Newport Workshop Teaches Tactics for Better Business

Cold weather and rain didn’t stop dozens of people from visiting the OASIS Senior Center in Corona del Mar over the weekend to learn tactics on how to improve their businesses.

On Saturday the Opis Network held its Business Accelerator Workshop-- a kick-off workshop for the Helping 100 Businesses for 100 Days Program-- for the second time in Newport Beach. The program was created with the mindset that if Opis helped one community at a time, then eventually economy can rebuild itself and businesses will thrive because of it.

“We’re going to teach them to understand themselves like they’ve never understood it before,” said Norm Bour, the organization's community development director. “Most people think they know their business because they have their inside perception and they do not understand the outside perception of how people actually view them.”

The workshop provided the attendees with over two hours of crucial information that will be covered more in depth over the next 100 days if business owners decide to participate in the program. 

“There is nothing more powerful than connecting with like minded people or have the same sort of affinity in terms of a group setting, and being able to share those ideas and thoughts, likes and dislikes is important because it creates a relationship with people,” said David Naidu, president of Opis. “That strength with social media is definitely dictating how advertisers connect and how businesses thrive.”

Naidu gave business owners different tips and methods throughout the workshop, such as building connections with clients, respecting competitors and  valuing people who aren’t afraid to tell you the truth. He also stressed for people to do things differently, and wants to challenge them to think more clearly without having a lot of emotions attached to their ideas.

“We tend to overcomplicate simple solutions,” Naidu said. “Some of the biggest businesses have simple concepts and in life we feel that being more sophisticated and complex makes us sound better, but the reality is that we have to boil everything down to the core.” 

Mayor Nancy Gardner attended the workshop and gave encouragement and praise to the program attendees.

"With something like this, you become newly enthusiastic about businesses",  Gardner said. "You get tools, a slightly different slant, and you feel invigorated. If businesses do well, the city does well."

Wossene Bowler, the owner of the online based New Awakenings Coffee, attended the workshop in hopes of improving her business. Bowler, a cancer survivor, uses her gourmet coffee business to support the nonprofit organization she founded in 2006 called The Life’s Second Chance Foundation, whose goal is to bring a hospital and research center to Ethiopia to help cancer patients, and then eventually turn her attention to cancer patients all over the world.

“I think the workshop is, promising, and I hope they will teach us the tools we need to grow our businesses,” said Bowler. “Hopefully they will take me to my dream.”

The Helping 100 Businesses in 100 Days program will include three more live workshops and conference calls to make sure everyone is keeping up with the workload.  Opis Network plans to have the next 100 Day Program in Costa Mesa in March.