Events/Workshops

QuickBooks 2 shows participants how to set up their products and services in the QuickBooks system, manage their accounts receivable and accounts payable, receive payments on invoices, pay outstanding bills, and track payments/expenses. This seminar is designed for the small business owner or prospective owner.

Speaker: Marlene Houk -QuickBooks Certified Consultant/Trainer

Creating a Realistic Budget for Your Business: Budget Deconstruction, Diversified Funding Streams, and How to Get Started! This session will identify the building blocks of a strong budget and explain how a lay out a budget, create line items, include all actual expenses, make projects when planning ahead, and ultimately create a realistic budget. We will examine how to develop the strategies to bring in the dollars through each funding stream. We will discuss how proper budgeting will guide work product. If grants are one of your funding streams, get a look at how your budget can propel grant proposals to success, and how to use messaging to raise these much needed funds. You’ll see how to accurately describe, budget, and properly package your programs and projects to effectively secure funds from diversified funding streams and create effective partnerships to help you achieve success. If you have a budget, but aren’t brining in the dollars to cover costs, we will deconstruct a budget so you can see what might be missing in yours. This workshop is for all businesses, for and nonprofit.

Speaker: Amanda Pearce

In this seminar, participants will learn about different options to advertise your business using online resources. These options are often easier and much less expensive than traditional advertising. We will discuss social media advertising through major platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc as well as Google adwords and other options.

Speaker: Matt Rudisill

QuickBooks 3 pulls together information from previous sessions, showing participants how to use classes, customize and use reports, and create financial statements to analyze their business. This seminar is designed for the small business owner or prospective owner.

Speaker: Marlene Houk - QuickBooks Certified Consultant/Trainer

"In this seminar, you will learn how to get started with video marketing, how to make good quality videos with the tools you already have, setting up and promoting your YouTube channel, and spreading your message to all of your customers with a simple and easy to use method."

Speaker: Matt Rudisill

QuickBooks 4 shows participants how to use the payroll feature in QuickBooks to create paychecks, pay tax liabilities, process payroll forms and produce reports. This seminar is designed for the small business owner or prospective owner.

Speaker: Marlene Houk - QuickBooks Certified Consultant/Trainer

>>>>>Notice This Event is being rescheduled to 11/9/17. >>>>>> Calvin F. Patterson, chairman and chief executive officer of Earnest Harvest LLC, will be speaking on “Managing A Non-Profit Organization.” This free seminar will focus on the guiding principles that successful non-profits utilize to be effective and some of the best practices you can implement to take your organization to the next level. Upon successful completion of this seminar, participants will be able to: • Have clear understanding of successful principles in managing a non-profit organization • Utilize best practices in leading a non-profit organization • Embrace the need for active Board participation in non-profit activies • Understand the need to develop an effective team to execute plans for the organization

Speaker: Calvin F Patterson

Don't miss the opportunity to learn the basics of starting a small business. Are you thinking about getting into business for yourself? This course covers the issues that an individual should consider before thinking about opening the doors. In other words, this course is the starting point on your journey into business ownership. Learn how to identify critical issues and make the right decisions as you prepare to start your business. Topics include business structures (sole proprietorships, partnerships and corporations), licensing and zoning, trademarks, copyrights, patents, insurance, financing alternatives, record keeping, and taxes.

Speaker: Eddie McGimsey

Financing continues to be a challenge for many small business owners. Questions range from, Who will give me money for my business idea and what do they need from me? to, How will this business make money and will it be enough to pay back a loan or attract an investor? Get to the heart of business financing in this seminar that answers your questions. Explore the advantages and disadvantages of the different types of funding sources and how to choose the right one for your needs. Discover the keys to financing success. Get answers to: Are there grants available to start my business? What is factoring and is it a good financing tool? How do I apply for a loan? Are banks' lending to small businesses? What is an angel investor? Are venture capitalists willing to invest in a non-technology related business? How much can I borrow from a micro lender? How do I ask family and friends to invest in my business?

