
For WNC Employers
Our locally owned businesses are vital to our region. We appreciate our employers and are here to support you by connecting you with all of the resources available to you.
Soft Skills
NCRLA Foundation Hospitality & Tourism Training Program

Balancing Life: Simplifying Your “Busy” Calendar and Digital Life 2023
Friday, April 28, 2023 10-10:30am ET
Do you feel like you’re constantly on the go with too little downtime? Or are there overlapping events and meetings forcing you to choose where to be and what to miss? These can all add to negative stress, burnout, and overall frustration. In this session, we’ll talk about ways to “de-clutter” your schedules and simplify life. This can allow you to say “no” to some things so you are available to say “yes” to the things that matter most to you.
Rural RISE NC
No matter whether you are a brand new business owner needing help getting your business off the ground or an established business looking to get to the next level, NC Secretary of State Elaine Marshall wants you to have access to as many useful resources as possible to help you succeed, including our new business checklist.
Our Rural RISE NC initiative connects you with mentors, business counselors, funding resources, and more – within your community and beyond. Even better, many of these resources are free.

Southwestern Community College Small Business Center Online Training Events

Sequoyah Fund Trainings
TACTIX DIGITAL MARKETING
Ready to take your digital marketing to the next level?
Sign up today to secure your place in Sequoyah Fund’s May, 2023 cohort of TACTIX.
This dynamic community of small business owners from all over the country comes together on our super smart system of digital tools to learn digital marketing from the experts.
Within the TACTIX app, you’ll attend our ACCEL course where our team will teach you how to leverage the top platforms in the world to take your company to the next level. Covering topics like Digital Marketing, Social Media, eCommerce websites, and Online Sales, our education app gives you a step-by-step roadmap to launching and growing your business, and making more money online.
Sequoyah Fund is sponsoring 50 seats in this cohort ($150 value)!

Customized Training for YOUR Small Business
If your small business could benefit from customized training in
Customer Service
Hiring, Recruiting & Training
Basic Supervision, or
Train-the-Trainer
or if you need to create or update your employee handbook or policy manual, Sequoyah Fund can help!
Contact us today to schedule a free consultation.

Webinar Wednesdays
Sequoyah Fund and Southwestern Community College offer a free webinar every Wednesday from 12:00-1:15 p.m. Eastern Time, with a different topic each week. Grab your lunch and log on with us to improve your business.
Here’s what’s coming up:
May 10: Take Your Business Pitch from Good to Great
May 17: Secrets to Keeping Customers for Life
May 24: Budgeting Blunders & Beauties – How to win the fight with your business finances

Virtual Business Counseling
provided through a grant from Dogwood Health Trust.
Wednesdays from 7am-3pm.
Download Nicole’s free e-book, “How to Eradicate Fear- A Guide for Entrepreneurs”.

Got Your Back Business Summit
We are delighted to announce that our Got Your Back Business Summit is now available online! You can take it at your leisure, for free!
The Got Your Back Online Academy provides tools that you can immediately put to use in your business.
Join other local business owners in this online course as we address finding and keeping the right employees, effective leadership strategies, digital marketing, affordable benefits, how to handle challenging customers and employees, ways to improve the workplace environment, and training.
The Got Your Back Academy is a result of the NC Cooperative Extension – Jackson County, Mountain West Partnership, SCC’s Small Business Center, Western Carolina University, Create Bridges WNC, & NC State University working together to help businesses in WNC as they face staffing shortages and other challenges.
We invited a wonderful group of speakers to lead the Got Your Back Academy. They each brought their own expertise, resources, and tangible tools for our region’s employers. We discussed with them what keeps our business owners up at night. Together, we continue learning new ways to maneuver the current workplace challenges.
This course is designed to support our local employers, packed full of tools & resources to help employees know that your businesses have their backs! And we have yours!
As a business owner, you have seen it all and learned so much. What in the world could this course offer you? Maybe nothing. You may be the best employer that you could possibly be. But perhaps there are some tools that could make your work life easier, your workplace more pleasant and your staff more reliable.
Take a sec to read through these questions to see if this course could be useful to you:
- What do you do with that employee who is always late but you can’t let go of?
- How do you make sure your best employees stay with you?
- How do you attract new employees?
- How do you handle an irate customer?
- How can you be s stronger leader?
- Do you think that offering your employees benefits is something you can’t afford?
- Could your employee training process use some improvement?
If any of these questions catch your interest, then we invite you to explore the GYB Online Academy. No catch, no gimmicks. A free opportunity to learn from industry experts and other business owners in a user-friendly online format that allows you to watch and learn at your own pace.
*All employers who complete this course or attend the in-person GYB Academy in April will NOT have to pay a registration fee to attend the WeSpeakWNC Workforce Conference at the Cherokee Convention Center on February 27th & 28th.
More about that later but trust me – you do not want to miss it. If you’d like to take the first step on this journey, click this link: https://gybacademy.thinkific.com/
Got Your Back Radio
Take a listen to this interview from WRGC radio that explains the origin of The Got Your Back Employer Training that was introduced as as in-person event in April of 2022 in Jackson County, NC.
Curious about Broadband in your area?
Check out the FCC National Broadband Map.