RCC Small Business Development Center offers management program

The program was developed to help local entrepreneurs become successful with their businesses: https://sbdc.roguecc.edu/small-business-management

The coronavirus pandemic has had a lot of small businesses hard this year.

Now local programs providing an opportunity to build your business, develop your team and plan for a successful future.

Tim basalt, with the rcc small business development center joins us now, tim, thanks for being with us this afternoon.

Thanks for having me for those of us who don't know.

What is the small business management program?

The small business management program started approximately nine years ago here in the rogue valley.

And it's meant to be designed to work with this assist throughout just latina jackson county and really focused on four key areas, sales, profit people process.

And we, uh, develop a code or approximately 20 businesses every year, every fall.

And the cohort operates.

We've worked together for nine months.

We meet once a month in a classrooc pi.nthen we also provide ennbusiness advisingssions thugs pandemic affected how you guys the program this year at all?

L that's a great question.

And it's a bit of a unknown at is point.

Our plan is to follow the guy mine's established by acommunitycollege rriculum person, which is ouraae e able to do that because of,, , we would offer the program online.

Now because of the going pandemic, is there going d change your content with the program this year?

Obviously the previous years,is grow andvercome some of theirals lated issues that businesses e seeing this year?

Well, our, r approach toward business, ere e core principles.

That,, wr e business to execute,erate ande d work with businesses and adapt literly on a week byweek .

Ntinuous ciggies to succeedd gr, otecting their customers andotes sinesses.

Wes to know it.it's ni ess i would callhe new norm,t fe tchints and maybethinking, i dos something that we shouldply fos know if this is a program that they could use?

Ll, as i said earlier in our scussion, we've offered a program over theose of nine years.

And we've had approximately over that nine years, 150, uh, certified graduate companies go through the program.

Many of those companies you would recommend, uh, recognize it's.

Um, the program we offer applies to.

All industry sectors throughout, throughout valley.

And one of the unique features that we offer with the program is the one on one advice in sessions.

And through that, we have a core group of advisors that are either past business owners, ceos, and other businesses, and are experts in certain fields and industries.

So we're able to match the particular business and industry they're in with either myself or a fellow advisor.

That has expertise in that industry.

So it's really kind of tailored towards a business's individual needs and their customer base, right?

Yeah.

How i would describe the program is the classroom topics that we cover are basic, not basic the general business topics.

Um, and then the one on one advice and sessions that occur occur throughout the nine months.

Then take those topics then how are we, how do we adapt those topics to those specific business needs?

Now you are offering some scholarships this year.

How do businesses apply for those scholarships and how do they apply for the program in general?

Well, through, through a limited time offering rcc is offering a $300 scholarship for the program.

The program normally costs five 99 is it's a program that that is, um, um, if you were to go out and get this in the private sector, you'd pay thousands of dollars to go through this type of program, but through our, our resources and the funding through our local stakeholders and our state federal stakeholders, we're able to offer this program at a very affordable price to business owners, so to apply, um, you would go to our sbdc website and the sbm program is listed there as far as services, and you can apply online.

Then i conduct an interview with the business owner to be sure that we're a fit for what they're trying to do and we can help them.

Perfect.

Well, thank you for being with us today, mwe really appreciate itfamily h their mourns the amily really .

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