WHAT DID I LEARN?

Just finished my last in a series of six business sessions I held at the Eureka Loft at the Scottsdale Civic Center Library. Having never offered anything of this length before and also a first for me at the Scottsdale Library, I looked at this as an education.

I estimated that I had approximately 80 people among all the sessions and about 45 of them were one- time attendees. I wanted to accomplish several things:  Does the meetup system work? How receptive is the small business community to this type of education. What were the attendees looking for?

The majority of the attendees came from the meetup web page, so it does have a following. I may have been able to increase the attendance by doing more marketing. With almost 50% attending more than one session, I feel that there is a need for small business education. Most of the attending were in need of customers, and marketing was their main concern. 

A large number of those in attendance were new businesses, less than six months, or else getting ready to start a business. These groups were very tentative about their upcoming venture and not sure who they should trust to help them get started.

Of those that are currently in business not one had the basic business-building blocks completely in place. Of the 30 BizQuack Nuggets we identified in our Vision Based Business Plan process no one had implemented more than 3.

These sessions and the rest of the outreach programs we conducted in 2016 and 2017 will guide us in improving our member support as well as adding a section for new start-ups. The need exists as we are the only ones, which we know of, that are specifically offering affordable, complete, ongoing support for small business owners.

We will start by adding a voice to explain all our online education session, and, hopefully during 2018, we can offer videos of new classes.  Perhaps before the end of the year, on line classes will be given with live questions and answers right after the sessions. We will also offer some live classes with a wide variety of topics and presenters to our membership.

I will turn to our members to help us by participating in our member to member communications as well as marketing support for other members.

Growing our quality member base, with your assistance, will also help us insure that our new members are the type with whom you want to do business.

Thank you for your ongoing support.

“I’ve learned that I still have a lot to learn.” Maya Angelou