SBA's Emerging Leaders Program Offers Business Owners Knowledge and Skills to Grow Established Businesses
Applications Now Being Accepted!
SALT LAKE CITY, UT – The U.S. Small Business Administration’s Emerging Leaders Program will be offered again this year to help increase growth opportunities for small businesses. This valuable initiative provides participants with knowledge, know-how, and subject matter expertise from peers, business leaders, and the financial community. The Emerging Leaders program is available to owners and executives of existing businesses, at no cost to them.
The goal of this program is to assist business owners in growing their businesses, creating jobs, and strengthening their communities. This initiative is an intense six-month course that offers approximately 100 hours of live training, providing the opportunity for small business owners to receive face-to-face instruction; and to work with experienced professionals at no cost.
SBA’s Emerging Leaders program is successful because of its strong relationships and collaborations with community partners and business champions throughout the state of Utah. SBA appreciates the work the small business community does, and would like to invite all to refer and help identify potential candidates for this year’s Emerging Leaders cohort. In addition to providing an outstanding training opportunity for those who participate, the Emerging Leaders initiative is an opportunity for them to connect with a diverse group of small businesses owners.
Eligible Applicants
• Have annual revenues of at least $250,000.
• Have been in business for at least 3 years.
• Have at least one employee other than self.
Participants must also demonstrate a high level of commitment to complete the course, and minimal absences are accepted.
How a business owner can register:
Register at: https://www.sba.gov/emergingleaders. Interested small business owners are invited to learn more about the initiative by contacting Program Manager, Ian Lorenzana, at ian.lorenzana@sba.gov.
Classes begin April 12, 2019 from 9:00am-12:00pm. This year, the classes will be meeting at the Weber State Farmington Station Campus, in Farmington, Utah. The Emerging Leaders classes will be held every other Friday through October.
The deadline to apply is April 5, 2019. Interviews are taking place now, so interested parties are encouraged to apply right away. Only 20 slots available.
How you can help:
• Help spread the word to small businesses
• Direct prospective participants to our project manager (via email) or have them register at: http://www.sba.gov/emergingleaders
• Include this information about Emerging Leaders in your printed publication, online publication, or social media outlets
• Forward this notification to any other organizations or people who have connections to local small business owners
What 10,000 miles on the road has taught me
by Dan Nordberg, SBA Region VIII Administrator
SBDC SERVICES THAT WILL DRIVE GROWTH FOR YOUR BUSINESS
Many of you may know that the Logan SBDC offers free management consulting services. In providing these services, our main focus is to help both established and start-up businesses overcome major challenges to drive business growth. Many of you may not know, however, that the center provides a multitude of other low-cost services that will help your company accelerate its growth. These services include: employee training systems, market research, marketing system set-up, e-commerce development, and design services.
Market Research
Analysts at the SBDC regularly perform market research for established and start-up businesses. Competitor analyses, surveys, industry analyses, and SWOT analyses are a few examples of the many projects we have conducted. Our market research is customizable to the needs of your businesses, and we tailor each market research project to provide the exact information that you need for success.
E-Commerce Development
If you are looking to create an online store, you will need an e-commerce platform, which the Logan SBDC can help you choose and setup.
Shopify and BigCommerce are two fully functional, yet user friendly ecommerce platforms that we use often, although we can also set up many others. With comprehensive order management systems, they streamline order fulfillment, shipping label creation, and order tracking. They both integrate with many other services and sales channels (such as QuickBooks, Facebook, Pinterest, Google Shopping, Amazon, MailChimp, etc) and integrate with various point of sale (POS) systems to keep all inventory and purchases synced in one location.
The Logan SBDC will setup your store with either Shopify or BigCommerce, create you a customized theme, and train you on how to manage your store. As part of the store setup we link and configure Google Analytics, Google AdWords, and Google Merchant to facilitate online marketing.
Creative Services
Design and other creative services are an essential component of creating and maintaining your company. The Logan SBDC offers a variety of creative services that can help grow your business and build your brand trajectory. Our graphic designer has experience in branding and brand strategy and can help develop a visual identity for your business that will most effectively communicate with your target market.
In addition to graphic design services, we offer branding/brand strategy, creative direction, logo design, print design (e.g. brochures, posters, catalogs), package design, and photography.
Training Course Development
The Logan SBDC can help you streamline training or certification procedures with Moodle.
Moodle is an online learning platform designed to provide educators, administrators and learners with a robust system to create personalized learning environments. From a few students to millions of users, Moodle can be scaled to support the needs of both small classes and large organizations.
Save time and money while increasing retention by creating comprehensive, online training or safety certifications courses with Moodle's robust course creation capabilities. The Logan SBDC will setup/configure your Moodle site, create a customized theme, and train you on how to administer your Moodle course. Because Moodle is an open source software it's free to maintain, and your course is yours forever.
Marketing Services
Properly marketing your business through different channels is essential to success, although it can often be difficult to learn all of the systems. At the Logan SBDC we offer direction and implementation of several marketing platforms, including: Facebook and Instagram ads, LinkedIn ads, Click Funnels, Lead Pages, email automation, and others upon request.
Our marketing analyst can create and run ad sets on your social media pages or coach you how to create your own and interpret the results. Our analyst also has experience in creating Click Funnels, an automated sales tool that is popular in online sales and webinars that can be used as a lead magnet as well. By analyzing your business' needs, we can identify Shopify Apps or other methods to automate as much as your sales process and email marketing as possible.
For more information about these services, a quote, or to schedule an appointment, please call (435) 797-2277, or reach out to us at sbdc@usu.edu.