A weekend of workshops for community-minded entrepreneurs.
Seeking to start or grow a socially responsible venture? This weekend intensive interweaves business basics with social/environmental/personal values, inner awareness, and a vision of community.
Each hands-on workshop is led by a topic expert and guided by the series facilitators. Threaded throughout the weekend are mindfulness exercises, individual exercises, and opportunities to co-learn with your peers.
This is the fourth iteration of the series, now packed into a weekend. Previous incarnations were held in partnership with Etsy in Hudson, NY, and the New York Open Center in NYC.
“Truthfully, I attend many, many workshops and seminars throughout the year and this was by far among the finest. I think most every area of business was addressed, it was interactive, there was adequate time and attention paid to address individual business issues and concerns, there was a huge amount of sharing of ideas, and each participant was drawn into various discussions so no one was made to feel excluded.”
Who Should Attend?
- retailers
- makers / boutique manufacturers
- nonprofiteers
- small biz owners
- restaurateurs
- hospitality, lodging, tourism
- artists
- service businesses
Limited to 30 participants.
Workshops
Saturday
Visioning + Branding With Purpose
Scott Tillitt
aligning your brand with your vision and purpose, creating a high-impact brand system
Communicating Your Value(s)
Ajax Greene
mindful, goal-oriented selling through language (verbal and written), passion, and posture
Marketing With Purpose
Melissa Gibson
the 4 Ps, social media, marketing plans, collaboration, marketing your values
Sunday
Accounting + Finance Issues
Myriam Bouchard
Budgets and P&Ls and KPIs, oh my! Learn how to create financial well-being for your business.
Legal Strategies
Gary Schuster
intellectual property, partner contracts, benefit corporations, crowdfunding
Personal Leadership
Colette Ruoff
growing yourself to grow your business, giving feedback, engaging in difficult conversations
Schedule subject to change. People listed are the lead presenters (bios below). All sessions are co-facilitated by Ajax Greene and Scott Tillitt. Amy Soucy leads the mindfulness exercises.
Breaks will be scheduled throughout the weekend.
Investment
Full weekend: $399 / $319 for partners
Scholarships: reduced fee of $199 for the weekend (a $200 savings), compliments of Luminary Media (only 2 available — if you can afford the full fee, please choose that option)
A portion of the proceeds supports Re>Think Local, a nonprofit collaborative of locally owned independent businesses, artists, farmers, and nonprofits co-creating a better Hudson Valley.
Presenters
Myriam Bouchard
Bottom Line Business Services
Board Treasurer / Re>Think Local
An award-winning certified business advisor, Myriam has over 30 years of experience as an entrepreneur. She currently helps entrepreneurs find peace of mind by providing constructive and creative feedback to help them make knowledge-based day-to-day business decisions and increase their bottom line, while keeping an eye on the broader long-term goals. She is passionate about using her creativity in helping a business grow, whether it is reviewing a profit and loss statement to help with cash flow issues, discussing marketing and pricing strategies to increase revenues, or reviewing organizational charts to improve workflow. Myriam has helped thousands of entrepreneurs do feasibility analyses, often leading to successful endeavors and at other times, the numbers exposing the hurdles of starting or expanding a business. She has an MBA from Syracuse University.
Melissa Gibson
President/CEO / New In Town
Melissa is a seasoned marketing and business development professional with over 20 years of experience. With degrees in Agriculture Economics and Management from Cornell University and a Masters of Brand Management from the University of Georgia, Melissa began her career with a pioneering database marketing company and then went on to found her own business development consulting firm, New In Town. She continues to work with individuals, businesses and organizations seeking to acquire new customers and successfully nurture and build brand equity, with a special emphasis on grassroots growth platforms, small business collaborative marketing and innovative idea generation.
Ajax Greene
Founder/CEO / On Belay Business Advisors
Co-founder + Vice Chair / Re>Think Local
Ajax is a well-known and respected serial social entrepreneur, triple bottom line and localism evangelist, trusted generalist business advisor, and connector of confidential business transactions. He has turned his abundant creativity, talent and positive energy to building organizations and a community that expresses a deep commitment to being conscious of the triple bottom line of people, planet and prosperity. He is a co-producer of Social Venture Institute / Hudson Valley, a weekend retreat for world-changing social entrepreneurs.
Colette Ruoff
Founder / Terra Nova Facilitation and Consulting
President & Founder / SageArts
Colette is an organizational consultant and board certified executive coach who works with corporations and nonprofits to enable them in fulfilling their missions. She founded Terra Nova with Thomas Jaggers. A former VP of European American Bank and director of investments of AIG, Colette has deep business experience and an MBA from NYU. She has worked as a leadership development specialist with partners of management consulting firm McKinsey & Co and Ernst & Young, one of the big five accounting firms, as well as with senior executives of Johnson & Johnson and WPP. She has also worked with the staff of Robin Hood Foundation and Earthjustice. In 2014 Colette launched a local nonprofit arts organization called SageArts, which gives elders an artistic platform to share their life wisdom with the community.
Gary Schuster
Partner / Jacobowitz & Gubits, LLP
Gary’s varied law practice includes formation, transactions and counseling for corporations, LLCs, partnerships and nonprofits; purchases and sales of businesses; commercial and residential real estate transactions and leasing; franchising; estate planning, administration and litigation; guardianship proceedings; and media, copyright and trademark. He has been a leader in educating the public about New York’s new benefit corporation. He also has extensive experience in music and art, which includes past employment with ASCAP, The Songwriters Guild of America, Dunvagen Music Publishers (owned by the composer, Philip Glass) and Knoedler Publishing (publishers of the artist, LeRoy Neiman). He has represented clients in art, music, film, video, dance, theater, photography, fashion modeling, publishing, the internet, museums and arts centers.
Amy Soucy
Yoga + Meditation Instructor / Resonant Heart Yoga
Amy is a Beacon-based instructor known for her expressive and authentic approach to the art of awareness. With extensive training in both the Integral and Anusara methods of hatha yoga, Amy brings her experience to a diverse range of students in a variety of settings: NYC public schools, colleges, social work agencies, preschools, corporations and institutions, public parks, yoga studios and private homes.
She’s a staff member of the Lineage Project, which brings mindfulness-based practices to vulnerable youth throughout NYC. Amy also facilitates movement and mindfulness experiences for group events and conferences, including at TEDxLongDock and the annual Social Venture Institute / Hudson Valley (at Omega Institute).
Scott Tillitt
Founder / Antidote Collective + BEAHIVE
Co-founder + Board Chair / Re>Think Local
Equal parts strategist, publicist, marketer, social entrepreneur, nonprofit leader, and writer with 20+ years of experience, Scott has an insatiable interest in transforming failed systems, in big ideas and the behaviors that drive people, what resonates with them, and how to communicate with them. He's instrumental in a social enterprise, a nonprofit, and various projects and community engagements that are focused on making the Hudson Valley a more vibrant, sustainable, locally-rooted and human-scale place to live and work. Scott is a co-producer of Social Venture Institute / Hudson Valley, a weekend retreat for world-changing social entrepreneurs.
Sponsors + Promotional Partners
“[I came away with a] greater ability to focus on goals and clarify purpose. Also, some specific strategies to improve business practices — i.e. responding to Facebook mentions, paying more attention to accounting practices.... Can’t wait to share some of the self exploration exercises with the nonprofits I work with. I think they will be hugely helpful in helping members to work together towards a common goal. [What I enjoyed most:] new perception of leadership that reaffirms my interest in taking on more responsibility in my community.”