So I don't understand how this happened, but I am speaking at the LDS Small Business Groups for the next 3 months.
A couple of years back my partner Bryce Nielsen and I started a small consulting company lovingly named, Wasatch Dev, LLC. During the starting of this company we decided to join the local Chamber of Commerce: Also known to us as the PO COC (Provo/Orem Chamber of Commerce). When we joined this organization we started going to its network lunches and other activities. One of it's activites was "Chamber University" where they had a prominent business person come in and talk about what it was that they did as a business and how it might work out better for your company. It usually turned into a sales pitch which was frustrating, but hey that's the capitalist mind at work.
So Bryce and I thought, "Hey we could do that." And decided that we should approach the chamber to see if we could present a topic on something computer related. I don't mean to speak ill will of the POCOC (or maybe secretly I do), but they were less than helpful with anything that we suggested. We then thought that it might be a good idea to try it on our own. So we came up with the idea of the Wasatch Business Conference, or WaBCon for short. We started bringing the idea around to a couple people that we knew and some that we heard about and everyone loved it. It was revolutionary. It was fresh. It was something that I thought everybody did! But it turns out no one thought that way.
So what was it? WaBCon is a FREE all day event that is geared towards training small businesses in areas that they might find useful: Finance, Marketing, Business Management and Technology. Local speciallists come and present for 50 minutes about a topic that they know intently. And the best part ... THERE IS NO SALES PITCH!!! If we find out that people are pitching their wares during their presentations they are not asked back the next year and are put on our "Black List." More on that to come later in another post.
During this run of marketing for the conference and networking lunches and meetings we met a wonderful person named Larry Stevenson. He is the person in charge of LDS Employment Services. And if you are a small business owner in the Utah Valley region and you have not met Larry you are not being productive in your business.
Well, after our first WaBCon (and we are on year three) Bryce and I asked Larry to help us out and be on our WBC Steering Committee. The WBC is an idea that came out after WaBCon. The Wasatch Business Community, or WBC, is an online community dedicated to taking off where some of the other networking groups have lacked: The Online Community presence. That is for another blog as well. But because of the valuable information and knowledge of Larry, we asked if he would help us out this things. And he accepted and has been a huge asset ever since.
Well I guess Larry has thought that I was knowledgeable in the community area as well because he asked if I could come and talk to the LDS Employment Groups about the WBC. My presentation is tomorrow and I hopefully will post what happened so you guys can see it. I only am presenting one day in the next couple months: Tomorrow to Provo, July to Orem and August to Springville. But that's enough for me. Because truly do you really want to hear me ramble on and one about more community stuff?
Of course you do ... that's why you're reading this!!!