Intern Adventures: Success In Business
Introducing, Katherine and Nathan! We are so excited to be joined this summer by two Plano Independent School District students, Katherine Han (Plano West) and Nathan Gong (Plano East), as summer interns for the Plano Chamber. Their internships through the Plano Mayors Summer Internship Program have been generously sponsored by JPMorgan Chase & Co. and FedEx Office – thank you for your support! Please be sure to welcome Katherine and Nathan to the team when you see them this summer!
The Plano Chamber interns are thrilled to present their NEW blog series, Adventures of an Intern. Katherine and Nathan will be joining the Plano Chamber at our various events during their internship. Follow along on their adventures as they recap our events from a fresh perspective.
If you are looking to further your personal and professional development, make plans to join us for a Success In Business seminar. Whether it is an update on the latest in social media or training on how to communicate more effectively in the workplace, these monthly lunch-and-learns deliver an engaging program for business professionals at all levels.
Nathan shares with us his experience & takeaways from our latest Success In Business.
On Wednesday, July 27th, I had the pleasure of attending a session of the Plano Chamber’s Success in Business event. This session called “Leads To Lead Your Business To Success” was hosted by Dr. Laura Shwaluk, President of Business Builders Mentor and Masterminds, where she discussed several ways to help small businesses grow and increase their outreach.
Dr. Shwaluk started off the session by explaining the concept of contact “leads”, which refers to the amount of customers that a business is in contact with. The next concept she talked about was the conversion rate of a business, which is the percentage of “leads” that actually turn into business (when a lead spends money at a business). She gave a lot of good tips to the attendees about how to actually increase their amount of leads AND conversion rate, by showing over 19 ways of contacting customers. Some of which were really unconventional – who would have thought using radio to air advertisements actually works! Well, it did for Dr. Shwaluk’s old chiropractic business, and she was generous enough to share a lot of specific examples from her business.
A big takeaway for me personally and a lot of the people in the room was Dr. Shwaluk’s emphasis on a business holding a “Market-dominating position”. Being in this position essentially answers the question of – Why should I choose your business over your competitor? And as she stated, once a business can successfully pitch their business and answer this question, they will have the most dominant position in their given market. She shared a lot of other tips and tricks to help out small businesses, but these were just some of the most notable things that I, even as a non-business owner, took away!
Nathan Gong