Community Futures Highwood, Crowsnest Pass and Southwest are stepping up to provide help to entrepreneurs to build business resiliency.

Executive Director Sara Noyes says because of COVID-19 business owners have had to be flexible to survive.

"Everybody is at the point of needing to reconsider things, people are pivoting and transitioning to different methods of doing business, whether that's simple things like limiting the amount of people in your store to more complex issues like taking a store or business online to some extent, people are making tough decisions," she says.

She says they're trying to build resiliency and mental supports that will help business owners who've been battling through the pandemic.

Noyes says they understand that businesses don't have the funds to invest in coaching, so they applied to Western Economic Diversification and received a grant to provide a series of free workshops and coaching programs for any businesses that want to take part.

She says there'll be both individual and group coaching available.

"Even if the worst case happens and a business fails, there's learning opportunities in that and as tough as those decisions are, closing your business is the correct choice and the responsible choice and we want to make sure people are well supported in making those decisions," Noyes says. "Or continuing on, they may be changing things and they need to make decisions that are hard."

There are seven workshops, with the kick-off panel discussion involving the four coaches Monday August 24, 2020.

"That kicks off with a Finance series in September, so that'll be a three part series, each part in a couple of hours, led by an expert. They are an opportunity to learn things like bookkeeping skills or reading your financial statements or things about taxation, there'll be lost about COVID and the programs that were available that businesses took advantage of that they need to understand more of how that affects their finances and things,"

Contact Community Futures for more information.


Questions, comments or story ideas? e-mail