RPCN is moving to a new location in October 2024

For the past few years, since we began to have hybrid meetings after the pandemic, Rochester Professional Consultants Network (RPCN) has conducted our meetings at the Al Sigl Center at 1000 Elmwood Avenue, Rochester, New York. We have been happy there, but we received an offer we didn’t want to refuse!

One of our RPCN members, Jane Ahrens, owns a business called Ahrens Benefits Company. Jane made us a gracious offer to meet in a meeting room she had available at her business at 2800 Dewey Avenue, Rochester, NY 14616. Her offer was too good to refuse, so we’re making the move as of October 2024!

Our last meeting at Al Sigl Center was on Friday, September 27th. All in-person meetings after that date are at Ahrens Benefits Company.

We’ve moved our library, our mailing address, and all other items to Jane’s location on Dewey Avenue starting October 1st. Please join us and continue to connect with RPCN and its members there. We look forward to seeing you!!

—Sandy Glanton

Don’t be a “Presentation Pain”:
Have mercy on your audience

Presentation Pain
I once endured a presentation from the leader of a large organization who spoke clearly and with good volume. But he bored us to death by reading every word on 45 cluttered slides in one hour. His slides resembled pages from a textbook. The topic should have been “Info Overload.” He also confused us with a flurry of acronyms and jargon. I hope to never again endure this agony.

Mistakes
Some presenters think it’s okay to:

• Have many slides
• Put lots of words on the slides
• Talk fast to cover all the material
• Read their slides to the audience

They also think it’s okay to use:

• Unexplained Acronyms
• Obscure jargon (“choicing” was a new one for me)
• Verbal shortcuts and jargon that sound like other words

A Better Way
How can you not make your audience feel like they’d rather go to a dentist for a tooth extraction?

1. Keep your key points to a minimum.
2. Use your slides to focus attention on your key points (not to tell the whole story).
3. Don’t read your slides to the audience. It bores and demeans them.
4. Make your key points with your voice. If you’re brave, try it with one-word slides, pictures-only, or no slides.
5. Use jargon only if you know that your audience understands it (or define it for them). Avoid spoken jargon and acronyms that can sound like other words.
6. Use a mix of words and graphics but avoid clutter. (Slides using just words are boring.)
7. Make it interesting. Use examples, anecdotes, and your experiences. Tell stories. Use humor with care.
8. Be ruthless as you edit your presentation. “When in doubt, cut it out.” If necessary, keep slides with more detail in reserve. Use them only to answer questions, not as part of your main presentation.
9. Practice. Control your timing. Allow time for questions. Edit and trim to gain time.
10. Become a “Presentation Pro” not a “Pain”. You’ll get your points across and do your audience a great favor.

Volunteer Without Overcommitting

RPCN is run by a passionate group of volunteers who we thank for their time and dedication. But did you know there are volunteer needs that require very little of your time?

Here are a few of those easy but valuable tasks:

1. Forward to our Newsletter team any networking events or event notices you receive from your memberships and subscriptions. Reach out to newsletter@rochesterconsultants.org for more information and guidelines.
2. Repost entrepreneurial interest posts to the RPCN Group on LinkedIn. Reach out to Thomas Fecteau for more information and guidelines.
3. Repost RPCN social media posts (LinkedIn and Facebook) to your followers. Reach out to Mark Fling for more information and guidelines.
4. Add intro and ending screens to our Learn from the Best video recordings. Reach out to Dave Finger for more information and guidelines.
5. Reach out to two members a month for news or success stories. Reach out to Thomas Fecteau for more information and guidelines.

Please email your interest to the parties noted as “many hands make the load lighter.”

—Tom Fecteau

Member Asks: Can You Help?

At a recent Learn from the Best session on Networking, presented by Robert Braathe, Robert asked attendees to share, “Who do you want to meet? (industries, roles they are in, locations and/or specific people)” by posting in the Chat area.

Given that the N in RPCN stands for Network, we ask that you look over these asks and see if you can help a fellow RPCN member.

• Gary Wood: CEOs, CFOs, COOs of manufacturing companies with annual revenue between $10 and $50 million
• Dave Bassett: Startup founders
• Barbara Ingrassia: Victims of content theft and businesspeople who value copyright skills as tools to grow and protect
• Tom Fecteau: Business owners who manage a small sales team and their people are underperforming or there has been turnover
• Isabelle Cornelus: I want to connect with thought leaders in the transportation industry or tech.
• Bob Manard: People who value their time and prefer to spend it doing what they do best, running a thriving business, and still have plenty of time left over for their personal lives.
• Gerianne Puskas: Nonprofit CEOs who want to raise significantly more funds and diversify the sources while building a more stable, forward-thinking staff.
• Tom Fecteau: Solopreneurs who have worked for a while and are starting to have doubts about their success because sales are lagging.
• Robert Braathe: Career Service Station: Good referrals for me are business owners looking to grow their LinkedIn presence, people who have been recently laid off (or are worried about it), and parents of recent graduates.

When you attend any of our events, remember to share your ask with everyone. Thank you for making RPCN a group for continued connection and support.

RPCN Still Needs Simon Vision Mentors for Fall 2024

The Rochester Professional Consultants Network’s (RPCN) program of providing mentors to the University of Rochester’s Simon School of Business (Simon) Simon Vision Consulting Program (Simon Vision) is preparing to provide mentors for a fourteenth consecutive semester.

For those of you that regularly read this column, you already know about Simon Vision and what a great opportunity it is. For those of you that are unfamiliar with Simon Vision, the program is an effort to increase experiential learning opportunities for Simon’s MBA and MS students.

Simon Vision Consulting (SVC) is a student-run program that usually has 4-5 student members per team. Each team typically provides consulting to a local small business for 8 - 12 weeks, which is one semester. In the semester that follows, Simon sometimes has another student consulting team take over the next part of the project for the same company.

Participation in the program is voluntary for the students and is not part of the regular Simon curriculum. In addition to the RPCN mentors, there is a faculty adviser who helps the students run the program.

Mentors
It’s time for us to provide mentors for the upcoming Fall semester. There will be 16 projects in total. We would like to have at least that many mentors to help.

As of now, we need more mentors to reach our goal of one mentor assigned to work per project team.

• The mentors meet either in person or virtually with their project manager and/or team anywhere from once per week to once per month depending upon the needs of the team and the project.
• How often and when you meet is mutually decided by you and the student project manager.
• It’s fun to work with the students and you might even find yourself learning some new things.
• If you’d like to become a mentor, please contact me at the contact information shown at the end of this article.

Projects
Simon Vision is also looking for new projects for the Spring semester.

• If you, a client, or an associate have an outsourceable project that could be completed in about 8 – 10 weeks, send an application to Simon Vision to get it included in the Spring semester.
• Projects are evaluated by the Simon Vision student governing board, and the leadership of Simon Vision will work with you to define the project requirements to be completed within these constraints.

Contact Information
If you are interested in having an SVC Project Team perform work for you, would like more information about the program, or especially if you’d like to volunteer to be an RPCN member mentor to a student team, please contact Dave Bassett at dbassett@basstat.com.

—Dave Bassett