Staffing and funding. Business owners share those and other top concerns at Turlock summit
Small business owners gathered Tuesday for the first Turlock Business Summit, organized by the Valley Sierra Small Business Development Center.
The free event, held at the Grand Oak Banquet Hall And Event Center in Turlock, saw over 100 small business owners and employees in attendance and featured presentations from various consultants and business leaders.
Maisie Silva, the Turlock program specialist for the Valley Sierra SBDC, said the event was made possible through an American Rescue Plan Act grant for the “Turlock: Small Business, Large Impact” program. The program seeks to connect local business owners with resources and provide opportunities and training.
Silva said she and her fellow organizers chose workshops for the event based on a business needs survey. Top concerns for business owners were marketing strategies, how to find capital funding and business strategy in a post-COVID world.
“The turnout is great so far,” Silva said at the beginning of the event. “The reception has be great as well.”
In addition to workshops, organizers invited nine vendors to connect with business owners and share their resources, from the local chamber of commerce to Opportunity Stanislaus, where the Valley Sierra SBDC’s offices are housed.
David Lamarre, who owns the steel fabrication business Lamarre & Sons with his brothers, attended the event after he’d reached out to the SBDC for business advice. Lamarre said his business had been through rough patches during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We’ve just had a lot of trouble with hiring and finding capable help,” he said. “It’s why we’re here today.”
He said he was most looking for financial advice, as well as information about small business grants and other funding.
Across town, Marissa Gonzalez is the general manager for the Fairfield Inn & Suites and Holiday Inn Express, two franchise-owned hotels. Gonzalez said her hotels have dealt with staffing issues and had to close down whole wings during the pandemic when people weren’t traveling much.
“Now we see business getting back to normal and it’s actually doing really well,” she said. “We’re having sold-out nights and so now (we’re) able to generate a new team, (we’ve brought back) everyone that we could and are building our team further.”
Gonzalez learned about the summit through social media, and attended with her sales team to connect with other local businesses and get advice on business strategy.
As businesses emerge from the COVID economy, the key to success lies in strategic planning, said Claudia Newcorn, the president of Acorn Marketing in Modesto and one of the event’s speakers.
These plans will look different business-to-business, Newcorn told The Bee before her presentation, and don’t have to be a thick deck, “which has no use but as a great doorstop.”
“Good strategic planning is actually ongoing,” she said. “There’s reality checks you can do on a running basis in your business, and those include quick and dirty financial assessments (and) reviewing of your operations, including how you’re better leveraging your staff and team to be part of a team.”
Newcorn added that business owners need to get comfortable with the new normal, and realize that there will never be a return to the prepandemic world.
“Instability is the norm,” she stressed. “If it’s not COVID, it’s something else.”
To help fund The Bee’s economic development reporter with Report for America, go to https://bit.ly/ModestoBeeRFAThis story was produced with financial support from the Stanislaus Community Foundation, along with the GroundTruth Project’s Report for America initiative. The Modesto Bee maintains full editorial control of this work.