Speaker: Eddie McGimsey

Market research isn’t just for startups; it’s an important ongoing process for every small business. Developing a focused and effective marketing plan requires up-to-date market analysis. Discover the variety of market research tools that will give you critical information about your industry and customers. Get the data you need to test the feasibility of a new business, find the competition and potential customers interested in your proposed product or service.

Speaker: Matt Rudisill

An effective business plan is vital to the success of a small business. By committing your idea to paper, you face tough questions and identify strengths and weaknesses. Business plans are not just for financing purposes; they are working documents to guide your business. For new and established small business owners, the course will start you down the path of small business success. This class will discuss tools necessary to write a business plan that will help raise capital and serve as a guide for your business. You will leave with a document that you can begin using immediately and build on in the future.

Speaker: Matt Rudisill

Goal-Setting for Bigger Sales. "Sales don't just happen," so how do you achieve your goals and make your marketing plan succeed? You do so through proactive Goal Setting. This seminar shows you what goals are and how to achieve them. Then, you will learn how to set goals for various parts of your life. We will break them down into manageable steps and give you a plan that could involve a large sales team or possibly just yourself. Once you have set your goals, you now have a target that gives you motivation to plan for the achievement. Topics such as where to find motivation, how to plan a typical day, financing your dream, and methods to get excited about your achievements will be discussed. You will also learn how to motivate others to work towards your goals and what to do when you need assistance in accomplishing them.

Speaker: Matt Rudisill

In this seminar, attendees focus on the importance of market research and target market when developing a marketing plan. Learn how Marketing Mix decisions can be made using the 5 P's of Marketing. Attendees identify target market segments and develop a marketing strategy for a sample business using SWOT Analysis.

Speaker: Arlene Childers

Geared towards those wanting to start their own business, local entrepreneur and former Small Business Center Director David Waechter teaches the basics of getting your business off the ground. This 3 hour session discusses the topics that you need to be aware of. Topics in this course include: *How to name your business and why your business name is so important. *Registering your business with Secretary of State. *How to obtain your LLC, Sole Proprietorship, or Incorporation *How to find the proper tax forms. *How to obtain your tax ID or your EIN (Employer Identification Number) from the IRS. *How to set up a Business Checking account and credit card. *How to find what licenses and permits you need to get started. *Renting a space - things to consider. *Easy and cheap marketing to start NOW. *Sales and Service. *Bookkeeping absolutely must do's. More in-depth classes will be offered in the future that discuss a majority of these topics in more detail. Class will be held at the Caldwell County Chamber of Commerce. Questions? Please call Ben Willis (828) 726-2615

Speaker: David Waechter

A great seminar for the “beginner” or the entrepreneur wanting to make eBay a primary business tool. During this fast-paced session, learn best practices to use when setting up an account, listing items for sale, taking payments, and shipping. Topics will include eBay appraisals and research, registering on eBay and starting a seller’s account, choosing formats & categories, writing descriptions that sell, submitting photos, feedback, starting up and using a PayPal account, shipping tips and pricing philosophies that will make you an eBay Top Rated Seller!!

Speaker: Nick Hawks

This session is for individuals having knowledge/experience of selling on EBay who want to establish a continual retail presence. Participants will learn: • Starting an EBay business, • Finding merchandise to sell, • Creating professional listings, • Marketing your business on EBay, • Managing active listings, • Resolving issues and feedback, and • Protecting your EBay business.

Speaker: Nick Hawks

Do you struggle writing your business plan? Do you wonder if there is in an introductory step to assist in the creation of your business plan? The Business Model Canvas is your blueprint for business success. This hands-on seminar will walk you through the nine building blocks of the Business Model Canvas and provide you with the tools necessary to successfully work the canvas for any scenario. You will learn to visually map, test and validate your business model quickly. Leave with a clear understanding of business models, the skills needed to implement the Business Model Canvas and ready to test their idea on potential customers, obtaining real world evidence to either support or pivot your business idea.

