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AMA seminars free through ESDC program
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For 80 years the American Management Association (AMA) has been offering business management advice to the nation's top companies. This year, they have decided to do something different.
As part of a federally-funded technical assistance services program launched by the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) in August, AMA is now offering free business skills seminars to small business south of 14th Street. In classes that Fortune 500 businesses pay thousands of dollars for their top executives to attend, Lower Manhattan small business owners can now learn -- for free -- essential management skills that can help them regain their footing after the events of September 11.
"We felt there were basic business skills that we could offer on a professional level to these very small businesses that don't usually have access to our services," said Carol Khoury, AMA's director of marketing for corporate learning services. So as soon as AMA was selected as one of 23 providers in the ESDC technical assistance program, Khoury and her colleagues set to work to develop an eight-class seminar series with the specific needs of downtown small businesses in mind.
"These classes meet a major need for businesses downtown," said Regina Wierbowski, a Tribeca-based independent real estate broker who specializes in Lower Manhattan residential sales. "We lost 100,000 customers -- we need to know how to rebuild our business base."
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| Wierbowski plans to attend every seminar offered |
For Wierbowski and others in the downtown small business community, the opportunity to get the same advice big companies pay top dollars for -- for free -- is simply too good to pass up. She has now taken three of the eight seminars offered, one on basic business planning, another on planning for business crises, and a third, fundamentals of accounting for non-finance people. "And I have every intention of taking all eight -- I would have attended three this week alone if it weren't for the snow," Wierbowski said.
AMA chose which classes to offer based on feedback from a survey of Lower Manhattan small businesses conducted last fall. The eight they selected are all among the top forty they sell -- at a fee of between $1,600 and $2,000 each -- to leading global companies. In addition to those Wierbowski has already attended, other classes include principles of professional selling, strategic planning, fundamentals of marketing, coping with unanticipated changes and insurance and risk management in an uncertain market.
Most surprising to Wierbowski in the classes she has attended so far has been how well the examples given by instructors of lessons learned by large corporations apply to her small business. "Perhaps the most important thing I have learned is that fundamentals of business are fundamentals of business," she said. "If I lose my reputation for service, honor or integrity -- that's as important for me as Enron losing its reputation for those things."
The same instructors that provide management advice to huge multinational companies, including 486 of the venerable Fortune 500, teach the free Lower Manhattan seminar series, drawing accolades from Robert Andreson, a consultant in the telecom industry who has participated in the seminars. "The instructors are real life professionals bringing their knowledge and expertise to the table," he said.
Andreson was equally impressed by how easy AMA has made it for business owners to participate. "The classes keep me where I need to be -- downtown -- and they are short and focused, meaning all I have to do is clear away an afternoon." AMA recognized that for small businesses already struggling to stay afloat, seminars that were several days long or held away from downtown would pose too great of an inconvenience. With this in mind, they arranged to use downtown locations rather than AMA's midtown offices -- so that seminar participants wouldn't have far to travel They also decided to contain each seminar session to half a day, so participants wouldn't need to leave their businesses for long stretches of time.
While the Lower Manhattan business seminars teach the same skills as do AMA's corporate engagements, this is hardly business as usual for the AMA, said Laura Guarascio, AMA director of large accounts. "This is very personal for those of us involved," she said. "This is our city and we want to do the best we can to serve it."
More than twenty half-day sessions, held morning and afternoon, took place in November and December. Another series will run from now through late April. Small businesses south of 14th Street with fewer than 200 employees are eligible to participate. Registration is required. For a full list of spring sessions or to register, call (800) 262-9699, email freetraining@amanet.org, or visit www.ama4nyc.org/.
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