Rhode Island Nexus

Power Hour Seminar Series: “TLC - Think Like The Customer” Join national expert Celeste M. Warner, as she helps you to TLC-Think Like The Customer. Whether you are a new service professional or a seasoned veteran, you will learn the costs associated with your customers’ silence and the benefits of creating small, internal systems that will help you capture your lost dollars. This program is fun, valuable and informative. It will change the very way you think about doing busine$$

cost: $15 members, $20 non-members 

In order to conduct a proper strategic analysis of your operation, you must perform a SWOT analysis. A SWOT is the process of carefully inspecting the business and its environment through the various dimensions of Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. Conducting a SWOT is a way to organize information and assign probabilities to potential events – both good and bad – as the basis for developing business strategy and operational plans.

Strategic analysis is presented in this seminar as a five-step methodical process that will help to organize information and aid in planning. By applying management by objectives techniques, you will learn how to establish specific goals and objectives, which you commit to achieving. Through the process of strategic analysis, you will also learn the need to consider when outcomes start to differ from expectations. This process is referred to at management by exception. When outcomes differ, you must establish new strategies to deal with the change. By combining management by objectives and management by exception techniques, you will be able to develop an effective strategic plan for your company.

This luncheon program will introduce and summarize perhaps the best available means of financing most business needs -- the SBA 504 loan program targeted to small businesses that may or may not be fully bankable and are in need of affordable capital for plant or office purchases or expansions and capital equipment acquisitions, among other purposes.

Participants will learn from the pros at New England’s leading Certified Development Company (NECDC – an affiliate of the Business Development Company of Rhode Island), Liz Trifone and Nancy Gibeau, and from local closing attorney and long time Chamber board member, Tom Madden, why this loan program should not be overlooked and how to use it to your advantage..

Cost: $29 (includes lunch) 

For those just starting out or thinking about owning a business, this course discusses commitment, risks and rewards, advantages and disadvantages of entrepreneurship. Also covered are trends, location, marketing, research, operational issues, insurance, advisors, failure and much more. You will leave this session with tools, worksheets, and tips to get started.

Four exciting new films have been chosen - *Holodomor* by Apu/Anya Productions, *Writer’s Block* by Daylight Films and Productions, and *All the Colors Grey* by Fred Timdall, rescheduled from the last screening. *Holodomor* is a very interesting documentary hybrid made in conjunction with the Kirovohrad Social-Pedagogocal Institute in Europe as a way to spread awareness of the Ukrainian Famine of 1932; *Writer’s Block* is a comedy following one man’s quest to save his film by writing the script himself despite his writer’s block and *All the Colors Grey* is the epic tale of a mailman who daydreams on the job to escape his boring job before quitting it all to pursue a more meaningful life.

A short Meet the Filmmaker / Q&A Session will follow. The event is open to the public with a $5.00 Suggested Donation at the door.