owners don't want to wean themselves from that relationship. So says Shivram Krishnan, president and CEO of Indus Corp., a Vienna-based information technology company that is one of the fastest-growing small companies in Virginia.

With nearly 200 employees and projected revenues of $20 million this year, Indus may soon lose its small-business status. But that wasn't the case in 1993, when the company had just landed a big contract and hired five full-time employees. Krishnan decided it was about time to stop financing his business with credit cards and grocery money.

"We needed financing to cover that period of time from the hiring of new employees for a project to when we could bill and collect on our invoices," Krishnan recalls. "I actually went to two of the largest banks in the state, who claimed to be small-business friendly, but I found out otherwise."

Indus finally obtained a $50,000 line of credit from a small bank in Northern Virginia, and its business bloomed. Within nine months, the company had grown so much that Krishnan needed to up the credit line to $200,000. "That's when I started to run into some bumps with the small bank," he says.

About the same time, Krishnan attended an advisory meeting sponsored by a CPA firm and George Mason Bank of Fairfax. There he met Mark Moore, a George Mason vice president. Krishnan says Moore was one of the few people he had met who seemed to understand the nuances of financing high-tech companies — primarily that the value of such companies is intellectual capital.

Indus made the switch, and Krishnan's company has been with the bank ever since, even after the institution was absorbed by Fairfax's United Bank.

Bill Ridenour, United's executive vice president of commercial banking, says his bank has developed specialty lending groups for different markets. That approach has kept Indus from being lured away by competitors, Krishnan says. He doesn't have to explain what his company does every time he needs to up his credit line.

Today, Indus is negotiating for a $4 million line of credit, and Krishnan says his preference is to stick with the people who understand his business.

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Lee Clemens has a similar philosophy. In 1972, he kick-started Departure Bike Works, a South Richmond custom motorcycle shop.

Clemens says he suffered a rude awakening a few years ago when his local bank was purchased by a North Carolina-based conglomerate. "Within a few months after that happened, there wasn't a soul in the bank I knew. The first time I asked a simple question, they told me they'd have to check with the home office," Clemens says. "I knew it was time to move."

Clemens already had done some business with County Bank of Chesterfield, and Clemens' old banker had moved to County Bank, so he thought it was worth a look. "I don't look like your typical businessman," Clemens says. "I wear T-shirts and have kind of long hair, but when I went through the door of that bank, everybody made me feel I was important. I moved all my accounts over to them about three-and-a-half years ago, and I'm glad I did."

Clemens' bankers have come by his Hull Street cycle shop to talk with him about expansion plans. He says he hopes to begin a mail-order campaign through a national motorcycle magazine and his existing Web site.

"We crunch the numbers just like everybody else, but we also look beyond the numbers at the business itself," says County Bank of Chesterfield President and CEO Hank Richeson. "We sell our relationships to small businesses. We don't sell a product."

Community banks tend to have longtime loan officers, says Larry McCoy, County Bank's senior credit officer. "People have time to get comfortable with them. Small business owners like to see the same faces over and over again. That's the way they run their businesses, and that's what they expect from us. They don't like to do business with an 800 number."

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Larger banks can make larger loans than community banks, but can they provide the same kind of service? If they want to, they can, says Rob Leitch, director of a commercial division at Crestar Bank that provides financing for owner-run businesses.

"We have actually grown this market in recent years," Leitch says. "[Small business] customers will stay with us as long as they can see the same people. ... It's not just a training ground for young bankers to move through and disappear."

One of the rewards of small-business banking is the friendships that form over the years, Leitch says. "You have to make decisions based on your judgment of people and their integrity. It's not everything — we still do the numbers — but it's still part of the decision."

Al Hopper, one of three principals of A&E Supply Co., a Richmond firm that sells services and supplies to architects and engineers, says imagination is a quality he looks for in bankers. That's why he chose Crestar. Formed in 1977 with two employees, A&E now has 55 employees and annual sales of nearly $6 million. The company uses Crestar for a line of credit and loans for technology upgrades.