I spoke with Natalie Kelly, Treasurer of the Bow Valley Chamber of Commerce, about a series of free webinars beginning this Wednesday to help local businesses transition into this new reality.  Open to both Chamber members and non-members!

 

Rob: The Chamber is starting a brand new interactive business webinar series this week. What can you tell us about it?

Natalie: It’s titled Post COVID-19: Thriving in the New Normal. The goal is to help businesses be ready to survive and ultimately thrive as they face new realities with their businesses and prepare to reopen. We just want to help business owners face these new realities and changes head on, help them develop some plans, provide some guidelines so that they can execute with urgency and measure and improve how they’re doing things and how they can start doing things differently. We can help each other get through this together.

Rob: On Wednesday, this kicks off at 7:30 AM. What’s the first session about?

Natalie: The first session is on financial health, so we’re going to be going over a cashflow and alternative forms of financing. One thing I’d like to just mention too about this program is that it is an interactive webinar series. The idea is to engage in small group discussions with other business owners, just to share ideas and see how other people are developing their strategies.

We’ll follow up after the long weekend, next Wednesday on May 20th with government and alternative financing.

On Monday, May 25th we’re going to be talking about protecting people. What are policies, management, communication, and, employment regulations that you’ll need to address when you’re reopening?

The fourth session will be on Wednesday, May 27th. That’s going to be a focus on marketing and sales. Client engagement, impacts, changing needs and innovation.

Our fifth session will be on Monday, June 1st. That’ll be on operational excellence. That’s maintaining service levels and supply teams and really looking at reducing costs.

The sixth session is Wednesday, June 3rd, on support functions. We’re going to be talking about accounting and finance. We’ll have questions and answers and also legal components that relate to the changes and reopening.

Our final session will be on June 8th. That’s a leadership nerve center, talking about agile communication, revisiting action plans and how things align, and this is what our roles and responsibilities as business owners.

Rob: How can people sign up for these free webinars?

Natalie: They can visit our website and there’s actually really has had a great response already. We’re really hoping that some more people in the Bow Valley can sign up.

Rob: Is there a limit for the amount of participants?

Natalie: With Zoom, it’s great. We can put as many seats as we like and we want to have a good group so that with our breakout sessions we’re having five or six people in each.

Filed under: Banff, Canmore, covid-19