Business Smart was a Smart Workshop

The City and Small Business Administration co-hosted a "Business Smart" workshop designed to teach prospective and new business owners essential strategies for running "smart" and successful businesses. Workshop topics included: -Basics of business startup -Essentials of becoming credit-ready -How and where to find additional small business support and educational resources. More than 30+ people showed up, most of them getting ready to start a new business.

Some interesting facts -

• 545,000 new businesses started each year, but even more fail each year
• 75% of them have no employees
• Main causes of failure are lack of planning, not enough money, and poor management skills.
• 80% of small businesses close in first 60 months: most fail in the first 18 months
• small businesses make up 99% of U.S. employees, employ 48% of private sector jobs, and create 63% of new private jobs.

This workshop is one of the many workshops put on by our excellent Economic Development Department. For more information, click here.

The next workshop will be on May 12 from 8:30 am to 12:45 pm at the Sports Park. The title is "Secrets & Strategies for Business Success". It's designed for current and prospective entrepreneurs, featuring informative sessions from experts in their given industries. Business owners will have the opportunity to visit various business resource booths and form collaborative business partnerships.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. Jim Gardner is on the City Council for Lake Forest. You can check him out on LinkedIn and/or Facebook and you can share your thoughts about the City at Lake Forest Town Square on Facebook. His comments are not meant to reflect official City Policy.

Dr. Gardner has office hours every Tuesday from 4 pm to 6 pm at the City Hall. In addition, he holds a Town Hall meeting every quarter. The next meeting will be on May 20 at the Foothill Ranch Public Library.