PITTSBURG — On Thursday, the Small Business Development Center will host its first set of workshops for the year at Block 22.
Before the SBDC was moved to Block22, workshops were hosted at Shirk Hall at Pittsburg State University. The SBDC works with with 11 counties in southeast Kansas to provide business counseling services for people who are thinking about going into business, who are at the beginning of starting a business and people who are retiring or moving away from owning their own business.
“We like to think of it as a soft spot people can land on if people don’t know what the next step to take,” Kansas SBDC Small Business Advisor Mindy Lee said.
As part of SBDC’s Entrepreneur Education Series, the presenters Dacia Clark, Kansas SBDC, Quickbooks Certified Pro Advisor and Lee, who is also a Certified Wix Web Designer, will discuss social media businesses should know about, online marketing and financial statements.
SBDC has structured the workshops based of information on the biggest things their clients need assistance. The biggest things were social media, marketing and finance, “these are introduction of what we do and services we provide,” Lee said. “The workshops are a good idea of what to do to get started on the three subjects.”
People can sign up for each workshop individually or can choose to go to all three. It is not a requirement to own a business to take any of the workshops, which are all free to attend.
The first workshop will start at 8:30 a.m. with the Social Media workshop which will focus on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
At 10:30 a.m. the workshop, Online Marketing, will discuss marketing tactics outside of social media. This includes search engine optimization, Google for businesses and the importance of having a website.
The last workshop will begin at 2 p.m. and it will discuss financial statement topics which include P&L, Cashflow, Financial Projections and other topics that could help people prepare for a business loan. If people attend this workshop they can receive a $25 coupon for Quickbooks, an accounting software, Lee said.
Each workshop will follow with a Q&A and evaluations of the workshop to help tailor workshops in the future.
— Stephanie Potter is a staff writer at the Morning Sun. She can be emailed at spotter@morningsun.net or follow her on Twitter @PittStephP and Instagram @stephanie_morningsun.