Strategy and AI Foundations for Small Business

About the workshop

This is a practical capability-building day for small business founders, operators and people planning to start a business. You’ll learn new methods in the room, and you’ll put them to work on your own business as you go. You’ll leave with stronger skills in both strategy and AI, and the confidence to keep using them once the day is over. The morning session covers strategy and the afternoon session covers AI. You can book either session on its own or come for the full day, which includes lunch.

Places are limited so that Nick can spend time working one-on-one with each person in the room.

Before the event

Before the workshop we’ll send you a short questionnaire. Your answers will help tailor the sessions to your business, its needs and where you are in your journey.

Session 1: Strategy (8.30am to 12.30pm)

You’ll build your strategic planning skills and apply them directly to your own business. During the session you’ll complete up to three essential business templates, then pitch your work back to the room and get feedback from other founders and operators.

By the end of the session you will:

• improve and test your business model

• set a clear direction for your business and its growth ambitions

• know which bottlenecks you need to address to reach the next stage of growth.

You’ll leave with a plan that’s written down and tested with other people, so you can make decisions with more confidence and explain where your business is heading to staff, partners or a lender.

Session 2: AI (1.00pm to 5.00pm)

You’ll learn how to use AI on the bottlenecks that are holding your business back. The session is hands-on: you’ll use AI on your own work throughout, with guidance and coaching in the room. We’ll cover the foundations of AI, how to write better prompts and how to set up projects so the AI works from your own business information. We’ll then apply it to the areas where small businesses most often get stuck, including outreach and sales, marketing and design, website creation, email and admin, quotes and invoicing, customer enquiries, process automation, and research and planning. You’ll leave with a plan for how AI fits into your business from here. Used well, these tools can give you back hours every week and let a small team handle work that would otherwise mean hiring.

What to bring

Please bring a laptop to the AI session so you can set things up on your own business as we go.

After the event

Everyone who attends can join an optional online community after the workshop to keep sharing insights and stay connected with the group.

Your facilitator

The workshop is run by Nick Psanoudakis of NCP Co. Nick has spent more than ten years working with CEOs, boards and leadership teams across universities, not-for-profits, government and private business. He has co-founded and run several businesses, including Hydrate The People, MobiPet and crgo. He now advises and mentors senior executives and small business operators across Australia and New Zealand.

Nick is a strategy advisor and business co-founder who mentors senior executives and small business operators across Australia and New Zealand.

Background

For more than ten years Nick has worked with CEOs, boards and leadership teams. Much of that time has gone into making the planning methods of large organisations simple enough for a small team to use. This workshop brings that experience to small businesses, so you can work on a clear plan in the morning and put AI to work on it in the afternoon.

Consulting experience

Nick’s consulting work covers the same strategy and AI skills you’ll practise in the workshop.

• Strategic planning and delivery: developing and delivering strategies for universities, not-for-profits and private businesses, from board workshops through to implementation.

• Process improvement: mapping and redesigning processes in large and global organisations to remove bottlenecks and free up staff time.

• AI training and coaching: training and coaching middle managers and their teams to use AI in their day-to-day work.

• Operating models and structure: designing roles, teams and governance so an organisation is set up to deliver its strategy.

• Business cases and financial modelling: building options papers and financial models that help leaders decide where to invest.

• Workshops and change: facilitating workshops and bringing staff, boards and communities along through major change.

Businesses Nick has built and run

• AptoNow: a strategy and transformation consultancy, where Nick was Chief Operating Officer and Consulting Lead.

• NCP Co: Nick’s independent practice, advising and mentoring leaders across Australia and New Zealand.

• Ventures (co-founder): Hydrate The People, a premium electrolyte brand sold online and in stores; MobiPet, a marketplace for after-hours mobile vets; and crgo, premium container gyms built in Perth.