Speaker: Katy Gould

This 3 hour hands-on seminar is a fantastic way to provide a step-by-step approach to those individuals who are ready to become eBay Store owners. You will learn how to start, brand, and optimize your eBay store website. Understand how to market your eBay store more effectively with email newsletters, traffic reports, and the markdown manager sales tool. Learn how to use the “Quick Store Tune-up” feature and "Manage My Store" page to customize your eBay Store, plus learn tips for search engine optimization (SEO) that will bring even more internet shoppers to your eBay Store via Google, Yahoo, and Bing search engines!!

Speaker: Nick Hawks

Gain a solid understanding of taxes required for small business owners and develop the best tax strategy for your business. Become familiar with the latest tax forms and procedures for both state and federal taxes. Discover how everyday business decisions can have tax implications that can affect your bottom line. This seminar is important for both new and experienced business owners.

Speaker: Bobbie Young

The following topics will be covered: 1. What is Customer Service? 2. Define Your Customer. 3. What are the Characteristics of your Customers? 4. What separates your customers from other companies' customers? 5. What drives your customers away? 6. What role does each person play in the company’s overall customer service? 7. What are the different levels of customer service? 8. At what level is your company? 9. What are the steps to enhance your Customer Satisfaction? 10. Verbal communication and its role. 11. Using Active Listening. 12. Measuring your Customer Service. 13. What are the “Seven Deadly sins of Customer Service?”

Speaker: Bobbie Young

Run your own virtual bookstore and coffee bar to see how money moves in and out of a business while learning the fundamentals of accounting at the same time. This course provides an in-depth look at each of the primary accounting transactions used in a business. Without using any accounting jargon, the course demonstrates how to keep score in a business through a simple scorecard approach.

Speaker: Small BizU

Buying a Business is a comprehensive course on how to buy the right business at the right price. Developed by entrepreneurs who buy businesses for a living, this course offers advice and wisdom in such areas as: the key questions to ask of any seller, the due diligence process, valuing a business and determining the offer, negotiation steps and tactics, and sample legal agreements.

Every new venture has to work the complex decision of what legal structure to choose for the business. This course breaks down this decision into its essential characteristics simplifying the decision making process. An in-depth discussion is presented about the pros and cons of structures such as the sole proprietorship, partnership, “c” or “s” corporation, and the limited liability company (LLC).

Speaker: Small BizU

This course details the exact steps necessary to prepare a comprehensive loan package request. Typical loan forms and requirements are explained and included. This course concentrates on what a lender is really looking for and how they evaluate loan requests. Simply understanding the way a lender thinks can more than double your effectiveness in raising money for your business.

Speaker: Small BizU

Creating Buzz is one of the most comprehensive courses on how marketing is actually executed in a small business. Creating Buzz is packed-full of hundreds of strategies, checklists, and tips across the realms of network theory, positioning, advertising media, word-of-mouth campaigns, publicity, and public relations. From informal, easy to implement tactics to full-fledged formal marketing plans, the lessons taught in this course are paramount to any growing business.

Speaker: Small BizU

Financial projections are a collection of statements that present a numerical model of your business. Learn to create a projected income statement, cash flow statement, balance sheet, and breakeven point analysis. Understand what financial projections are and what comprises a good set of projections.

Speaker: Small BizU

Examine the peculiar nature of investment capital. The course presents practical tactics on how to identify and secure different types of capital including seed capital, angel capital, and venture capital. The process used by different kinds of investors as well as tools for completing the fund-raising process. Special focus is given to the federal and state laws that govern the capital and securities process.

Speaker: Small BizU

Gain comprehensive tactics of raising money for small business formation. The course examines the sources of available capital and provides an overview of the difference between debt and equity. Learn financial terms and tactics necessary to successfully identify and secure money for a new business venture.

Speaker: Small BizU

Get advice and strategies from leading entrepreneurs concerning what it really takes to start a new venture. “Starting A New Business” moves through the important tasks of building a strong foundation for a business to the more tactical aspects like marketing, managing, and money. This course will also show you how to protect your ideas, how to hire employees, and how to find out what licenses and regulations may apply. More than 50 resources provided.

