Chamber Chatter - Small Business Month

Key speakers Steve Mepham, Diane Gray and Ed Campbell
15th Mar 2022

March is Small Business Month right across the state of NSW. As part of this focus on small business, the Guyra District Chamber of Commerce hosted an information day with four key speakers and lots of free food. Fifteen people attended the event on Sunday 6th March at Silent Hands Café. The venue was just the place to hold such an event on such a rainy day.
Diane Gray spoke about the various avenues of support and services available to businesses in this region and talked about how businesses have been able to tap into some of these and realise new opportunities. Diane also talked about how Aus Industies can advocate to Government and others for small business on issues such as supply chain disruption and freight issues etc as has been experienced during Covid. Also about how they can link B2B to find solutions etc.
Ed Campbell from Seek + Deploy presented on the foundations of a successful digital strategy for our businesses and what we need to do and why we need to give careful consideration/plan for our digital presence and how important it is to have at least a small but consistent investment of time to get our digital presence working for us.
Rachel Fenn spoke about the financial things that need to be taken care of in business and the many things that she has seen go wrong, when we don’t get it right or treat our financials as something we will do when we have some spare time which rarely happens then disaster strikes. Good bookkeeping software and automation Apps can make a huge difference to keeping on top of our bookkeeping along with some help from a good BAS Agent and Tax Agent.
Bronwyn Pearson from Pinnacle People Solutions spoke about the issues of not meeting our HR obligations and where that could end up. Bronwyn provided a number of insights into what is required to get it right from the start, which is important as fixing it can be very problematic and expensive.
It was great to see not only a few people in the throes of setting up their first small business venture who soaked up everything like a sponge, but also a number of seasoned business operators who found quite a few timely reminders that they had not been paying all the attention they should have been.
The day was a resounding success and it would have been even better if more businesses had tapped into these sessions. The cost of this information to each business would have been around $1,500 to get personally so was a great opportunity provided to our local business community by the local chamber and the small business month grant we received.
Steve Mepham
President