Weekend ‘Work At Home Business Expo’

Are you unemployed? Substantially under-employed? Do you run a business from home?

If so, you’re part of a vast and vital demographic—11.4 percent of people in California were unemployed in September, according to the California Employment Development Department, and the U.S. Census Bureau reported that same month that nearly half of all businesses in the nation are home-run, the majority of them self-financed.

Until a little more than a month ago here in Eagle Rock, a group of self-employed entrepreneurs called PeopleConnectors met every Wednesday morning at the to network on a variety of business-related issues. Consisting of financial advisors and professional life coaches to chiropractors and realtors, the group offered advice on everything from signs for businesses to tips on personal well-being.

But "after struggling for more than eight months to revive PeopleConnectors, a decision was made to dissolve the group," says Adeline Miele, one of the group's main organizers. "From 2007 to the end of 2010 we did some great things, connect many people, helped many people and all of us are proud of what we accomplished in those three and a half years."

Given the tough economic times, it's probably no surprise that a “Work at Home Business Expo” scheduled this weekend offers details about as many as 100 tested home business models, resources and workshops aimed at helping just about anybody launch and manage a successful home-based business.    

Also known as the Los Angeles “WaHB Expo,” the event will be held Saturday and Sunday, November 12-13, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Fairplex Exposition Complex in Pomona.

The expo offers a range of seminar discussions, including a presentation by the California Small Business Development Center on how to use social media to promote your business, and a talk organized by the L.A.-based AM radio station KFWB, titled, “How to look BIG when you’re working small at home.”

For more details, click on this link to the WaHB Expo website.

Admission is $10 at the door, and $8 if purchased in advance online. (The admission fee may be applied as “an investment in your chosen Home Based Business Model,” according to the Fairplex Exposition Complex site.) People with proof of unemployment, as well as for children under 12 years of age, will be admitted free.

Fairplex Exposition Complex, 101 West McKinley Avenue, Pomona, 91768.

Note: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that PeopleConnectors, a group of self-employed entrepreneurs, meets weekly in Eagle Rock to network and help each other conduct business. As the article now correctly has it, the group stopped meeting a little more than a month ago after some three and a half years of successfully helping many people.