DAY 1
The CBP Seminar
Skip To The Key Takeaways & Action Items
After starting my small business, I became aware of something really exciting. The government and many others really want me to succeed. Whether it be to collect more tax money, to stimulate the local economy, or empathy, the reasons don’t matter. The fact that there are services out there to help me, many of them free, does.
In my case, I’ve learned a lot about starting a new business by studying the subject in both undergrad and in obtaining my MBA. That is a really good head start. However, there are many minute aspects of starting a business that I need help with (what permits I need, how to you pay the IRS), and a refresher of the things I learned many years ago should be beneficial.
In future blog posts, when I have experiences with the different groups and programs, I will explain exactly what they are and how they help. These include the Fairfax County Economic Development Authority (EDA), The Virginia Department of Small Business and Supplier Diversity (SBDC) and the Mason SBDC. But for now, we will focus on the topic of today’s post, the Northern Virginia Community Business Partnership (CBP).
In order to start filling out my calendar for the 100 Days of Business, the first things I used as action items, besides actual money making jobs, were seminars & classes. These types of events don’t happen every day, and if you miss a good one, you may have to wait a month, or even a year to attend again.
My calendar journey into the world of workshops is how I discovered the CBP. I found that they offered a course called “The ABC’s Of Starting A Business”, so I promptly signed up (The cost was $35).
As a side note, to give you my quick synopsis of the CBP: They are a non-profit organization created to support small businesses. They offer one on one business counseling and a few different training classes that aren’t free, but the fees are pretty nominal. Their office is across from Springfield Town Center Mall. You can learn more at their website.
When class day came, I arrived at the CBP office in Springfield early, and I sat in the classroom waiting. It was at this point I noticed, up on the screen, were the slides for the presentation. On the first slide, a large and colorful logo that read, “Women’s Business Center Of Northern Virginia”.
I almost had a panic attack. Did I accidentally sign up for an all women’s class? I looked at my emails, at the website, at the course description and none of it mentioned women. (Although now I realized what the “WBC Presents” meant on my confirmation email). (NOTE: The WBC helps all businesses, they let me know I was mistaken.)
The presentation was conducted by Kathy Wheeler, who is the retired president of the CBP. Kathy covered a variety of topics from the risks of starting a business to how to legally create the business entity. I particularly liked the breakdown of the business plan, something in which I definitely needed a refresher.
Aside from those topics, there were 2 key takeaways from the class which led to a few new action items that should help me going forward:
Takeaway #1: Learn More About Lean Startups
The presentation touched briefly on the business practice called LEAN STARTUP. Trying to define this in one sentence is kind of difficult, but I liked this explanation from the Harvard Business Review:
“It favors experimentation over elaborate planning, customer feedback over intuition, and iterative design over traditional “big design up front” development.”
Without knowing it, this sounds like the approach I began taking to grow MY business and to narrow down exactly what my key services were. Right now, I have a nice base service, and a lot of ideas for money I can spend on equipment to provide other services. However, do the customers actually want those services?
Action Items:
Read ‘The Lean Startup’
Takeaway #2: Don’t Ignore SWOT Analysis
I’ve been doing SWOT analysis for 20 years, and been ignoring it for just as long. SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. The idea is to brainstorm all of these things in terms of your business (or anything really), so you can do good things and avoid bad things. It sounds so simple and intuitive, and feels like it sometimes. But if you take the time to think about it and write it all down, it can be an eye opening experience.
Unfortunately, I haven’t formally done this for my business. Sure, I’ve informally and sporadically touched on different aspects of the SWOT, but never practiced a focused effort. And when talking about it in the class, it seemed insane that I had overlooked it.
Action Items:
Read SWOT Section Of ‘Analysis Without Paralysis’
Perform A SWOT analysis for Fire Toga LLC
Overall, the class provided a nice overview of starting a business. Personally, a lot of the course was not relevant to my situation as an already formed business with lots of formal business education, but the parts that were relevant were big. The small class size meant I could ask specific questions about my business, which was also a bonus.
Going forward, the CBP has another class I am going to attend, and I have some other classes & seminars with other organizations on the schedule. Once I attend more, I will be able to compare and contrast.
And in terms of this blog post, I was happy that I could turn my class notes into 2 solid key takeaways and develop some actual tasks I can add to my to-do list or calendar. I also discovered 2 new books to add to the reading list. Not bad for the first day of the 100 Days of Business!