Extension town halls to focus on interpreting business data

Finding and interpreting market research and other useful business and industry data can be challenging for small business owners. University of Nevada, Reno Extension will walk small business owners through real-life examples of finding and interpreting data to help them with their business challenges, at its free online town hall this Wednesday.

The town hall is free, and there will be an English-language session and a Spanish-language session. The online interactive sessions are part of a series of online town halls and webinars for small businesses, “Coping With COVID-19,” that the Extension has been offering weekly since April.

“A few months ago, we held a session where we covered the basics of how market research can help small businesses, and where they can access some data,” said Extension’s Lucas Thomas, who will lead this week’s sessions. “But, this week, we will actually walk them through the process and address questions and challenges they might encounter, because it can be pretty overwhelming when you first dive in.”

Thomas has been working closely with business counselors to gather data for small businesses and deliver the data in a concise, easy-to-interpret manner.

The town hall, “Market Research and Navigating Business Data,” is 9 a.m. Wednesday, Oct. 14 for English speakers and at 2 p.m. for Spanish speakers. In addition to Thomas, panelists include Small Business Administration Deputy District Director Saul Ramos and outreach/marketing specialist Alfredo Cedeno and, from the Extension, business development instructors Reyna Mendez and Juan Salas and research associate Mike Bindrup.

“We are going to continue to offer these weekly town halls for our state’s small businesses because they face so many challenges right now, and there is so much information to sort through,” said Buddy Borden, economic development specialist with Extension’s Business Development Program. “Besides the information we present, we answer a lot of questions, and the participants share with each other what they are learning and what they are doing to get through this difficult time.”

Both the town halls and the webinars usually run about an hour.

To register for the English-language town hall, go to https://bit.ly/2FnXmTz

For the Spanish-language town hall, go to https://bit.ly/2SQkIEy

For more information, go to the Extension Business Development Program website at extension.unr.edu/busdev.

For more information, email Borden at bordenb@unr.edu