Speaker: Small BizU

This ten-part course walks you through the details and tactics of creating a comprehensive business plan while helping you avoid planning mistakes that plague most businesses. As an added bonus, this course comes with Active plans Business Planning Software, which helps you create a plan narrative and financial projections through a simple step-by-step approach.

Speaker: Small BizU

Any entrepreneur should want to know as much as possible about their market. This course provides the guidance and resources necessary to develop a working knowledge.

Speaker: Small BizU

This course describes the fundamentals of the most important aspect of any business: marketing. Learn the concepts taught in college-level courses in just a few hours including the “5Ps”-Product, Promotion, Price, Place, and Positioning. At the end of this course, you will be able to create a comprehensive marketing plan for business that encompasses a creative plan, a positioning plan, and a media marketing calendar.

Speaker: Small BizU

Pricing is the moment of truth. All marketing comes to focus in the pricing decision. Yet, pricing is one of the least understood of all the activities in marketing. From the fundamentals of pricing to advanced discussions on psychological theories focused on pricing formulation, this course is essential to anyone responsible for making the price decision.

Speaker: Small BizU

This course presents a media-by-media discussion of the tips and tricks used by marketing professionals when advertising a product or service. Learn to set an advertising budget, why it’s better to run two smaller ads than one larger one, correctly position your product, and how to best design an effective marketing message. This course also presents an overview of public relations tactics and internet marketing practices.

Speaker: Small BizU

Creating Buzz is one of the most comprehensive courses on how marketing is actually executed in a small business. Your marketing agenda as an entrepreneur is vastly different than that of a member of the Fortune 500. Some of the principles may be the same, but the details are different. The theory of creating buzz is that your primary investments should be time, energy, and imagination. In other words, you are shooting for a high return on imagination as opposed to return on investment.

Speaker: Small Biz U, On-Line Training

This course is about the craft of creating a plan for your business. The business plan is the essential document used to raise money for a business and communicate your business vision and strategy to your management team, suppliers, customers, and other stakeholders. This ten-part course walks you through the details and tactics of creating a comprehensive plan while helping you avoid the critical planning mistakes that plague most business plans. As an added bonus, this course comes with Activeplans Business Planning Software which helps you create a plan narrative and financial projections through a simple step-by-step approach--a $40.00 value by itself!

Speaker: Small Biz U, On-Line Training

Every new venture has to work the complex decision of what legal structure to choose for the business. This course breaks down this decision into its essential characteristics simplifying the decision -making process. An in-depth discussion is presented about the pros and cons of such structures as the sole proprietorship, partnership, "c" or "s" corporation, and the limited liability company (LLC). As part of this course, a legal structure wizard ranks the best structure to choose for your business based on a series of questions that account for risk, complexity, types of ownership, and so forth. Once you have selected the best structure, the course then presents each of the forms that are necessary to file and set up your business from a legal requirements perspective. A final section of the course deals with employees and the legal implications surrounding this important responsibility. Each of the forms needed to successfully hire and manage employees is presented.

Speaker: Small Biz U, On-Line Training

Market research is the systematic process entrepreneurs use to gain insight into market problems and opportunities. The term market includes not only customers, but all players who are responsible for bringing certain products and services to market including suppliers, competitors, producers, wholesale distributors, retailers, logistics, and so on. To conserve time and money, successful entrepreneurs minimize the resources they devote to researching their ideas. Unlike the corporate world, the entrepreneur only does as much research and analysis to justify the next action or investment. This course presents scores of best practice concerning how entrepreneurial research is actually implemented. Answers to questions about market segments, consumer and business markets, market size, and sales forecasts are all addressed through step-by-step processes. Any entrepreneur should want to know as much as possible about any market they participate in. This course provides the guidance and resources necessary to develop just such a working knowledge.

