Advice to small business owners: Continue to embrace training

Locals who own Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) have been encouraged to embrace training despite their knowledge, or how long they have been operating.

The advice has come from Chief Executive Officer (CEO) at Invest SVG, Glen Beache, who said that in an ever changing world, remaining stagnant can be detrimental to businesses.

The CEO was speaking on Tuesday, November 26, 2024 at the start of a three day Invest SVG and Caribbean Export Development Agency (CEDA) workshop which was held under the theme, “Enhancing MSME Competitiveness with Green Business Strategies”.

Addressing participants at the opening of the workshop which, addressed among other topics, building resilient economies by empowering CARIFORUM MSMEs through capacity building and green business strategies, Beache urged MSME owners to not slight workshops of this nature.

“…no matter how long you are in business you still have things to learn and understand as the world is changing constantly,” Beache said, while noting that when he was CEO at the Tourism Authority there were veteran taxi men -in business for 25 years- who were shunning training, saying there was nothing for them to learn.

“…so, the first thing we did- we got every single taxi driver to come up here and pretend as if they were taking a visitor from the Cruise Ship Terminal to the Botanical Gardens and said, ‘walk us through it, tell us exactly what you are going to say as you go along’, and not one taxi driver was able to do it,” Beache said.

“I use that as an example to say, no matter how long you’ve been in business, it doesn’t matter what you’re doing, how much you have expertise in it, there is always something for us to learn and understand, this world is changing constantly,” Beache stressed.

Among the areas addressed in the workshop were how to strengthen the capacity of MSMEs while fostering regional and international trade and aligning with global sustainability standards.

The Invest SVG CEO told the more than 11 business owners present that when it comes to exports, small countries like St Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG), does not always have to look at the United States of America (USA), Britain ,and Canada because doing business with neighbouring countries sometimes makes more sense.

“A lot of times we can look to our neighbours Barbados, Trinidad, Saint Lucia- all these places that can sustain our exports, and these countries make it more viable for small businesses, medium businesses, if they desire to go out of St Vincent and the Grenadines,” Beache advised.

“Invest SVG- when we hear the word investment, a lot of the times, we just think about it on an international scale.

“Sandals that has just opened, Holiday Inn, the new port, we look at these big projects and we think that is what it is all about, and we realized that we need to pay attention to regional/ local investment because it is a big part of what we do, and sometimes when the big, shiny objects get attention, we forget about what’s going on in our own backyard.”

Sessions over the three-day period also addressed renewable energy technologies; energy conservation techniques; energy efficient techniques; and identifying wastage.

Referring to the workshop’s agenda, Beache said what stood out to him was the mention of energy consumption.

He said this is an important topic as some people have no idea how to consume energy to benefit them.

“…it is important…we hear from every business about energy cost, and we usually wonder how we use so much. We have to understand consumption, how we use it and manage it, where we can cut back and how they (VINLEC) charge,” Beache said, while encouraging the business owners to pay close attention to the presentations by Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Barbados-based Atom Solutions Inc., Dr. Erwin Edwards.