Speaker: Small Biz U, On-Line Training

This course describes the fundamentals of the most important aspect of any business: marketing. Learn the concepts taught in college-level courses in just a few hours including the "5Ps"--Product, Promotion, Price, Place, and Positioning. At the end of this course, you will be able to create a comprehensive marketing plan for business that encompasses a creative plan, a positioning plan, and a media marketing calendar--the essentials of any good marketing strategy.

Speaker: Small Biz U, On-Line Training

This course provides the advice and strategies of the some of the leading entrepreneurs concerning what it really takes to start a new venture. Starting A New Business moves you through the important tasks of building a strong foundation for a business to the more tactical aspects concerning marketing, managing, and money. This course will also show you how to protect your ideas, how to hire employees, how to find out what licenses and regulations may apply, as well as, provide more than 50 resources of free information that are available to you in making your new business a reality.

Speaker: Small Biz U (On-Line Training)

Understanding Intellectual Property defines exactly what a copyright, trademark, and patent are and what kinds of protection they might afford your business. The process of establishing such protection is presented for each kind of property. Also discussed are international intellectual property protection issues, as well as, important legal documents such as non-disclosure agreements. A primer concludes this course which details the prior details to prepare before meeting with intellectual property attorney.

Speaker: Small Biz U, On-Line Training

With so many social media options and sites, what is right for your business? This three hour seminar reviews the popular social media sites and helps small business owners identify what is appropriate for their business to move to the next level. Participants learn tips and tactics to use social media wisely and productively and develop a social media marketing plan tailored for their individual business.

Gain a workable knowledge of how to properly record financial transactions for your business. Discover the three most important financial reports and how to use them to make the best-informed business decisions. If you’re a new business owner or need a refresher on the basics of accounting, this seminar is designed for you.

Facebook is used by millions to communicate and share information. And now more small businesses are using Facebook as a way to get on-line and share information. This seminar shows small business owners how to set up a Facebook business page, as well as use Facebook promotions and advertising to make an impact for their business on-line.

There are many digital fundraising opportunities for non-profit organizations, but leaders of these organizations must still build and maintain personal relationships to sustain their funding. Real money is raised through personal contact, through cultivation, through planning and preparation--personal means, as opposed to texting, e-mail, and other more digital forms of communication. This seminar will review the basics of personal fundraising and the “art of the asking” people for money to support their non-profit organization.

Participants will learn about different options to advertise our business using online resources. These options are often easier and much less expensive than traditional advertising. We will discuss social media advertising through major platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, as well as Google adwords and other options.

Securing funding for a small business remains a top challenge in this turbulent environment. This three hour program consists of panel discussions with local bankers, financial organizations, and public and private resources to help small business owners and prospective business owners understand the current lending environment and identify options available for funding. Each session will be followed with Q&A sessions for participants to ask questions and interact with panel members.

The use of online videos, primarily those on YouTube is making a huge impact on the way we do business today. Videos are seen by millions of people and business owners use them to make an impact online and bring customers to their stores. This seminar shows small business owners how to set up their YouTube account and make great videos with a small business budget. You will learn tactics that will work best for your business

Ready to get your business started, but want to make sure you’re properly handing your taxes? This seminar presented by the NC Department of Revenue covers the basics of tax compliance ranging from registering your business, to withholding from employees, and sales and use tax requirements. Information will be provided on a program for businesses that have fallen behind on sales and use, withholding, and other trust taxes. At the end of the seminar, there will be a question and answer session and networking possibilities with other business owners.

To be successful a non-profit should always have a detailed strategic plan. Participants will learn key components in the strategic planning process and how to engage the appropriate board members, staff, volunteers, and/or stakeholders in the process. This workshop offers a roadmap for non-profits who want an overview of strategic planning from start to finish as well as some practical tools to use along the way.

Intro to QuickBooks gets new and prospective small business owners started using QuickBooks, focusing on navigating the home page, using QuickBooks lists, and the chart of accounts. In this hands-on session, participants work through using QuickBooks to create a company file and practice recording sales and managing expenses. The session provides an overview on how QuickBooks can be used to manage a small business’ finances.